1962-03-15

Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege today to call the attention of the house to the presence in the Speaker's gallery of Right Hon. John McEwen, deputy prime minister of the commonwealth of Australia. Mr. McEwen has been a most distinguished leader not only in his own country but throughout the commonwealth of nations, and in 1958 he headed the Australian delegation to the trade and economic conference in Montreal. He comes to us following a stay in Washington. He is discussing with members of the government matters of international interest, including in particular the implications of the common market, as the entry of the United Kingdom may affect not only our two nations but commonwealth trade relations as a whole. To him, and through him, I extend warmest good wishes.
We recall so well an address which was given in the days of war by the prime minister of Australia, Right Hon. Robert Menzies. It will always be remembered by those who were privileged to hear it. Speaking in this chamber with great eloquence, he filled us with determination and moved us to a realization of those values which were then at stake.


Hon. Lionel Chevrier (Laurier):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to join with the Prime Minister in welcoming to our country Right Hon. Mr. McEwen, the deputy prime minister of Australia. Our relationship with this commonwealth country has been not only cordial but very close at the United Nations and all international meetings. I am sure that those of us who sit on this side of the house will not only be happy to welcome the deputy prime minister here but will also desire to wish him well in the deliberations that I am sure he will be entering upon with the government.
(Translation):
With the consent of the house, Mr. Speaker, I should like to add only this. Since the talks to be held will also have reference to the
26207-1-115
common market and, consequently, to the export trade which is of particular concern to all of us, we hope that they will be successful.
On behalf of members of the opposition, I extend our best wishes to the deputy prime minister of Australia.
(Text):


Mr. H. W. Herridge (Kootenay West):: Mr. Speaker, members of this group join with the Prime Minister and the hon. member for Laurier in extending a welcome to the deputy prime minister of Australia. We in this group have a high appreciation of the value of the commonwealth and the role it can play in international affairs. On that account we are particularly anxious on all occasions to extend a most hearty welcome to any representatives of the people from our fellow commonwealth countries.
I was interested to hear the reference made by the Prime Minister to the study of the question of the common market. I am sure this is a matter of mutual and serious concern to Canada and Australia. I trust that after the discussions which will take place in the next few days we will reach a common approach to this question as fellow members of the commonwealth who are concerned with developments in this respect.



TAPE RECORDING OF HOUSE PROCEEDINGS

Mr. Speaker:: If the house will give me leave I shall be glad to make a brief statement about experiments in reporting our proceedings by mechanical means, pursuant to the authority given by the house last April. My reason for suggesting what might be called a progress report is to remove doubts which may have been left in the minds of hon. members yesterday when the matter was raised, but not proceeded with, as a question of privilege. Is it agreed that I may make a brief statement?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: If hon. members will refer to page 3963 of Hansard of April 25, 1961 or the Journals of that year at page 471, they will see the following:


Mr. Speaker:: By leave of the house-and I should first inform the house that I have already consulted the party leaders-I should like to ask for the approval of the house to carry out some experiments in reporting the proceedings of the house by using tape recording machines in conjunction with our sound amplification system. The purpose is to determine whether mechanical recording can usefully be used in combination with

House of Commons
shorthand reporting, as is being done in some other jurisdictions, and to develop this information for the guidance of the committee on procedure and of the house itself. As I have said, nothing is contemplated other than experimental recordings. Is it agreed?	,___ ...


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
Before the July adjournment some experiments with dictaphone machines were made in the English and French debates offices with the co-operation of the editors and certain members of the staff. These experiments were not reported last session to the committee on procedure because they were not considered conclusive and the committee itself had its hands full with other business.
To continue the experiments the assistance of the management analysis division of the civil service commission was requested. This request was initiated by the Clerk on October 5, 1961, and the terms of reference were as follows:
To survey the organization, methods and procedures of the English debates reporting branch with a view to making recommendations for their improvement.
Mr. A. M. Ervin was assigned to the work. He has undertaken a fairly broad study of reporting methods elsewhere as well as in our own house.
The recordings which are now going on began on Thursday, March 1 and continued to March 9. The second stage will begin on March 15 and will run until March 23 and conclude at that point. The method is to take ten minute sample recordings at intervals of approximately one hour during the daily sessions.
In all these experiments the belts or discs on which the proceedings are recorded have been closely guarded and put to no outside, ulterior or improper use. The belts and tapes from the first experiment have been destroyed, and those from Mr. Ervin's experiments will be turned over to the Speaker with his report. There has been nothing secret about the experiments other than to maintain the privacy of the records.
I think perhaps hon. members would like me to add that what we are doing should not be taken in any way as a reflection on our excellent reporting and editorial staff, but rather as an attempt at finding possible means of assisting them in their difficult duties.


Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Speaker, if I were in order I think I should like to say that we are grateful for this statement you have made. There might well have been some misunderstanding about the matter. After having looked at the statement which Your Honour was good enough to let some of us have, we should like to say that we think the statement which Your Honour has just made is of significant importance,

as it affects the privileges and responsibilities of all of the members. We are wondering whether Your Honour would not look with favour on a meeting being called of the house leader and the other party leaders to consider this statement. Not only might it affect the rights and responsibilities of all of us but, from the mechanical aspect of this analysis, it might well gradually and eventually affect the rights of the Hansard reporters and those who have been carrying on so well, as Your Honour has just said.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Speaker, this matter was raised by the hon. member for Vancouver East who, with his long experience, values the traditions and rights of parliament. This group appreciates your explanation this afternoon and urges that consideration be given to the suggestion made by the hon. member for Laurier.


Hon. Gordon Churchill (Minister of Veterans Affairs):: I think the proper place for it to be discussed would be when the committee under your chairmanship meets, Mr. Speaker. I refer to the committee on rules and procedures.



BANK OF CANADA


[Stage Direction]
On the order:	Government notices of
motion:
March 13-The Minister of Finance-That the annual report of the governor of the Bank of Canada, together with the statement of accounts, for the year ended the 31st of December, 1961, laid on the table on the 12th day of March, 1962, be referred to the standing committee on banking and commerce.
Mr. Speaker:: Pursuant to section 2 of standing order 21 this government notice of motion stands transferred to and ordered for consideration under government orders at the next sitting of the house.



LABOUR CONDITIONS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Lionel Chevrier: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Labour. In view of the fact that the joint release of his department and the dominion bureau of statistics concerning the labour force in Canada is, as a rule, issued before the middle of the month, may I inquire whether the minister will be receiving those figures today and whether he will be in a position to table them so that we might have cognizance of them today?


Hon. Michael Starr (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, if we look back over the years at the dates upon which the dominion bureau of statistics has issued a release on employment and unemployment, I think it will be found that there is a variation month by month and year by year, and that there is not any specified date. I think there is a difference of as much as eight or nine days in the dates of the issuance of this release. I do not know ahead of time when they are going to release it. I do not get the report any sooner than the hon. member, or any sooner than the report is available to him. The dominion bureau of statistics prepares this report along with the economics branch of the labour department, and we await it from month to month. I think the statement that ordinarily it does come out at the middle of the month is incorrect.


Lionel Chevrier: On that point, Mr. Speaker, may I say that I have here the releases for the last three months, and they are all before the 15th with the exception of one.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I do not think the hon. member would be within his right in debating the question of the time of release, other than to ask a supplementary question if any arises. It has been indicated by the minister that the matter is not really one under his control.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Speaker, I wish to address a question to the Prime Minister. I trust he realizes that these questions are advanced in a spirit of cooperation to assist him to unveil this mystery and deal effectively with future situations.
In view of the report in the Globe and Mail of March 15 that soldiers caught smuggling in Indo-China late in 1961 were dealt with on the spot by their commanding officers, and apparently quite lightly; and since under the National Defence Act the maximum punishment that can be imposed by a commanding officer is three months' detention, could the Prime Minister inform the house why so lenient a view was taken of these deplorable crimes, and could he assure the house that all future proven cases of smuggling by members of the armed forces will be dealt with by courtmartial?


Hon. D. S. Harkness (Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, I think this question should more properly have been addressed to me as Minister of National Defence. First of
26207-1-115i
Inquiries of the Ministry all I should like to say that I think the hon. member has a rather peculiar view of the administration of justice, in that the whole tenor of his question was along the line that any person suspected or accused of a particular crime is more or less automatically guilty and must be dealt with accordingly. When a man in the army is suspected of a particular crime-and the same thing applies in civil life-the first thing that has to be done is to secure sufficient evidence to establish a prima facie case. On the basis of what the investigation discloses the man's commanding officer determines whether he should be dealt with summarily or whether he should be tried by courtmartial. It is not the function of the government to state that a particular case shall be dealt with by court-martial. Is is for the law officers in the J.A.G.'s branch, the commanding officer and the commander of the command that the man happens to be in to determine the particular procedure to be followed. I can assure the hon. member and other hon. members that all due regard is being paid to the proper course that should be followed in the administration of justice in the army.


Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a supplementary question arising out of that statement. Is it not a fact that the Minister of National Defence took exactly the same position as the hon. member has taken when the minister in his former capacity as minister of agriculture dealt in the same manner with one Mitchell, an employee of his department in Montreal? Does the minister not recall that?


Douglas Scott Harkness: No.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I take it the hon. member for Laurier is referring to some matter of the past by way of argument rather than asking for information. As it has gone that far, perhaps the minister might want to comment.


Lionel Chevrier: He took exactly the same position he is complaining about.


Douglas Scott Harkness: With regard to the particular case to which the hon. member refers, he is talking about one of his political henchmen who was caught contravening the rules and regulations of the department, abusing his position-


Mr. Martin (Essex East):: And never tried notwithstanding the bill of rights.


Douglas Scott Harkness: -as a member of the staff of the Department of Agriculture.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Guilty by association.

Inquiries of the Ministry


Douglas Scott Harkness: -and was dismissed as a result of those actions.


Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Speaker, the statement which has been made by the minister-


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Lionel Chevrier: I rise on a point of order. The statement made by the minister is not only inaccurate but also wholly untrue. It is untrue, sir.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I think the hon. member is perhaps the author of the difficulty by introducing a challenging, debating statement with respect to the former answer by way of a supplementary. Opinions have been expressed both ways. This is not an occasion upon which any conclusions can be taken by asking and answering questions. I suggest to the hon. member that it is not a point of order to rise and say that an answer given is not true.


Lionel Chevrier: I rise on a question of privilege, then, because the question I put to the minister was a factual one and he proceeded to make a political statement.


Douglas Scott Harkness: It was not a factual one.


Lionel Chevrier: I wish to say now not only that the minister's statement is untrue but it is inaccurate because, first of all, this man was not a political organizer-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: I suppose if the hon. member wishes to challenge the statement made to the house by the minister as a matter of privilege he may do so, and I will give the minister an opportunity to answer.


Lionel Chevrier: I simply wish to say this. The person whose name has been mentioned was never a political organizer of mine.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Lionel Chevrier: He was never charged, as he should have been, but he was found guilty by the minister without being given the opportunity of a trial.


Mr. Benidickson:: No bill of rights.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I do not think any purpose would be served by my engaging in the same sort of childish activity as the hon. member for Laurier did in saying that statements are untrue. There is no question but that the statement he made is a highly biased one. He must have felt very badly about losing the services of this particular gentleman from his political organization.


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Lionel Chevrier: He has a better job today, sir.



HOUSING


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. D. J. Walker (Minister of Public Works):: I should like to reply to a question asked by the hon. member for Trinity last Friday. This is an answer not about angry waters but about blue waters. The hon. member for Trinity raised a question regarding the Blue Water redevelopment area at Sarnia, and then asked a supplementary question which I took as notice.
In answer to this question I would say that the city proposes to make the cleared land available for industrial use. While I am not aware of any agreement or understanding with the city of Sarnia that part of the land be made available to Polymer Corporation, it is quite possible that the city officials have held discussions with potential developers, including the Polymer Corporation.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Paul Joseph James Martin: May I ask
the Minister of Finance, if in view of the fact that the budget will be brought in before Easter, so we are informed although not officially, he can assure the house we will be allowed the full six days of debate under our procedures before dissolution of parliament or before the Easter recess begins?


Hon. Donald M. Fleming (Minister of Finance):: The hon. member began his question with an assertion. Anyone who can dream up an assertion of that kind I feel does not need any information from me on that question.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I take it I am right, and we will have the budget before Easter?



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Herbert Wilfred Herridge: wish to direct a question to the Minister of National Defence, and I might say that in presenting this question I am speaking for all parties in my constituency. In view of the report in today's Globe and Mail that Mr. Robert Bonner, attorney general of British Columbia, has expressed his disappointment at the refusal of the Minister of National Defence

to send troops to the Kootenays unless the provincial government formally calls out the troops in aid of the civil power under the National Defence Act, would the minister inform the house whether he could, in the spirit of co-operation, review the training plans of the regular army troops of western command to determine if useful exercises, schemes and training could be carried out in the delightful Kootenay country during the next few months?


Douglas Scott Harkness: Mr. Speaker, having spent a few summer holidays in the Kootenay country I can vouch for the fact that it is quite delightful at that time of year. This is not that time of year and, generally speaking, to send troops in there would seriously interfere with their regular training and would impair their general efficiency.
However, the main point is this. There is no question whatever, in view of what the attorney general of British Columbia said and the reported statements in the Globe and Mail of this morning, I think it was, and other newspapers as to what various people living in that area have said-mayors of towns, and so on-that the real reason troops are wanted in the Kootenays is in aid of civil power. If troops are wanted and needed in the Kootenays in aid of civil power, then they should be secured in the regular manner as laid down by law.



PUBLIC SERVICE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. M. W. Martin (Timmins):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Secretary of State. I regret that I did not have time to send him notice, but this matter was drawn to my attention by a telephone call just before the house opened.


An hon. Member:: Oh, another telephone call.


Murdo William Martin: My question has to do with a rather disturbing report in yesterday's Journal which states that a tracing bureau operates seven days a week and 24 hours a day, and employs contacts in most of the country's major police departments, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the unemployment insurance commission, the Department of National Health and Welfare and several other government and private agencies.
My question is, would the minister launch an immediate investigation to ensure that
Inquiries of the Ministry confidential information gathered by some of these departments is not handed out to private investigators or anyone else?
(Translation):


Hon. Noel Dorion (Secretary of Stale):: Mr. Speaker, I shall take the hon. member's question as notice and try to provide him with a reply as early as tomorrow morning.
(Text):



OLD AGE SECURITY


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. W. C. Henderson (Cariboo):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of National Health and Welfare. Can he advise the house whether British Columbia residents are yet receiving the benefits of last month's increases in the amounts his department is prepared to pay under the federal-provincial welfare programs?


Hon. J. W. Monteith (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: No, Mr. Speaker, I have had no word from the hon. member's home province as to whether they are going to participate in this $10 increase.


Mr. Maurice Johnson (Chambly-Rouville):: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Could the Minister of National Health and Welfare inform the house whether there is any progress with-


Mr. Brassard (Lapointe):: "In connection with".


Paul Léo Maurice Johnson: -in connection with-the hon. member is very good in English-the negotiations with the province of Quebec in this matter.


Jay Waldo Monteith: No, Mr. Speaker, Quebec has not given any indication as to its intention.


Some hon. Members:: Shame.


Mr. Jack McIntosh (Swift Current-Maple Creek):: I should like to direct the same question to the minister in connection with the province of Saskatchewan. Has the minister heard from the province of Saskatchewan?


Jay Waldo Monteith: No, Mr. Speaker. Saskatchewan makes the third and remaining province which has not given any indication.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Paul Joseph James Martin: May I ask
the Minister of National Health and Welfare whether he has received any word from the government of Nova Scotia?
1820	HOUSE OF
Inquiries oj the Ministry


Jay Waldo Monteith: I have indicated that Saskatchewan was the last of the three provinces, the other two being British Columbia and Quebec, which had not given any indication as to their intentions. I might add that all provinces which have signed agreements, except Newfoundland, have had their agreements dated back to February 1; and the agreement with Newfoundland, which I signed this morning commences April 1.


Hon. J. W. Pickersgill (Bonavista-Twil-lingate):: Mr. Speaker, I wonder whether I might ask the minister a supplementary question as to whether he thinks the promotion of questions of this sort is calculated to promote harmony with the provinces.


Some hon. Members:: Order.



INDUSTRY


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Maurice Bourgei (Levis):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Prime Minister. Did the Prime Minister receive an invitation to attend the luncheon last Saturday to launch a steel complex in Lauzon, which is in my constituency? If so, did he reply and what was the nature of his reply?


An hon. Member:: It is none of your business.


Lionel Chevrier: Closure.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The hon. member has not satisfied me that the question is a proper one. It seems to relate to the social engagements of an hon. member, which are not normally discussed on the orders of the day.


Maurice Bourget: I am asking that question of the Prime Minister and I think I deserve an answer-


Some hon. Members:: No.


Maurice Bourget: -because after what has been said in the newspapers, and because I am the member representing that constituency, I think I am entitled-


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Some hon. Members:: Sit down.


Maurice Bourget: -to ask the Prime Minister, and it is in the public interest to know.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Murdo William Martin: On a point of order-


Some hon. Members:: Sit down.


Mr. Speaker:: Before I hear the hon. member for Essex East on the point of order may I remind hon. members that questions asked before the orders of the day, like written questions, must relate to public matters. Rule 39 says:
Questions may be placed on the order paper seeking information from ministers of the crown relating to public affairs; and from other members, relating to any bill, motion, or other public matter connected with the business of the house-


Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Speaker, on this point may I bring to your attention the fact that this does relate to a public affair and to a public matter, since it concerns the construction of wharves and other matters of a federal nature within the area which my hon. friend represents in this house.


Mr. Speaker:: If the hon. member has a question related to the construction of public wharves, well and good; but the hon. member's question as I heard him put it was as to whether the Prime Minister had been invited to a luncheon party and whether he had accepted or refused. I cannot allow a question of that kind.


Maurice Bourget: If I may be permitted to add one word, the question I am asking the Prime Minister is put to him in his public capacity as Prime Minister of this country.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Maurice Bourget: I am the member concerned because this complex was supposed to be developed in my own constituency, and I am sure I am in order in asking the Prime Minister-


Some hon. Members:: Sit down.


Maurice Bourget: -if he received an invitation.


Mr. Speaker:: If the hon. member is repeating his original question, I must say I cannot agree with him; I cannot accept his view. It would be intolerable to have hon. members of the house asking each other about their private engagements on the orders of the day.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Speaker:: That, basically, is what it is. If there is another matter of public administration involved, surely the hon. member can ask a direct question about the matter of public administration.


Paul Joseph James Martin: On the point of order, Mr. Speaker, the allegation has been made in the newspapers that public money was going to be spent on this particular project.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes. That may or may not be the case, but that has been the public allegation, and surely an hon. member is within his rights to put to the head of the government of Canada a question asking whether or not this government proposed to spend any money on that project.


Mr. Speaker:: I quite agree with the hon. member, but no such question has been asked.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Maurice Bourget: May I then ask the Prime Minister whether any commitment has been made regarding the construction of wharves in my constituency in connection with that steel complex?


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, the answer is in the negative completely and absolutely in so far as the government is concerned. May I also add that the kind of exhibition going on here today is time consuming.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


John George Diefenbaker: It indicates the attitude of the opposition in endeavouring to waste time.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I rise on a question of privilege.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Hees:: Sit down, Sir Wilfrid.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The Prime Minister in this house is no different than any other hon. member-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Paul Joseph James Martin: -and he has no right to rise and make statements of that kind.


An hon. Member:: Yes, he has.


Paul Joseph James Martin: If our questions are not in accord with the procedures of this house, it is up to Mr. Speaker to say so. The Prime Minister ought to attend to the job of being prime minister. He will have enough to do if he does that.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, I thought you ruled certain irrelevant questions, certain impertinent questions, out of order, yet they persisted in the opposition. I am simply pointing out that the business of the house is being held up from day to day by this kind of attitude.


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Essex East suggested that a matter of privilege arises from the Prime Minister's reply. The Prime Minister, after answering the question,
Inquiries of the Ministry adverted to the discussion about the question and the point of order which I myself had taken, which point had been discussed by a good many people. As for the suggestion that hon. members are exercising for improper motives their right to ask questions, I do agree that that is not a proper suggestion to be made. Hon. members must be credited with discharging their duties properly.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Erhart Regier (Burnaby-Coquitlam):: I should like to direct a question to the Secretary of State. I wonder if he could inform this house whether he was acting in his capacity as a member of the government when he accorded an interview to the president of Sulphur Converting Corporation as reported in the Gazette of March 15. Could the minister tell us exactly what transpired?
(Translation):


Noël Dorion: Mr. Speaker, when visitors wish to see me in my office, especially when accompanied by high officials of the provincial administration, I see no reason why I should not let them come in, and this in no way involves the minister's responsibility, and still less that of the cabinet.


Augustin Brassard: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Secretary of State. Is the high provincial official he mentioned in his answer the former deputy minister of the provincial department of industry and commerce, under the previous administration? Also, is he that same person of whom the parliamentary correspondent of Le Devoir, here, in Ottawa, spoke with much verbosity in one of this week's issues of that paper?


Noël Dorion: Mr. Speaker, 1 do not know to what extent 1 have to answer this question. However, in order to satisfy the curiosity of the hon. member-who, in any case, ought to know something about that company which originated in his region-


Augustin Brassard: I beg your pardon. It was in the Roberval constituency.


Noël Dorion: -and through the efforts of his own friends-the gentleman referred to is Mr. Coderre, who remained in the Quebec government service, in the department of the Hon. Mr. Rousseau.


An hon. Member:: He is a friend of the
Union Nationale.


Mr. Guy Rouleau (Dollard):: Mr. Speaker, is the Secretary of State not aware of the

Supply-Labour
fact that Mr. Louis Coderre is no longer deputy minister of the provincial department of industry and commerce and that he is still a friend of the Union Nationale?
(Text):


Mr. Speaker:: Does the hon. member's question relate to industry and commerce in the province or in the federal government?



COMMUNICATIONS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. D. M. Fisher (Port Arthur):: I should like to direct a completely innocent question to the Minister of Transport. In view of the statement of Mr. H. G. Young, chairman of the trans-Canada telephone system, that the announced Canadian National-Canadian Pacific national microwave system will be a duplicate facility, with no apparent requirement either for the public use or for defence, could the minister tell us if he was consulted by either the C.N.R. or Canadian Pacific before the project reached its present stage?


Hon. Leon Balcer (Minister of Transport):: What the hon. member is asking for involves the contents of a communication between the minister and a crown corporation, and it has always been my understanding that such communications are privileged and should not be placed before the house.


Douglas Mason Fisher: A supplementary question, then. Was the minister aware that the C.N.R. was entering into this $36 million program before it was announced?


Léon Balcer: The budget of the C.N.R. and of Trans-Canada Air Lines will be before the committee of this house which deals with these matters. The hon. member, who is usually a very vocal member of that committee, will have every opportunity there to put all the questions he wishes.


Douglas Mason Fisher: Just answer the question.


Hon. Paul Hellyer (Trinity):: A supplementary question. Has the government approved the capital expenditure of the C.N.R. in relation to its share of the cost of the
system?


Léon Balcer: An announcement was made jointly by the C.N.R. and Canadian Pacific with regard to this telecommunications corporation. It has been published in the papers. As far as the expenditures of the C.N.R. are

concerned, they form part of the budget of the C.N.R. and after they have been approved this budget is then placed before a committee of this house. That is the procedure.


Douglas Mason Fisher: May I ask the Minister of National Defence a question. Was he consulted by the Canadian National Railways and the Canadian Pacific Railway in connection with this microwave expansion program, inasmuch as it might be of assistance in defence communications?


Douglas Scott Harkness: I do not recall having been consulted, but I should have to check in order to find whether that is the case or not.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Does the minister consider the building of a new microwave system essential to national defence?


Douglas Scott Harkness: I think it will certainly improve the capacity to carry on and maintain communications in the event of this country being under attack.



VOCATIONAL TRAINING


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
John Whitney Pickersgill: Before the orders of the day are called I wonder if I might ask the Minister of Labour-if I might have the minister's attention-if I could ask the minister-the minister seems to be very much engaged.


Michael Starr: Mr. Speaker, I can hear the hon. member; I do not have to look at him.


William Moore Benidickson: Still in a bad temper after the labour congress visit yesterday.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I thank the minister for his customary courtesy. I would now ask him whether in fact he tabled the list of technical schools which my hon. friend from Laurier asked him for on Tuesday night, because there seems to be no entry in yesterday's Votes and Proceedings indicating that that document was tabled. If it was not tabled, could the minister table it now so that another procedural question need not arise in committee?


Michael Starr: I endeavoured to table that yesterday, but the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate thwarted that attempt. If the hon. member for Laurier still wishes me to table it I shall be glad to do so. I was prepared to do it yesterday.


Paul Joseph James Martin: You said you would table it.


Lionel Chevrier: I understood from the
minister yesterday that he would take that course, and I would appreciate it if he would do so now.


Michael Starr: Yes. I will table it with the permission of the house.


Mr. Speaker:: Does the house give permission for this document to be tabled?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.

The house in committee of supply, Mr. Martineau in the chair.
DEPARTMENT OF LABOUR Technical and vocational training assistance-
636. To carry out the purposes of the Technical and Vocational Training Assistance Act and agreements made thereunder-payments to the provinces-further amount required, $28,400,000.


The Chairman:: The hon. member for Timis-kaming.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I wonder whether the hon. member, before he begins, would permit me to make certain observations concerning the supplementary estimates, which have now been before the committee of supply for some days. The further supplementary estimates No. 3, which are those we are now concerned with, were introduced some time ago and have already engaged the attention of the committee of supply on, I believe, six days, today being the seventh. There are altogether 61 items before us, only 22 of which have been discussed and passed thus far.
My colleague the Minister of Veterans Affairs, leading the house, drew to the attention of the house on two occasions the serious consequences that were certain to result from delay in dealing with these important supplementary estimates. On March 8, as reported at page 1635 of Hansard, my colleague said:
I had hoped that we would finish the supplementary estimates this week because we are spending more than the normal time on supplementaries, and there will still be final supplementaries coming before us during this month. But uncertain as to whether or not we will complete the supplementaries tomorrow, I cannot forecast the business for Monday and Tuesday.
If we do not finish the supplementaries we might have to continue with them on Monday, because certain works will come to an end and people will be without pay unless we are able to get these supplementaries approved.
Again on March 12, as reported at page 1731 of Hansard, my colleague drew to the attention of the house the serious consequences of delay. He said on that occasion:
-as I pointed out to the house last week, certain projects will have to be discontinued for lack of money to carry them on and certain people will go without their pay because the money has not been voted by parliament.
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My colleague then asked that the house proceed on the following day as expeditiously as possible with its consideration of these estimates.
I have no wish to curtail or to suggest on the part of any hon. member the curtailment of any proper observation that he feels it is his duty to make with respect to any of these items, or any observations which he wishes to put before the committee which may affect his own decision or the decision of other hon. members in voting on any particular item, but I would be lacking in the performance of my duty if, in view of the long time which has already been devoted to only 22 of these items, I did not reinforce what was said by my colleague the leader of the house and bring to the attention of the committee the fact that we have reached the 15th day of March.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: The Ides of March.


Donald Methuen Fleming: This is normally the day when cheques are payable with respect to a number of the liabilities of the government. I must inform the committee that by reason of the fact that these supplementary estimates have not yet been disposed of, notwithstanding the warnings given to the house by my colleague some days ago, it will not be possible now to pay on their due date certain accounts of suppliers in various departments, and certain employees cannot receive their mid-March pay until supply is released.
In another case it has been necessary to stop payment on all non-pay list items in order to protect the mid-March monthly pay and allowances of the army. I would not be bringing this very serious matter to the attention of the committee as I do now if so many days had not already passed and if the matter had not already on two occasions been brought to the attention of the house by my colleague the leader of the house.
I repeat that I am not suggesting and under no circumstances will suggest curtailment on the part of any hon. member of anything he feels it is his duty to say, but there is such a thing as reasonable self-discipline in the house, there is such a thing as avoiding repetition-


An hon. Member:: The minister should set an example.


Donald Methuen Fleming: -and there is such a thing as adhering closely to the essential matters that are represented by each of these items. I therefore bring these serious facts to the attention of the committee in the hope that hon. members may find that they will have had reasonable opportunity to make their proper observations and it may be possible to have the supply passed and released for this necessary purpose.

Supply-Labour


Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Chairman, I doubt very much whether the remarks made by the Minister of Finance were in order. However, having allowed him to make the long statement he has just made I presume I should be entitled to reply and say to the minister that I am not too much impressed by the statement he makes, to the effect that he has no wish to curtail debate on the part of those who sit on this side of the house. The house leader on two occasions and the Minister of Finance on this third occasion have brought this matter to our attention. The only inference I can draw from the minister's statement is that he does wish in effect to curtail debate.
I have before me a list of the two supplementary groups of estimates tabled by the minister. The first is further supplementary estimates No. 2 tabled on January 24, 1962 and the second is further supplementary estimates No. 3, tabled on February 8, 1962. I understand from the house leader that there will be further supplementary estimates which are not yet before the house.
There is a limit to what the Minister of Finance can tell us, and there is a limit to the subjects upon which he can lecture us. If it is a fact, as we have some reason to believe, that parliament in the not too distant future is going to be dissolved, then surely before all the estimates are here we have a right to inquire to the full into the supplementary estimates.
As I said when Mr. Speaker was in the chair the day before yesterday, we may not be given the opportunity of discussing the main estimates at all. Since the Prime Minister, who is perfectly within his rights in doing so, chooses not only to keep unto himself his advice but also chooses not to make an announcement concerning these matters, surely we too, not knowing what the position is and not knowing whether the main estimates will be brought up for discussion or when further supplementary estimates No. 4 will be presented for discussion, have a perfect right to inquire into the matters that are before the committee.
Thus far we have spent six days discussing further supplementary estimates No. 3. That is not an abnormal length of time having regard to the circumstances under which this parliament sits-


John Whitney Pickersgill: And the size of the estimates.


Lionel Chevrier: And, as my friend the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate points out, this is not an abnormal length of time in view of the size of the estimates. Surely if we determine that on certain items we will spend more time than on others, that is our responsibility. Surely that is a decision

we must take in the light of the items that are before us and in discharging our responsibilities to the country and our respective constituencies. If the Minister of Finance will give us the assurance that the main estimates will come before us for discussion before dissolution, it may well substantially alter the position taken by the opposition. We await with interest the statement the minister will make in regard to this matter.
I think that is only a fair and reasonable request, I feel we should be entitled to know whether or not all these estimates which we shall be asked to pass upon will be before us prior to dissolution of the house.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I think it is quite obvious that the hon. member is talking about something entirely different. What I am addressing my observations to is supplementary estimates No. 3 for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1962. The hon. member is talking about the main estimates for the next fiscal year, which we have not yet reached. Surely his remarks have no bearing either upon this question or what is reasonable in relation to the consideration of the supplementary estimates for 1961-62. I simply renew the plea I made to all hon. members in relation to this matter, as I have some concern over people who are going to go without pay and over contractors who are not going to be paid.


Lionel Chevrier: Will the minister advise the house whether there is a list of further supplementary estimates No. 4 which will be brought before the house?


Donald Methuen Fleming: As my colleague the leader of the house said on March 8, as found at page 1635 of Hansard, there will be as usual the final supplementary estimates for this present fiscal year 1961-62. I shall be happy indeed to bring them forward just as soon as we can dispose of these supplementary estimates No. 3.


Lionel Chevrier: The minister has not replied to the question I put to him. I asked whether or not, with regard to these additional further supplementary estimates and the main estimates, he will give us the assurance that these estimates will come before us prior to dissolution.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The hon. member says "these estimates". If he is speaking about the supplementary estimates for the present fiscal year, I can assure him that I shall be pleased to bring them forward just as soon as the house will have disposed of the supplementary estimates No. 3. I cannot go beyond that.



IS, 1962

Paul Joseph James Martin: We are discussing the main estimates.


Paul Raymond Martineau: I just want to remind the committee at this time that the hon. member for Timiskaming has the floor. The Minister of Finance asked for permission to make a general observation with regard to the discussion of these estimates. He has made that observation. The hon. member for Laurier has replied on behalf of the official opposition. I think the questions should be dealt with as the items are studied. I therefore recognize the hon. member for Timiskaming.


Lionel Chevrier: I rise on a question of privilege. This is a matter which affects all hon. members of the House of Commons.


Murdo William Martin: Including the Prime Minister, who should stay in the chamber.


Lionel Chevrier: I am sure we shall not object to the hon. member for Timiskaming having the floor after this matter has been disposed of. I think the Minister of Finance owes the house a duty and a responsibility to tell us whether or not we shall have an opportunity to discuss other estimates, anything beyond the estimates which he has tabled, prior to dissolution. That is something that is going to put an entirely different light on the whole discussion that is now going on with regard to supplementary estimates No. 3.


Gordon Minto Churchill: May I just point out that the main estimates about which the hon. member is talking in referring to the estimates for the next fiscal year are already before the house in six departments, namely citizenship and immigration, justice, national health and welfare, northern affairs and national resources, public works, trade and commerce. Public works has been before the house on the main estimates for two days, so we are already into the main estimates.


Paul Joseph James Martin: That is not the
question at all.


Lionel Chevrier: My hon. friend from Essex East is quite right. That is not the question. I think the opposition is entitled to get from the government, either from the house leader or from the Minister of Finance, an assurance that before there is dissolution we shall have an opportunity of discussing the main estimates.


John Whitney Pickersgill: All of them.


Lionel Chevrier: Yes, all of them; and an opportunity of discussing the other estimates that are before us now.


Paul Raymond Martineau: I recognize the hon. member for Timiskaming.
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Mr. Peters:: This has been a very interesting discussion, but in my opinion it has not been very fruitful. On behalf of this party I should like to add only one suggestion, namely that I hope it is not a prelude to the government using governor general's warrants.


Murdo William Martin: I rise on a question of privilege.


An hon. Member:: Sit down.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Before the hon. member continues, will he allow me to observe that the Minister of Finance who raised this matter has now left the chamber while this matter is still under discussion.


Gordon Minto Churchill: A disgraceful statement.


An hon. Member:: He is back.


Murdo William Martin: They have brought him back.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The hon. member for Essex East has just made a statement-


Paul Joseph James Martin: I raised a question of privilege.


Donald Methuen Fleming: -which he put forward obviously with a view to drawing attention to the fact that I had departed from the chamber when the hon. member for Timiskaming began to speak on the next item. I had expected to leave the chamber. I am leaving for a very good reason, namely to attend a very important meeting with the deputy prime minister of Australia, for which meeting I am now 10 minutes late. That is the reason I left the chamber. It was not that there was anything uninteresting about the remarks of the hon. member for Timiskaming, and it certainly was not for the reasons assigned by the hon. member for Essex East.


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


Paul Joseph James Martin: Contempt of parliament by the Minister of Finance.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Paul Raymond Martineau: I must remind the committee that the hon. member for Timiskaming has the floor, and that I had recognized him.


John Whitney Pickersgill: You apparently did not hear me, Mr. Chairman, because of the noise opposite. I was raising a point of order, and it is this. Your Honour tolerated a lecture by the Minister of Finance to this committee. In the course of that lecture he made reflections about the conduct of other hon. members of the committee, and raised certain

Supply-Labour
points. He even threatened us with responsibility for the failure to pay public servants, and so on.


An hon. Member:: Where is the point of order?


John Whitney Pickersgill: Surely, Mr. Chairman, I will be permitted to explain my point of order.


An hon. Member:: Take 20 minutes.
Another hon. Member: What is the point of order?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Mr. Chairman, may I ask you to keep order?


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


John Whitney Pickersgill: When in the committee it was agreed that something be raised that is irrelevant, it has been the custom that the debate should not be choked off as long as hon. members wished to debate the matter. The hon. member for Kenora-Rainy River rose in order to put to the Minister of Finance a very pertinent question, but he was not recognized. This debate initiated by the Minister of Finance has been terminated while hon. members still wished to discuss points which he raised. I suggest that this is a denial of the rights of the opposition that is intolerable.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


John Whitney Pickersgill: We are surely entitled to know which estimates were made so badly last year that the minister is now running out of money, and to have disclosed the real amount of mismanagement that made it necessary for a threat to be made on the orders of the day.


Paul Raymond Martineau: Order. The Minister of Finance asked permission to make a general remark, which he made, and it was made by the leave of the committee. That remark was made and an adequate reply was given by the opposition. We are not here studying the rules of procedure of the House of Commons. The business before the committee is vote No. 636. I would ask all hon. members to co-operate with the Chair so that we may get down to the business that is now before the committee, namely vote No. 636. On that particular business, which is the only business the Chair can deal with at all, I have recognized the hon. member for Timiskaming.


William Arnold Peters: Mr. Chairman, as a P.S. to this whole debate I would advise our civil servants to get down to the banks and cash their cheques just in case. Yesterday we were talking about the fact that in Ontario we seem to have gone into the construction of these vocational schools without arriving at
[Mr. Pickersgill.)
firm plans as to how we are going to get the children into them, what the purpose of the training will be, and also what the end result will be with respect to the students going through these schools.
I was pointing out to the hon. member for York-Scarborough in particular-when he speaks again in this debate I should like to know whether he does not believe this is true-that it is my information that in his area it is the expectation that during the next four or five years many of the classrooms being built under this program will be high school classrooms because there will not be the vocational teachers or vocational students to put into those particular classrooms.


Mr. Pugh:: Have you no faith in Canada?


William Arnold Peters: Certainly we have faith in Canada, but we have very little faith that le bon Dieu or somebody else is going to decide this matter. We should do a little planning. We should make some preparations. In Ontario the minister of education who is going to be responsible for this program is also the premier. A person who listened to the debate yesterday from the gallery asked me last night if I had heard about Robart's program of robots in the classrooms. Maybe we are going to use robots for teaching purposes. Maybe this is the way it should be done, but I do not think this kind of program can be undertaken without a plan. We know that we have not the facilities in Ontario to train teachers; we have not the facilities to train guidance councillors, yet the vocational training program in Ontario is more than double what it formerly was.


Mr. McGee:: Does the hon. member want an answer to his question right now?


William Arnold Peters: I have a few more questions. It may also be that in Ontario we are going to make use of other systems of teaching. It might be wise if we gave consideration to the matter of teaching by television. It may be that the federal government will pioneer in this field and be of a great deal of assistance, particularly in those areas where the national government has a responsibility with regard to education, the vocational training field. It may be that the national government should decide now on the standards of training and the type of training that should be given in each of these vocational schools. Perhaps the government should set standards in order to give guidance to those provinces that have not had as much experience in this type of training as other provinces.
Before the program can really be called a vocational and technical training program I think there must also be established a set of qualifications for teachers on a national basis;

because 1 am sure, as other Ontario members are, that in the vocational schools this year there are going to be many teachers with a very limited amount of training in the particular fields concerned. As I pointed out yesterday, this is a fact now in many of the small high schools that have vocational training programs. The people they are getting are receiving quite high salaries although they have very limited qualifications for training other people in these fields. This is true of most of the areas of which I am aware.


An hon. Member:: What about the hon. member for Peterborough?


William Arnold Peters: I am sure the hon. member will understand the difference between academic training and technical training. Some other members may not. They may not know it is very difficult to transform the one into the other and get the best results. I am sure the minister will be the first to accept my statement that the plan has grown out of all proportion, and that it was certainly not expected that it would be so widely accepted; but because it has been widely accepted additional assistance will have to be provided to make the plan successful.
The third field into which I think the federal government should go immediately has to do with the establishment of standards for career and guidance teachers and other counsellors. Some members can laugh about this if they want to, but it is going to be of vital importance. The parents of children entering technical, vocational or business schools today are vitally concerned about whether they have chosen the right occupation for their children. I can only speak for the province of Ontario where I think the situation has been made more difficult because the whole system is now being broken into three sections and students who now do not have to choose a career until they have graduated from high school are going to have to make a decision at a much earlier age.
Mr. Pallet!: Would the hon. member permit a question? Has he not read the proposed program in detail?


Michael Starr: Or the act?


William Arnold Peters: I do not quite understand the hon. member.


Mr. Palleit:: Has he not read either the act under which these estimates are required or the program that has been announced by the minister of education for Ontario? If he has, then his last statement cannot possibly stand up.
Supply-Labour


William Arnold Peters: The parliamentary secretary should know that we are not discussing a bill but rather a supplementary estimate. He should also know that the province of Ontario has not finally determined its program. If they have, it has not been made known to northern Ontario. A parent-teacher meeting was held in one of the new vocational schools about a week ago and nobody was prepared to give any of the answers or I would not be raising the problem. I believe these things have not been settled. If the hon. member has knowledge that I do not have, then I would appreciate knowing where the teachers are going to come from.


Mr. Cathers:: That is not our concern.


William Arnold Peters: That is the whole point. You say it is not your concern, but it has got to be your concern. There is no point in buying a car and having no gasoline for it.


Cecil A. (Tiny) Cathers: You are out of order.


William Arnold Peters: There we have this government all over again. We say that you do not really care, but you have to care or the plan will be unsuccessful, and you will be dealing with the lives of a whole generation of children in the process. Vocational training is vitally needed. It has been needed for 50 years. Maybe it was needed then more than now. I am not in a position to say because I am not in the counselling field. I do know that we just have not got the people available to staff these schools, and I say that the government should take the lead in assisting the provincial governments in this regard. There are people much better qualified than I who will be speaking on this matter, and you can question them.
The point is that we need further assistance. The minister is certainly to be congratulated for having initiated this plan. The fact is that it has met with greater acceptance than he expected would be the case. It is also important that we give leadership in the provision of qualified personnel to staff these schools. Maybe we will be able to use television for teaching. Maybe we could supply robot assistance. Maybe there are other forms of teaching we could supply that would fulfil the need. I think it is true that this year we are not going to have enough teachers for all the classrooms and shops in the schools that are being completed. I only ask that more consideration be given, not that there be any curtailment of the plan. We now know there are very great weaknesses in the field of education.
I believe that in the field of vocational and technical training the federal government has a responsibility. We want to see standards established for employment purposes from

Supply-Labour
coast to coast. We want to see standards established for teaching proficiency from coast to coast. We want to see every assistance given, every modernization made, wherever it is possible. These things should be provided by the government to those provinces who want to take advantage of them.


Frank Charles McGee: In view of the questions of the hon. member for Timiskaming which were directed to me, I should like to reply. I should like also to express some disappointment that he did not offer me the bet which he started to offer me when he was cut off the other evening.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Who is taking up the time now? Listen to what the Minister of Finance said to me.


Frank Charles McGee: The hon. member for Essex East is lecturing the committee.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am not objecting, but just listen to what the Minister of Finance said. That is what I am pointing out.


Frank Charles McGee: As I was saying, before we were treated to another spontaneous lecture by the hon. member for Essex East-


Paul Joseph James Martin: Never mind the insults.


An hon. Member:: Still out of order; still speaking from your seat.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Why don't you try to speak from your head?


Frank Charles McGee: The hon. member for Timiskaming suggested there would not be a sufficient number of students in the township of Scarborough to fill the classrooms that are now being built under this program. I just want to say that I have more faith in the potential birth rate of York-Scarbor-ough than he has.


William Arnold Peters: I did not say there would not be enough students. I said that there would not be enough in the technical courses. There will be enough students.


Frank Charles McGee: I am replying to precisely that point. There has been a substantial and continuing increase, a natural rate of increase in my constituency, possibly the highest rate of increase in Canada.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Does the hon. member have any control over that?


William Arnold Peters: Quit bragging.


Frank Charles McGee: There is an increase in the number of young people with young families moving into this constituency. There have been over 100,000 move into the area since

the 1957 election. I suggest to the hon. member that he is insulting the intelligence and smearing the integrity of the officials of the department of education who were responsible for making these recommendations. The criticism by the hon. member for Timiskaming amounts to this. He is saying, in effect, that this government is moving too fast, moving too aggressively, and that is an interesting contrast to the statements made by members of both his party and particular sections of the frontbenchers who usually speak from their seats. They say that we have done too little and are too late in our efforts to combat this continuing, long term problem in this country.


William Moore Benidickson: When we opened the discussion of supplementary estimates No. 3 this afternoon I endeavoured to take the first opportunity to reply to the observations that had been advanced by the Minister of Finance. We are now dealing with a very substantial item in respect of vocational training. The Chair recognized the Minister of Finance, who intervened to suggest that there were people in Canada who were going to be deprived of salaries, under this item and other items in the supplementary estimates, because parliament was not dealing expeditiously with these proposed expenditures. It was not possible for me to be recognized, although I attempted to obtain the recognition of the Chair while the Minister of Finance was in his seat. I feel that if I had been able to obtain recognition the hon. member for Timiskaming would have recogized that I was speaking to the point that was then under discussion, and he would have allowed me to continue.
I want to say that the responsibility in these matters is with the government and is always with the government. These supplementary estimates No. 3 were introduced on February 8, 1962 by the Minister of Finance. However, not until February 23 was this committee asked to deal with them. Then again, there was an adjournment of the debate on these matters. This is all within the leadership of the government. We were not again asked to deal with these matters until March 2 or 3, I believe.
In addition to that, and what I really rose to try to get information about, is the fact that the main estimates presented a year ago always contain what I call a kitty, something available to the Minister of Finance to prevent any failure in the payment of pressing obligations, particularly payments for personal services in the way of salaries. The main estimates for 1961-62 contain an item called "Contingencies and miscellaneous." Our government financial housekeepers should have

been looking ahead rather than coming now and moaning that perhaps somebody is not going to get a pay cheque.
This is the third group of supplementary estimates for the current fiscal year. Further supplementary estimates No. 2 were introduced on January 24. Was there anything in them to replenish the so-called kitty to which I referred, and which is given to the Minister of Finance every year in his main estimates? Was there anything advanced by him after parliament assembled, in the further supplementary estimates No. 2, for the replenishing of another kitty, item No. 125, to supplement other votes subject to the approval of treasury board, for the payment of salaries, wages and other pay list expenses? There was not. There is nothing of that nature advanced in supplementary estimates No. 3.
I want to say that had there been, this would have been taken care of, because items for the Minister of Finance were given priority. I remind the committee that the supplementary estimates for the Minister of Finance were passed at the first opportunity for debate, on February 23. There was no item to replenish these votes. I should like, therefore, to ask the parliamentary secretary to tell me to what extent his opportunity to take care of the situation by means of these items has been completely lost. I refer to the votes that we passed, items 121 and 125 in the main estimates. I say it is completely erroneous to tell those who are looking to the government for payment for personal services, or for materials, that the opposition is to blame if they are not paid.
I repeat that the supplementary estimates were presented on February 8. The leader of the house did not introduce them for debate until February 23. We were given then only one day of debate and the next opportunity for debate, I think, was March 12. I say that no blame can accrue to the opposition in this respect.
I do want the Minister of Finance to indicate, without any derogation of our rights as an opposition-after all, there is a lot of money involved here-which of the items we have not yet passed involve payment for personal services which the minister is not already empowered to deal with under the general "kitty" items to which I have referred.


Mr. Pitman:: Mr. Chairman, it is with no apology that I take up the time of this committee to deal with this problem, because I do not think there is any piece of legislation, and certainly no estimate, which will
Supply-Labour
have more effect and significance in the years ahead than the one we are dealing with this afternoon.
Hon. members know that this program comes under Bill No. C-49, which was introduced in the fall of last year. We all had great hopes for this program and we all supported the bill with a considerable amount of enthusiasm, although not without some serious misgivings. I am afraid those misgivings have proven to be justified.
If I may trace the history of this matter for a moment, this was a crash program, but it was a crash program in an area where crash programs are least successful, and I am afraid that the whole thing may come crashing down around us. We all know the pressure that was behind this program. In the fall of 1960 the unemployment crisis had reached tremendous heights and something had to be done. This was one of those great pieces of legislation put forward to solve and end our unemployment problem.
However, a second realization came along with it. This was as a result of studies that were made in certain areas in certain occupations, when we discovered that Canada had one of the worst trained work forces in the world. Indeed, over the last 10 or 15 years we had been importing our skilled labour and had failed rather miserably to create a society which would encourage young people to stay at school and become more skilled and more able to compete in the technical and vocational areas when their lack of skill was the cause of their being unemployed.
We brought those two facts together and then, of course, we made a rather amazing assumption. We assumed that the provision of facilities, the building of schools, shops, and so on would solve this problem. We assumed this was the deficiency with which we had to deal, that we had not built enough vocational schools at the secondary level, not enough trade schools at the post-secondary level, and certainly not enough technical institutions for a higher level of attainment. This was a reasonable assumption, but I do not think it is one that has ever been borne out by the facts.
Last May the information branch of Department of Labour passed around a publication which I am sure all hon. members have received. It contains a series of speeches on education, training and employment. It was published and distributed by the information branch of the Department of Labour in May, 1961. In this publication there is an address by Mr. D. E. Bridge, of the vocational training branch of the Department of Labour, which

Supply-Labour
deals with this problem of facilities. I should like to quote the following extract:
In Canada at the present time there are 24 institutions of technology providing post-high school technical training and five institutes that offer both post-high school technical and also trade courses. In addition to these schools, approximately 223 technical, vocational or composite high schools provide commercial, technical, trade or other occupational training programs.
A cursory glance at these statistics will show where the real deficiency was; not in the secondary school level but in the postsecondary trade school level. In the trade school level there were five institutions across the whole Dominion of Canada. This is the area where the 700,000 people who were unemployed last winter could have obtained some relief. These were the people who did not have necessary skills; these were the people who were working in areas where they required new skills, and schools of this type in which they would be able to bring up their qualifications. This was an area where I think even a cursory glance would show what facilities were required. Mr. Bridge goes on to say:
At the post-high school technical training level, where requirements are developing rapidly, the shortage of training facilities is very acute.
I repeat, "very acute". He goes on to say:
There is a need for facilities for an additional
15.000	persons in full time day classes at the trade occupational and post-high school technical level.
Of course we recognized that need. At no point does Mr. Bridge say that at the secondary school level there is any very acute shortage. The reason for my interest in this matter is because in my own experience I have travelled around various schools where there was no great shortage in the technical classes and sections of the schools or where students were unable to take vocational courses because of such a shortage. In many areas where I went I found they had vacancies. I am talking now about the secondary school level.
Let us look at Ontario for a moment. The problem of facilities I contend, is not at the secondary school level. The minister's report of September, 1960 stated that there were 61,049 people in vocational training-this, of course, includes commercial and various types of vocational training-at the secondary school level. I made inquiries and found that the total facilities in the province of Ontario were capable of accepting approximately
70.000	people. In other words there were sufficient facilities, as far as I could determine, at the secondary school level.
How fast is the need growing? I took the figures for the last three years and found that the need had grown by about one tenth each year. The buildings which have already been

contructed, to say nothing of those contemplated by March, 1963, would raise the accommodation nearly 100 per cent from what it was when this bill was brought in. Once again I am talking about the secondary school level. Obviously one cannot help wondering whether these governments, especially the Ontario government, are not linking the development of secondary school training with reality. If they can get 75 cents for every dollar spent on this type of building, there is no reason why they should not take it. Whether they actually need it now or not.
There is no system of priority. We suggested when this bill was brought in that there should be a system of priority as to where the need was. Obviously it was in the post-secondary schools and in the trade schools. But where has all the money gone? We will look at the statistics on that question in just a moment.
Really What we have here is some kind of sewer view of education that was linked very closely to the N.H.A. legislation. It was suggested that we should build sewers and this would help put people to work, and it was felt that therefore if we built schools it would put people to work. The time limit was set for March, 1963 so we could build schools and other facilities whether or not we knew what we were doing. I suggest that one cannot relate the building of schools to a make work project; yet, as the minister said in reply to the hon. member for Timmins recently, the cut-off date of March 31 related to winter works. It is astounding to me that the long range future and employment of young people is being determined by winter works projects considerations. I think this will go down in the annals of education as one of the most fantastic, most misdirected programs ever conceived on the North American continent.
I read the debate on this bill with some amazement. At no time was it made clear exactly what the shortage was and where it was. I realize that the emphasis on keeping young people at school and the need for educational training in schools is important, and that with the growth of the population in this country we need more technical schools, but I say this is one of the most unbelievable hoaxes that has ever been perpetrated. This government does not know where the money is going or where it is coming from. This government has gone off on a wild spending spree which is unrelated entirely to where the real shortage is.
Mr. Bridge also says:
Early last fall the Department of Labour was requested to gather information on a national basis concerning the requirements for training in all areas. Its officials were asked what facilities were available then, what new accommodation was

required, what equipment and personnel were required to put the expanded program into operation.
I should like to read from the debate that took place on this program. Some rather interesting questions were asked in this connection. I can remember very well the afternoon when the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate came into the house and asked some rather interesting questions. I should like to read from page 675 of Hansard for December 9, 1960.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I am sure some survey of this was made before the legislation was produced and I would like the minister to tell us just what the capacity is in each province, how many people could be trained in the existing institutions that have already been provided and in each province, as well, what the department's estimate is of the deficiency. I ask that because I assume the department has made some kind of estimate of how many places for additional pupils are really required in order to do the much larger job which I completely agree with the minister needs to be done.
Then on page 676 appears the minister's answer:
The hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate asked about the present situation in vocational training schools in this country. I might say that I have had conferences, particularly with the province of Ontario, to see whether more of this training could be undertaken.
Boy, just look at the amount of money which is going to the province of Ontario now. The federal share amounts to more than $120 million. Quebec is getting $5 million and New Brunswick $1.8 million.


David Vaughan Pugh: Have you the figure for British Columbia?


Walter George Pitman: Yes, I have. It is $8 million. In Ontario it is $124 million.


David Vaughan Pugh: Are those actual expenditures?


Walter George Pitman: This is the table the minister gave-


David Vaughan Pugh: Expenditures to date?


Walter George Pitman: This is the estimated capital expenditure approved up to February 23, 1962.


David Vaughan Pugh: Those are commitments.


Walter George Pitman: That is right. Throughout history Ontario has been complaining about its money being used to help all the other provinces. All the provinces are educating Ontario now. "Particularly with the province of Ontario", the minister said. No wonder he should say that, when $125 million is being paid out of the money of this nation to Ontario and $5 million is going to the province of Quebec. To continue the quotation:
Their problem has been that all of their facilities have been filled to capacity.
Supply-Labour
I doubt that.
We have surveyed the other provinces of Canada-
I wonder why Ontario was picked out, especially when Premier Robarts came out and based practically all his campaign on a three stream system of education. But to continue-
We have surveyed the other provinces of Canada and we find their facilities are all filled to capacity and there is a waiting list.
I would question that also at the secondary level.
Almost as soon as the doors erf new accommodation are opened it is immediately filled. Consequently we feel with respect to this matter and as a result of our survey that there has to be at least a 50 per cent increase in capacity throughout the country so far as this type of school is concerned.
Then the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate continued:
What I am really trying to find out is how many individuals can be engaged in training with the present facilities on any one day? It is hard for me to believe that the government, which has reached the conclusion that the capacity should be increased 50 per cent, does not know what the capacity is right now.
Then comes the answer of the minister:
In this respect I am advised that all we can do is to take the word of the provinces. They are the ones who advise us in respect of these matters and it is the provinces who say that they feel that a 50 per cent increase in present capacity is necessary over the coming years.
The hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate continued:
Is the minister really telling us that his department does not know what the present capacity is in this country? When all is said and done-
Then he was interrupted by the minister, who said:
I do not want any misunderstanding; that is exactly what I told you.
Isn't this unbelievable? I will go on to another remark of the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate:
I say I would not, as a minister of the crown, come into this parliament and ask that public money be spent out of the treasury of Canada merely because a provincial government said they would like more of something, unless they told me precisely what they had already so that when I asked the representatives of the people who are the trustees of the people for their money, for more money, I could tell them what existed already and not merely say, we have to take the word of the provinces.
Well, apparently that Is the situation, and I cannot help wonder what this means. Somebody suggested that Premier Frost died
politically of heartbreak because the promises made by the Prime Minister in Massey hall were not kept. I think he died politically of hysterics at the thought that he could take

Supply-Labour
this government for everything it is worth. I think he must believe that they are the biggest group of suckers who ever landed here in Ottawa, because they can find a way to make this government pay for their education costs.
What does Premier Robarts say? He says "Cut down your education costs". I am reading from the Toronto daily Star of February 15:
Premier John Robarts last night warned that municipalities must hold the line on education expenditures to keep municipal taxes at a reasonable level.
In other words he is saying "Boy, we have got something good. Now we will hold the line and we will stick the federal government for every cent we can." This expenditure has become a kind of transfer payment from the federal government to the department of education in Toronto. I think the department itself must go into hysterics every time they realize what this government is doing.
What the minister is saying in this debate is, we are concerned about unemployment and we have an idea that technical training can do some good. We are not sure that the government can do any good, but we can go on giving money out, not merely to the provinces, but to the municipalities, to see what will happen.
How is this money being spent? The minister says, as reported at page 1778 of Hansard, that it is to be spent as follows:
Included in these projects are the construction of one new institute of technology, 18 new trade schools, five new combined trade schools and institutes of technology and some 114 new vocational high schools.
Over and above these new schools, alterations and additions will be made to five institutes of technology, 16 trade schools, two combined trade schools and institutes, 56 vocational high schools and 31 minor alterations.
The money is going to the wrong places at the wrong times and for the wrong reasons. Obviously the provincial governments are going to accept this. Why would they not accept it?


Frank Charles McGee: Are you going to vote against it?


Walter George Pitman: We shall vote it even if it bankrupts you. The history of the opposition in this parliament has been voting for little bits and drops in the bucket. That has been the entire activity going on in this part of the house. May I continue? I want to read a part of a speech by Mr. Bridge:
The provinces were asked to estimate their needs and to suggest their possible expenditures for the next ten years. After considerable study of the needs of the ten provinces and a concentrated look in the crystal ball-

Boy, that was some crystal ball.
-we came up with an estimated cost of some $190 million which I will admit startled us but apparently did not startle the cabinet. They decided to plan new legislation which would provide the type of training which we thought necessary for our own skilled manpower training program.
That was for the next ten years; $190 million. This was the result of the survey made by the Department of Labour. I point out that we are up to $269 million already. The hon. member for York-Scarborough said we were questioning the intelligence of the staff of the Minister of Labour. What does he say now?


Frank Charles McGee: That was not what I said.


Walter George Pitman: 
Mr. Chambers:: And the curriculum?


Walter George Pitman: You cannot conduct an art class in a woodworking shop.


Egan Chambers: I think we wanted to know if the hon. member thought the federal government should establish the curriculum for the schools.


Walter George Pitman: I am not suggesting that. Let me place on the record a comment made by Dr. Claude Bissell, former president of Carle-ton University, when addressing the opening session of the Canadian conference on education in Montreal:
Current demands for more vocational training in Canadian schools are about 20 years too late-
Perhaps one of the best known commentaries on the educational scene is J. Bascom St. John, who writes for the Toronto Globe *and Mail. I invite hon. members opposite to listen to what he says:
If anything is clear, even to Ontario politicians, it is that education is changing just as society is changing. This means that new approaches will have to be developed in school architecture to make possible the new trends in education. (That is why it is a national tragedy to spend $200 million, as Ontario is doing, on technical schools designed for educational programs that are already out of date.)
I suggest that in many cases this is a problem communities will face. They will have vocational training schools preparing people for employment opportunities that existed in the 1930's and 1940's. They will be
Supply

Labour
training people for jobs of a nature for which there is a declining demand. The tragedy is that communities will be stuck with buildings that are out of date even before they are built.
Let me take an example. Last year I examined the woodworking program. I doubt that there is any job area that is less likely to expand or to be creative of employment than woodworking as it breaks down into cabinet making, pattern making, and so on.
I do not know the experience of other hon. members, but my own experience this winter substantiates my belief. I have received a great many calls from unemployed carpenters this winter.
I am sorry to again use the Ontario school system as an example, but when you consider the money spent in the province in this field it is perhaps good to examine the record. In 1958 there were 111 graduates in all branches of woodwork. In 1959 the figure declined to 109 and in 1960 it dropped to 91. When I directed an inquiry to the department I was advised that 117 new wings or new buildings had been constructed in Ontario and there were 81 woodworking shops, approximately one for every student graduating in the craft. One director of education commented that we might as well establish a program under which we would give courses in fur trading, which would be just about as relevant to the situation. No time is spent in thinking, planning or in conducting research. We are just handing out money. There is no research project to determine the direction we should follow. I suggest we are erecting buildings which will be future monuments to our lack of foresight.
One cannot but wonder at the order in which things are being done.
I wish to read from the Toronto daily Star of February 28 an article entitled "Add $28 Million to Build Technical Schools-Ottawa". It reads in part as follows:
Coupled with the building program la a report, soon to be released, surveying training requirements of industry across Canada and making recommendations as to what skills are most In demand.
Has this report been tabled? I have taken this comment from a news release. It continues:
The two year study was undertaken by H. L. Shepherd, industrial relations supervisor of Canadian Westinghouse in Hamilton.
What a backward way to go about it. You put the buildings up and then have the survey. Of course the survey may reveal that the existing buildings do not meet the needs and that you cannot adapt the buildings to meet the needs revealed by the survey. A

Supply-Labour
few millions should have been spent in research to find out where we are going; then the buildings could have been constructed. I suppose, however, that would not be politically expedient. I suggest that by 1963 there will be large numbers of brick piles to which cabinet ministers can point as they wander across the nation. The politicians are playing politics with the careers of our young people, and I am sure none of us condone this.
Let me quote from a news release issued by the Department of Labour on February 14, a statement attributed to the minister:
Because of the recent increase in federal financial assistance to vocational training facilities there has been a great growth in the training capacity of schools in all provinces Mr. Starr said. He added that this will provide more pre-employment training and more capacity for training employed persons, with great advantage to the apprenticeship program.
This expansion of training facilities is only the first phase of our work, Mr. Starr told the committee, which is made up of leading representatives from industry, the labour movement, and provincial departments of labour.
Surely the first phase should have been research to determine the needs. Can a more backward approach be imagined? I continue:
The federal government is not satisfied just to see more schools being built, the minister stated. We are interested in the programs that will be provided in these schools and in industry. We want to see these new schools serve adequately the youth of our country, and industry.
In other words, you build the buildings, then find out what the needs are, and then set up the program. That is simply too ridiculous. What terrible consequences there will be as a result of this preposterous sequence. It may be discovered that we do not need some of the buildings, some may be located in the wrong places, some may be fitted for the wrong courses and of course, tragically, we will be stuck with them for 25 or 30 years. It is already too late, and the buildings will decide the programs.
The provisions of Bill No. C-49 offer assistance in the training of teachers, and I shall have more to say about that later. However, I cannot conceive of a more backward way of dealing with what I consider to be one of the most serious problems in the nation. Will the sequence here be that of putting up buildings, retraining teachers already trained, studying the needs and then deciding on the program? Again the sequence is backward. We are faced with the problem of bringing people up to the levels of skill and technical training demanded by the age in which we live. The Ontario department is faced with over 100 technical wings springing up everywhere. Where will they find the teachers?

As hon. members probably realize, vocational education divides into two distinct phases; the industrial arts, which is an important and significant area of teaching, as well as vocational training which is largely related to providing jobs. We recently received an interesting telegram from the chairman of the research council. This is what he says:
Technical program in Ontario has caused displacement and discomfort for long established and professionally sound area of industrial arts. Research shows one hundred men seriously affected. Department not cooperating well to allow these to re-qualify but they take anybody from the trades. Details to follow. Sincerely feel with many others that program has gone overboard and is outdated.
What you have at this time-
The Depuiy Chairman: I am sorry; I thought the hon. member had finished his sentence.


Walter George Pitman: We have industrial arts
teachers who are doing important work in one area placed in another area where they themselves recognize they are not as qualified to teach trades training or vocational training as are those who have had several years trades experience, as it has been in the past. What you have are people less qualified in that sense when we need men more qualified in a certain way.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: I listened to the hon. member for Peterborough with great interest. I think he has made a very thoughtful address and one which deserves serious study by this government. I will not attempt in any way to repeat the arguments he has put forward, as he has made the case very well.


An hon. Member:: Does the hon. member agree with him?


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Supply-Labour
training in academic subjects only; 38 men taking academic subjects plus welding; 21 men taking blueprint reading plus academic subjects; 29 men taking tor the last day cabinet making plus academic subjects.
On January 26, 1962, the following letter was received by Mr. F. Roca, past president of the Italian community promotion centre, from the prime minister, the Hon. John P. Robarts:
"Dear Mr. Roca:
Your telegram dated January 14, 1962, expressed regret on behalf of the Italian community regarding the decision which was reached with respect to a proposed training program at the provincial institute of trades. The matter of offering practical training in the building trades has been studied carefully and the conclusion has been reached that under the laws as they stand at present the Ontario department of education is not in a position to offer basic training for skilled development in the designated trades. The course has, therefore, been revised to include academic work related to the trades. It is our opinion that this revised course will be of value to the people whom you represent.
Yours sincerely,
John P. Robarts,
Prime Minister of Ontario and Minister of Education."
Some unanswered questions: In analysing these events, the following considerations have come to our attention:
1.	Out of 180 applicants, 45 have spent four to ten years as tradesmen and had registered for the course to upgrade themselves. It is difficult for us to understand the basis on which unemployed tradesmen are denied this opportunity.
2.	While the main purpose of the course is to upgrade these people academically, it is important to remember that these men are accustomed to manual work and that it is most difficult to get them to accept an educational program which excludes any opportunity to develop manual skills.
3.	We have been diligently studying the apprenticeship act and regulations in order to learn what precise laws in Ontario would make it illegal for the department of education to offer training in basic skills in designated trades where there is no compulsory certification. If it is entirely permissible for anyone over 21 years of age to accept employment in any of the building trades, whether he has any training or not, why then is it illegal for the department of education to provide this much desired training?
4.	We have been surprised to learn after careful investigation that Ontario is the only Canadian province where the apprenticeship act makes it impossible for a person over 21 to get training in a designated trade.
Summation:
It is our firm conviction that in watering down the progressive and comprehensive program it embarked upon last November the government has taken a retrograde step. We therefore call upon the members of the legislature to urge the government to alter its decision and return to its original policy. Failure to do so will, in our view, lead inevitably to a situation where thousands of new Canadians, who could by retraining very greatly enrich their own lives and thereby increase their value to the province of Ontario, will instead become spiritually disheartened and during frequent periods of unemployment an economic burden to the community. To permit this to happen would, in our opinion, be a denial of the dignity and rights which are the basis of the Ontario human rights code.
We hope that in reviewing the facts given above you will bear in mind that our organization, in
[Ur. Hellyer.l
pressing for the full reinstatement of the original plan, is motivated by one desire, to enable these new Canadian citizens to increase their knowledge and develop their skills so that they may make their maximum contribution to the development and progress of the land of their adoption. Above all, we hope that you will do your very utmost to bring about a speedy change in existing laws which now stand as a barrier to the government's previously announced retraining program.
We are confident that the members of the legislative assembly will share the concern felt by the members of our association in a situation where the well-being and future usefulness of many thousands of new Canadians is vitally affected. For that reason we felt obligated to provide you with some background material which will enable you to make a proper assessment of the problem and effect an early solution. It is our earnest hope that you will find the occasion to deal with this matter within your own parliamentary group or in the course of your legislative deliberations. If you desire further information the undersigned will be very happy to confer with you.
Respectfully submitted,
Adelsi Bulfoni, President.
Although this memorandum is oriented to new Canadians, it applies equally to all Canadians. They have the same problems. It applies equally to unemployed adults no matter what their origin who happen now to find themselves without employment and who wish to take advantage of their idleness to improve their chances to contribute gainfully to the country they love. This is the problem. This is what we are trying to face and yet this problem is being evaded by the government by reason of the administration it is giving to this act.
I have said that in respect of young people of high school age there is some real question whether further expenditure in this area is in their own best interests or whether, on the other hand, an expansion of the apprenticeship scheme would not be of greater benefit to them. I can say from my experience in hiring men, Mr. Chairman, that I have found that those who are best qualified and best able to go to work and do their assigned tasks well, without on the job training, are those who have gone through the apprenticeship system and those least qualified and least able to perform the duties assigned to them are those who in many cases have graduated from the secondary school system as it is now constituted.
This raises a very real and vital question. We are being asked to provide to the province of Ontario alone over $100 million. To do what? That is the question. To subsidize the building of secondary school facilities which are not in some cases in the best interests of the pupils themselves? Is that the purpose for which funds are being voted? Is it the intention of parliament that the great problem of unemployed adults is to be overlooked and ignored and that the impression is to be created that something is being

done merely because a lot of money is being spent? Is this what we are being asked to believe?
There is a very real question, Mr. Chairman, as to the effectiveness of this plan to meet the purposes for which it was allegedly designed. This raises too, as I have said, by inference at least a question as to the competence of the authorities in some of the provinces, particularly in my own province of Ontario, to administer the plan wisely and make the maximum use of the funds for the purpose for which they were intended. Frankly, I have not too much faith in the Ontario administration.
Furthermore, it raises the larger question of the effectiveness of provincial jurisdiction in labour matters. The judicial committee of the privy council ascribed labour matters to the provinces under section 92 of the British North America Act relating to property and civil rights. One could ask, how can the federal government, which is responsible for maintaining full employment, which is responsible for maintaining economic growth in the country, fulfil this responsibility when it is frustrated by legislation such as that existing in the province of Ontario in respect of apprenticeship training. This is a very real question, Mr. Chairman, and one to which I think we will have to turn our attention. Can we in 1962 expect the federal government, with its responsibility in matters of money and finance, with its responsibility in respect of external trade, with its responsibility for over-all financing of major national projects, to achieve the goal of full production and full employment, the raising of the standard of living, and at the same time be hampered in achieving that goal by the archaic legislation that exists in the province of Ontario?
Well, Mr. Chairman, I hope that the government will consider this question. I hope that the government will reassess the purpose for which this act was introduced, the purpose for which the legislation was passed and the purpose for which funds have been and are now being voted by parliament, and try to relate them to the great problem which exists in the country. I hope that before the question is put, the minister will reassure the committee that he will reassess the problem and that he will try to relate it to a greater extent than he has been able to demonstrate thus far to the funds being voted that are going to help rehabilitate and retrain those Canadian workers who, through no fault of their own, are unable to find gainful employment.


Walter George Pitman: I believe that what the hon. member for Trinity has said should be given careful consideration by the government. I
Supply-Labour
feel this is the problem, that we are doing everything in the wrong order. We are putting the money in the wrong places in terms of priority. Certainly, we need vocational schools. However, let us find out where we need them and for what job we need them. Let us find out what people we should train. It is because of the planless, chaotic, confused state we have under this government today that we are doing the most fantastic things imaginable. This government is spending $124 million out of a vote of $188 million in Ontario, and yet Ontario may very well not even qualify for its share because they have not spent enough days in training unemployed people.
With over 200,000 people unemployed last winter in Ontario, that government did not train enough people to permit the Ontario government to qualify. The only provinces in fear of not qualifying were Ontario and Quebec. Yet, you have this distorted priority. The people were not trained but were on the welfare rolls and the governments are putting money into vocational schools which in many areas, I say from experience, are not going to be fully utilized for perhaps ten years.


Frank Charles McGee: They will be training people so there will be no unskilled unemployed in the future.


Walter George Pitman: These schools are not even training people for the type of employment that will be available 10 or 20 years from now. Are we going to keep these unskilled unemployed for the next 20 years? Are they going to be the lost generation, the lost group of people, as a result of this government's policy? You can put it another way. Are these people going to remain unemployed and do nothing for the economy of this country for the next 20 years? I know people who have been unemployed for three years. The hon. member for Essex East said he has people who are coming to him every week end, and I expect other members have had the same experience. There has been no government directed program for retraining unemployed. There is an excellent editorial on this subject in the Toronto daily Star, and it reads in part:
Toronto's retraining program for the unemployed has hardly begun, though it was supposed to be well under way by midsummer. Why?
There is no lack of unemployed men and women -26,398 were asking the national employment service Toronto district office for jobs last week.
At the same time, there were 10,000 unfilled jobs in Toronto that these people could not take.


Paul Raymond Martineau: Order. I regret to interrupt the hon. member but it is now five o'clock and it is my duty to leave the chair in order

Criminal Code
that the house can proceed to the consideration of private members' business, pursuant to section 3 of standing order 15.



PRIVATE BILLS

[Stage Direction]
On the order:
House in committee on Bill S-3, an act respecting the Mutual Life Assurance Company of Canada. (Without amendment)-Mr. Weichel.
Mr. Speaker:: I notice there are four private bills standing for consideration in committee of the whole. Is it agreed that, in accordance with section 1 of standing order 54, they be referred to the committee of the whole in one motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.



CONSIDERED IN COMMITTEE


[Stage Direction]
Bill No. S-3, respecting The Mutual Life Assurance Company of Canada-Mr. Weichel.
Bill No. S-4, to incorporate Westmount Life Insurance Company-Mr. Webster.
Bill No. S-7, respecting Muttart Development Corporation Limited-Mr. Maloney.
Bill No. S-8, respecting Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada-Mr. Lafreniere.


Frank Charles McGee: the second reading of Bill No. C-22, to amend the Criminal Code (corporal punishment).
He said: Mr. Speaker, the origin of this bill, as most hon. members are probably aware by now, is the report of the joint committee of the Senate and House of Commons made in 1956 on capital punishment, corporal punishment and lotteries.
The recommendations of the committee include the following:
The committee kept two considerations in mind throughout its inquiry into corporal punishment as a part of the sentence of the court. The first was whether it deters those subjected to it from further crime and. second, whether it deters the public generally to a greater extent than other methods of punishment. The evidence did not justify the view that it will exercise any special reformative or deterrent influence on individuals upon whom it is administered and, on the whole, it appears to have the contrary effect. The committee concluded that the existence of corporal punishment affords no unique deterrence to crime. Accordingly, the committee recommends that corporal punishment be abolished for any of the offences for which it is presently prescribed in the Criminal Code.
The committee, representing members of all parties of this house and the other place, came to this conclusion after a most careful, thoughtful and thorough examination, after
[The Chairman.]
hearing testimony from many sectors of our country and summoning informed and expert witnesses on this subject.
The history of the movement to abolish corporal punishment here and in other countries is interesting because wherever it has been abolished, either within provincial jurisdiction-as it was recently in the province of Ontario-or within federal jurisdiction, as occurred in England, the abolition of this particular form of punishment has flown in the face of public opinion. In England approximately 75 per cent of the public disagreed with the action taken in abolishing corporal punishment.
I am confident that this is the situation in Canada today and has been for some years. I have seen no evidence-and I would be grateful if any hon. member who has encountered any evidence to the contrary would inform me of this-that this situation has changed materially since the report of the joint committee to which I referred a few moments ago.
I should like to refer to the experience in England. Last year I took the opportunity to place on the record excerpts from the report on corporal punishment handed down by the advisory council on the treatment of offenders. This advisory council was ordered by the home office in England. The report was presented to that parliament by the secretary of state for the home department by command of Her Majesty in November, 1960. The advisory council was formed as a result of increasing agitation within and without parliament in England concerning the increase in the incidence of crime in general and crimes of violence, in particular, and particularly strong pressure exerted from within the house of commons.
A substantial number of government members-that is, members of the Conservative party-in England had been making vociferous demands of the government to restore corporal punishment, which hon. members will recall had been abolished in that country some years before.
Last year I placed on the record the salient features of that report in connection with this measure. I would recommend the reading of the report to hon. members interested in this matter. In reviewing the salient features of the report last year I neglected to state that in the face of vociferous agitation within the Conservative party in the British house and abroad in the country the government accepted the report, flying in the face of approximately 75 per cent of public opinion to the contrary. Surely that was an act of courage on the part of that government and an example, in an enlightened way of not accepting public opinion. I neglected to include that salient fact in the summary of the British experience in

my speech on second reading of this bill last year. It is my opinion that the feeling in Canada today among those who are concerned with this matter is that we would be prepared to abolish corporal punishment for the adult groups, having acknowledged the futility of taking a hardened criminal, lashing him to a post and proceeding to apply the penalty in the quaint and crude manner prescribed under the Criminal Code.
I mentioned the province of Ontario a few moments ago. Again, it is significant that the province of Ontario under the leadership of George Wardrope, the then minister responsible for reform institutions in Ontario, should have abolished corporal punishment in that province. This was an act of political courage, I suggest, particularly when one recalls-and I am subject to correction here -that this action was taken a few months before a general election in that province. One could argue that the gentleman was elected in spite of that action rather than because of it, but it is significant to me that this action, an enlightened as well as a courageous one, should have met with a wide measure of support, certainly on the editorial pages of newspapers in Ontario.
I should like to turn the attention of the house today to the specific problem of the juvenile delinquent because, as I said a few moments ago, it is my opinion that the country is prepared to abolish corporal punishment for the adult group but that there is a reluctance not only among members of this house but among members of the public at large to abolish corporal punishment of the juvenile delinquent.
I should like to quote from the original report to this house concerning this question of the juvenile delinquent. I should also like to quote from the United Kingdom report, because this subject, as I shall point out later, is receiving increasing attention and is under study at this time by a committee set up by the Minister of Justice on January 8 of this year to inquire into the whole question of juvenile delinquency. It is my hope and expectation that following this inquiry we shall come to a final conclusion on this matter and satisfy ourselves that corporal punishment has no effective application in the field of the treatment of juvenile delinquents, and then proceed to abolish corporal punishment and place the name of Canada among those of the nations which have reached a degree of enlightenment enabling them to remove a barbaric and punitive form of punishment.
In the report of the joint committee of the Senate and the House of Commons, specific reference is made to the corporal punishment of young offenders. I quote:
Criminal Code
The committee gave special consideration to the problem of young offenders. Some of the arguments for extending the use of corporal punishment to young offenders as an effective deterrent against subsequent offences are reviewed in paragraph 13. The only suggestions made for increased use of corporal punishment were made by those who favoured its use for particular types of young offenders. The view was expressed that youths who had persisted, despite reasonable efforts at reform by probation and other methods, in offences against the person, property or public order, most commonly associated with street corner gangs, might be brought to their senses by the administration of corporal punishment. In this way, it was contended, they might be saved from a prison sentence which would probably lead to a confirmed criminal career.
Then the report continues:
The committee cannot accept these views. The evidence presented to the committee indicated that the special provisions formerly made in the United Kingdom for the caning or birching of young offenders were not effective and were gradually abandoned, in practice, in favour of probation and other methods of treatment which were found to be much more effective. The United Kingdom departmental committee on corporal punishment (1933) recommended abolition of caning young offenders. This recommendation was carried into effect in 1948, by which time caning had become virtually obsolete as a method of treatment or punishment.
Medical and psychiatric evidence presented to the committee suggested that little, if any, advantage would come from increased use of corporal punishment against young offenders. It was stated that such punishment would create an attitude of aggressive hostility in many cases which would militate against reform; and the experience of the juvenile and family court of Toronto with corporal punishment of juveniles supported this contention. The danger exists that any increased use of corporal punishment for young offenders might undermine and destroy the positive attempts made towards their reform and rehabilitation. It was also considered that the delay resulting from the necessity of allowing for a proper trial and appeal would destroy any good which an immediate application of corporal punishment might accomplish.
Finally, the report says:
The committee does not believe that any convincing case was made for extending the use of corporal punishment to young offenders.
I would remind hon. members that this question of the street corner gang and the kid in the leather jacket is not new. Suggestions have been made that this problem is increasing, but the factors which are involved and which were considered by the committee have, I submit, not changed in any material way since the date of this report.
Now I should like to refer to the report made in 1960 in the United Kingdom where special attention was paid to this question of corporal punishment for juvenile offences. I quote:
There seems to be a widespread feeling, based partly on these objections to the formalities of judicial corporal punishment and partly on those to the delay that must occur before the punishment is inflicted, that for young offenders the

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punishment should be either less formal or administered without waiting for the ordinary judicial processes. One suggestion put forward-
I might add, parenthetically, that this is a suggestion I have heard frequently from hon. members in private discussions on this subject.
-was that courts should have power to order young offenders to be caned by their parents, and another that the offenders should be handed over to their schools to be caned.
After mentioning that this particular point is discussed in another paragraph, the report goes on to say:
We do not see how either could be enforced. Another popular suggestion was that the police should be permitted to "cuff" or "spank" young offenders on the spot, or should take them to the police station to be caned immediately, and that they should be protected by law against the possible consequences of such actions.
Again, this is a popular opinion, a widely held view as to what might constitute a simple, quick and easy solution to this problem. Hon. members may recall several suggestions which have been put forward as to how these young punks can be treated. The report goes on:
Several of our older correspondents said that these practices were prevalent when they were young and that it was mainly because they themselves were dealt with summarily in such ways that they were better behaved in later life. We do not think, however, that such practices would now be found acceptable.
Then, discussing the reference which was made to the possibility of turning over young offenders to their parents for punishment, the report states in a later paragraph:
One suggestion that was put forward in relation to young offenders was that parents should be required to administer the penalty, if necessary under supervision, but this would clearly be impracticable, as well as objectionable in principle. A parent could not be required by law to chastise his child, nor could any sanction be imposed if he refused to do so.
Where the problem has come into sharp public focus, public opinion aroused and inquiry made into the question, we find once again that the thinking of experienced people in the field almost unanimously is that in England corporal punishment should not be restored and in Canada it should be abolished.
I mentioned earlier that the Minister of Justice has established a committee to implement a study of juvenile delinquency in Canada. I wish to read briefly from the terms of reference of the committee as contained in the press release of the Department of Justice dated January 8:
The committee will be charged with the responsibility of inquiring into and reporting upon the nature and extent of this problem in Canada and to make recommendations concerning steps which may be taken by the parliament and government

of Canada to meet the problem. It will hold discussions throughout Canada with appropriate authorities who work in, or are familiar with the field of juvenile delinquency and invite written briefs from interested private organizations and members of the public.
The director of the main committee will be Allen J. MacLeod, Q.C., commissioner of penitentiaries, a man who I am sure is known to many hon. members of this house. I am certain Mr. MacLeod would not object if I mention here that this fulfils a strong personal ambition of his. I am sure he has discussed this with many hon. members. He feels that this is one of the vital areas of study that must be inquired into in an effort to understand and solve the problems that occur in later life, and those he has to deal with in his capacity as commisioner of penitentiaries. Mr. MacLeod is a man of outstanding reputation, ability and character and will do an excellent job in this capacity. He is to be assisted by a supervisory committee to be composed of the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Justice whose sterling qualities I need not list because the reputation of the hon. member for Saint John-Albert speaks for itself, C. W. Harvison, commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Mr. T. George Street, Q.C., chairman of the national parole board, who are outstanding in their respective fields.
I would hope that the committee of inquiry in its meetings with various groups across Canada would address itself particularly to the problem of corporal punishment for the juvenile offender.
A frequent argument one hears with respect to the retention of corporal punishment is that advanced by the hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe in the debate last year to the effect that we do not want to go soft, that we do not want to spare the rod and spoil the child. However, I have personally spoken to people who held this view and who, when serving as members of committees of inquiry into the question, when confronted with the cold facts of the testimony of experienced people in the field reluctantly found themselves unable to maintain the position they had adopted when first confronted with the problem. Records of committees of inquiry may be examined to substantiate what I have said.
I will conclude quickly by urging that the committee headed by Mr. MacLeod address itself to this question. I expect that the recommendation they will make on the subject will concur with that made by the interparliamentary committee in Canada and with that made by the more recent committee in England, and that in the reasonably near

future we can look forward to a time when corporal punishment will have been finally abolished in Canada.
(Translation):


Mr. J. P. Deschatelets (Maisonneuve-Rosemont):: Mr. Speaker, the bill now before
us is, on the whole, rather simple: it tends to abolish corporal punishment, as provided under sections 136, 138, 141, 142, 148, 218, 289, 586 and 641 of the Criminal Code.
The hon. member for York-Scarborough (Mr. McGee) devoted a considerable part of his speech to attenuating that aspect of punishment and of the penalty provided by law.
Mr. Speaker, I should like to say at this point that I do not want to impute any motive to the hon. member not to make any unkind remarks because I know very well that he is acting in good faith and that he has strong feelings on that matter. However, I fail to see why we should waste the time of the house looking into a matter which only affects a few individuals among 18 million Canadians. Indeed, I think that, during the year 1961, corporal punishment did not affect more than five, six or seven individuals throughout Canada, and I certainly think that we are losing here of the true issue which we should meet, and in respect to which I shall say a few words later on.
The hon. member for York-Scarborough mentioned some paragraphs of the report submitted by the joint committee of the Senate and the House of Commons. It is true that the members of that committee recommend that corporal punishment be abolished for offences in respect of which it is presently prescribed in the Criminal Code, but they seem to have based their views on the fact, and I quote their own words:
-that in the last few years, the courts have rarely imposed corporal punishment.
I would refer the hon. member to page 43 of that report, and I am taking this opportunity of telling him that I was greatly impressed by the views on corporal punishment expressed by the attorneys general of the provinces, by police officers and certain law enforcement agencies. I should like to quote a sentence from section 11, page 43, of that report:
The attorney generals of most provinces, the police, and other law enforcement agencies favoured the retention of corporal punishment.
Mr. Speaker, this bill seems, indeed, to raise an issue which only exists in the mind of the hon. member for York-Scarborough. I do not believe that this problem can be said to stir public opinion. Not at all. The latest statistics I have here refer to the year 1954. Out of 2,344 cases where corporal punish-
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ment might have been prescribed in Canada, it was imposed in only 14 cases, representing a percentage of 0.6.
I thought the hon. member for York-Scarborough would have supplied us with some recent statistics, perhaps for the years 1958-59, 1960 and 1961, and I am certain that the proportion would have been still lower than the one I just mentioned.
Mr. Speaker, we are then engaged in an academic discussion. The question is to determine whether corporal punishment operates as a deterrent of certain serious crimes. Personally, I fail to see any usefulness in this debate, and I shall tell you why.
While the joint committee recommends the abolition of corporal punishment, it seems to question whether such a recommendation would be accepted, and it even makes alternative recommendations which the hon. members will find on page 48 of the joint committee's report. I quote from beginning of section 29 of the report:
In the event that the recommendation of this committee is not accepted, the committee makes the following alternative recommendations.
Mr. Speaker, this bill provides for some relaxation in the meting out of corporal punishment in the most serious offences for which it is presently prescribed in section 289 and following sections of the Criminal Code, such as rape or robbery.
The hon. member, in spite of all his comments and learned comparisons, has not succeeded in showing the committee whether or not corporal punishment is a deterrent to crime.
There is no comparative table in Canada, and I do not believe the hon. member could show us one. I wonder whether we should not, on the contrary, try and make the law and its enforcement still more severe.
In a neighbouring province-the one referred to, a moment ago, by the hon. member for York-Scarborough-a survey of organized crime is now in process. That survey-and I am not indulging here in party politics- whether it has been requested or not by the opposition, has indeed been decided upon under the pressure of public opinion, I am sure. That survey is now then in process in the neighbouring province, especially on account of a statement made by the chief of the royal mounted police, to the effect that organized crime and American underworld elements had infiltrated into Canada.
I submit very humbly that, in the circumstances, we should keep the provisions of the Criminal Code as they are at the present time. Besides such is the recommendation of the attorneys general in most provinces-who are experts on the subject-as well as most chiefs

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of police in Canada and all law enforcement agencies.
I prefer to all others the opinion expressed by all these people, who know the facts and who advocate that the law be strengthened.
Mr. Speaker, a provincial inquiry on organized crime will take place in the neighbouring province. I submit that such is not the solution to the serious situation in which Canada finds itself at this time. As far as I am concerned- it is my personal opinion-I think that a royal commission on organized crime in Canada should be instituted; it is needed, especially following the statement made by the chief of the mounted police.
In the circumstances, I submit that this bill does not deal with today's problems and is at the most of academic interest.
Until a royal commission on organized crime in Canada is instituted and a report submitted, I am in favour of the status quo with regard to the present provisions of the Criminal Code.
For those reasons, if the bill comes to a vote, I will vote against it.
(Text):


Mr. Harold E. Winch (Vancouver East):: am very glad, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. member for York-Scarborough has introduced this bill. I hope this matter will continue to come up for consideration until finally corporal punishment is abolished. If for one moment I could see any evidence that the lash or the paddle was a deterrent to crime, an aid to discipline or of any use in the majority of cases in transforming the antisocial attitude of juvenile delinquents and criminals, then I would be in favour of its retention. However, I have never come across any evidence to show that corporal punishment exercised through the paddle and the lash results in anything more than an addition to the antisocial attitude of those who receive corporal punishment. I am not speaking from an attitude of going soft or from an attitude of one who does not realize the seriousness of crime, and in particular of juvenile delinquency in this country. I am speaking from a long study of this matter. I had the privilege of being one of the members of the joint committee of the Senate and the House of Commons which gave a great deal of thought and study to this entire matter. On the basis of all that we could learn from the authorities, we were obliged to reach the conclusion that corporal punishment should be abolished.
I personally have visited a great many jails and penitentiaries in Canada. I have seen the lash and the paddle. I have seen the rooms in which they are used and I have had given to me explanations as to how they are administered. The fact that there is a great deal of severity in the application of them is proven

by the fact that a doctor must be present at all times. I have seen the backs of men who have had the lash. I know that many of them, after receiving the lash, require to be hospitalized for a number of days. I say that is not a modern approach to the questions of penology and of reformation. Over the years I have spoken to a great many of the guards in our prisons and penitentiaries. In the prisons and penitentiaries themselves I have interviewed a great many of those who have received the lash and the paddle, either as a result of a judicial sentence or for purposes of discipline through the warden's court. In all these interviews, which were sometimes undertaken individually and sometimes with a group numbering as many as 20 at one time who had received the lash and the paddle, I can remember only two who ever said that it did them any good. The rest of them said that it made them more bitter. They said it made them feel aggressive against society and not more friendly to society.
It will be a long time, Mr. Speaker, before I forget one young man whom I interviewed. He told me that as a result of receiving the paddle he was driven by one ambition only, namely the ambition to kill the guard who gave that punishment to him. This young man years later told me himself that the first thing he did when he was released was to get a rifle and that he actually had that guard in the sights of that rifle when a companion of good sense stopped him. Someone may say, "All right, you have spoken to these men in the institutions and naturally they would express bitterness and an antisocial attitude, but what about the attitude of those who were once antisocial, who broke the law, were sentenced and received the lash or paddle?" We recognized that that was a logical question to ask. That is why the joint committee of the Senate and the House of Commons in 1956 made all the neccessary arrangements through the Y.M.C.A., the Salvation Army and other bodies for legal counsel to the committee to meet in confidence with a number of former inmates who are now prominent businessmen in this part of Canada. They were all interviewed in confidence and their names are not known. But what they had to say is known.
When all these men who were previously anti-social, who received the lash or paddle and who have now become adjusted to life were asked what their reaction was to corporal punishment and whether or not it did them any good, only one said that it did. All the rest said exactly what I was told by men in the institutions all across Canada, that it made them more bitter and more antisocial. It made them want to get back at society. It was not so much a case of the pain as it was of the shame. That may sound rather startling,

but if you speak to those who have had the lash or the paddle nearly all of them will say that they would rather have the lash. The lash is more severe and far more painful but they would rather have it because they can stand it and they become heroes. On the other hand, to be tied down to a table and have their pants taken down and to be paddled as though they were little schoolboys when they are grown men brings about a sense of shame in most of them.
I want to repeat that as a result of everything that the joint committee of the Senate and the House of Commons was able to learn, as a result of all I have been able to read on the subject, as a result of all the interviews I have had with those in institutions who have been given such punishment and the information received from those who in the past were so punished but are now rehabilitated, I can only come to one conclusion, that corporal punishment is not a deterrent to further crime and is of no assistance so far as discipline is concerned, because there are far better ways to administer discipline. It does not aid in getting rid of antisocial behaviour. It just makes these people more bitter. Therefore, although such punishment is only imposed rarely now by judges as part of sentences, I say it would be a sign of maturity on our part to remove from the statute books those provisions having to do with the imposition of corporal punishment. For these reasons I am in favour of the principle of the bill.


Mr. G. W. Baldwin (Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the hon. member for York-Scarborough (Mr. McGee) on his pertinacity in pursuing this matter and in presenting this particular bill. I must say I am somewhat surprised at the attitude taken by the hon. member for Maisonneuve-Rosemont (Mr. Deschatelets). As I understand his position, it was that unless we can have a colossal production, unless we can have an epic approach, unless we can deal with this matter on the grand scale, why should we worry about it at all? If we waited for conditions like that to deal with any of the multifarious problems that afflict us, I am afraid very little progress would be made in our human affairs.
This is bad legislation on our statute books and I think no better proof can be found than the statistical information which has been given to us. If I may refer again to the report which was referred to by other hon. members, we find that in 1930 there were 1,143 cases where corporal punishment might have been awarded and such punishment was actually awarded in 95 cases or 8.3 per cent. Next year the figure rose to 12.1 per cent.
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We come down to 1954-this information has already been given but I wish to put it on the record again-and we find that there were 2,344 cases where corporal punishment might have been awarded and that such punishment was only awarded in 14 cases. This indicates the trend that has been pursued. Surely there can be no better proof as to the futility of this particular form of punishment.
I have discussed this question with judges and magistrates whose duty it is to decide upon sentences. I may say it is one of the most difficult and onerous responsibilities that falls upon a judicial officer when, after having come to the conclusion that a certain person is guilty of a criminal offence, he is faced with the very important problem of deciding what the punishment is to be. These are men who have had great experience with regard to the imposition of sentences. There must be a very large measure of wisdom residing in them as a result of the performance of their duties over a great many years. If in their wisdom they have come to the conclusion, as manifested by these figures, that the awarding of corporal punishment is not a suitable or sensible punishment in respect of certain criminal offences, then surely that speaks for itself.
So far as corporal punishment is concerned, we stand in the company of such countries as the United Arab Republic, the Union of South Africa and one or two others. I understand that the state of Delaware is the only state in the United States to retain this form of punishment. For us to retain this barbaric punishment upon our statute books in such company as I have indicated is to me an indication that our position has not been carefully considered. With any punishment of this nature which is repugnant, which is so opposed to our concepts of humanity and to the norm of human behaviour, I suggest that the onus should rest upon those who urge the retention of the punishment to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that it serves an effective purpose. In my opinion this has not been done nor can it be done.
I should like to make this suggestion. There will be an inquiry by the committee which the Minister of Justice has announced, for which I must compliment him, and I suggest that consideration might be given, without actually repealing the legislation, to abolishing corporal punishment for a temporary period so that there will be some opportunity to observe the results. I think that a suitable period might well be during the time when this commission is making its inquiries.
I know there are others who want to speak on this subject. There is much more that I

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should like to say. This is a difficult question because we find it hard to disentangle the skeins of emotion and reason, of fact and fiction, when dealing with an emotional problem of this kind. I should like however to refer to a reasoned and rational exposition of the subject in a book entitled "The Gallows and the Lash?" written by Mr. W. T. McGrath, secretary of the delinquency and crime division of the Canadian welfare council. After a lengthy and quite learned exposition Mr. McGrath concludes by saying:
Corporal punishment does not deter potential criminals and, far from reforming the individual who received it, instils a desire for revenge that retards treatment.
Canada is practically the only civilized country that still retains corporal punishment as a sentence under its criminal law. A few other countries still retain the lash or the strap to enforce prison discipline, but the fact that the majority of civilized countries, including almost all that have advanced prison systems, get along without it, shows we do not need it. It may well become a substitute for more progressive means of dealing with the situation.
Corporal punishment has fallen into disuse in Canada,-
This illustrates the point I sought to make before.
-and Is used so infrequently that in his planning no offender could seriously consider the risk of such a sentence.
The lash and the strap should be abolished-
And to that, sir, I say amen.


Mr. Jack Wratten (Brantford):: I have to speak as a result of one or two experiences I have had in connection with this subject. I associate myself with the hon. member for Maisonneuve-Rosemont (Mr. Deschatelets) who said that he would have to vote against this bill. If a vote came now, I would do the same.
I believe that corporal punishment is a deterrent to crime, and I believe this as a result of one or two experiences I have had. I listened with interest to the hon. member when he said that, in Ontario, they have taken the strap away from the magistrate. Certainly we know it has been taken away from the school principal and the teacher. I believe that is one of the reasons we have so much juvenile delinquency in our province today. There is no doubt in my mind but what hon. members in this house, at some time or other, were chastised, perhaps rightly so, and learned a good lesson, one that they did not forget. I should like to read part of an article that appeared in a newspaper the other day. I quote:
One reason there are so many delinquents today is that their dads did not burn their britches behind them.
I think that quotation is applicable to this bill before us today. I should like to refer

also, Mr. Speaker, to an article which appeared in the Toronto Star, the weekly magazine section, written by a chap who visited Kingston penitentiary. There is one paragraph I should like to read, and it is as follows:
X also found-and surely this is strange-that whereas many men expressed regret for what they had done, they were primarily concerned with their misfortunes, their problems, their future. "The jailhouse conscience is like jelly," somebody said, and this seems to be true. For not one prisoner that I met showed any interest in or concern about the people he had robbed, cheated, beaten or killed. The one possible exception was a modern Robin Hood. "I never stole from a poor man," he said.
Now, Mr. Speaker, if the abolition of corporal punishment is going to do as much good as we have heard some members say it would today, why has it had no effect on these men who have been incarcerated? It does not seem to have had much effect on them because, although they are in prison, they have not been subjected to corporal punishment.
I recall very vividly an incident that happened some years ago. A youngster who lived not too far from me got into trouble with a gang of boys who broke into a house. He was caught and taken to magistrate's court. I was with his father when the sentence was pronounced because the man was deaf and could not hear. The magistrate said, I can either put him on suspended sentence and have him report to a probation officer or I can have him strapped. Which do you prefer? I said to the father at the time, I think the best deal here is to let the boy have a good strapping; perhaps it will smarten him up quicker than anything else. This is what happened. They boy never got into any trouble afterwards. Today, he is a father of a family and is an exemplary citizen of Brantford.
They talk about corporal punishment not being a deterrent. Some two or three years ago, there was a murder committed by four young punks here in Ottawa. This is what Judge Allan B. Fraser had to say when he was talking to an association, and I quote from a newspaper article:
Judge Allan B. Fraser said yesterday that corporal punishment was used in the case of one of the young defendants in a recent murder trial in Ottawa.
The judge of the juvenile and family court of Ottawa and Carleton, speaking to the engineers' wives association, said that while the defendants were in jail awaiting trial "they were still pretty cocky".
"Finally they used corporal punishment on one of them and it worked wonders."
The warden of a jail is empowered to use corporal punishment on prisoners if it is thought necessary.
Judge Fraser said he favoured corporal punishment "when all else fails".

"The boy came up and thanked the authorities afterwards", said the judge. "He said that if his parents had done the same thing earlier he wouldn't have been where he was."
This is just one incident, Mr. Speaker, that I think bears out the belief I have that corporal punishment is a deterrent to young people. 1 should like to refer to another article that appeared in the London Free Press, and which refers to a meeting of the law enforcement officers of Essex county. They came to the conclusion that the young criminals considered Essex county magistrates lenient and treated the suspended sentences they frequently hand out as a joke. The majority of law enforcement officers in the area are in favour of using the whip to deter young criminals.
May I call it six o'clock?


Mr. Speaker:: The hour for the consideration of private members' business having expired, the house will revert to the business which was interrupted at five o'clock.

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



DEPARTMENT OF LABOUR

[Stage Direction]
Technical and vocational training assistance-
636. To carry out the purposes of the Technical and Vocational Training Assistance Act and agreements made thereunder-payments to the provinces-further amount required. $28,400,000.
At six o'clock the committee took recess.

AFTER RECESS

The committee resumed at 8 p.m.
Walter George Pitman: Before the recess, Mr. Chairman, I tried to indicate, although we do need technical and vocational training, what this program most needs. First of all we require to put these things in an order of priority. I tried to indicate that there has been no sensible, rational, planned order of priority whatsoever; that we are putting the money in the wrong place and using it in the wrong way.
One of the areas in which I think it is most unfortunate the way this program is being carried out is that of trained teachers. Surely the whole thing depends upon the kind of trained teachers we have. This is a tremendous problem, because when you have a poorly trained working force or a less skilled working force you have even fewer people from which to draw for the jobs which require skills. This, again, was put
Supply-Labour
very well by Mr. Bridge in the speech included in the document to which I referred this afternoon. He says:
There is an urgent requirement for the development of vocational teacher training programs in Canada to provide both basic and advanced professional training for the growing numbers of teachers who will be required.
In this respect I would comment that surely this was one of the first things that should have been done. Once the needs have been determined, once the courses and the whole program had been determined we could have begun to train the teachers, and then perhaps we could have begun to put up the buildings. At the present time there is a serious shortage of adequately trained instructional staff; that is, before this program was even started there was a shortage, and with the building of additional facilities this shortage will become more serious. An estimated 1,000 to 1,500 additional, trained technical and vocational teachers will be required during the next ten year period. I can assure the committee that certainly they will need more than 1,000 or 1,500 now, with the number of buildings that have been put up during the last few months. I continue reading from this speech by Mr. Bridge.
The programs for training vocational teachers in Canada have never been well developed. The need does not justify a college for training vocational teachers in each province but there is ample need for at least four such training centres, one for the four western provinces, one in Ontario, one in Quebec, and one in the Atlantic provinces.
How much of this tremendous amount of money which we are putting aside for vocational education has been assigned to the training of people to put this program into effect? I would suggest it is a very, very minimal amount, and this has caused a tremendous amount of chaos and disruption in the teacher training programs in each of the provinces. This was not adequately prepared for, and these are the problems you get when you try to put crash programs into too many educational media. Mr. Bridge continues:
Provision should be made for these vocational teachers to advance to degree level in vocational education if they so desire.
There is also a shortage of supervisors and administrators for these programs.
In Bill No. C-49, which I am sure all hon. members have read, there is provision for the dominion government to pay half of the cost of training those who are going to be teachers, administrators and supervisors in this whole program. But there again we are doing the thing backwards; we have not laid enough emphasis on this area, and instead we have been subsidizing, virtually, the educational program in Ontario to a large extent. Mr. Bridge continues:

Supply-Labour
These persons usually come through the ranks of the vocational teaching staff but they require training which will prepare them for the responsibilities of directing programs and improving the standards of instruction.
The last thing I would like to say is that we have had no proper national approach to this problem. I say this with all humility, because this is a tremendous problem; it is a tremendously complex and complicated problem, but that does not mean we should throw up our hands and simply distribute money and let somebody else handle the problem who is in a far worse position to deal with it. I refer to the local municipal school boards. I say that in many cases we have disrupted the whole educational approach. There has been over the years, especially in my own province, a decision which means that people in the outlying areas who need vocational training shall be brought into the larger cities.
Hon. members who come from rural areas will say, "Good heavens; surely people who live in rural areas have the same right to vocational training as those who live in the urban areas". Certainly they do; but we cannot always give the best vocational training by putting up a school at their back door. The best way may very well be to bring those people by bus or various methods of transportation into an area where they can get a far greater diversity and higher level of training than if they simply put a school into a rural area.


John Cameron Pallett: Oh, just move everybody into Toronto.


Walter George Pitman: Holy smoke, what an inane, silly remark from the parliamentary secretary, "Just move everybody into Toronto". Surely the parliamentary secretary has something better to do at this time than sit there and make a silly remark like that. Perhaps he should go out and have another fight with the Voice of Women.
Anyway, the rural school boards find themselves in this position. Some of them find they are at present sending their students into an urban school and they have to pay some percentage of the capital cost of the city school system. But what happens? The federal government comes along and says: "We will pay 75 per cent of the cost of the building" so you have virtually a free building. They can either pay some percentage of the capital cost of the schools in the urban area or they can have their own virtually free institution. This is like a misguided philanthropist who wanders into an African village, puts up a university and walks off and says, "This is wonderful; haven't I done a great deal for these people?" They do not define how they

are going to find the people to man the university or how they are going to pay for it. That is not his problem. He simply walks off the scene. There are several examples which could be given of this kind of observation. I could use one which is not too far away, in the area of Pelham. The normal development of this area would be the enlargement of the Thorold-Fonthill high school which is on a quiet 30-mile road. But what happens? The county is putting up another high school on a 60-mile highway. How they are going to pay for this they do not know. The Robarts system is to keep costs down. There has been some discussion of this. It has been taken up in the press. I could draw the attention of the committee to an article in the Evening Tribune of January 23, 1962, in which one of the members of the board is reported to have stated:
We know how much a classroom costs but nobody seems to know what it costs to operate it.
That is a surprising statement and it is even more surprising that the chairman of the board should write in a letter to the Fonthill Herald on January 30:
As to the cost of operating the new school, no one knows at this time. We have good reason to believe that there will be additional grants, the only guide we might have would be our cost of vocational training at other schools compared with our cost of academic training at the same school.
As to having reason to believe there will be additional grants, hope springs eternal. I trust he has an indication that there are going to be some additional grants from the federal government because, believe me, they certainly will need them.
I should like to end my remarks with a number of constructive suggestions as to how we could salvage, I use that term advisedly, what we have been doing over the last two years. We know we have spent some $269 million, including the federal share-away over anything we had ever expected to spend in the next ten years. Now I think is the time to take a serious look at what we have been doing and the way we are going. I would be the first to admit that as long as we accept the belief that government responsibility has no concept of planning and looks upon the economy as a whole as a mass of wild horses going in every direction, it is going to be hard to plan an efficient training program for that kind of economy. I understand the difficulty that this creates. However, I think we could make more enlightened guesses than we have been making over the past year and a half. The first thing we should do is to put on the records of this house exactly what the needs were. Surely, we could get that information from the provinces, because we are paying enough; find

out exactly what the facilities are in those provinces, and how they are being used at every school level. I think knowledge is the first thing we must have if we are going to plan this properly. We should have had it on the debate on the bill last fall but we did not, and now perhaps we should sit back and find out where we have gone and where we are going.
Second, we should take off the deadline. There is a difference between building schools and building sewers. There is a difference between sewage and students. There is no point in putting deadlines which force departments of education to go on at breakneck speed to do things because they have to get them up to get the money. Third, we should put the priority on expenditure in training those who are now unemployed. We should put up a system of education or, at least, trade schools to get these individuals retrained. Fourth, a great effort should be made to find out exactly where the work force is going. We cannot talk about this intelligently at the national level before we know this.
How are the boards of education in any province of Canada to be expected to provide education for the future if we do not know where the future is? That is a matter of some concern to me. Fifth, we should recognise that job retraining is a continuous process. I have found from my own experience that it is possible to put a school up, but more difficult to get the kids into the course. As long as we in Canada believe that every individual has a right to decide on the course he is going into, that is more difficult. I agree, and I believe we all agree, that we do not want to force them. We have to find some means of educating the parents to get their children to go into these courses. In my own experience we have had shops which have been three quarters full.
The technical teachers themselves are concerned about this program. They do not want to see some half-hearted program which is going to undermine all the efforts they have made to build up a prestige for technical education. We still think far too much in terms of academic education. We need a program of public advertising in the best sense to bring the advantage of this training to everyone likely to need it. I think, also, we have to decide on a system of sustaining grants to these institutions. It is not good enough to put up a building and leave a municipality with a great pile of ruins without deciding how they are going to be staffed adequately, how they are going to be equipped and how the equipment is going to be kept up to date.
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I have suggested five or six things which perhaps could be done to salvage what we are doing now. If we do not do this, we are doomed. We shall have buildings unrelated to our employment needs. They may be training people for the wrong employment opportunities. We may have inadequate instruction; we may have courses completely irrelevant to the kind of work these people are doing; we may have a fragmentary vocational system in many parts of this country; we may have disillusioned it about technical education and it may take years to restore confidence. We may have thousands of unemployed, along with many thousands who realize that their skill are running out and that they would be virtually impossible to place in industry if new machines should make their present skills unnecessary.
This may sound pessimistic. I hope this government will make a full scale effort to recover the loss of ground that has taken place in the last few years.


John Cameron Pallett: Mr. Chairman, I did not intend to participate in this debate but after listening to the footle of the hon. member for Peterborough, which was subscribed to by the hon. member for Trinity, I feel that some of the erroneous statements that have been made should be corrected and that some indication should be given to these hon. gentlemen, particularly the hon. member for Peterborough who I understand is a pedagogue, of what is involved in the technical training educational system and the purpose of the participation in it by the federal government.
These estimates cover expenditures under technical and vocational training agreements with the provinces. The hon. members for Peterborough and Trinity seem to think the province of Ontario is not entitled to share in this program as the other provinces do. Their statements this afternoon appeared to express an objection to any benefits going to Ontario, and it is interesting to note-


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Would my hon. friend permit a question? Is the hon. gentleman saying that the federal government now has jurisdiction over secondary education rather than the provinces?


John Cameron Pallett: I suppose it is not very flattering to me but by his question the hon. gentleman indicates that he has not listened to or read any of the speeches I have made in this house on the subject of education. If the hon. gentleman would take the trouble to peruse the record he will find the answer to that question in clear terms.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Why not briefly and succinctly give it to me now?

Supply-Labour
Mr. Pallet!: I shall resort to one syllable words if that is the wish of the hon. gentleman, so he may fully understand our position in that regard.


Lionel Chevrier: Send us a letter.
Mr. Pallet!: We are dealing with technical and vocational training. I suggest that the hon. member for Trinity has no conception of what are the responsibilities of the federal government in relation to this type of education-if there are responsibilities-on the basis of what he said today with respect to the apprenticeship training program of Ontario, which has nothing to do with the federal government and is irrelevant to the item before us.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: It certainly does.


John Cameron Pallett: The hon. gentleman's statements also indicate his complete lack of knowledge of the training program that is being conducted under the act, through the operation of trade schools that are operating not only by day but also by night in the province of Ontario, and that are available to the unemployed workers of this country.
I was astounded at the lack of knowledge of this subject revealed by the comments of both hon. gentlemen. I was astonished at their failure to read newspapers, to visit these schools, to talk to people who know something about the programs and processes that are going on. Despite their lack of knowledge hon. gentlemen stood in this chamber and made statements that were far removed from the facts. If they were not innocent- I suppose that is the correct word-I would accuse them of being intentionally misleading, but I would not wish to go that far.
The hon. member for Peterborough suggests we have a grand plan. In a recent speech in this house I heard the hon. gentleman say that his theory is to move workers from spot to spot.


Walter George Pitman: Reference?


John Cameron Pallett: I will give the hon. gentleman the reference if he wishes it.


Walter George Pitman: May I ask the hon. member a question?
Mr. Pallet!: I would be delighted.


Walter George Pitman: Does the hon. member realize that the Department of Labour has moved and is moving workers from area to area? Does the hon. gentleman know that is taking place under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labour?
Mr. Pallet!: There is quite a difference, Mr. Chairman. The workers the Department of Labour moves are those who request transfer

from areas that are declared labour surplus areas. The hon. member in the speech he made, which I suspect he will have occasion to remember far into the future, said nothing about the voluntary movement of workers from area to area. He was speaking of compulsory movement, which is in line with socialistic thinking.
The hon. member spoke about a grand plan and said we in this chamber should anticipate what the state of the nation will be 40 years from now. No one anticipated ten years ago that a group of parliamentarians would adjourn to watch a trip around the world by Colonel Glenn in a space capsule; and yet that trip was delayed while a bolt holding the door was repaired by the skilled hands of a workman. That is what this program does; it puts skills in the hands of future workmen.
The hon. member for Peterborough made a categorical criticism of all boards of education across the country. He refuses to recognize that these are the people who correctly assess the needs and who have surveys made. He may not be familiar with this fact because probably he has not sought out the information-and I say this to the hon. member for Trinity as well-but in the metropolitan Toronto area, for instance, the following questions were put not to hundreds but to thousands of industries: If you had skilled workmen available today, how many would you hire? How many would you hire in five years? How many would you hire in ten? All this information is available to boards of education-


Walter George Pitman: Do you call that research?


John Cameron Pallett: This information is gathered from those who will be employing and training these skilled workers. These are the people who comprise the strength of the free enterprise economy which, of course, the hon. member for Peterborough cannot understand. Part of the purpose of education is to fulfil the social needs of future society. This applies equally in the technical field.
Of course, the hon. member would not understand that consideration has been given to these questions by boards of education. Each area board of education or trustees first determines its own needs. Each area need is carefully checked by a high school inspector who is familiar with the locality. Of course this may not suit the hon. member who is a member of the teaching profession. By implication he is saying that the boards and inspectors themselves are not capable of doing what must be done, that they do not know what they are talking about, that

they are making recommendations dishonestly. That is what he is saying. He indicates that they are not assessing properly the educational needs of the young people in their recommendations to the departments of education, that they are giving false service. That is what the hon. member said today.
Every sentence of criticism, every suggestion that the money is being taken for purposes other than that prescribed, is a condemnation not only of the provincial boards of education but also of the inspectors who approve the programs. And then the hon. member condemns every public servant of the provincial departments of education who approves the plans and the program and makes his submission to this government. This afternoon the hon. gentleman engaged in a blanket condemnation of the people engaged in the educational systems of every province and more particularly his own, and all his remarks were subscribed to and echoed by the hon. member for Trinity.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Those are your words not mine.
Mr. Pallet!: Your speech is on Hansard.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Yes, my speech is.
Mr. Pallet!: The first words of the hon. member for Trinity were words complimentary to the hon. member for Peterborough on the speech he had made and on the accuracy of that speech.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: It was certainly a lot better than yours.
Mr. Pallet!: The hon. member for Trinity to my way of thinking completely endorsed all the remarks made by the hon. member for Peterborough.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: I am prepared to allow the people of the country to interpret my speech for themselves. They have learned to read, you know.
Mr. Pallet!: And so we had the two of them, Mr. Chairman, and also some of the other socialists condemning every person who has anything to do with the educational systems in the provinces for accepting and carrying out this program.


Erhart Regier: Are there no teachers among the Tories?
Mr. Pallet!: What did the hon. member say?


Erhart Regier: Is there not a teacher in the Conservative ranks who knows what he is talking about?
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Mr. Pallet!: I would point out to the hon.
member that the Minister of National Defence was once a teacher, as was the Minister of Agriculture.
I believe the Minister of Trade and Commerce, or rather, the Minister of Veterans Affairs was once a teacher.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Did you say the Minister of Trade and Commerce?
Mr. Pallet!: I said the Minister of Veterans Affairs.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I ask, because that would strain our credulity.
Mr. Pallet!: Other members of the government, the Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources and the Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys, were university professors.
In any event there is no monopoly of members of the teaching profession in the group which the hon. gentleman is a member. There are in this party those who are fully capable of playing an important part in the free enterprise system and of instilling in our young people a proper belief in the future of their country. That is why I suggest that the remarks of the hon. member for Peterborough dealing with the subject must be regarded as an indication of a complete misunderstanding of the program by a person who should have an understanding of it. He talks about the program in Ontario not providing the type of training that it should provide. Both he and the hon. member for Trinity indicated a complete lack of understanding of the Robarts system, if you like to call it that-


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Oh, of course.
Mr. Pallet!: -or of the three streams: the scientific technical and trade stream; the business and economics stream; and the arts and sciences stream. These are things which a teacher who is very soon going to be engaged in the full time occupation of teaching should be prepared to discuss in this chamber with some knowledge, rather than to criticize those people who are endeavouring to do important work in the provincial field in order to educate the young people of this country. The hon. member says, "What about the rural areas"? He objects to our giving, in co-operation with the provinces, the opportunity to these young people to-


An hon. Member:: No.
Mr. Pallet!: I can only go by what the hon. member says. If he says he is wrong, that is all right. If he wishes to take it all back, and if he will stand up in this chamber and will retract everything he said, I will sit down.

Supply-Labour
However, he will not do that. He says we are wrong in giving an opportunity to the people in the rural areas. He says that we are wrong in providing accommodation so that they may fit into a technological age. He would uproot them from their homes and transport them to one central place.


An hon. Member:: Nonsense.


John Cameron Pallett: This is, of course, the system the socialists like. They like to get them all under one roof so they can take them away and put them under their own influence. They like to get them away from their homes and centralize them. This is socialist thinking. To them it is not right that the rural communities can train their people at home for jobs of the future. The hon. member talks about decentralizing industry. I have heard him say this in this chamber. Yet today, with regard to the very thing that will help this come about by training people in all the areas of Canada, he is objecting. Let us get the hon. member to be consistent in what he says.


An hon. Member:: You could not possibly do that.


John Cameron Pallett: That may be so. It may not be possible to get him to be consistent.
This is a good program, Mr. Chairman. It is a program designed to train the young people of this country to take their position in the society of the future, as the people who are skilled in the administration of education in this country see it.


William Arnold Peters: It is designed only to build schools and nothing more.


John Cameron Pallett: My hon. friend, who says he is a great authority, does not know, for instance, that in Ontario today 300 teachers are being specially trained to take part in this program, with 300 about to be trained especially in this program.


Erhart Regier: A six weeks course.


John Cameron Pallett: It is not a six weeks course. If the hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam will stand up, if he is capable of doing so, and make his speech at the proper time, he will be allowed to do so. However, interruptions such as the one he has made are not only contrary to the rules but are also inaccurate. I should draw that fact to the hon. member's attention. It is not anything like a six weeks course to train the teachers. The people in this group to the left of you, Mr. Chairman, just do not know what is going on in this training program; yet they are the people who stand up and profess they do know. This is what prompted me to speak, Mr. Chairman, I did so in order that the

committee would not have unchallenged before it first, statements condemning every educationist in the provinces, and more particularly in the province of Ontario; second, completely inaccurate statements as to the program of training for the teachers; and third, to show the attitude about the future of the country, trying to decry the young people, and by the criticism of this scheme, trying to keep the young people out of it.
The hon. member for Peterborough said there will not be enough people to fill these schools. From where is he getting the information? Surveys are conducted by the boards of education of this province, who make recommendations on the basis of questionnaires answered by the students in consultation with their parents. Oh, he looks surprised. He does not know this is happening. He just does not have any idea of this happening, namely that the recommendations of the board are made on the basis of questionnaires answered by the students in consultation with their parents. After all who makes the final decision as to the education? It is the students in consultation with the parents.


William Arnold Peters: Before they go to high school?


John Cameron Pallett: No, not before they go to high school; it is both before and after. Again, Mr. Chairman, the interruption indicates a complete misunderstanding. They have their choice of the three streams. They can get into one of the three streams. At the end of the first year they can go to whichever one they wish, without any loss of educational time. That is an advance program. Oh, the hon. member for Port Arthur laughs. I suppose it is the laugh of the cynic. It fits him very well, I think. In their cynicism they refuse to give credit to a good program and a sound one. It is, of course, one which they are incapable of comprehending because it contains some imagination and something that will actually benefit the young people of the country. They may criticize, Mr. Chairman, but let us see what their people at home say about their criticisms. That is the final test. I have never heard one person in the educational system and charged with the responsibility of administering education in any province criticize this measure.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: They would probably not get very far if they did so.


John Cameron Pallett: The hon. member for Trinity speaks from his seat, probably indicating that he has more brains there. I think that all members may lay some claim to some knowledge about education in the provinces; and I have never heard one suggestion from a person in the educational system in a province criticizing this scheme.


Lionel Chevrier: I have listened carefully to what the chief whip has said, Mr. Chairman. He has spoken for nearly 30 minutes, although I am mindful of what we were told this afternoon by both the Minister of Finance-


Mr. Montgomery:: Why don't you sit down then?


Lionel Chevrier: -and the house leader to the effect that we on this side of the house were holding up these estimates and that people were going to be unpaid because of the fact that these estimates were not going through.


Gage Workman Montgomery: That is very true.


Lionel Chevrier: Somebody said, "That is very true". If that is very true, then those who sit on the other side of the house certainly are not assisting in passing these estimates and in seeing that these people are being paid or are about to be paid. I am therefore getting curious, Mr. Chairman, and I should like to find out from the Minister of Labour if he can tell the committee whether the government has run out of money on this estimate. I think the house is entitled to know.


Michael Starr: I will answer that now, Mr. Chairman. When we first put in an amount we could not properly anticipate what the exact amount would be, but now that many of these buildings are under construction and payments have to be made this is the amount required to carry on up until March 31.


Lionel Chevrier: That is exactly the point. I have asked a question but I have not received an answer.


An hon. Member:: He said yes.


Lionel Chevrier: If that is the case, and I thank the member for that interjection, I think the house is entitled to know what is being held up. Where are the buildings that are being held up? Where have you had to stop construction? The house is entitled to know because after all the Minister of Finance made it quite clear that he did not want to curtail debate directly in any way, although by inference that is exactly what he was trying to do. He did not want to curtail debate but he wanted the house to know how some of these people were going to be affected both directly and indirectly.
These estimates have been held up for the last 30 minutes by the chief whip, and I think the house is entitled to know far more than the minister has told us. I submit with deference, sir, that the minister should answer the four questions I put on this item with regard to where and how the money is being held up.
Supply-Labour


John Whitney Pickersgill: Is the minister not going to answer?


Lionel Chevrier: Is the minister not going to answer those questions?


Michael Starr: I do not know what the member for Laurier means by the money being held up. This is an estimate on the part of the department as to the amount of money we will need up to March 31st to reimburse the provinces for expenditures they will have incurred up until that time, and nothing more. It is based on information we have been able to get from the provinces.


John Whitney Pickersgill: That is a most ridiculous answer. What we were told by the Minister of Finance today was that people were not going to be paid if these estimates were not passed immediately. We want to know who is not going to be paid if this particular estimate does not pass. We do not really have much confidence in these broad statements of the Minister of Finance, and with very good reason. Ever since that affair last summer we know what value is to be placed on statements made by the Minister of Finance-


Some hon. Members:: Order.


John Whitney Pickersgill: -and everybody knows what I am referring to. We also know the kind of language that the Minister of Finance would have used about this matter, language that I would not use at all; but what I am saying is, let the minister tell us who is not being paid because the money in this item has not yet been voted. Who is it that is not being paid?


An hon. Member:: The provinces.


John Whitney Pickersgill: What job is being held up? Let the minister answer that question or by his silence show that in this particular at any rate it was just another big bluff by the Minister of Finance.


Mr. Bell (Carleton):: A totally ridiculous speech, as usual.


John Whitney Pickersgill: You asked for it. That great bluff comes in here-


Richard Albert Bell: The hon. gentleman has done nothing else but bluff.


Lionel Chevrier: Don't you become like the Minister of Finance.


John Whitney Pickersgill: If I can only provoke the parliamentary secretary into talking for another 30 minutes-


Douglas Mason Fisher: Mr. Chairman, I hope all these remarks are getting on the record. Perhaps the best way for me to begin my remarks on this item is to say that I received a letter last September from the minister informing

Supply-Labour
me that a new vocational school was going to be built in Port Arthur and the contribution of the federal government was going to be approximately $1,700,000. It is a crash program and it is anticipated that the school will be ready this September. The federal government in effect will be putting up close to two thirds of the cost of the school, which will be around the $3 million mark, and the provincial government is putting up most of the rest.
It is said that you cannot vote against Santa Claus or you cannot kick Santa Claus in the face, and I realize that in trying to make an analysis based upon something in my own city I may stand in some danger of being misinterpreted or my views may be warped in much the same way that I felt the chief whip was twisting some of the views of the hon. member for Peterborough. However, I should like to offer some comments as a taxpayer in my own city, and as a teacher. As a matter of fact, I was offered a job in this school and it would be a good place to work.
I have taken an interest in the educational program in the city and I know something about it. I should like to emphasize that I have talked to the members of the board of education, the secretary of the board and the principals in the city, and as a taxpayer I am delighted that the city of Port Arthur through the board of education is getting what amounts to a $3 million high school without any capital outlay on the part of the taxpayers of the city of Port Arthur. I am delighted with it from that point of view. But I ask myself this question. How does this fit into a program of improving the technical qualifications of the students in my own area and, if this is part of a national plan, in the nation as a whole?
I understand that the school is going to have 61 classrooms. I know that there will be an electrical shop, a sheet metal shop, an automobile engineering shop and a woodworking shop. There will be general academic courses, business or commercial courses and courses in the shop or industrial subjects. I know that the school system in Port Arthur will experience difficulty in getting students to take the industrial and commercial courses because of the fact that the general course, from my understanding and following of the situation, has always tended to be and continues to be much more popular than industrial courses, and with very good reason, I think.
The hon. member for Peel indicated that one of the critics in this group was not aware of the statistics or the pattern with regard to what students were interested in. It is

very hard to keep up to date with educational statistics in Ontario because the annual report is always 18 months to two years behind time. The latest one I have been able to get is 1958. However, 1958 is not too long ago, and here are the figures respecting the enrolment of pupils in secondary schools in Ontario by courses: General, 170,000; commercial, 29,000; industrial, 20,000; home economics, 465; art, 659; special industrial, 1,308. It is very obvious from these figures that in the province of Ontario there is a tremendous preponderance toward general courses, and in this regard I want to suggest that there are both poor and good reasons for this situation.
As a teacher one good reason I should like to suggest why the general course is much more efficacious for children in grades 9 to 12, children between the ages of 14 and 18, is that in those adolescent years it is extremely difficult to carry on any kind of effective trade training. I should like to illustrate that from my own experience. I started teaching school and doing library work in an academic high school and I thought teaching was a wonderful game. Discipline was not hard, the hours were regular and the students usually had their homework done. Through a couple of accidents of fate I found myself teaching for a few weeks in a school that had a number of industrial, business and commercial courses. Suddenly I found myself up against what the hon. member for Trinity referred to this afternoon. In effect I was a sort of high priced loud shouting baby sitter because the atmosphere of the composite school with a great many students taking industrial courses is not one of study. It is extremely difficult to develop an esprit de corps and a real concern with education in that kind of school. The hon. member for Peel may not believe me but I wish he would talk to some of his teacher friends about this matter. It is a very real problem. It is one of the reasons why in my own city so many parents do not want their children to go to schools offering industrial courses or to take industrial courses.
We had a situation in the city of Port Arthur, Mr. Chairman, where we had one academic high school and two composite schools. There were parents who went to the trouble of selling their homes in order to move 100 yards to be within the boundaries of an academic high school, so their children could take general courses rather than have to go to these composite schools. Now, I regret this attitude, and I still regret it in any community-this looking down upon technical training and vocational training. However, it is a very real problem which exists, and these

figures from 1958 confirm it. From what I have seen of the mores of Ontario parents and children, it is not a regional attitude.
One change that has come on the scene has been the Robarts plan to which the hon. member referred. I am not going to sound off with any criticism of the Robarts plan, not because I do not have any views upon it. I am critical of it. I am critical of it for reasons that have already been indicated. I can perhaps give a most general criticism from a rather excellent study by James S. Coleman entitled, "The Adolescent Society". I want to stress one paragraph which I think is germane, in a very general way, to this problem. I quote:
In sum, then, the general point is this: our adolescents today are cut off, probably more than ever before, from the adult society. They are still oriented toward fulfilling their parents' desires, but they look very much to their peers for approval as well. Consequently, our society has within its midst a set of small teen-age societies, which focus teen-age interests and atttitudes on things far removed from adult responsibilities, and which may develop standards that lead away from those goals established by the larger society.
Now, getting away from the sociological language, the author is saying, in effect, something with which I believe everyone can agree. We have created in North American society today, a teenage, adolescent world. These teenagers are finding it extremely difficult to accept adult responsibilities and attitudes, for example, towards job training. One of the consequences is the lack of success of technical and vocational programs for students in grades 9, 10 and 11. This is one of the main criticisms that has arisen of the so-called Robarts plan. Of course, one has always to acknowledge that most people thinking of educational programs are activated by the best intentions in the world. I feel that the Robarts plan will flounder on this very point unless it is postponed at least until ages 16 or 17 when you can begin to make some impression on the teenager or adolescent about gearing his educational program towards occupational goals beyond the school.
This argument may seem extremely theoretical to hon. members, but I assure them it is not. I have done enough supply teaching in the past few years, visited enough schools and enough teachers' rooms, talked to enough teachers, to realize that this is a very real, live problem. It underlines the tremendous technical and vocational training programs at the secondary school level. I expressed this concern when this measure was originally introduced. I recall at the time members telling me that surely this was a means of getting the federal government into the educational field; that this was tremendously worth while, and one could put aside one's worries to see how the program worked out.
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I come back to being a taxpayer in the city of Port Arthur. I am delighted that our tax load is not going to be so heavy because we are going to get a 61-room high school which -I will argue this and I will insist upon it -is going to house a majority of students in general courses rather than technical or commercial courses. I am sure this will be the situation, knowing the statistics as I do and the attention in my home area. This would be fine if it were the real purpose of this program; but is the purpose of this program to ease the burden on our local school boards across this country? Judging by the statistics, particularly for Ontario, if this is the intention I can only feel that the school boards and taxpayers in Ontario have had a tremendous bonus. I wonder what would have happened if other provinces had answered the call, had been prepared for the call, had been spurred by the Robarts plan to take advantage of the plan in the same way as Ontario has? Our debt this coming year would be fantastic. Look at the figures. The federal share for Ontario is $124 million and for Quebec only $5 million. As hon. members from Quebec know, there are tremendous changes and increased expenses in the educational system of that province. However, Quebec only picks up $5 million under this plan, while Ontario gets $124 million.
Well, I have never been the kind of Canadian who could take great delight in seeing my particular part of the country get the lion's share and another part of the country go without. I made some inquiries from some people I know in the province of Quebec. I asked, why is it Quebec is only picking up $5 million and Ontario is getting in for $124 million? The obvious thing is to say that the Ontario government is on its toes, and the Quebec government is not on its toes.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Douglas Mason Fisher: I think that is too simple an explanation. The explanation that I would give is that Quebec felt it could take advantage of this scheme only to this extent because it was taking money only for schools that were properly and completely technical training institutions, that is they did not offer general courses or anything like that. They were completely technical training institutions such as the Ryerson Institute and schools like that. This is what I really thought we were going to get out of this measure, Mr. Chairman. We have a tremendous need for this kind of program. However, I support the hon. member for Peterborough completely in his statement that at the moment we do not have this tremendous need for courses in woodworking, metal work, electrical work, automobile mechanics, and so on,

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for children of the ages of 14, 15 and 16. I believe this is where most of the money for Ontario is going, to provide the opportunity for schools offering general training.
Having said this about the situation, I think that we have to have an explanation from the minister of this fantastic, this tremendous gift or bonus or reward to Ontario from the federal treasury. The other provinces do not even come close to it. I wonder whether the minister would not acknowledge that in the response he has had to this program, particularly from Ontario, there has been a misjudgment. I wonder if he would not acknowledge that the deadline date of March 31, 1963, in itself, was a misjudgment? I should like to point out to the minister that he has been sent a copy of a report prepared in my part of the country on the advice of some of his own economists called, "Report by Northwestern Ontario Commission on Unemployment." Hon. members may be aware that our area is an easy one to study because we are isolated from all metropolitan centres. We are, in a sense, a microcosm of Canada that you can look at intensely, because we are not within the sphere of influence of any metropolitan area. This group of citizens, on the advice of the minister's economists, did this study and came up with some recommendations that I hope the minister is considering at the present time. I should like to put on the record a couple of the recommendations they made. They have just been going into this whole question of people coming into the labour force, training facilities and the school expansion that we have had. Among other things they want a regional advisory council, a regional economic conference, a resources inventory and a research oriented university. Then they come to this:
The university should be capable of taking all our grade 13 students who can benefit from undergraduate study. Projections indicate there will be about 1,500 students from northwestern Ontario by 1966. Graduate research faculties will help industry to develop new methods and use untapped resources.
Then it goes on:
Regional colleges of technology should be established to train people in the demand skills of the late twentieth century and increase the range of vocational, extension and night courses.
Special courses should be organized to train people for jobs in potential developments so that developers in the area would be assured of properly trained, available personnel.
Then it continues:
A vocational guidance and testing centre properly equipped and staffed by competent specialists should be established to fill a vital need in the region.

Those are recommendations of this group which indicate that they are concerned about the very problem this legislation is trying to meet. I suggest that this is primarily a problem in adult education or adult retraining, plus the establishment of technical institutions such as Ryerson on a much larger scale.
I regretted the tone of the remarks of the hon. member from Peel, because he seemed to suggest that people in our particular party were looking at the educational system very cynically. I would like to tell him that I worked for a few years in a technical institute that was taking people from grades 12 and 13 and first year university. This institute was giving courses for mining and forestry. I was always inspired by what took place with so many young fellows who came into that forestry school with very bad high school records. They took the technical course and began to come on. Then next they would be down in the university of Newfoundland or McGill or Toronto, going on to higher education; or if not, going out into the woods with an excellent job with security, and with a magnificent future. I have seen what effect a technical institute of this kind has on these young people.
I think there is not a school in Canada today that has had the success of Ryerson Institute of Technology in Toronto. That institute has made magnificent accomplishments in so many fields. But that is not what we are getting out of this money. We are not really getting this kind of response. What we are getting is secondary school classrooms in the main. I would like to see the focus go in this direction rather than in providing classroom space of the average secondary school kind, which is in the main what we are doing, which I think is perpetuating what has been an error in our vocational training since about 1913. If hon. members do not think this has been an error I would ask them to look at the Ontario statistics, where after 25 or 30 years of a vocational and technical training program we find that in 1958, 170,000 students were in the general course, only 29,000 in the commercial course and 20,000 in the industrial course.
We know that the goal of the general course is to eventually lead to university or technical institutes such as Ryerson. I would suggest that those figures are an indication that this program has gone off the rails and that something is very wrong with it. I think there is such a disparity here between what Ontario is getting and what the other provinces are getting that I would recommend to

the minister that he should immediately call a conference of the ministers of education in this country.
Last week the hon. member for Peterborough and I went down to visit the Canadian conference of education that went on for a week in Montreal. It was a rather confusing place to be, because so many of the delegates were dissatisfied or up in the air with various things. Repeatedly we heard- or at least I heard, and I think he got the same impression from a different lot of people-that there is a tremendous feeling that it was time the federal government took the lead in these matters. All kinds of obsequious remarks were made about the attitude of Quebec, but the feeling was-and anyone who read the Montreal Star of last week, which covered this conference magnificently, will find this to be so-that the federal government should show greater leadership in this field by making a national office of education. Repeatedly this suggestion was put forward. I think this was mainly because our efforts in education are piecemeal, haphazard and not directed or co-ordinated in any overall way.
I suppose the rebuttal to this is that this kind of planned approach is socialistic. I would like to make the point that it was a most popular approach that I found at the Canadian conference of education, and I am not so optimistic-whatever my party may be-as to feel that most of those people who were talking that way considered themselves socialist, even though this was the view they were expressing at that conference.
I would suggest that when you get educators in responsible positions such as Dean Leddy, Max Swerdlow, Kurt Swinton and people like that all recommending federal leadership in this particular field, it underlines the point that a program such as this, wonderful as it may have been in conception, is probably well off the rails because of the very disparity of the figures released of what expenditures have gone where, and to what province.
Mr. Chairman, I wanted to speak about a specific local situation that ties in with this. Two weeks ago I was in Elliot Lake speaking to a university women's group on the topic of education. Spontaneously from this rather large group in the community came the repeated suggestion-I can say to the Minister of Veterans Affairs that although I would not say they have forgiven him for the Whiteshell business, they are no longer talking about that-that Elliot Lake could possibly be used as a retraining centre. After all, having 600 or 700 empty houses there and institutional buildings that no longer have occupants or the occupancy of which 26207-1-118
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has faded, why cannot the federal government approach this question with imagination and use Elliot Lake as a retraining centre for the very kind of thing that all the educators are saying we need in order to retrain our people?
I do not know whether it could come under this particular kind of program, but it certainly seems to me this is the kind of expenditure under this program that would do much more good than providing more classroom space. I know that at Elliot Lake the schools are magnificent. They are still building schools there despite the fact that the population is decreasing. The fact remains that at the present time they have not the equipment, the teachers or the facilities to do the kind of job that this group obviously feels Elliot Lake could do, and act as a bit of a lodestone or magnet. It could be a great example to the rest of the country if that were the first place to be set up under federal and provincial auspices, with regional support, to undertake a magnificent retraining program for those men aged, say between 18 and 35 who can be retrained in various specialized aspects of technology, or it could even be linked in with the mining and forest industries in more of a tradesmen kind of approach.
The surprising thing is that when you get out into communities such as Elliot Lake, North Bay, Sudbury, Port Arthur or Kenora you find that at the local level education is one of the most intensely interesting topics, and repeatedly the suggestion-as we heard from the Canadian conference of education- is that they want federal leadership and inspiration. It just seems to me that we cannot have it until this government and future governments decide that they are going to lead rather than introduce a program such as this which has become so unbalanced.
There is one final point I wish to make about these expenditures. I suppose the spending of any money may be good, and the spending of $269 millions in this field is wonderful in creating temporary employment. But when I look at these figures I come back to one of the great agencies which the federal government set up a number of years ago in education. That agency is the Canada Council. I realize so many people including members of both parties have criticized that $100 millions that went into the Canada Council. When we realise that $50 millions of that Canada Council money has gone into capital projects at various universities, when we realise that the Canada Council has been claiming repeatedly that it does not have enough income from the other $50 million to meet its scholarships and payments, we look at this other institution where the federal

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government is putting up in this period of a couple of years a total of $129 million and we wonder what kind of sensible apportionment has been given to federal moneys in the field of education.
Nobody would suggest there is any greater merit in putting money into universities as against technical institutes or trade schools, but surely something has gone out of whack here, when the Canada Council, the main federal agency in the field of the arts and the humanities has only the money that it has to operate on, and the head of it has complained very openly, almost bitterly, about the situation, and we are spending $179 million under this crash program.
I come back to where I started. As a taxpayer in Port Arthur and as someone interested in the schools there, I am delighted we have a new high school called the Dag Hammarskjold school, and that the taxpayer is only to have to staff it and carry it on because the funds came from other sources. But I am also a federal taxpayer, and I wonder whether there is any real justice in this kind of approach when Ontario, my own province, indeed, my own town, benefits so much in this regard and the rest of the country seems to go short. I really wonder about the justice and fairness of this program.


Mr. Brunsden:: Will the hon. and academic member for Port Arthur permit a question? He talked a great deal about Ontario and ignored the fact that there are some other parts of Canada west of Ontario. May I ask him if he will drop the verbiage from his words and tell us bluntly whether or not he believes in the vocational training school program?


Douglas Mason Fisher: The hon. member has opened up another hour's debate. The vocational training program has its place, but I would suggest that before the ages of 16 and 17 its place is limited. I can point out, if the hon. member wants to come down to a pedagogical or educational philosophy point of view, that I believe learning to read, to write, to do arithmetic, and to know something about our society and about citizenship should be the core of the training of every child and adolescent until they begin to reach a stage where mentally and manually they are able to move to some kind of training which has links with an occupation. I suggest that this core of reading, writing and expression is important to everybody whether they are going to take technical or vocational training or not. I think, in a sense, the whole program of vocational and technical training in Canada has been an attempt to compromise between this goal and the idea of preparing

young people to enter into a trade, and I would suggest to the hon. member who put the question that if he can show me that Alberta technical and vocational secondary schools are able to train people and send them into the labour force competent to work in their trades as craftsmen I would say I am completely wrong, but that certainly is not the situation in Ontario.


Edwin William Brunsden: Never mind about Ontario. Let us talk about Canada.


Douglas Mason Fisher: The hon. member says "Let us talk about Canada". I think that Ontario represents a portion of the country, and I happen to have some relationship with its educational system. I am not trying to suggest to the hon. member that I think it has a better system than the other provinces. That is the kind of debatable thing that you can never really be sure of. I do know this, though, that as a result of this program there is no doubt about it Ontario is going to have a lot more nice big high schools than any other province in the country. I have only to refer the hon. member to the paragraph which appears on page 1778 of Hansard where he will see the scale. I am delighted that Alberta, his home province, has been able to take advantage of this to the degree it has and that it is getting a federal share of $20 million. But we can only reiterate our doubt that this program, about which we expressed some reservations when it was initiated, which, I think, shows there is a consistency in our approach as a party, has met with the success which the minister claims. I suggest that the hon. member take a look at the statistics. He will see that the scale of success is concentrated in the province of Ontario. I have given an example from my own constituency to indicate that right here it really is not meeting the growing need. The growing need is, surely, the technical training of young people from 17 to 22 and the retraining of those people in the work force who cannot get jobs now and are practically unemployable.
We have a very good unemployment insurance office in Port Arthur and a good one in Fort William. I think the officials who work there are as knowledgeable about the problems in the region as are any of our school teachers or our school principals or our inspectors. They have told me repeatedly how difficult it is to carry on a retraining program. Our board of education in Toronto is co-operative. It has found facilities. Women are taking classes in hairdressing and men have learned how to repair television sets. They have tried to find something flexible that will retrain people and give them a

better chance of getting jobs; but in the main these programs are very short-range. They are ad hoc and very limited in the success they are having in meeting the problem. It seems to me the effort has to be along the lines suggested by the northwestern Ontario committee on employment. I think that one of the main things that has to be done is to establish these vocational guidance and testing centres not only in our region but right across the country.
I cannot take up the time of the committee any longer on this item. I certainly have had my share of the discussion. But I should like to appeal to the minister, whom I have always found to be fair, much as I disagree with his approach to certain aspects of his responsibilities, to immediately have a review of this program, to bring in all the education ministers from across the country. I should like to know, for example, what Mr. Paul Lajoie of Quebec feels about this program.
I should like him to give the minister an explanation as to why Quebec could take only that amount of money and Ontario could take so much more. I think this is a question that needs to be resolved and the minister can do it only by having that kind of review of the situation.
I know the minister can readily say that, this being such a popular program, this kind of approach is unnecessary. I know it is very popular in Port Arthur. As I said we are getting a $3 million high school without any capital costs devolving upon the taxpayers but I wonder whether that may not be the very reason why it is difficult in Ontario to obtain a really constructive analysis of what this program is doing. As I said earlier in my remarks, no one is going to kick Santa Claus in the face.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Mr. Speaker, I should like to put a question to the minister about this program and about the relationship of the program to something that was said last night on television by the Prime Minister. In order to make my question intelligible I should like to read this paragraph from what the Prime Minister said. He said:
Now, there's one problem that's causing me a great deal of concern and that's the men and women who are having to go in too early retirement-
I think there is a misprint here. I feel that should read, "who are having to go into early retirement". I continue:
-some at 50. 55, up to 60, some younger. This is a very difficult problem to meet. And to do so will require the co-operation of the provinces, business and labour. And I'm having a full study made of this question, for I am determined that action must be taken to give hope to that body of men 26207-1-118i
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and women who find themselves retired at ages when they should expect many years of productive service ahead of them.
Now, I assume that that full study which the Prime Minister says is being made now is being carried on by the Department of Labour and I assume, of course, that it is largely retraining for people in these age groups-


Michael Starr: The hon. member is doing too much assuming.


John Whitney Pickersgill: -so that as the Prime Minister put it, and I thought very well-
Mr. Pallet!: It was an excellent speech.


John Whitney Pickersgill: -they could have many years of productive service ahead of them.
I am sure we would all like the minister to tell us about this study. We would like to know who in his department is carrying it on, how it is being carried on, how it is organized and how it fits into the vocational training program of the government.
I feel it was very opportune that the Prime Minister should have made this speech last night when the estimates of the department are before us. I thought it would have been even better if the minister when he brought the estimates before us had told us about this study and given us all the details so all of us could have talked about it. But now that the Prime Minister has told us this useful study is being made, would the minister tell us something more about it and particularly the lines it is following and the direction it is taking and who is carrying it out?


Michael Starr: Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate is doing a considerable amount of assuming on the basis of a speech made by the Prime Minister last evening. If the hon. gentleman wishes complete details I suggest to him that he ask the Prime Minister on the orders of the day.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Well, Mr. Chairman, the minister has been a member of this house for quite a while and by this time he ought to know about the rules of this house. Under the rules, as the minister should know, it would be a totally inappropriate question for the orders of the day.
If there is any such study going on at all surely the minister knows about it. If these people are to have many more years of productive service-the people who are being retired too early-they will only have those years of productive service because they have some kind of training and surely the training is going to be done under the aegis of the Department of Labour.

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If what the minister is saying is that this is just so much hot air on the Prime Minister's part and that there is no such study at all and that he knows nothing about it, let him get up and say so; but if there is any substance in this, as I assumed there was in my innocence, because the Prime Minister had said it, let him tell us what part his department is having in this study, what members of his department are taking part in it and what the nature of the study is.


Lionel Chevrier: No answer.


John Whitney Pickersgill: No answer, no study.


Jean-Paul Deschatelets: Another bluff.
Mr. Pallet!: Another speech.


Mr. Best:: Mr. Chairman, it was not my intention to participate in this debate but when I entered the chamber this evening the hon. member for Peterborough had the floor. His comments were so fantastic that they aroused my interest and I feel compelled to reply to some of the fallacious remarks that emanated from that corner of the house this evening.
I feel that the hon. member for Peel in a capable fashion has put the record straight in clear and emphatic terms. The hon. gentleman delivered a hard-hitting and excellent speech.
The speech made by the hon. member for Port Arthur to which we have just listened was somewhat more temperate and perhaps more positive than that of his seatmate from Peterborough whose speech was one of the most completely negative utterances I have heard in this chamber for a long time. If one sought to attempt to destroy a scheme and pour cold water on a program, one could not have succeeded to a greater extent than did the hon. member. I must say I cannot think of an educational program at any level in Canada which is as significant as this concerted attack by the government.
In my own riding of Halton in Burlington, Oakville and Georgetown three technical wing additions to high schools have been approved for a total federal contribution of approximately $4 million and possibly there may be further interest on the part of other communities in the riding. This is partially a sudden or crash program, but in view of the arrogance of the previous Liberal administration with its intellectual wastelands and lost time-and the hon. member for Trinity who spoke earlier was a member of the former government-surely we have some catching up to do in this country and must get at this rather quickly.

The statistics used by the hon. member for Port Arthur were, I thought, somewhat erroneous. I do not have all the figures with me this evening. I will accept his figure of between $120 million to $125 million as representing the money going into Ontario under the scheme. He used the figure $20 million for Alberta. Calculations I made just now by asking my neighbours from that province, indicate that since Alberta has approximately only one fifth of the population of Ontario, on a per capita basis Alberta would receive very close to the contribution we are giving to Ontario. To say that nearly all the money is going into Ontario is completely inaccurate and if all the hon. members' statistics are as wrong as those presented this evening I think we can discount almost all the remaining remarks the hon. member made.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to examine the remarks made by three Ontario members, the hon. member for Trinity, the hon. member for Peterborough and the hon. member for Port Arthur. Do they really not wish Ontario to accept this money? Do they feel that the local boards of education and the provincial departments of education have no knowledge of this scheme and no basis on which to make decisions with respect to the program? The statements made by the three hon. gentlemen represent a significant denunciation of all our municipal boards of education and our provincial department of education-indeed of the teaching profession. I wonder whether those two hon. gentlemen who are members of the teaching profession could re-enter the profession today in view of some of the comments they have made. I really doubt that they could on the basis of the comments they have made about the school system and their colleagues in the profession.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I thought this was supposed to be a free country.


Charles Alexander (Sandy) Best: Some interesting remarks were made at the conference on education at the recent conference in Montreal and one quotation used by the hon. member for Port Arthur referred to federal leadership and inspiration. I have heard those remarks applied to this program in my area. I have heard it said that this is an area in which we must move with some speed. I have heard the program characterized as being one of vision. I can think of no program in any educational field- primary, secondary, technical or at the university level-introduced by any municipal, provincial or federal government that compares with the present program.
I mentioned the figures for the province of Alberta. The per capita grants going into that province are comparable with those

going to Ontario. The hon. member for Port Arthur talked about secondary schools. I happened to see the figures just here this afternoon and although I may be inaccurate here, I believe that near Edmonton there is one school which is receiving a total grant of something like $8 million under this program. This surely is a large specialized school which will give detailed vocational and technical training in some depth.
Ontario perhaps has been able to make some use of this plan with the new Robarts streaming technique. It seems, however, that many of the objections we have heard this afternoon and evening are based on a detailed analysis of municipal and provincial responsibilities. I do not say that this matter should not be discussed to some extent in this chamber; but surely we must rely on the municipalities and on the provinces in their wisdom to work out the details of these schemes within their provincial and municipal jurisdictions, the province of Quebec in a different manner from the province of Ontario. We are not a Conservative government here at Ottawa that wishes to dictate- as I think the hon. member for Port Arthur and the hon. member for Peterborough and probably the near socialist member for Trinity would like to do-the educational programs and schemes of the provinces and municipalities. We do not intend to do that. We wish to grant under a general government and a general scheme, moneys to be used by the provinces and the municipalities according to their methods, and according to their best ways and means. This is our philosophy. If those sitting opposite disagree with it, that is their privilege. Again, I think this is a complete renunciation of local responsibility. It can only mean, as the hon. member for Peel pointed out, a complete lack of confidence on the part of the N.D.P. and the Liberals in the authority, integrity and ability of the local boards of education and provincial departments of education. I have talked to guidance teachers in high schools in my riding and to provincial inspectors around Ontario and I find that there is a whole hearted and warm acceptance of this scheme.
Some remarks were made by the hon. member for Peterborough about the retraining of vocational teachers. We know that this is going on. There are rush programs being carried out to retrain and and further train our present vocational teachers in order to bring them up to higher standards for these new classes and these new courses. This is going on. Undoubtedly new teachers will have to be recruited as well. That is being done and I am sure is realized by the provinces and municipalities in question.
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I am told that the hon. member for Timis-kaming in speaking this afternoon was guilty of a number of inaccuracies-I observe that he is at last listening now-with regard to students being obliged to decide in grade 8 to commit their lives to one course or another. Again I believe the hon. member for Peel has set out the true scheme. There is one year after which students may criss-cross to different courses; and, as I think perhaps has not been pointed out this evening, really none of these courses closes the door, upon graduation, to a variety of college or technical training thereafter. This is an encouraging thing. There are basic similarities between these courses. There is only a percentage- perhaps 20 per cent-of specialized training in the different courses. There are many subjects which will be common areas in the first three streams. This will not close doors or possibilities to any students to further their education and their training beyond the secondary school level.
I must admit that I was troubled at first by this seeming inflexibility of the scheme. However, on better acquaintance I now realize the tremendous flexibility it has, the great choice provided in the fact that students can go on from there to a variety of things after their secondary schooling.
The hon. member for Peterborough also said that we should be training, instead, the unemployed. Of course we are doing that. We are doing that in my riding. In the town of Oakville the province, the federal government and the municipality and the school board, as a matter of fact-that much decried school board about which we heard so much earlier this evening-have taken it upon themselves, on their own initiative, to cooperate seeing the opening made by our Minister of Labour here, through this provincial federal scheme, to retrain some of the unemployed in our area. This scheme is just starting to catch on. There is not perhaps a tremendous volume of students as yet but this is a very healthy sign in the training of the unemployed. We are trying to classify them and to train those who are most capable of receiving that training and to give them courses which will make them able to fit into a wider variety of jobs.
As I have said, hon. members opposite who have spoken this evening have raised problems which are largely provincial in nature. The basic conclusion to which we must come is that this is part of a concerted socialist bureaucratic attack on the problem of education in this country. I am not one who feels that our government in a variety of ways should not contribute to some extent to education. However, I am far from thinking that we at this level should control the curricula,

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the students, the methods of study and the training of teachers at the federal level. From some of the remarks made here this evening I can only conclude that this is the direction in which the New Democratic party would head. As was mentioned by the hon. member for Peel, I think that everybody would have to move to Ottawa. We would let all the little boards go and let the provincial departments go and we would have one glorified huge bureaucratic department of education here in Ottawa. I think that is just as ridiculous as it sounds. If they wish to vote against this program I think possibly we may see just what their objections are. However, the sort of negative remarks which we have heard this evening-


William Arnold Peters: You sure have made some.


Charles Alexander (Sandy) Best: Perhaps I was spared the misery of hearing the hon. member's remarks made this afternoon. I heard enough inaccuracies, I think, to be grateful that I was away from the chamber at that time.


William Arnold Peters: It is too bad you were not away longer.


Charles Alexander (Sandy) Best: I think the measure of support and reaction to this program is witnessed by the very applications which have come to the Prime Minister and to the federal government. This is the true measure of its success. I am sure that our major attack on this problem will mean a great increase in trained personnel, in employment in primary and secondary manufacturing in the years ahead. I wish to compliment the Minister of Labour and the government on what I think is one of the major keystones of the policy and practice of this administration.
(Translation):


Maurice Bourget: Mr. Chairman, the $28 million vote that we are asked to approve affects what is known as joint plans. I therefore believe it would be unfortunate to let this opportunity go by without knowing exactly where the members stand on the question of joint plans, especially the members from the province of Quebec sitting behind the treasury benches.
Mr. Chairman, I would not have raised this point tonight if, while making two speeches in this house since the beginning of the present session, one during the debate on the speech from the throne and the other during the consideration of the first general estimates of the Department of Public Works, I had not been subjected to a barrage of questions from the Conservative members of the province of Quebec who, several times-and

Hansard is there to prove it-asked me to state the stand of Liberal members on joint plans.
Well, Mr. Chairman, in order to dispel any ambiguity, I wish to take this opportunity afforded by consideration of this item to place on record the policy of the Liberal party as regards joint plans.
And I want to say that our policy, which was clearly stated on different occasions-


Mr. Flynn:: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order-


Maurice Bourget: -when our leader-


Paul Raymond Martineau: Order. Does the minister want to speak on a point of order?


Jacques Flynn: Yes, Mr. Chairman. I submit that the point raised by the member for Levis is irrelevant.
It is not that I fear to follow him on this ground, but it is a waste of time to discuss matters that have nothing to do with the matter under discussion.
In this case, the act was passed by the house, the principle has been accepted, and it is now only a matter of asking the house for an additional amount. Therefore there is no need to reconsider the principle of the act. It is simply that, if the hon. member for Levis is allowed to continue his remarks to that effect, we will soon be getting into full scale, and completely irrelevant debate.
I think that such has been the case long enough today.


Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Chairman, with regard to the point of order raised a few moments ago by the minister, I think we should point out two facts. First, the minister has said that the remarks made by the hon. member for Levis go beyond the limits of this debate; well, it should be remembered that the same question was discussed for about an hour or two. Consequently, if at that time the members were going beyond the limits of the debate, the hon. member for Levis has the right to do the same, because the member for Port Arthur (Mr. Fisher) was the first to bring up the point that the hon. member for Levis is now discussing.
As to the principle of the act, the minister is absolutely wrong when he says that a member is not allowed to discuss it now. But under vote 636 which is now before us, a member has the right to discuss the principle of the act. This seems clear to me. Consequently, I respectfully submit, Mr. Chairman, that the hon. member has the right to pursue his remarks since we have been discussing for two hours the principles of education in the

province of Ontario. Therefore, the member has, a fortiori, the right to do as much as far as the province of Quebec is concerned.


Mr. Tremblay:: Two wrongs don't make a right.


Jacques Flynn: Mr. Chairman, I have only a few words to add. The hon. member for Laurier said that we talked about it this afternoon.
I admit that part of the debate was beyond the scope of the vote under discussion. However, there was no mention of the principle of the act but rather of its application in the province of Ontario, which is quite different from the argument that the member for Levis wants to raise.
Second, the rule setting the limits of a debate is very well set forth on page 738 of May's sixteenth edition.
Once again, I do not want to prevent the member for Levis from discussing that matter. He already has had the opportunity to do so. If he wants to come back to it, it is his business; but I submit that we will move away for good from the vote under consideration.
(Text):


John Whitney Pickersgill: Mr. Chairman, I should like to put in a word or two on the point of order that has been raised by the minister of points of order. My point is this. The minister says that in our discussion in this committee of an additional vote under a law we cannot discuss the principle of the law. That is the most extraordinary attempt to limit freedom of speech that I think I have ever heard in the committee of supply. Surely we can point out that the principle of the law is working badly, as it obviously is when three quarters of all this money is being spent in one province. Surely we can point out that in the application of the principle the thing is not working out properly, and to lay a foundation for dealing with the application one has to recall what the principle is. That is precisely what the hon. member for Levis was doing.
(Translation):


Paul Raymond Martineau: The minister has obviously raised a very important question, that of the relevancy of the debate. I know that he is referring to May whom he has quoted in part yesterday. But a little further, on the same page, I read this:
(Text):
If the sum demanded by a supplementary estimate is of the same order of magnitude as the original estimate, the chairman has allowed questions of policy to be raised upon it which would have been in order if it had been an original estimate.
Supply-Labour
The first point is that this is an important amount that members are being asked to vote. The second point is that the discussion that has taken place on this item has ranged widely enough to cover the policy of the original law as well as the question of voting this additional amount. Third, with regard to the remarks upon which the hon. member for Levis was embarking I would point out that he was speaking about the principles of joint programs. This is a joint program and if he relates his remarks on joint programs generally to the joint program that is now under study, then to my mind he is fairly well within the realm of relevancy. I do not feel inclined to stop him at this stage although I would caution him that, as the minister has well pointed out, the rules of relevancy must be adhered to and he must correlate his remarks to the particular item.
(Translation):


Jacques Flynn: I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, but if we start a discussion of that kind in a few minutes, I would not want the hon. member for Laurier to blame us for delaying the passing of the estimates.


Lionel Chevrier: That is what you have been doing all evening.


Maurice Bourget: And this should not happen.
I wish to point out to the Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys that tonight, the chief whip of the Conservative party (Mr. Pallett) spoke for half an hour and the hon. member for Halton (Mr. Best), for fifteen minutes.


Jacques Flynn: Half an hour between the two of them.


Maurice Bourget: Then, I do not think the Liberal opposition can be blamed for taking the floor too often on this matter since the Conservatives themselves took more time than we did. Mr. Chairman, I am not a lawyer, but my judgment tells me, and especially common sense, that it is logical for a member to express the attitude he intends to take concerning a credit as important as that of $28 million which is now put to us.
As I said at the beginning, I would not have raised the matter if, in the course of two speeches I gave in this house, I had not been submitted to a barrage of questions about joint programs.
So that there shall be no misunderstandings, I will put on record the policy of the Liberal party, which remains the same, not only in the province of Quebec, but throughout the country.

Well, that policy on joint plans is outlined in a pamphlet which we are distributing all over the country and which is entitled The Option Formula. I quote:
Although tax sharing is essential, other forms of co-operation between the provinces and Ottawa exist which will provide a better balanced development of Canada.
Such are the federal-provincial joint programs in the field of welfare, for example old-age assistance, pensions to the blind and the disabled-
As well as this project which is about technical and professional training.
-In that field, Ottawa must help develop, all over the country, such assistance programs; but if it remained indefinitely in that field, it would run the risk of creating, in the long run, administrative difficulties.
A new Liberal government, after having made arrangements with the provinces, will withdraw from those joint schemes which are now well established everywhere. At the time of its withdrawal, the federal government will confer on the provinces direct taxation powers and increase its equalization payments to a degree equivalent to the federal contribution to those programs.
Thus, the federal government will be able to suggest new joint programs if necessary. Yet, in view of applying further schemes, a new Liberal government will ensure that any province unwilling to take part in one or the other, would not suffer with regard to revenue. As the federal taxes will pay a new joint program, any province may have an option and receive from the federal government some financial compensation equal to what the province would have received if it had shared in the joint federal-provincial scheme.


Mr. Pigeon:: You are repudiating the past.


Paul Raymond Martineau: Order. I indicated to the hon. member a moment ago that he could add a few references concerning joint plans to the premise of his argument, but I suggest it is not within the scope of this discussion to consider the details of this program nor the fiscal agreements which could be reached between the federal and provincial governments. I would therefore ask the hon. member to get back to the estimates which are now before us.


An hon. Member:: You are repudiating the past.


Maurice Bourget: Mr. Chairman, I will abide by your suggestion. I do not want to belabor the point further, but I believe that it would be the right time, since we have with us tonight the senior minister of the province of Quebec and the Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys-


Léon Balcer: Would the hon. member permit me a question?


Maurice Bourget: If you will let me finish what I have to say, you will be able to ask me all the questions you wish. You asked questions

Supply-Labour
when I spoke on two previous occasions. Besides, it is not up to the Liberals, who are in opposition, to reply; it is up to you, who are in power, to shoulder your responsibilities. I feel it is time for you to take a stand and to say what you think of joint programs.


Léonard-David Sweezey Tremblay: Jokers.


Maurice Bourget: And especially the hon. member for Roberval (Mr. Tremblay) who-


Léonard-David Sweezey Tremblay: Jokers, jokers.


Paul Raymond Martineau: Order.


Louis-Joseph Pigeon: You are contradicting yourself.


Léonard-David Sweezey Tremblay: Comedians.


Paul Raymond Martineau: Order. I would ask the hon. member to address himself to the Chair in accordance with the rules of the house.


Maurice Bourget: I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, but I feel hon. members opposite should stay quiet. I ask the ministers of the province of Quebec to say what they think about those joint plans, as well as the hon. member for Roberval whom-after his recent speeches in the province of Quebec-I am always surprised to see, not only on the government side, but also in this very house.


Léonard-David Sweezey Tremblay: Comedians. You will be told in due time.


Maurice Bourget: I do intend, Mr. Chairman, to ask that a vote be taken for the adoption of this item.


Louis-Joseph Pigeon: Tell us about Mr. Bona
Arsenault.


Paul Raymond Martineau: Order.


Léonard-David Sweezey Tremblay: Tell us about Mr. Chevrier.


Paul Raymond Martineau: I would hope that hon. members interrupting from their seats will stop that so that the Chair as well as all hon. members may hear the remarks of the hon. member for Levis who has the floor.


An hon. Member:: The hon. member for Roberval will find it difficult.


Maurice Bourget: I thank you, Mr. Chairman, but I have completed my remarks and I hope we shall now have the opportunity to hear somebody from the province of Quebec say what he thinks of these joint programs.


Louis-Joseph Pigeon: Bona Arsenault is going to talk about them.


Léonard-David Sweezey Tremblay: Tell us about Mr. Chevrier.
(Text):


Murdo William Martin: Mr. Chairman, as I have a few remarks to make on this item I wonder if I might call it ten o'clock?

(Translation):


Paul Raymond Martineau: Order. I have already asked hon. members not to interrupt from their seats. I hope they will abide by the rules of the house since, otherwise, it will be impossible to give proper consideration to these estimates.
I recognize the hon. member for Timmins (Mr. Martin).
(Text):


Murdo William Martin: As I say, the hour is rather late and 1 wonder if I might call it ten o'clock?
Item stands.
Progress reported.
Business of the House



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Lionel Chevrier: May I inquire what we will be doing tomorrow?


Gordon Minto Churchill: Tomorrow we will press on with the supplementary estimates.


Lionel Chevrier: Would the house leader give some indication of what we will be doing next week, Monday and Tuesday?


Gordon Minto Churchill: Everything will depend on the progress we make tomorrow, which I hope will be extensive.


[Stage Direction]
At ten o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
[Stage Direction]
Friday, March 16, 1962