[Stage Direction]
Bill (No. 105) relating to the water carriage of goods-Mr. Nesbitt.
Bill (No. 109) to amend the Government Annuities Act, 1908-Mr. Fielding.

Hon.  W. S.@: FIELDING (Minister of Finance) moved that on Friday next the House do go into Committee of the Whole to consider the following proposed resolution:
Resolved, That it is expedient to authorize the Governor in Council to advance by way of loan to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway

Company a sum not exceeding ten million dollars for the purpose of aiding the company in the completion of the construction of the prairie section of the western division of the National Transcontinental Railway, the sum so advanced to bear interest at the rate of four per centum per annum, payable half yearly, and to be repayable in ten years from the time the loan is made, or if advanced in instalments, then in ten years from the time the first of such instalments is so advanced; and to provide,
That such sum, whether advanced in one or several instalments, shall be advanced upon the pledge of an issue of bonds, bearing interest at the rate of four per centum per annum, payable half yearly, to be made by the company as collateral security for the payment of such sum and interest, the principal amount of the bonds received in pledge to equal the sum advanced, such bonds to be secured, subject to any prior lien or charge, by a mortgage, or deed of trust by way of mortgage, of the prairie section, and of the undertaking, equipment and property, tolls, rights and franchises of the company in respect of said section, and to be guaranteed as to the payment of the principal and interest thereof by the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada; the form and provisions of such mortgage and of the bonds to be secured thereby, and of the guaranty thereof by the Grand Trunk Railway Company, to be substantially as set forth in the schedule of the Act to be founded on these resolutions;
That His Majesty, in the event of default in the payment of half yearly interest, or in default in the payment of the principal sum advanced under the provisions of such enactment, in addition to and without prejudice to any right or remedy against the company in respect of such default, and in addition to and without prejudice to any right or remedy His Majesty may have as pledgee of the whole or any part of such bond issue, shall, for the purpose of remedy, be deemed to be the holder of such bonds and entitled to all rights and remedies available to bondholders arising according to the terms of such mortgage when default is made in payment of interest or principal of such bonds; and that default in payment of interest on, or principal of, any advances made under the provisions of such Act, shall be deemed to be default in payment of the interest on or principal of such bonds to the amount accrued thereon according to the tenor thereof.
That the Governor in Council may, in addition to the sums now remaining unborrowed and negotiable of the loans authorized by any Act of parliament heretofore passed, raise by way of loan, in accordance with and under the provisions of that portion of chapter 24 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1906, relating to the publio debt, and the raising of loans authorized by parliament, such sum or sums of money not exceeding ten million dollars, as may be required for making the advances contemplated by these resolutions.
He said:	His Excellency the Governor
General, having been made acquainted with the subject matter of this resolution, recommends it to the consideration of the House.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Mr. FIELDING.: 



CATHOLIC IMMIGRATION.

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day being called
Mr. T. S. SPROULE (East Grey).: Mr. Speaker, I observe in Monday's ' Mail and Empire ' and in other papers, the following item:
Limited to Catholics-Emigration Agent in England says he was so Instructed. (Canadian Associated Press Cable.)
London, March 14.-Speaking on church prospects in Canada, Archdeacon Renison, of Moosonee, yesterday told how, travelling in England lately, he met an emigration agent of the Canadian government. This man was a German, who had built up a prosperous homo in Canada, and asked the Canadian government to appoint him as an agent. For the lest few years, he had been working in his native country, bringing out bands of emigrants and settling them in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
This man told Bishop Renison he had instructions to bring out only emigrants of the Catholic faith. Hundreds of German Roman Catholics were being planted year after year by the Canadian government in the great western prairie lands.
I wish to ask the Minister of the Interior whether there is any truth in that statement?


Hon. FRANK OLIVER (Minister of the Interior).: As far as I am aware there is none whatever.



FISH SLIDES ON TRENT CANAL.

Mr. E. GUSS PORTER (West Hastings).: I have received a communication of rather urgent importance. My correspondent writes on behalf of himself and a large number of others living along the line of the Trent canal, pointing out that in the construction of the dams on the Trent canal no provision is made for fish slides. He further points out that large quantities of food fish pass up the river and the construction of the dams in this way will have the effect of entirely excluding the fish from the river. If that is the case the minister's attention should be given to it at once.



PAY OF MILITIA AT HALIFAX.

Mr. A. B. CROSBY (Halifax).: I am
credibly informed that the militiamen and soldiers in Halifax have not received their last pay which is long overdue. I would like to know why this is so and when the men may expect to receive their money.


William Stevens Fielding: I shall be glad to call the attention of the minister to it. I am unable to give the hon. gentleman the information at the moment.



PORT OF OSHAWA.

Mr. SAM. HUGHES (Victoria).: On the 11th inst. I put a question regarding the

Port of Oshawa, which both the Minister of Customs and the Minister of Public Works attempted to answer, I asked who was the collector of customs at Oshawa Harbour and what was his salary. Oshawa Harbour is not Oshawa town, and while the customs regulations may statte that the port of Oshawa includes both the town and harbour, my question was so framed as to require an answer only for the harbour. I asked also what revenue has been collected at the port of Oshawa each year since it was taken over by the government and from what source was the revenue derived. I presume that, in giving the answer he did, the minister was technically correct, because the port of Oshawa includes both the town and the ' harbour. But what I want to get is the return from the Minister of Marine (Mr. Brodeur) or the Minister of Public Works or the Minister of Customs or the minister of any other department of the government showing what has been collected at the harbour of Oshawa-not the official port. I want a return of what comes in by water into the harbour at Oshawa, and not what comes by rail into the town. If necessary,
I will repeat the question in another form.


Hon. WM. PATERSON (Minister of Customs).: I do not know whether we will be able to divide the two and give the harbour distinct from the town.


Samuel Hughes: It will be very easily done. There is nothing.


Mr. FOWKE.: I can help the hon. gentleman out of his difficulty. He asked for information as to the amount expended by the government since taking over the port.
I think what he meant to do was to ask who was the harbour master. The revenue through that officer.


Samuel Hughes: That is the point.
Hon, L. P. BRODEUR (Minister of Marine and Fisheries). I understand it is a matter which refers to my department, and will make inquiry.



FRAUDS ON THE INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY.

Mr. BLAIN.: I would like to ask the Minister of Railways if there is any truth in the report in the press under the heading of 'Frauds reported on the Intercolonial Railway,' to the effect that many thousands of dollars of a shortage are found in connection with the Intercolonial Railway, and that some of the officials have been suspended.


Mr. GRAHAM.: So far as the department is concerned, the only information we have is what we have seen in the newspapers. I wired the general manager on the subject and have not yet received a reply. These
things occur in every railway and I imagine -though I do not wish to express an opinion-that this must be much exaggerated. There will be a thorough investigation, if there is anything in the report.



INQUIRIES FOR RETURN.

Mr. BRADBURY.: On the 17th of February two returns were ordered which I moved for. One was for copy of correspondence or petitions received from F. W. Colclaugh and the other for copy of correspondence between J. H. Davis and the Department of Marine and Fisheries. Why have these not been laid on the table?


Mr. BRODEUR.: The return with regard to Davis is ready. It has been sent to the Secretary of State and when it comes back to my hands I will lay it on the table. The other is in course of preparation.


George Henry Bradbury: On the same day I moved for an order of the House showing the amount of money paid by the government to the Logberg Printing Company and my motion was granted. What is the cause of the delay in bringing down that return?


Hon. CHARLES MURPHY (Secretary of State).: I will have an inquiry made about it.


Mr. FOSTER.: I again call attention to certain returns ordered by the House and not brought down. The Finance Department and the Public Works Department are the two chief sinners.


William Stevens Fielding: In the case of the Finance Department, my hon. friend himself is the chief sinner. He made a motion and the information was being prepared, but he discovered that he had made a mistake and asked that the form of the order be enlarged. I said we would be very happy to enlarge it at his suggestion, but I do not think he should blame us for the little delay thereby occasioned.


George Eulas Foster: I asked for a return of all the loans which had been made from 1896 up to the present with their charges. I explained the matter to the deputy minister almost immediately, and I think he has had that information some time. There is another matter, that with reference to loans since January, 1907, which has not been brought down. Also the armouries under the charge of the Minister of Militia. And two stand to the debit of the Minister of Public Works, who is behind as usual.


Mr. PUGSLEY.: These returns have not been overlooked. I have ordered that they be brought down as soon as possible, and I have been informed that they are being prepared with all possible speed.



SUPPLY-THE INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. FIELDING moved that the House go into Committee of Supply.
P\ GRAHAM (Minister of Railways). As is the custom at some stage aurmg the session, when you are about to leave the chair, Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of allowing the House to go into Committee of Supply, a general statement is made concerning the government railways Canada and dealing incidentally with the larger problems which confront tins country on the matter of transportation. Ihe questions now inviting attention of the Canadian people are of such great magnitude and import that interest m them is not confined to the Canadian people, but reaches the entire world; and in making comparisons between Canada and any other country regarding the facilities afforded for transportation of our products, the records show that we, as a people, have greater courage than any other on the globe in this particular direction, irer head of the population we have the greatest mileage of railways of any country in the world; and that this work is being continued and that mile after mile of railway is being constructed throughout this country shows two things.
It shows, first, that Canada has resources that require greater development, and, second, that the Canadian people, though comparatively few numerically considered, have unbounded faith in the country m which they live. When we stop for a moment to think that the question of the carrying trade of Canada's great west is being partially solved by utilizing the route from the Pacific across Mexico to the Atlantic, and thence to the European market, we are filled with wonder. It need not surprise us that people of other countries look in astonishment at our efforts to solve this problem which has come before us within the last few years. And when we consider that the proposition is now before the country, and the government intends in dealing with it, to add another channel for the great traffic of the west, this one to be via Hudson bay, it is all the more astonishing, I say again, that the courage of the people of Canada has Teached such a climax. Were it not that we have unbounded confidence in the resources of the country, the undertaking of such great projects would stagger us. It is true that at the present moment the financial condition does not warrant us in launching out in great new schemes involving large expenditure. It is, nevertheless, true that the people of Canada look forward to the time when they will have greater avenues jof trade, greater outlets for -the earry-cf our produce from our own country to the doors of the consumers wi,v ut un-Mr. PDGSLEY.
due expense, and this at no distant day.
I have unbounded faith in this country; and, notwithstanding all the money that we are expending in railways, in canals, in deepening our waterways and improving our harbours-notwithstanding all the money spent in opening up these various channels for transport-I still have faith that the products of this country will be sufficiently great to tax all our carrying facilities, no matter what we may be able to make them. I have already said that we have in Canada a great railway mileage. On June 30 last we had 22,966 miles of railway in the Dominion, the increase last year being 514 miles. Shortly after that time 750 miles were put in operation, so that at the present moment-and I am stating the figures conservatively-there are in operation in the Dominion of Canada 23,716 miles of railway. In this matter we compare favourably with any country in the world. On June 30 last there were under construction in the Dominion of Canada 4,327 miles of railway. This means a great deal to the people of Canada. But, in discussing this question of railways, I desire to say that the prime object of a railway is not so much the development of ether industries; the prime object in the interest of the people of Canada is that the railway may sell transportation at a fair price. Anything that conduces to the bringing about of this result is in the public interest. Sir, we have one transcontinental line already built, we have another under construction, and, in a few years, I believe we shall have a third, when the Canadian Northern gets its lines linked up. In this connection I am sure it will be interesting to hon. members for me to read and place on ' Hansard ' a letter which is, in effect, a short interim report by Mr. Collingwood Schreiber, chief engineer of the western division of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. The letter is as follows:
Office of the General Consulting Engineer to the Goernment.
Ottawa, Canada, February 5, 1909. The Hon. George P. Graham,
Minister of Railways and Canals,
Ottawa, Ont.
. Sir,-Knowing your desire to be kept fully informed as to the progress made, from time to time, with the works of construction upon the western division of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, I summarize the position on December 31, 1908, as follows:
Prairie Section.
From Winnipeg to a point 8| miles west of the Battle river, a distance of 683J miles the- Grading and bridging is completed, and the track is laid over the whole distance with suitable sidings at each station, of which 92 miles has a full lift of ballast, 502 miles has a first lift and 89£ miles is a skeleton track having no ballast.
Station buildings.-The following are com-

pleted: West Winnipeg, Melville, Portage la Prairie, Nokomis, Rivers.
Others are in course of erection at Biggar and Wainwright.
Whilst the following are under contract: Scott, Iwana, Allan, Lazare, Kelliher, Semans, Leney, Punnicliy, Bradwell, Goblenz.
Engine houses-have been erected at Rivers and Melville, and others are in course of erection at Watrous, Biggar and Wainwright.
Water services.-The following have been built: Beaudry, Elie, Harte, Rivers, Lazare, Welby, Gerald, Melville, Watrous, Bradwell, Earl, Biggar.
Water services-are in course of construction at: Portage la Prairie, Squirrel Creek, Pope, Quadra, Miniota, Uno, Atwater, Birmingham, Ituna, Mostyn, Touchwood, Wainwright, Quinton, Raymore, Nokomis, Iwana, Landis, Reford, Unity, Winter, Yonker, Art-land, Dunn.
Grain elevators have been erected at: Cabot 2, Ingelow 1, Justice 2, Rivers 1, Pope 1, Uno 1, Spy Hill 1, Fenwood 2, Lazare 1, Gerald 1, Atwater 1, Waldron 1, Cana 1, Melville 2, Birmingham 1, Semans 1, Tate 1, Venn 1, Young 1, Bradwell 1, Iwana-1, Kinley 2, Landis 1, Scott 1, Nokomis 1, Watrous 1, Allan 2, Clavet 2, Juniata 1, Leney 1, Reford 1, making in all 39 elevators completed.
Loading platforms have been constructed at: Cabot, Barr, Caye, Deer, Exira, Firdale, Gregg, Harte, Ingelow, Justice, Knox, Levine, Rivers, Myra, Norman, Oakner, Lazare, Welby, Spy Hill, Gerald, Yarbo, Zeneta, Pope, Atwater, Bangor, Melville, Waldron, Cana, Fenwood, Kelliher, Tate, Nokomis, Undora, Venn, Watrous, Young, Allan, Bradwell, Clavet, Duro, Grandora, Iwana, Juniata, Kinley, Leney, Landis, Reford, Scott, Raymore, Unity. Making 52 in all.
Fencing.-There has been erected on each side of the railway 345 miles of fencing.
Telegraph line.-There has been erected a two-wire line from Winnipeg west for 672 miles, and a single wire line from the 672nd mile to Battle River 1 mile, and a stub line 2 miles-3 miles-making in all 675 miles.
This section of the road was opened for public traffic on the 21st September, 1908, since which it has been successfully operated to the great convenience and benefit of the public, especially to the population contiguous to the line.
Battle river to Wolf creek (western end of the prairie section), a distance of 24J miles.
Battle River bridge.-This steel viaduct and bridge was completed on the iljlth December, 1908. This important structure consists of 51 spans of 50 feet and one of 151 feet, making in all 2,700 feet long and is 180 feet high.
Grading and bridging.-This work is practically completed from the Battle River bridge to a point 50 miles west of Edmonton, a distance of 172 miles, so that there is now no impediment to the laying of the -track over the whole.
Clover Bar bridge.-This bridge over the north Saskatchewan river was completed on the 26th December, 1908.
From 50th mile west of Edmonton to Wolf creek (the western limit of the prairie section), distance 69 miles, about 75 per cent of the grading is done and a number of culverts have been built. There are two gangs of men engaged in driving piles for pile and trestle
bridges. The grading and bridging on this section should be finished by July, 1909, which will complete the grading and bridging upon the prairie section.
The work is practically closed down for the season on the prairie section, with the exception of the pile driving for bridges, the concrete piers and pedestals for the steel bridge over the Pembina river and some grading in rock cuttings and in muskegs between the 65th mile west of Edmonton and Wolf creek.
Mountain section.
The first 100 miles from Prince Rupert easterly is under contract and fair progress is being made with the grading which is composed largely of solid rock. 633,396 cubio yards of solid rock, 94,970 cubic yards of loose rock and 94,407 cubic yards of earth have been excavated, and 32 culverts have been built; a capacious wharf and warehouse have been built at Prince Rupert.
There are 1,850 men and 90 horses and mules employed upon this work. This is short of what is required to finish the work in reasonable time, but I understand the contractors are making great efforts to largely increase the force.
This is the only work in, progress on the mountain section, which is about 836 miles in length.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
(Sgd.) COLLINGWOQD SCHREIBER,
Chief Engineer, West Eivision, N. T. Ry. Mr. FOSTER. What is the total length of the prairie section?
["I understand that the position taken by the Eoyal Insurance Company of Liverpool is this. It is authorized to go into the casualty business but does not do so, and therefore has no special objection to the incorporation of this company under the name ' Eoyal,' although that name comes pretty close to its own. But what it objects to is that a company doing a life insurance business should take the name, as for instance, the Eoyal Victoria Insurance Company.\nBill reported, read the third time and passed."]
George Perry Graham: From Winnipeg to Wolfe creek, 916 miles. The mountain section is 839 miles. Now I do not intend to go into any details of the Grand Trunk Pacific, as they will probably be discussed on another proposition. But I thought it would be interesting to the House and to the country to know just what progress was being made up to date with the western and prairie sections with regard to practical work. Coming east of Winnipeg, as hon. gentlemen will have noticed, I laid on the table of the House a day or two ago an interim report of what has been done on the Transcontinental, that is, the line between Winnipeg and Moncton, the government section. Since the end of the fiscal year, March 31 last, I have endeavoured to make a short summary of the contents of that report, and I think it would be interesting to give it to the House:
A summary of the interim report of the commissioners of the Transcontinental Railway, from the 31st of March, 1908, to the 31st of December, of the same year, being a period, of niae months.	,	, ,During this nine months they expended $18,866,212,84; making a total expenditure, from the initiation of the work to the 31st of December, 1908, of $45,924,156.88.	...	,
668.65 miles of grading were completed; and 309 -12 miles of track was laid.
The entire line is under contract, with exception of the entrance into Winnipeg. Con-


George Perry Graham: [DOT]
One item, that, I am sure, will be of very great interest to the country is: On the line of the Transcontinental Railway there is an area, in distriot " C," commencing about 4 miles east of the Bell river and extending to the western boundary of Quebec, of about 5,800 square miles, or 3,712,000 acres, of which it is said that 2,500,000 acres will make good farming land; and that most of the rest of the area can probably be drained so as to make a fertile country. The whole territory is well watered, and interspersed with fine lakes and rivers. For instance, the Hurricanaw is a good navigable river for steamboats, 60 or 70 miles in a southerly direction from the Transcontinental Railway. The land is said to be a good clay soil, easily drained, and the expectation is that the arable area extends much farther north than is now shown.
District " D " commences with the Ontario boundary and extends to the 74th mile or mile 185 on the map. There are about 2,100 square miles, or 1,344,000 acres of arable land, fit for cultivation upon clearing. From mile 185 on the map, to mile 285, there is an immense tract equal to any agricultural land in Canada, being a succession of long ridges, interspersed with swamps which can be readily drained. The country is well watered, and has an abundance of good fuel. There is an area of 7,500 square miles, 6,000 of which, or 3,800,000 acres, can be considered to be good arable land. It is a timbered country at present, covered with small spruce, balsam and white birch, with some occasional clumps of white pine. From mile 285 to mile 325, the soil is of a more sandy nature. It is stated that the valley of the Missanabie river contains some excellent land, the area of which would be, approximately, 500,000 acres *f good arable land; 300,000 of medium quality, the balance suitable for pasture-and rocky well wooded land. There is another large area of tributary good land which will require drainage, as the country to the south is flatter and contains many swamps with low clay ridges, but all with a good sub-strata of clay.
There are reports and information from the Ontario land surveyors' explorations in the same territory, which show that the clay belt extends much farther north than that described in the area shown on the map and described herewith; which has been put in from personal observation and reports to the commissioners.
From mile 325 to mile 355, there is good agricultural land, comprising about 1,000,000 acres. The soil is a good sandy loam, well watered and timbered, with small spruce, birch and balsam. From mile 355 west to mile 475, the arable land area is much more restricted, so far as the reports go, being confined to the valleys of the large rivers. It is estimated, however, that there are 600,000 acres in this tract.
This will, I am sure, be information much appreciated by the House and the country, as it discloses that there is room for settlement along the line of the Transcontinental Railway between Nipigon lake, on the west, and La Tuque on the east; equal to that now occupied in the cultivated section of the old province of Ontario.


George Eulas Foster: Is the minister able to say in what way that information has been gathered?


George Perry Graham: These are reports received by the commissioners, which have been put in from personal observation and reports by the engineers in charge.


George Eulas Foster: It is the information gathered by surveying engineers.


George Perry Graham: them with rolling stock of a large capacity. If we did not the railway could not compete with other railways that carry large amounts of traffic at a small cost.


Samuel Hughes: To what account were those cars charged?


George Perry Graham: 
George Perry Graham: St. John improvements	$	48,973
Mulgrave "		 39,641
Truro	"	
86,594Fictou	"	
45,138Extension to Sydney Mines	
48,993
Indiantown and Blackville branch.. 35,855
Increased water service	 54,330
Additional sidings	 27,196
Large amounts have been and are being expended on the different shops but I will only refer to one of these, and I think it is only fair to the House that I should do this because a large amount of money has been expended there and a large amount in addition will be expended. But as these shops at Moncton will provide in a large measure the terminals for the Grand Trunk Pacific I think it will be interesting for the House to know just what kind of shops we are constructing.


George Eulas Foster: That is at Halifax?


George Perry Graham: At Moncton.


Adam Brown Crosby: It should have been at Halifax.


George Perry Graham: Halifax will be one terminus and St. John the other terminus when we have all the railways down there as we shall no doubt in time. At the risk of wearying the House I wish to give a description of the shops at Moncton because I submit with all modesty that there are few of the members of the House who understand just what work has been done on the Intercolonial. I would go further; I think there are probably few people in Canada who know the Intercolonial as it really is, as a first-class railway. The shops that are being constructed at Moncton will serve the Grand Trunk Pacific also, and in that connection it will be interesting to have the following description of the buildings into which we are putting out money :



[Stage Direction]
Freight car repair shop: 362'-0" x 134'-8". Area covered 48,700 sq. ft. Net floor area 47 400 sq. ft. Gross cubic contents 1,573,000 cubic ft. Net contents 1,541,000 cubic ft.
This building is composed of concrete foundations ; reinforced concrete wall columns, curtain walls, and roof slab; steel trusses and purlins. There are two longitudinal rows of steel columns within this shop. Floors between rails are of 3" plank; between tracks the floors are of mastic cement.
Six repair tracks run through the building, providing working accommodation for 48 cars.
Reinforced concrete air ducts are placed beneath the floor.
Planing Mill: 202'-8" x 81'-10"; together with a fan honse 20' x 20'. Area covered 17,100 sq. ft. Net area of floor 16,400 sq. ft Gross cubic contents 550,000 cubic ft. Net contents 523,000 cubic ft.
This building is composed of concrete foundations, surmounted by a steel frame, with curtain walls and roof slab of reinforced con-

crete. The bottom chords of trusses are designed to carry 3 ton trolleys, and the floor space is entirely free from obstruction.
The floor is of hardwood.
Reinforced concrete air ducts are placed beneath the floor.
Passenger Car Repair Shop: 361'-8" x 100' -0". Area covered 36,100 sq. ft. Net area of floor 371,000 sq. ft. Gross cubic contents
887.000	cubic ft. Net contents 856,000 cubic ft.
This is a transverse shop with 18 tracks,
besides an area at one end of 36 ft. x 100 ft. which together with a mezzaine floor 18 ft. x 100 ft. is for use as a cabinet shop.
The building is of reinforced concrete throughout, having four longitudinal rows of columns. Between the rails plank floors are provided; between tracks the flooring is of concrete.
Reinforced concrete air ducts are placed beneath the floor.
Passenger Car Paint Shop: 361 ft.-8 in. x 100 ft.-0 in. Area covered 361,000 sq. ft. Net area of floor 371,000. Gross cubic contents
887.000	cubic ft. Net contents 856,000.
This building is practically a duplicate of the repair shop. The end area, not occupied by tracks, and the mezzanine floor being devoted to upholstering and varnishing.
Storehouse and office building:-343-ft.-8-in. x 51-ft.-8-in..
Area covered by building 17,700 sq. ft. Net area of floors, 50,800 sq. ft.
Area covered bv platform, 7,900 sq. ft. Net area including platform, 58,700 sq. ft.
Gross cu. contents exclusive of platform,
674.000	cu. ft. Net contents, 610,000 cu. ft.
The building is of reinforced concrete
throughout, except the office partitions which are of porous tile.
The building consists of two stories and a basement. The greater part of the upper floor is devoted to offices. The building is provided on two sides and one end with a concrete plat-from designed for heavy loads. Freight elevators connect the different floors.
The interior is well finished. Floors are of hardwood except in basement which is of concrete. An ample supply of plumbing fixtures has been provided, and the building equipped for steam heating.
f 408-ft.-4rin. x 178-ft.-4-in. Locomotive shops-j 375-ft.-1-in. x 157-ft.-9.in l 375-ft.-1-in. x 102-ft.-3-in
Area covered 171,000 sq. ft. Net area of floors 168,000 sq. ft.
Gross cubic contents, 7,360,000 cu. ft. Net contents, 7,270,000 cu. ft.
This is a group of buildings comprising;
Boiler shop375-ft.-1-in. x 102-ft.-3-in. In two bays, with riveting tower at one end of the erecting bay. The tool bay is served by a 10 ton electrio travelling crane; the erecting bay by a 35 ton crane; and the riveting tower by a 30 ton crane. Plank floor on timber sills.
Locomotive erecting shop:-375-ft.-1-in. x 81-ft.-1-in. This shop is arranged with a central longitudinal pit, flanked upon either side by individual pits arranged in herring bone pattern. There is standing room for six locomotives upon the central pit, and for sixteen locomotives upon the side pits. Two electric travelling cranes, each of 60 ton capacity, command the shop. Flooring is of plank resting upon timber sills.
Forge shop375-ft.-1-in. x 76-ft.-8-in. This
shop is served by jib cranes. The flooring is of earth.
Machine shop:-108-ft-4-in. x 132-ft.-6-in. This shop is in two bays, each of which is commanded by a 10 ton electric travelling crane. The flooring is of plank, supported by a concrete base.
Machine Shop Annex, 408 ft. 4 in. x 44 ft. 10 in.
This includes the bolt room, tool room, brass room, brass foundry, with lavatories upon a mezzanine floor.
The foundations of all these shops are of concrete, the skeleton is of steel, with curtain walls and roof slabs of reinforced concrete. Travelling cranes command all floor space except that of the forge shop and the machine shop annex. Reinforced concrete air ducts are placed beneath the floors of all these shops forming the locomotive group.
Bower House, 203 ft. 2 in. x 69 ft.
Area covered, 14,000 sq. ft.; net area of floor, 13,300; plus basement, 1,400; gross cubic contents, exclusive of basement, 477,000; net contents, 460,000.
This building consists of concrete foundations, surmounted by a steel frame, with curtain walls and roof slab of reinforced concrete. The engine room is served by a 15 ton travelling crane operated by hand. The engine room is provided with a hardwood floor, supported by steel framing over the basement portion.
Gas-producer House, 40 ft. 10 in. x 38 ft. 10 in.
Area covered, 1,600 sq. ft. ; net area of floors, 2,750 sq. ft.; gross cubic contents, 61,600 cubic ft.; net contents, 52,700 cubic ft.
This building consists of a single story with a basement. It is a steel frame structure with reinforced concrete walls and roof slab. The basement floor is of concrete, the charging floor is of steel.
Dry Kiln, 57 ft. x 25 ft. 4 in., 17 ft. 4 in. x 16 ft. 8 in.
Area covered, exclusive of platform, 1,730 sq. ft.; net area of floors, 1,550 sq. ft.; gross cubic contents, 22,500 cubic ft.: net contents,
14,000	cubic ft.
This is a brick and wood combination building, upon concrete foundations. There is a platform on either side, 6 ft. in width.
Lumber Shed, 150 ft. x 20 ft.
Area covered, 3,100 sq. ft.; net floor area 2,800 sq. ft.; gross cubic contents, 46,500 cubio ft.; net contents, 36,000 cubio ft.
This is wooden structure upon concrete foundations.
Mi*. J. HAGGART. What is the capacity of these shops? how many locomotives and how many cars can you build in a year?
George Perry Graham: I have not that information but I will get it a little later on.


Mr. J. HAGGART.: Oh, never mind.


George Perry Graham: These shops, are I am told, very superior both in structure and capacity, and in referring to them it is perhaps not out of place to quote from an interview that was given to the 'Moncton Transcript' by Mr. Quesnel, who is the

International Vice-President of the Boiler Makers' union and who visits Moncton occasionally as he does I believe all railway centres on the continent. Mr. Oues-nel certainly does know what is required in the construction of shops of this kind as he is conversant with the shops of the various American railways, and he makes this statement:
The extent of the shops and their equipment certainly surprised	When completed and equipped they will have no superior, not merely in Canada but in the United States, and I have visited every railway shop of any importance in North America.
That testimony coming from a man of such experience as Mr. Quesnel puts beyond all cavil the high class of the workshops being constructed at Moncton.


George Eulas Foster: What is the total cost of all these?


George Perry Graham: Speaking subject to correction, including a new piece of railway which we must construct in order to make a cut off leading from the city, the cost will be in the vicinity of $2,000,000.


George Eulas Foster: Will that include machinery?


George Perry Graham: I think so, but of that I am not sure. When you get into such large figures it is hard to be definite.
Now, I shall refer for a moment to the Provident Fund. To this fund the railway employees contribute a certain amount and the government contributes an equal amount. The fund has been established as a provision for those who retire from the service because of old age or other causes. In Committee of Supply I shall be able to give some more details as to the number of employees retired. Hon. gentlemen will please note that the government contribution to this fund comes out of the revenues of the Intercolonial. All the best railways on the continent have adopted such a system, and I am glad to know that the government railway is not behind any of them in this respect. The following table explains the position of the Provident Fund:
During the fiscal year the contribution of the employees amounted to.$ 82,707 71 The contribution by the railway
amounted to	 82,707 74
A total of	$165,415 48
The total expenditure was	 27,700 63
Leaving a balance of	$137,654 85
To which is to be added the interest	 1,594 36
Making a total amount to the credit of the fund on the 31st March,
,1908	$139,249 21


George Eulas Foster: What is the rate of interest? s


George Perry Graham: 


George Perry Graham: The rate of interest is not stated, but I imagine it is the bank rate of 3 per cent.


George Eulas Foster: By the way, is that fund invested in any way or is it a debt owed by the government?


George Perry Graham: I do not think it is invested but as to that I would not be sure. At all events it comes out of the receipts of the railway and not out of consolidated revenue. In reference to that fund let me say this: A few of the employees of the Intercolonial Railway, noting that the expenditures did not at all equal the income in this fund, formed the idea that the rate charged each year and set aside by the employees could be reduced; but I pointed out to them, and I believe the House will agree, that this is a fallacy. We cannot make that fund too strong and it is the history of all such funds that for the first few years not many are withdrawing, but every employee on the Intercolonial is growing one year .older every 12 months and is getting that much nearer superannuation, so that instead of reducing the amount to be collected annually, if I had any advice to give it would be that the amount be increased in order to make the sum substantial to those who in a few years will go into the retirement class under the Provident Fund.
Leaving the Intercolonial Railway proper, I take up the Prince Edward Island Railway. For the benefit of the country who perhaps do not give this careful study, I might repeat that there are two branches at least of the government owned railway, one the Intercolonial Railway, 1,500 miles long, and the other the Prince Edward Island Railway, which brings our total government railway up to something over 1,700 miles. This railway, of course, has its beginning and its end, its Alpha and its Omega on Prince Edward Island. It is an industry by itself and so faT as it can it has a monopoly.


Mr. EMMERSON.: It is a belt line.


George Perry Graham: It is a belt line.
The gross earnings and working expenses of the Prince Edward Island Railway for the
year compare as follows:-	_
Gross earnings	88
Working expenses	 399,947 79
Difference (deficit)	$ 95,367 96
The gross	earnings were	$304,579	83
The earnings from passenger traffic,
1907-8	 132,382	76
The earnings from freight traffic,
11907-8	
146,280	99The earnings from mails and sundries, 1907-8	
25>916	08
The capital expenditure on the Prince Edward Island Railway for
,end"g. Ma.r.0h.81.' .1908:$390,461 83
Charlottetown railway shops, new. .$299,875 71

Souris wharf, new crih, and facing
with concrete	$51,159 90
New machinery at Charlottetown.. 35,456 00 Rolling stock additions, 4 locomotives and 23 box cars	 73,281 00
As to salaries, additions were made during the year beginning April 1, 1907, as follows :
Aggregate
Class of employee.	Increase.
To trackmen	$4,768
To freight porters	 394
To mechanical department employees	 6,160
If these increased payments had not been made, then, as I said in reference to the Intercolonial Railway, the deficit on the Prince Edward Island Railway would have been that much less.
Leaving the operations of the government railways for last year, I wish to make a few comparisons in reference to the management of the railway. If my hon. friend from Westmoreland (Mr. Emmerson) will not find fault with me for encroaching on some of the ground he covered so ably the other might, in order to make my statement clear it is imperative that I should use some of the figures he used recently. How can we make a comparison ? A very prominent writer on the ' Economics of Railways ' says :
The percentage of the gross revenues which are devoted to operating expenses, fixed charges and dividends, are not necessarily an indication of creditable management or the reverse. Causes utterly beyond control of the management, may abnormally increase certain items of expense, while ruinous competition may cut down the gross revenue, so that little or nothing is left for dividends.
A favourable location will sometimes make a road prosperous in spite of bad management. On the other hand, the highest grade of skill will fail to keep some roads out of the hands of a receiver.
If he had been writing about the location of the Intercolonial Railway, he could not have expressed the situation more clearly, and if he had been speaking of that very great competition which he calls ruinous, so far as the water routes are concerned, he could not have made a truer statement if he had had the Intercolonial Railway in his mind. But, 1 am not going to dwell on that point, I am going to make a comparison with some other lines on a basis which I think is fair, to show that notwithstanding these handicaps as to the location, notwithstanding the handicaps as to the water routes and other handicaps to which I will refer later, that must exist in the management of a government road, the Intercolonial is as well managed as the average railway in Canada, has nc greater number of men to the mile and pays no more for the work accomplished. The train mileage expense is a fair 85
basis of comparison, and although different considerations, such as the standard of the railway and the double track enter into the problem, the large amount of business brought by high standard and a double track generally counterbalance these to such a degree that the comparison of train mileage expense is applicable. The average cost per train mile in 1907-8 not including interest, just wages and material, on the leading railways of Canada was as
follows :	*
1907. 1098.
All Canada	$1,381 1.364
Canadian Pacifio Ry	
1.45	1.493Canadian Northern Ry	
1.551	1.480Grand Trunk Ry. System	
1.267	1.154Temiskaming & North. Ont. Ry.. . 1.599	1.592Intercolonial Ry	
1.193	1.295
The only railway that has a better showing as to the average cost per train mile in Canada than the Intercolonal Railway is the Grand Trunk Railway, and the cost on the Intercolonial Railway is considerably less per train mile than the standard or average of the Canadian railways in Canada.
Another significant comparison is the cost of maintenance of rolling stock per mile run. I will give this table under the three headings of locomotive mile, passenger mile and freight car mile. The figures are as
follows :			
	Loco. Pass. Fit. car.		
mile.	mile.	mile.coats.	cents.	cents.C. P. R	0772	.0176	.0105C. N. R	1235	.0137	.0066G. T. R	0712	.0106	.0078T. & N. O. Ry..	0633	.0202	.0117I. C. R	0845	.0191	.0106
It is apparent from this that the Intercolonial Railway is not extravagantly run in this respect, and it keeps up the standard well.
Another test is the maintenance of way and structures on the basis of the train miles run. The figures for the different railways in this respect are :
cents.
Canadian Pacifio Railway	2997
Canadian Northern Railway	3307
Grand Trunk Railway	2007
Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Ry.. .2806 Intercolonial Railway	2400
Again, the Grand Trunk Railway is the only line in the Dominion that shows less than the Intercolonial Railway under this heading. The Grand Trunk Pacific makes a better showing rather than the Intercolonial Railway.	.
Take the maintenance of the rolling stock per year. As hon. gentlemen know who have studied this question, there is a standard below which it is not safe to go. If that standard is departed from, the quality of the rolling stock must deteriorate.


Mr. J. A. CURRIE.: Where are those train mile figures, giving the statement of cost, taken from?


George Perry Graham: We have a statement from every railway every year, and you can get them from other authorities as well. We can figure out the cost per mile from the statements they give us, and we have other authorities as well. There can be no question about the authenticity of the figures.


John Allister Currie: Was the statement the hon. gentleman gave per train mile or what is called per train ton mile?


George Perry Graham: The statement I gave has reference to the rolling stock and the maintenance of way and not to the ton mile at all. I may come to that later. Here are the figures tabulated:
Per	Per	Perloco-	passen-	freightmotive	ger car	carStandard	year.	year.	year.$2,000 00	$600 00	$45 00Canadian Pacific Ry.. Canadian Northern	2,444 63	985 21	75 19Ry	2,388 69	639 48	37 09Grand Trunk Ry.. .. Temiskaming and N.	1,833 53	447 54	47 900. Ry	1,580 00	417 80	34 84Intercolonial Ry.. ..	2,083 29	710 10	53 28
but are perhaps of a little later date. It has been said in the press that we have, I do not know how many, hundreds of employees in excess of our requirements on the Intercolonial Railway. I am not going to argue that in other railways there have not been certain decreases, but if we compare the management of the Intercolonial Railway with the management of other railways, if we take the number of employees per mile, we will find nothing to complain of on our road in that respect. Taking the past two years, I find the comparison as follows:
Per mile of railway.	1907.	1908.Canadian Pacific Railway	
7.39	5.68Grand Trunk Railway	
7.50	5.52Canadian Northern Railway.. .. 3.94	2.85Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Ry	
5.92	5.54Intercolonial Railway	
5.72	5.81


John Graham Haggart: What employees are those?


George Perry Graham: All the employees.


George Eulas Foster: From the president down?


George Perry Graham: I could hardly consider myself an employee. From the manager down.
It will be apparent from the above that the Intercolonial Railway spends enough to keep up the standard of requirement ; and as this comes out of its revenue, it shows we are not starving the maintenance of its equipment in order to make a good showing at the end of the year.
There is another test which has some bearing on the management of the road, and that is the percentage of loaded and empty freight car mileage. This is not always controllable, it depends upon the movement of trade, but in so far as it is controllable it is an evidence of efficiency; and in so far as it goes I want to give a comparison in that respect between the Intercolonial Railway and other railways. It certainly does not show' lack of management on the part of the Intercolonial Railway. Here are the figures:
Loaded. Empty. Empty p.c'
Can. Pao. Ry	 319,507,176 110,373,337 23
Grand Trunk Ry... 178,722,657	70.788,415	28Canadian Nor. Ry. 43,837,190	16,078,648	27
Temiskaming & N.
O- Ry	 1,639,951	851,533	34


Intercolonial Ry.   ..@: 60,532,928	20,952,989	25
So that in making a comparison along that line, certainly the Intercolonial Railway does not show to disadvantage.
Then I want to come to another point and that is the number of employees per mile of railway. My hon. friend dealt with that the other night, and I think that my figures correspond approximately with his, Mr. GRAHAM.


John Graham Haggart: Should you not give the amount of work they do in order to have a fair comparison?


George Perry Graham: The work on the line shows pretty w'ell what they do.


John Graham Haggart: Also the earnings?


George Perry Graham: I shall attend to the earnings before I get through. What I want to point out is that we are not overmanned to the extent some newspapers would lead the public to believe we are. Or if we are overmanned, then every railway on the continent is in the same condition. Let me point out this feature, which will strike members of the House as I read these figures. While the other railways reduced their number of men per mile in 1908, owing to the shrinkage in the traffic, the government owned railways retained about the same staff.


Mr. LENNOX.: The other railways had not an election on their hands.


George Perry Graham: I am glad my hon. friend has made that interruption because what I have said about the Intercolonial Railway applies equally to the Temiskaming and Ontario road. So that I submit, in neither the one case nor the other, had the elections anything to do with this question.


Samuel Hughes: Has the hon. minister dismissed any since the elections?


George Perry Graham: None that would not have been out in any case.
I call attention to the fact that on the two government railways, the number of men remained stationary this year as well as last year. By last year I refer to 1908. While last year the other railways of Canada dismissed no fewer than 17,608 employees, owing no doubt to the falling off in the traffic, the Intercolonial Railway did not follow suit, and the fact that there was an election did not make a bit of difference as I suppose it did not make any difference with the Ontario government railway. I have an idea-perhaps an erroneous one- that in a government railway such as this, where thousands of men are employed, there can be a distinction fairly drawn between the treatment of these men, when hard times arise, and that accorded by the other great railway companies to their men. If we were to take the cold-blooded _ view of what it would mean to the railway itself, then it would be wise to dismiss every man possible, it would be wise to do, as other roads, and reduce the number of employees to the lowest possible extent. But by doing that we would only add to whatever pan-nicky condition might exist and intensify the conditions. I may be wrong and possibly railway managers may say so, but I take the ground that during a financial stringency it would be unfair to municipalities and to portions of the country through which the road runs and to the employees themselves, if we were to act as other railways do and turn our employees out on the street to do as best they could while hard times prevailed. I did not think we should do that nor did the Ontario government, and as a consequence, while other railway companies reduced the number of their employees very materially these two governments practically retained the same number as they did before.


Samuel Hughes: Why did not the hon. gentleman impress that line of conduct on his colleagues in the various other departments?


George Perry Graham: They don't run a railway. This is a work that is in motion; it is not a new work, it does not mean not employing certain men, but it means depriving men of employment who have had it for years, and who depend upon it for their means of livelihood.
Now, I come to the question of earning power. I have tried to point out, as briefly as I could, that the management of the Intercolonial is as economical as the management of the other lines. You ask: Then, why does not this railway show a profit? Well, my own opinion is that the railways covering practically the same territory as the Intercolonial Railway have not made a 85*
dollar in the last ten years. I think that if hon. gentlemen will look into the facts, they will find that the Intercolonial stands as well financially year after year, for the last seven or eight years at least, as the other lines running through substantially the same section, considering these parts separate from the lines over the rest of the continent. The Intercolonial is a detached line, a line covering part of a territory, a line without feeders from the west, simply a long railway practically feeding itself, though getting what traffic it can from other roads. We have, it is true, an understanding and agreement with the Grand Trunk. But the Grand Trunk has its own connections to Portland, and will shortly have connections further east. And, while it may live up to its agreement with us, it does not give to the Intercolonial a pound of freight that it can get out of giving to that road; it gives as much as it can to its own line, and carries it to Portland. So, if you wish to compare the Intercolonial Railway with any of the other lines running through substantially the same section, we are willing to have that comparison made.
In considering the earning power, I wish first to take the train mile. When we discuss the train mile and the small rate received by the Intercolonial, we mean two things: first, that the Intercolonial does get a small rate on nearly all its commodities, and, second, that the majority of the traffic of the Intercolonial only entitles the road to charge the lower grade rate. If we had a railway into a rich silver district, or running through the richest agricultural section where they pay larger rates, we could have the same average rate as other roads similarly situated. The higher standard of the traffic would allow us to charge a higher average rate per ton per mile. To illustrate this I have only to call attention to the rates realized by the Ontario government road. Not that these rates are very much higher than ours if you consider them merely by the schedule; but their tonnage is of such a high standard, on the average, that they are enabled, as it works out practically, to get 149 per cent higher rate per ton per mile than the Intercolonial.
I wish to be clearly understood: I am not saying that they charge too much for the kind of freight they carry, but theirs is a high class freight on which they are able, under the ordinary tariff, to charge a higher average rate than the Intercolonial can charge on its traffic. This accounts, to a certain extent, for the low rates on the Intercolonial. There is another condition to account for it, and that is the competition with the water rate from Sydney to Mont- . real, Quebec and other points, and also the water transportation from Halifax to Sydney. These must be met, and they are met; but in meeting them the Intercolonial gives

to the people of the eastern provinces and the Dominion generally great benefits in the rates. Now, let me make a comparison of the earnings per train mile of the different roads. The figures are as follows:
Earnings per train mile.
1907.	1908.
Canadian Pacific Bailway	$2,279 $2.19
Grand Trunk Railway	 1.835	1.664
Canadian Northern Railway.. .. 2.41	2.201
Temiskaming & Northern Ontario
Railway	
2.155	1.806Intercolonial Railway	
1.254	1.238
There is a marked contrast, as hon. gentlemen will see, between the earning power of the other railways and the earning powers of the Intercolonial. Now, in the same way, take the average receipts. The following are the figures:
Average Receipts.
	Passengers per passenger mile.		Freight per ton mile, terminal charges included.	
1907.	1908.	1907.	1908.C. P. Ry	
Can. Nor. Ry... C. T. Ry	
T. & N. O. Ry. Intercolonial Ry NewSouth Wales ^ 
[DOT] .$ <n i CT'	Cents. 1-	814 2-	835 1-839 2'585 1-762	Cents. 1-89S 2 381 1-	771 2-	288 1'815	Cents. 0 778 0 873 0-672 1-518 0-584	Cents. 0-742 0 779 0-	685 1-	443 0-578 24
		JMIM		
Then, to carry this comparison a little farther-for I wish to convince the House, if I can, that the Intercolonial rates are low and that receipts will continue to be low so long as we carry the goods of the people at these rates-let us see what would happen to the other companies' earnings on the basis of the Intercolonial's freight rates for 1908. The Canadian Pacific Railway rate was 28-4 per cent more than the Intercolonial. To compel the Canadian Pacific Railway to accept the Intercolonial rate would have meant a loss to the Canadian Pacific Railway on freight alone of $9,587,531. Now, take the Canadian Northern; its rate was 34-8 per cent more than that of the Intercolonial. If forced to accept the Intercolonial rate last year, it would have meant the loss to them of $1,760,628. The Grand Trunk rate was 18-5 per cent higher than the Intercolonial, and the loss to them on the basis of the Intercolonial rate, would have been $2,969,703. The Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway rate was 149 -7 per cent higher than the Intercolonial, and the loss to them, had they accepted the Intercolonial rate, would [DOT]have meant $166,462. So far as the passenger rates are concerned, I think that the Intercolonial rates are fair. The Canadian Pacific Railway, on the average, gets about Mr. GRAHAM.
the same, the Grand Trunk a little less, the Canadian Northern 23 per cent higher and the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario 24 per cent higher.
It has been stated, and has been made a subject of complaint in some quarters, that the government road has injured the provinces through which it runs. I have seen the question raised in the press, and have heard it discussed by gentlemen who have taken quite an interest in the matter and who have said that, in years gone by, the Intercolonial hampered the maritime provinces and the province of Quebec. I am not sure about that, but I am inclined to think that the figures and conditions will not bear out the statement.
Now, take the province of New Brunswick. There are 440 miles of the Canadian Pacific Railway in New Brunswick, 565 miles of other lines, and 503 miles of the Intercolonial, or about one-third. There are a great many company lines of railway, but the government road has only one-third of the total mileage of New Brunswick. So if there be anything wrong, if the railways have not been fair in their treatment of New Brunswick, only one-third of the unfairness ought to be charged to the government railway. Now take Nova Scotia. I want to point out also that the Intercolonial is not the only railway that has a large mileage in Nova Scotia. We have the Mackenzie and Mann, with 435 miles, we find other railways with 395 miles, and The Intercolonial has 485 miles. Again the government railway has only about one-third of the mileage in the province of Nova Scotia. Now I do not admit for a moment that the existence of a government owned and government operated railway has injured any part of Canada. It is true that conditions have changed-and I will deal with that a little later on-conditions have changed, and what would do for a government owned railway or a company owned railway a few years ago, will not do for a government owned railway or a company owned railway at the present time. Companies are waking up to the situation and keeping pace with the increased demand of the times, and the government owned railway will have to follow in their wake, if it is to occupy the place it has occupied, or ought to occupy, in the transportation of the country. Now I want to point out something that my hon. friend pointed out the other night, and that is the expenditure we have made in the Dominion of Canada on railways. We hear a good deal of comment about the money we spend on the government railway. Well, Sir, if we selected the government railway and expended money on it and not on the other railways throughout the Dominion of Canada, I would say that perhaps we were treating one part of the country a little better than the other. But the fact is that there is no part of the Dominion of Canada

that has not had, and is not having to-day millions of the people's money expended in order to obtain for the people of Canada better transportation facilities. Now I will give a few figures, and I will explain to my hon. friend from East Hamilton (Mr. Barker), that I have taken the basis of $5 an acre.
The total sum of money granted by way of aid towards the construction of railways to
30th June, 1908=
From the Dominion of Canada. .=$133,049,376
From the provinces	- - 35,191,415
From municipalities	= 17,430,945
Making a total of	$185,671,736
Further aid by way of land grants has been given, aggregating:
From Dominion, acres	= 31,864,074
From provinces "	= 20,420,109
Total	=	52,284,183
If we take the average value of the land in question at $5 per acre-a moderate estimate -we get $261,420,915, making in land and cash a sum equivalent to $447,092,651. Of this the Canadian Pacific and its allied lines got:
From Dominion government.. .. $50,072,980 69 From provincial government.... 12,617,536 79 From municipalities	 5,214,267 35
A total of cash	= $67,904,884 83
Land grants, 26,816,202 acres at $5 per acre	= 134,081,010 00
Equivalent value to amount of = $201,985,894 83
The Canadian Northern and allied companies, including the Quebec, Nova Scotia and
Quebec and Ontario lines:
From Dominion government.. ..$ 7,488,710 86 From provincial government.. .. 9,649,297 59 From municipalities	 174,000	00
Cash total of	$17,312,008 45
Land grants of 5,047,872 acres at $5 per acre	= 25,239,360 00
Equivalent value to amount of=$42,551,368 45
The Grand Trunk Railway system and allied companies :
F'rom Dominion government.. . .$17,277,465 33 F'rom provincial government.. .. 3,000,406 59
From municipalities	 5,305,727 37
Municipal subscription to shares. 440,000 03
Cash total of	= $26,023,599 29


George Eulas Foster: Do the Grand Trunk figures take in the whole liability of the Grand Trunk Railway?


George Perry Graham: I imagine they do, but I am not sure about that. I asked for the way it was distributed among these other companies. These amounts I have given do not total the amount I have mentioned, in the aggregate, but I have only taken the three larger railways. In addition to that, as I say, we have given in guaranteed bonds large amounts of aid to different railways.
We are also constructing a large section of the transcontinental line, which amount is not included in these figures. Taking them altogether, we have given very many millions of money for the sole purpose of accommodating the people with railway facilities.


Henry Robert Emmerson: We have made loans as well, and propose making others.


George Perry Graham: Now we have been generous in the Dominion of Canada, not generous to the railways because we wanted to help the railways, not because it was thought wise to have great corporations, but we have been generous because it has been thought for years by the people of Canada, as represented m this House, that to give aid to the railways meant to give aid to the people in order that they might get better prices for their products in the markets of the world. That being the case, I do not think we ought to cavil so much When we are asked to make some expenditure on a railway we own ourselves. Now I want to point out one or two other things. It has been stated by somebody, at some place, at some time, that it would be wise to stop the expenditure on capital account on the Intercolonial. Now Sir, if that was done it would mean, as the Wall Street ' Journal ' said, the stagnation and death of any railway.


John Graham Haggart: Who made that statement? I never heard any one make it.


George Perry Graham: I have heard people make it. I did not mention my hon. friend as having made it. I have heard it mentioned at some time, at some place by some person.


John Graham Haggart: I was not there.


George Perry Graham: I did not make any personal reference. If there has been any person who had the erroneous opinion-1 will
put it that way, to meet the views of my hon. friend-I want to point out that other railways have not stopped expenditures on capital account during the past year, although they have taken devious ways of securing that capital. I want to read a few of the ways they have adopted in certain companies. Owing to the financial panic in the United States, these other railways demanded the closest possible curtailment of money demands; yet to meet pressing obligations, short time notes were issued by the following companies for the. amounts named:
Boston and Maine	 $ 7,000,000
Erie	 5,500,000
Delaware and	Hudson	 6,000,00Q
Missouri Pacific	 6,000,000
New York, New Haven and Hartford	  8,320,000
Wheeling and	Lake	Erie	 8,000,000
Chicago Great Western		3,300,000

Chicago, Rook Island and Pacifio $ 6,000,000
Baltimore and Ohio	 11,600,000
Pennslyvania system issued 5 per cent 3 years collateral notes for.. 60,000,000 The Canadian Pacific Ry. in turn issued in the year 1906-7 common stock at par to the amount of.. 15,684,810
The Canadian Pacific Railway have, a few months ago, taken power to issue $50,000,000 more stock.
For the year 1907-8 preferred stock
inci eased	 $4,866,666
Bonds increased for the same period 8,668,498 The Southern Railway Company, about 7,548 miles in length, has increased its expenditure on capital account by the sum of $76,000,000 in the past four years, for improvements in existing line, terminals and increased equipment.
Many other of the great systems of railways have, in like manner, made large investments on capital account, in obedience to the universal law of ' progress or death.'
But no matter by what method the capital is secured, it is necessary in order that a railway may live, that certain amounts be expended year by year in order to increase the facilities for carrying the people's goods, else these facilities will not be afforded and the railway must necessarily die. I want to take up another point that has been discussed in this House at times, and when I refer to it, I want to be distinctly understood as not taking any sectional view.
A comparison has often been made between the expenditure on the canal system and the expenditure on the Intercolonial Railway. That view may be sectional, but I want to point out that a great many people understood at the time of confederation, and it will be candidly admitted by any person who will read all the discussions which took place then, that the Intercolonial was to be built in a certain way to balance the canal systems that were built in other parts of the country. While it may be a sectional view, I want to carry out that comparison and point out to my hon. friends that there is not so much difference after all between us as to the contention that the Intercolonial Railway ought to be, for a portion of Canada, just as much the people's highway as the canal system is in another part of Canada. Anything that will tend to make it more efficient ought to be assisted by the people of the Dominion as a whole. With that end in view let me make a few comparisons. These figures are up to the latest date available. The Intercolonial and Prince Edward Island Railways-and I am including them both so as to be quite fair -had an expenditure made upon them on capital account up to the end of last year of $94,825,192.94. The total expenditure on capital account upon the canal system has been $93,457,874.28. Practically the same amount has been expended on the gov-1 Mr. GRAHAM.
ernment railways as on the canal system. Now let us take the year ended March 31, 1908. We find that there was an expenditure on the canals of $3,221,984.73, made up as follows:
Capital account	$1,723,156	07Income account	
508,010	19Maintenance staff	
556,902	83Repairs	
433,915	64
Leaving out the amount of money that we received from hydraulic rentals in connection with these canals the deficit on the operation of the canals would be $1,498,828.66. But I wish to deduct from that amount what was received from hydraulic rentals, namely, $144,882.13, making the cost of the operation of the canals last year to the Dominion of Canada $1,353,946.53. I want to make another calculation in order to bring in the interest. I propose to make a comparison for the last twelve months with respect to the cost of the canals and the government owned and operated railways.


Mr. STRATTON.: With respect to the operation of each?


George Perry Graham: No, if we were to take the question of operation alone there would be a showing of about $1,500,000 in favour of the Intercolonial Railway. But I propose to take the interest for one year on the canal expenditure and the interest for one year on the government-owned railway capital expenditure and then the cost to the country of the canals and the cost for the maintenance of the government-owned railways and see where we stood last year. If I take the interest at three per cent on the government railway expenditure I find that it amounted to $2,844,755.78. If I take the interest on the canals I find that it amounted to $2,803,736.22, there being a difference in favour of the canals as against the government-owned railways for last year in interest alone of $41,019.55.


Henry Robert Emmerson: You are including the Prince Edward Island Railway?


George Perry Graham: Yes, I am including the Prince Edward Island Railway. Then if I take this $41,000 which was against the rail-wav in the item of interest and deduct it from the $1,353,946.53, the net deficit on the canals, I find that it makes $1,312,927. If we were to stop at that point there would be an expenditure in one year, including interest and management of $1,312,927 in favour of the government railways, but that would hardly be fair. During that same year there was a deficit on the government railways of $79,244.69 and, deducting that, if we compare the expenditure on the canals with the expenditure on the Government Railway system we would find that the canals of Canada cost us $1,233,-

683 in excess of what the Governement Railway cost. That is, in a way, a sectional view and I do not want to confine myself to it. I take the position that the Intercolonial Railway is for the benefit of all Canada and that the canals are for the benefit of all Canada. That is the way I wish to regard these two propositions but I went to the trouble to figure out the position as to the cost in one year of the capital expenditure on canals and on the Government Railways to show the people of Canada who do not live along the Intercolonial Railway the point of view from which these two propositions are looked at by people in the maritime provinces and in a portion of the province of Quebec. The people of the maritime provinces contend, and Tightly so, that this comparison was made at the time that they entered into confederation.
Now, I come to another point which is of as great interest but not as encouraging.
I have been speaking all along with regard to the revenue of the Intercolonial Railway for 1907-8. The figures for the year that will end on March 31, inst., are not in the report but I want to refer to them very briefly.


Mr. R. L. BORDEN.: Before the hon. gentleman leaves that point may I just ask one question because I was waiting for something further to come, that I have not quite gathered yet ? Why is it that the statistics are so good and the results so bad ?


George Perry Graham: The satistics are so good and so true and the results so bad because the fares are so much lower than on any other railway in Canada that we do .not get the income.


Robert Laird Borden: It is simply a question of tariff.


George Perry Graham: Largely a question of tariff and of conditions. In some correspondence that I saw in the newspapers a writer said:	Of course, the Intercolonial
rate is lower but it is only about one-fifth of a cent per mile per ton lower. He did not know, or did not seem to grasp the idea, that that small amount per ton per mile meant $2,000,000 annually to the Intercolonial Railway. If you were to increase the rates by one-fifth of a cent per ton per mile on the freightage of the Intercolonial Railway you would have, instead of a deficit this present year, a large and comfortable surplus. While there may be deficiencies and lacks in the management of the government railways, as you will find them on all railways, the real reason why the Intercolonial Railway has not been able to keep even is because it gives to the people of the country lower rates than any other railway on the continent of America. Now, talking of the deficit, it will be within the
knowledge of every member of the House who has studied this question at all during the past few months that any falling off in the trade of the country affects railway business more quickly and. more decidedly than perhaps any other. All the traffic of the countrv, all the produce of the country, all the goods coming in, all the goods going out, all the product of the factory, all the product of the farm, all the product of the mine, all the product of the fisheries and all the product of the forest must be carried by some railway or by some other means of transportation. Once the business of the country is relaxed the railway and transportation companies are the ones to feel the Tesult most keenly. Every railway on the continent has suffered greatly during the past two years. A year ago,
I made a statement in this House. There was, at the end of January, quite a snug surplus on the Intercolonial Railway, but the traffic fell off so Tapidly that by the 31st March it had been reduced to the small amount of $16,000.
That traffic has fallen off remarkably month by month and has been getting worse instead of better during the past year. Of course, the traffic has fallen off on other railroads as well but they have been able to keep their expenditure more nearly within their receipts by dismissing a large number of men which the Intercolonial has not done. The expenses of the Intercolonial during the past year owing to increase in wages and cost of material are larger than they were a year ago notwithstanding that the traffic is less. How is it that during the past week or two we have seen that' the Canadian Pacific Railway is making a record showing? Sir, the Canadian Pacific Railway is a through line and its record week has been attained on account of the grain trade moving from the west. The Intercolonial has no grain moving trade from the west and I am afraid it never will until it is hooked up with some transcontinental line and is used as an outlet for some railroad system running from one end of Canada to the other. T am inclined to think that the trade of the Intercolonial Railway will not pick up until the traffic coming from imports received in exchange for the crop of this year begins to arrive when part of it will find its way over the Intercolonial Railway from the east to the west.
The statement for the Intercolonial Railway up to December 31, 1908, is as follows:
Passengers	$169,878 97 decrease.
Freight	
567,151	39	"Miscellaneous	
199,564	83 increase.Net decrease in earnings. 537,465	53Net deficit	
436,854	24


John Graham Haggart: What is the expenditure on capital account?


George Perry Graham: I am merely; giving a summary to the House of the results of Operating the Intercolonial Railway for the past year; I have not the statement as to capital with me.


John Graham Haggart: The minister is furnished with a statement from Moncton every month of the expenditure on capital account as well as on revenue and he ought to be able to tell us.


George Perry Graham: I will give that in Committee of Supply. I am merely giving the net result on the railway for nine months.


Mr.   POSTER@: You cannot give the net result unless we have the capital expenditure as well as the revenue.


George Perry Graham: I am giving what I purport to give; I am giving the net results of the receipts and expenditures of the railway.


George Eulas Foster: If a comparison is to be made the minister should give the expenditure on capital account up to the 31st of December. Surely that is germane to the question.


George Perry Graham: It is not in any degree germane to the question I am now dealing with; it will be germane when we are in committee.


George Eulas Foster: Does the minister now refuse to give the information ?


George Perry Graham: I don't refuse to give anything of the kind; I simply say I have not the figures.


George Eulas Foster: Then we have not the whole deficit.


George Perry Graham: What I am doing now has nothing to do with deficits. My hon. friend (Mr. Foster) has been so accustomed to deficits all his life that he has deficits on the brain.


George Eulas Foster: There is no necessity for the minister showing his temper. Was it not a fair question that my hon. friend (Mr. Haggart) should ask what is the capital expenditure?,


George Perry Graham: Perfectly fair.


George Eulas Foster: Then why did not the minister give it; or if he cannot he need not get cross.


George Perry Graham: I was not cross with the hon. member (Mr. Haggart) because he asked a fair question and I gave him a fair reply and he was satisfied.


George Eulas Foster: Was my question unfair?


George Perry Graham: The hon. gentleman (Mr. Haggart) did not accuse me of refusing to give information. I am not' accustomed to refusing the House any information I can Mr. J. G. HAGGART.
possibly obtain and I do not think it is fair to make such insinuation. Just now I am merely giving the receipts and expenditure for the nine months which have not yet been published, and the capital expenditure has nothing to do with the question I am now discussing. When we are in committee the hon. gentleman (Mr. Foster) can criticise me all he likes, but he has no right to insinuate that I am endeavouring to refuse information. If he were addressing the House and I should make such an accusation against him he would think I was very rude.


George Eulas Foster: Would my hon. friend allow a remark?


George Perry Graham: Decidedly.


George Eulas Foster: When the Minister of Finance is making his budget speech he gives his statement of revenue and expenditure and he immediately supplements that by stating the capital expenditure. If that were not done we would have no knowledge of the real financial state of the country. I suggested we can have no knowledge of the true position of the Intercolonial unless we have a statement of the capital expenditure and when I ask for that my hon. friend flies off at a tangent.


George Perry Graham: Your hon. friend did not fly off at all ; my hon. friend is wrong about that. I am only purporting to give the House the receipts and expenditure of the Intercolonial, and not the capital expenditure, and my case is entirely different from that of the Minister of Finance making a budget speech. I don't like to have the insinuation made that I am refusing to give information, because I think the House will admit that, such is not my habit.


George Eulas Foster: Then, will the minister give the information? I


George Perry Graham: I will get the information for my hon. friend and it can be discussed in committee which is the proper place to discuss it. Now that we understand each other may I be permitted to proceed?
There are certain difficulties in connection with a government-owned railway and I am not going to minimize these difficulties. To those hon. gentlemen who are new to this House and who have not had their minds in any way biased by the discussions on the Intercolonial Railway from a political standpoint, I want to appeal, on one oi two business points.
One point is that the method adopted by the House and by parliament-and I am not complaining of that method-in compelling the Intercolonial to publish and send broadcast throughout the country every detailed item of its expenditure, is unfair to the railway. There is not another railway on

the continent of America whose expenditures are so exposed. I have had occasion to get reports from other railways, and I point out that the Intercolonial Railway is handicapped in its buying of materials and supplies by the fact that every dealer in Canada and possibly on the continent is in a position to know just what we bought last year, and what we paid for it. The members of the House ought to have that information in the fullest degree so as to be able to criticise the buying and the expenditures of the government, but I submit that it is a handicap to the government-owned railway that every dealer in every kind of supplies to be sold to that railway has to-day in his hands the number of pounds or yards or tons bought last year, from whom bought, and the amount we paid for them. It is regrettable, but it i-* true that people in trade have certain understandings all over Canada. John Jones knows to-day what William Smith got for everything he sold to the Intercolonial Railway. He knows what the Intercolonial Railway bought and paid last year. Having that information the two dealers get their heads together, and if the price last year was. too low then no matter how many tenders we may advertise for, we cannot get a price lower than they had agreed among themselves to charge. The Grand Trunk can go to a company or a dealer and say: We want all these goods. Then the dealer need not observe the agreement with other dealers so particularly as he would where the details are placed on record and published broadcast. No dealer will sell to the government for less than he has agreed with other dealers to charge for such goods because he knows that the price he gets will come to the eyes of the other dealer the minute the Auditor General's Report is published. That handicap does not exist on any other railway and no other railway would tolerate it.
Here is another handicap with reference to which I appeal to business men. The Grand Trunk or the Canadian Pacific Railway will go to a large dealer who perhans during the year has a large amount of freight to carry. The officials of that railway will say to him:	We want so many
goods of a certain kind, what will you let us have them at? The dealer has to give them at a risht price. No tenders are asked for but the goods are bought at a right figure and they are bought with the consideration that this particular concern will give that railway the carriage of their freight. Under the tender system we have to ask for prices publicly and we have to buy from the lowest tenderer. The result is that we often buy large quantites of goods from men who never give us a pound of freight, and as the result of buying
from these men, we lose the freight of their competitors, who perhaps tendered at a higher price but who have a large amount of freight on the line. The tender system is all right in theory but in running an institution like a railway you are handicapped, as I said, by the publication of the details of every purchase, and by having to purchase from the lowest tenderer, no matter how much freight the railway may lose from some other competitor who would have given the goods at a fair price.
I how come to another question with which my hon. friend dealt the other night. This situation stares us in the face-and I want to approach it without wincing or shrinking. I may be right or I may be wrong, but I give my opinion for what it is worth. As I said, the Grand Trunk Pacific will soon have its line through the maritime provinces. The Canadian Pacific Railway now has its line there. Unless some arrangement is made by which the Intercolonial Railway will become the outlet for some transcontinental line, the Intercolonial Railway will only be a local road for all time to come, and there is not enough local traffic to keep it going on a paying basis. That is my opinion. Conditions have changed, years have come and gone; there was a time when the Intercolonial Railway had all the trade of the maritime provinces, anything that came to Montreal, Quebec or Levis, had to get into the maritime provinces over the Intercolonial Railway, and we had a portion of all this trade whether it was through trade or maritime provinces' trade. Now, we have the Canadian Pacific Railway, we will soon have the Grand Trunk Pacific, and these being fed by their own two lines and having to feed their own two lines, will not give us any traffic that they can possibly help. That means that they will give us no through traffic at all. I believe that if the Intercolonial Railway is to be made the road it should be, if we are to maintain it as a proposition in the interests of the people and to make it pay its way it will have to be hooked up with a through line from the west, which will feed it with east bound traffic and which it can feed with west bound traffic.
That brings me to the point of branch lines, a question of deep interest to the people of Canada in every part. I repeat that my opinions may be right or wrong, I think they are right. In order that there may be no mistakes as to my position on this point, and that I may not say something that really does not express the full view I hold, I trust the House will bear with me if I read a few lines which I have jotted down.
The question of branch lines is one that must shortly be faced, as it does not need

an authority on transportation and railway traffic to understand that there can be no prosperous main line unless it is fed by branches stretching out into adjacent territory.
The Canadian Pacific Railway is now in the east, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway is going there, and if the Intercolonial Railway is to maintain its fair share of trade it will have to see that it gets some of the feeders.
There is no use shrinking from the situation. Either the government must ere long be prepared to acquire some of its feeders and build new ones or it must hand over the management of the Intercolonial to some company that will do so. It will not be fair either to the railway or the section of the country served by it in face of the changed condition, to very much longer continue to occupy the present position.
Companies recognize the necessity of branch lines, and that is why in the west there is almost, at the present time, a struggle to cover the territory with branch lines. If the Grand Trunk Pacific is to be the success it is hoped, it will have to see that it has a sufficient number of feeders to keep its trunk line busy.
I think I am safe in saying that if a company owned the Intercolonial it would immediately proceed to pick out some of the best branch lines and absorb them, as well as build others, and it is possibly not going too far to say that if we were prepared to lease the Intercolonial Railway to a company, any company desiring to get such a lease, as a condition of it, would agree to take over such branches and build others. This is my view of the situation, and while present conditions do not warrant the government in launching out on the acquisition of existing branch lines, and the construction of new ones, the time cannot be far distant when the government will be forced to take one of two positions: either to adopt the policy of expansion itself or in the interests of the road and the country it serves lease the railway to some company that will adopt these business-like measures.
I have dealt at some length with the Intercolonial Railway and the railway problem. I may have expressed views that do not coincide with those of members of the House. The views I have expressed are mine, I am prepared to defend them and I think they are founded on common sense.
What are we going to do with the road? A good deal of discussion has taken place as to what we are going to do in regard to its management. Let me say that among the officials of the Intercolonial Railway are many first-class railway men, men who are giving the country good service. It has struck me that possibly the Intercolonial Railway, having been a government-owned road so many years, having had to combat some of the conditions to Mr. GRAHAM.
which I have referred, may have possibly got into a rut, and that we might get it out of that rut by making some changes. I do not mean by changes the dismissal of officers, but what I have in my mind is this, and I shall state it frankly, and it will be an experiment if carried out. There is no use disguising the fact that such will be the situation, if the plan I have in mind be put into effect. It will be an experiment, but one I think well worth trying, and which should bring good results. My proposition is this:	Not to establish a
commission. I have studied that a good deal; and if I do not favour that solution, it is not at all because my bon. friend (Mr. R. L. Borden) advocates it. I have gone into the question of the management of the Australian railways, and I came to the conclusion that, as a minister of the Crown, with a railway under government supervision and management, two conditions confronted me. In the first place, I was not prepared, as minister of the Crown, to admit that the Crown itself, through proper means, could not manage a government railway. In the second place, I did not think the country would be prepared to say that the government ought to divest itself of the responsibility which the people had entrusted to its hands. Having that view, I made up my mind to make this proposition and give it a fair trial. That proposition is to establish a board, not responsible to parliament-that is, not directly responsible- but responsible to the government of the day, whatever government that may be- responsible to the government through a minister of the Crown, because after all we may say about commissions, this fact remains that the people will hold whatever government is in power responsible for the management of the Intercolonial Railway so long as it is owned by the government. There is no use in our trying to get away from the inevitable. Any government must retain the responsibility, and any minister of railways must accept full responsibility. On that board I propose to retain two of the officials, now on the Intercolonial Railway, in very high places.
I propose also to allow Mr. Butler, the Deputy Minister of Railways, to act on that board, and I would call it, not a commission, not an advisory board, but a board of management. 1 propose as well to appoint on that board a man, whom I have not selected, from one or the other of the great railways-not an over expensive man, but a man with a good practical, level head, who would bring with him the knowledge and experience be had acquired on one of the great lines and add these to the knowledge and experience' possessed by the officials on our line of railway. This board would have the management of the road, and be responsible, as a general

manager would be, to the government. My idea was that this board would have to meet my deputy at least every thirty days and give a full and complete report and information of everything done on the line, so that the minister would know at all times what was going on and what was being done. Would this relieve the minister of the responsibility? Not of one iota. The minister must retain all responsibility, but it would relieve him and his deputy of a multitude of details which now come here and which ought never to get beyond the head office at Moncton. We have today details coming to the department at Ottawa, which never go to the president of a railway company, which never get by the general manager, and three-fourths of which never get to the general manager. But a condition has grown up on the government owned railway for which nobody is to blame; and little details, instead of being settled on the spot by men detailed and paid for that purpose, keep filtering through by some means to the head office and to the Minister of Railways, until our department is at present flooded by these matters which ought never to reach it. This board would be given power to settle these minor affairs without reference to the department at all. This would be a good thing for the railway, it would be a good thing for the men, and a great relief to the department.
I have kept the House too long. I have expressed my views fully, and I know that they will receive that consideration which this House is always ready to give a statement of this kind. There are many sides to this question which I might discuss and discuss at some length, but the question of transportation is so broad that it is impossible to enter, as far as one would like, into a discussion of its many phases. I assure the House that anything done, will be done with the interests of the Intercolonial Railway at heart, and above all with the object of giving _the people, whom this railway was built to serve, the best service at a minimum cost.


John Graham Haggart: My hon. friend the Minister of Railways, in his opening remarks, dealt with the general question of transportation which is always a very interesting one. He spoke of the immense resources of this country, how they were being developed, and of the public anxiety for better transportation facilities than we have at present. He spoke to us at some length about the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian Northern Railway and the present railway in embryo the Grand Trunk Pacific. He referred also to our different canal enterprises or water transportation. Regarding the later I have particular views which I may as well take this opportunity of stating.
Two or three years ago I explained to the House that the solution of the problem of cheap transportation was a better water communication for the west. In that connection I instanced the different countries which had adopted that system-Germany, France, Austria, Belgium and latterly the United States. I drew attention to the speech of ex-president Roosevelt in favour of water communications and its necessity in the United States, and also to the speech of Sir Thomas Shaughnessy in the same direction. Nature has given us on the continent of North America a proper line of communication for transportation purposes from the centre of the continent to the Atlantic ocean, if we will only avail ourselves of it. If we take advantage of what nature has given us, we will not only control the transportation of the products of the great republic but also of a greater fertile area than is to be found in any other part of the globe, namely, the area which is contiguous to the St. Lawrence river and the great lakes down to lake Michigan and Superior. There you have an immense section of fertile country which produces men of the Anglo Saxon race ; and if the people who inhabit that country would avail themselves of the means of transportation afforded by nature, they would control the destinies of this great continent. I have said before that water communication in no way interferes with communication by rail. Sir Thomas Shaughnessy said that this doctrine had been laid down so clearly by President Roosevelt that it was useless for him to dwell on it. According to that doctrine, in order to carry the heavy freight, it is necessary to have a cheap system, and that is to be found in water transportation.
I have shown that, with an expenditure of $100,000,000, we could have water communication, practically sea communication, from the Atlantic to the upper lakes, giving us control of the water transportation of this part of the continent. The deputy Minister of Railways and Canals has proposed another thing : Seeing the advantage of water transport, and being aware of the interest that is taken in this matter throughout the west, he proposes the deepening of the Welland canal. Let me show in a word the fallacy of that. We have expended on Port Colborne already in the neighbourhood of between $3,000,000 and $4,000,000 in order to provide facilities so that vessels from the upper lakes may tranship to smaller vessels for transport eastward. The effect of deepening the Welland canal would be simply to move this point of transhipment from Colborne to Kingston. The expense of carrying the svstem further would be prohibitory. Does tlie minister or does his deputy know what it would cost to deepen the St. Lawrence so

as to make a channel of full depth to Montreal? The evidence on that subject was given before the Transportation Commission. The testimony of the best engineer then living in reference to these subjects, Mr. Wisner-I am sorry to say he has since departed this life-was to the effect that the cost of making a channel deep enough for ocean-going vessels from Kingston to Montreal would be in the neighbourhood of $200,000,000, or double the cost of building the Georgian Bay canal, a route which would be about 450 miles shorter than the other. However, that is incidental to the general question of transportation. I would not have dealt with it had not the minister introduced the subject in his opening remarks.
The hon. gentleman next dealt with the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. He has built a branch road from Levis to Moncton that will be finished next year. Now, how is he going to utilize it? Is it to be worked by the Grand Trunk Pacific? It has no connection with the main line. Is it to be run by the government in opposition to the Intercolonial? The minister (Mr. Graham) hinted that he was considering a proposition of ferry boats at Levis pending the erection of the bridge. He tells us that the plans for the bridge will not be finished for a year or a year and a half. At that rate, the bridge cannot be completed in less than six or seven years. Are we to depend upon a ferry to connect the Levis-Moncton road with the rest of the system? I think the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) and the leader of the government (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) must now see the folly of constructing a road which will be quite useless as part of the transcontinental system for seven or eight years to come. But, so far as the bridge is concerned, we have in this an instance of the government's paternal care for certain corporations. A corporation was formed to build this bridge. It induced the government to subsidize the work. A catastrophe happened to the bridge-it fell down. One would have supposed that the parties particularly interested in the loss of the bridge would be those who had stock in the corporation that was chartered to construct the work. But these gentlemen did not suffer a single cent; the government took over the whole of their stock at its face value with interest. Now, we come to the construction of the road. We had a statement from the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding)-not the celebrated statement backing up that of his leader that the road would only cost the country about $13,000,-000-but a statement made in his saner moments to the effect that the road would cost in the neighbourhood of $38,000 per mile. The government now come down with the statement, that after revision of | the plans of construction, they find it will Mr. J. G. HAGGART.
cost $63,000 per mile. We have entrusted the construction of that road to a commission, supposed to be composed of gentlemen who were capable of taking charge of this construction, looking after the estimates, specifications and everything else necessary to the direction of the work. But we find now that contracts entered into are re-interpreted by the lawyers and that the Department of the Minister of Justice has given an interpretation to the specifications and schedules which has the effect of altering the classification under these contracts-which contracts, be it remembered, were approved, made on the authority of the engineer in chief, presumably after consultation with the commissioners. The effect of this interpretation is to increase the cost of construction from $38,000 to $63,000 per mile. Why, then, does the engineer in chief, whose opinion as to the classification has thus been over-ruled, still retain his position? Why do the commissioners, who have let these contracts, still remain in charge of the work of construction? But there is worse than that; even after they knew the opinion of the Minister of Justice, they continued to let the rest of the contracts with the same specifications and the same quantities as in the other. What will be the effect in the cost of the road to the country?
You would be astonished if I told you it will cost the country nearly $300,000,000. Let me give the figures as nearly as possible. From Moncton to Winnipeg the distance is 1,803 miles. According to Mr. Lumsden, the engineer in charge of the works, the cost of that section will be $63,427 per mile, or a sum equal to $114,393,765. Now what interest will we have to pay during its construction, which will take seven years? For three years and a half the interest at three per cent will be about $10,000,000. Then we have to pay interest for seven years after construction, which will amount to $14,422,000. The Moncton, Winnipeg, Quebec and other terminals, according to a statement brought down by the Minister of Railways, will cost $5,600,000. We have no information what is likely to be the cost of the mountain section of 800 odd miles. I estimate it, and I think very moderately, at $70,000 to $80,000 per pule. We guarantee 75 per cent of that, or three-fourths of the whole amount is guaranteed by us. The interest which we will have to pay on that alone will be without doubt $7,500,000. The loan is $10,000,000. The amount we guarantee for bonds on the mountain section will be nearly $50,000,000, and on the prairie section, $11,908,000. On the Quebec bridge we have already lost about $7,000,000, and I estimate the probable cost of reconstruction and of terminal facilities at Quebec at $15,000,000. Now the Minister of Railways brought down a return from Mr. Schreiber which ought to give us

the most accurate information in reference to the prairie section, and we have a right to rely upon it in considering the $10,000,000 which we are asked to advance to the company. So far as I can make out from the figures returned by Mr. Schreiber, he estimates that the mountain section commences 916 miles west of Winnipeg, and that it extends 800 odd miles to the coast. Now the cost of the prairie section of the road, if you can take the information which is furnished by Mr. Schreiber, is in the neighbourhood of $30,000 a mile. Add the $10,000,000 which we are giving for the purpose of finishing the road up to the end of the 960 miles, and the cost will be in the neighbourhood of $35,000 per mile at least. So here is a road which the engineers of the government, and which the government themselves, told parliament when they entered into the contract with the Grand Trunk Pacific, would cost the country $16,000 per mile, and we now find that it is going to cost $35,000 per mile. I will not deal here with the advisability of advancing the $10,000,000, as there is a resolution on the Order Paper which will call for a full dis-cusion of that question, and all the details regarding it. The mountain section is the only part of the road where we have accurate information as to the probable cost. I regret that the government have not yet brought down the return moved for by my hon. friend from Simcoe (.Mr. Lennox), in which a comparison is made between the quantities estimated by the engineers on which the contracts were let, and the estimates allowed to the contractors on a good many sections already let. It would be interesting to see how they compare. I have seen information in regard to the quantities which shows that the portions of the road which have been contracted for are going to cost double the amount which was originally estimated, owing to the fact that the government engineer had not been left to follow his own judgment, the resident engineers have not been left to follow their own judgment, in the matter of classifying the work. Now this is a serious matter. Now why do you retain in office men who make an estimate, who prepare your classifications, who draw your contracts, and yet who make such a bungle in the classifications? They ought to be at least qualified to draw up contracts and see that the classifications are right. Why is there such bungling in the administration of the commission? On some of the contracts the work is going to cost double. The engineer himself has increased the estimate from $48,000 to $63,000. The quantities should have been accurate, the information should be correct, and according to the information which I have in reference to that matter, I should judge that the cost of that road will be largely in excess of what is estimated by the engineer, even at the present moment.
What is our position? We have liabilities of nearly $300,000,000 in connection with this road. You may laugh, and say the amount will not be nearly that. I say it will come up to nearly $300,000,000. The liabilities of the people of Canada with regard to that road are enough to stagger any man who looks the matter squarely in the face. What likelihood, or what security, is there that the Grand Trunk will ever work that road from Winnipeg down to Moncton? The promise of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway company is equal to their ability of performance. Can they do it? Look how their loan was floated the other day. See how their securities have been received upon the market. They cannot raise money for the purpose of building or extending the road. They were obliged to come to the government of the country for assistance to the extent of $10,000,000. What security have we that the Grand Trunk Pacific will go on and operate the road? It depends entirely on whether that road is a going concern able to earn the revenue necessary to keep running and pay a certain amount of interest. What security have we? No security at all. The security of the second bondholders ranks before that of the last advance of $10,000,000 which we are making to the company.
Now, let us come to the Intercolonial Railway. We have dealt with that question again and again in this House. There is always some excuse given from time to time why this road does not pay. I remember that at the time when I was Minister of Railways and Canals different corporations approached the government with the view of leasing the road. The minister complains that the rates are so low that they cannot possibly pay. The parties who were willing to lease that road undertook to guarantee the same rates which were then in force on the Intercolonial, not as high as those at present, because Mr. Blair, when he was Minister of Railways raised the rates beyond what they were in my time. There were corporations at that time willing to take over the road, maintain the rates then in existence and pay a handsome sum per annum to the government of the country. What is the financial position of the road? Let me take this statement as it is set down by the Minister of Railways and Canals himself in his own report:	The expenditure
on construction account on the Intercolonial Railway up to the 1st December last was $77,673,000. The deficit between revenue and working expenses on the Intercolonial Railway since it started has increased to $8,250,000. Add $8,250,000 to the $77,673,000 and you have nearly $86,000,000. To this is to be added the Cape Breton Railway, the Oxford and New Glasgow Railway, the Eastern Extension Railway, and other railways amounting to $9,750,727; or, on construction account, $87,127,000. Then,

add the amount of cash which was paid out of the consolidated fund of the country for the purpose of making up the difference between the revenue and working expenses of $8,250,000 and you have $95,000,000. Ninety-five million dollars added to the amount which the minister says the railway at the present time is behind and the possibilities of another capital expenditure will leave .independently of the Prince Edward Island altogether, an amount of $100,000,000 expended on the Intercolonial Railway since it was undertaken by the people of this country. We have heard statements as to the beautiful prospects of the future -equip the road, give us large locomotives, increase the strength of the bridges, put heavier ties upon the road, let us use modern methods in operating the road and we will show you results; then the Intercolonial Railway will come out of the woods, it will no longer be a back number, it will no longer do business on the back street, if it is improved the result will redound to the benefit of Canada! Every year the promise has been made that the result will be better next year but still we find this state of affairs on the Intercolonial. Times are bad, they say, upon the railways in the different sections of the country at the present time. Two or three years ago they were not bad. Every railway on the continent of America was prosperous and paying dividends except the Intercolonial, under the management of the hon. gentleman who sits opposite me here, and it is getting worse and worse. What is the result at the present time?-the result that was dreaded by the people of the maritime provinces, the result that was foretold by the hon. gentlemen on this side of the House, that they would be obliged to part with the road, that no longer would the people of the country submit to the enormous expenditure above receipts for the purpose of continuing its operation. But the minister says: Oh, I would make things all right if they would allow me to fix the tariff on the road. The hon. member for Westmoreland (Mr. Emmerson), made the statement that the tariff for local purposes was one quarter lower than upon other roads. Notwithstanding that statement, the people of the maritime provinces pay, for everything except a few articles which I shall mention, as high rates for the carriage of their goods as are paid by people in any other part of the country. The minister made some comparisons with reference to haulage per ton per mile m connection with which he presented some of the most alarming figures that I have ever heard. I understand the question of haulage per ton per mile. Where you haul for 25 miles your rate per ton per mile is larger than where you are hauling for fifty miles, and the same thing applies to where you are hauling for a hundred miles. Where you have a full carload it is less per ton per Mr. J. a. HAGGART.
mile comparatively than where you have part of a carload only. The only thing that the minister's figures prove is that he is using too much haulage power, that he is running trains without carrying freight upon them or without carrying passengers; in short, that he is running trains in excess of the requirements of the traffic. He sends out a train with half the load that it ought to carry and then he makes a comparison with other roads.


Mr. ARMSTRONG.: To keep the men employed.


John Graham Haggart: Too many men. When I came into the management of the Intercolonial Railway I found a state of affairs something like that which at present exists on the road. The idea of making comparisons as to the number of men per mile employed on that road with another road without comparing the amount of business done is the most absurd thing I ever heard of. What is the use of saying that the Intercolonial has only the same number of men as a certain other road if you do not tell us the amount of business that is done by each road? The Intercolonial Railway only earns altogether a little over $9,000,000 per year. Another road, with the same mileage and performing the same service, may be earning four times that amount, or $36,000,000 per year. What is the use of making a comparison as to the number of men employed on the road? What I was going to say was this. When I took charge of the Intercolonial I found a state of affairs existing similar to that which exists to-day, and that a number of people were employed in connection with the road more for political purposes than for anything else. They got so that the officials of the road dare not discharge them or interfere with them, and the power was not with the heads of the road, but with a political agent as is the case now. I found that at Moncton there were 1,200 men more than were requisite for running the shops, and they were dismissed.


Henry Robert Emmerson: By you?


John Graham Haggart: Yes, by me; nearly 1,200 men.


Henry Robert Emmerson: In what year?


John Graham Haggart: About 1894, if I remember rightly.


Henry Robert Emmerson: 1,200 dismissed?


John Graham Haggart: Yes, there were over 1,200 dismissed from the road. I had to endure all kinds of trials in connection with it. The Minister of Justice of the day, I remember, if he only knew who recommended the dismissal of these people he would decapitate them. But, there is no doubt you have to exercise a firm hand. Every railway man laughs at the excess of
27X7

men employed by the Intercolonial. Look at the grand description of the shops of which the people of the country are asked to be proud, greater shops than the Canadian Pacific Railway have, and built for the accommodation of the Grand Trunk Pacific. Mind you, eight or nine years before that road reaches its destination. I venture to say that the locomotives required for the Intercolonial can be purchased for less than they can be manufactured for in these shops. Now, a few words in reference to the capital account.
At six o'clock the House took recess.
After Recess.
The House resumed at eight o'clock


PRIVATE BILLS-ROYAL CASUALTY AND SURETY COMPANY OF CANADA.
Haughton Lennox: I would suggest the advisability of leaving this Bill and the next one, to incorporate the Royal Canadian Accident Insurance Company, in the committee until we have before us the other Bill of which I spoke the other day, owing to the danger of confusion in names.


William Stevens Fielding: I understand the Bill referred to has not yet been introduced. Besides I think there may be shades of difference and an argument that might apply in reference! to one might not apply in reference to another. If there is any objection to the names perhaps the better course would be to refer the Bills back to the committee for further consideration. There seems to be no question but the title and I have no views on the matter myself.


Haughton Lennox: I would not want to do that, because there is no special difficulty with regard to these two. I think if we had the Royal Life Insurance Company and ilie Royal Insurance Company these two would infringe on the rule. When we come to consider these two I would not like to be hampered by the fact that we had passed these two Bills.


Mr. PERLEY.: As I understand the feeling in the Committee on Banking and Commerce is that no company shall have the exclusive right to any particular name providing the difference is such that an ordinary person can understand it. As to the suggestion to change the name of Royal Victoria Life Company to the Royal Life, there is now a Royal Insurance Company doing a fire and life business. That would not appear to me to be a reasonable change. There is as much difference between the names of the companies now under consideration as there has been between names of similar character which have come up from time to time in the committee. If the the committee is to pursue any different
policy, and the House directs them to do so, we will be glad to follow instructions.


John Allister Currie: I objected to the name last night because I had a communication from one of the agents of the Royal Insurance Company objecting to the use of the name 'Royal.' He said representations had been made to him by the general agent of the Royal in Montreal. I wrote last night to the general agents in Montreal. Apparently they were not aware of the fact that they could appear before the committee of this House and object to the Bill. I think the minister's suggestions to refer the Bill back is an excellent one. I shall write the general agents of the Royal Fire Insurance Company in Montreal and if they wish to come before the committee and make objection they should be heard. Many Bills affecting outside companies come before the committee and the parties vitally interested are not notified. Many foreign fire companies carrying on fire business here are not allowed to carry on casualty business and so they procure a charter for casualty business in Canada and call it, for instance, the Royal Casualty Company of Canada; but it is generally understood among people doing casualty business that in the case of a Canadian company with a name similar to that of an old country company the risks are underwritten by the old country company. If a company with the name 'The Royal Casualty Company of Canada,' was permitted to carry on business here, every one having a casualty risk would immediately arrive at the conclusion that the Royal Insurance Company of England was behind that company and therefore we should know definitely if the Royal Company is promoting any of these Bills. If it is we should give them a charter and let them carry on business, but if it is some one else seeking a charter with the name of the Royal I think it would be very wrong to give them the use of the name. If the Bill is referred back and the parties do not appear before the committee, they have themselves to blame if we give the name to some one else.


Mr. MILLER.: This matter was threshed out in the committee. I quite agree with the remarks of the hon. member for Argen-teuil (Mr. Perley). There is undoubtedly a great difference in the names of these two companies. As the hon. member (Mr. Perley) has said, we should be careful when a company comes before the Banking and Commerce Committee seeking to change its name from the Royal Victoria Life Insurance Company to the Royal, so that if we granted the charter we would have the Royal Insurance Company doing a fire and life business and the Royal Life Insurance Company doing a life business. I would object to that as misleading the

people, but there is a great difference between the name of the Eoyal Casualty and Surety Company of Canada and that of the Eoyal Canadian Accident Company. So far as the Eoyal Insurance Company of Liverpool is concerned, Mr McCarthy appeared in its behalf_ before the Banking and Commerce Committee when these two Bills were considered and made his objections. The committee fully con sidered the whole matter and decided that as the Eoyal Insurance Company of Liverpool is not doing an accident business and cannot possibly be permitted to do it, there was no reason why these two Bills should not pass. It would be unwise therefore to refer them back to that committee and cause unnecessary delay. The hon. member for Simcoe (Mr. Lennox) has mentioned the Bill of the Eoyal Victoria Life Insurance Company, which will probably come before us, and says he would have the strongest objection to the word 'Victoria,' being struck out. I quite agree with him, but it is nci necessary, in order to avoid that, that we should hold up these two Bills.


William Stevens Fielding: I would rather gather that there are some parties who wish to be heard before the committee. The hon. member for Simcoe seemed to be under the impression that the Eoyal Insurance Company of Liverpool had no opportunity of being heard. That is a mistake. The agent in Montreal called on me, and he was told that the matter was coming up before the committee. A legal gentleman appeared there on behalf of the company. Of course if any one had not been heard, who has a particular interest in the matter, I would be glad to have him appear before the committee, but unless somebody has something further to present, I cannot see anything to be gained by sending the Bill back.


John Allister Currie: We are all aware of the fact that these casualty companies have been going to the wall pretty rapidly the last two or three years and there have been some pretty bad failures. We ought to be very careful therefore in giving names which might lead to people being misled. Of course if Mr. McKay, the agent of the Eoyal Insurance Company of Liverpool, was present


William Stevens Fielding: He was not present but was represented.


John Allister Currie: That cuts away the ground of my objection. If that be the case, there is no use in objecting any further to the name. Still I think that the Minister of Finance should consider very carefully whether a casualty company should be permitted to take the name of a large company such as the Eoyal Insurance Company, especially in view of the fact that the large English companies have been Mr. MILLER.
building up subsidiary companies in this country, carrying their own names, to engage in the business of casualty insurance, and everybody knows that when an English company underwrites another, there is no possible risk on the part of the insured. The presumption would be that this company we are now chartering would be underwritten by the Eoyal Insurance Company of Liverpool.


William Stevens Fielding: It is not.


Mr.  J. A. CUEEIIE@: As a matter of precaution it would be better not to give it a name so closely similar.


Henry Horton Miller: The hon. member has said that a number of casualty companies have recently failed in Canada and that some of them have been bad failures. That is news to me; and for my own satisfaction and the credit of Canadian companies, I would like him to inform us what failures there have been recently among Canadian casualty companies?


Mr. MONK.: I understand that the position taken by the Eoyal Insurance Company of Liverpool is this. It is authorized to go into the casualty business but does not do so, and therefore has no special objection to the incorporation of this company under the name ' Eoyal,' although that name comes pretty close to its own. But what it objects to is that a company doing a life insurance business should take the name, as for instance, the Eoyal Victoria Insurance Company.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.


CONSIDEEED IN COMMITTEE- THIED BEADING.
[Stage Direction]
Bill (No. 63) to incorporate the Eoyal Canadian Accident Insurance Company- Mr. Ames.

[Stage Direction]
Bill (No. 93) respecting patents of Am monal Explosives, 1908, Limited-Mr. Mac-dcnell.

[Stage Direction]
House resumed debate on the motion for Supply.
['We shall go into supply on the Public Works estimates. At the first convenient opportunity in committee I would like to have the supplementary estimates for the current year considered.']
John Graham Haggart: Mr. Speaker, at six o'clock I was about to deal with the manner in which the books of the Intercolonial Railway are kept. I have argued again and again in this House in favour of the closing of the capital account of that railway. What I meant by that I fully explained, and I thought the House could have no misunderstanding of my meaning. Last session, in a debate in this House on the subject, Mr. Logan, the then member for

Cumberland, took the same view as the hon. member for Guysborough (Mr. Sinclair), that I meant that there was to be no expenditure on capital account. An item might be necessarily an expenditure on capital account; but my contention was that a road that has been finished and in operation by the government for twenty-five or thirty years has no reason for a capital account. The reason is that it would induce the minister to be lax in his administration, in reference to expenditures, the purchase of land for stations, and various additions to the railway, which, if he had no capital account, he would be chary about incurring. If there were no capital account the Finance Minister would not allow him the funds for an expenditure if it were to appear in the Public Accounts as ordinary expenditure, as he would want to make a good showing. The Minister of Railways cannot resist the importunities of his friends and he has no objection to making an expenditure if he can have it charged to capital account, and it does not appear in the current expenditure. The man who first made the suggestion in this House, supported by the whole of his party, was the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie. He drew the attention of the House to the iniquities that might be perpetrated with an open capital account, to which the minister could charge a great many expenditures, while the Finance Minister would not care two-pence about them so long as they did not appear in ordinary expenditure. With those sentiments I entirely agree. If we have to have an Intercolonial Railway controlled by the government, the only possible way to make a fair comparison with the past is to close the capital account altogether. I think I have made myself perfectly plain to the hon. member for Guysborough. I mean to say that an amount which might be fairly charged to capital account on other railroads, in a worse condition as to locomotives and other things, could not be fairly charged to capital account on a road like this. We should have no open account, the whole charges should be against revenue and expenditure. When I was controlling the Intercolonial I endeavoured to do so. In a couple of instances, I must admit, I went astray. There was a large expenditure for additions to the freight and passenger establishments at St. John, and tha,t was entered in the books to capital expenditure. I discouraged as much as possible any charge of that kind. I told the officials of the road that although improvements, additions to locomotives, new stations, new rails and so forth, might be charged to capital account on other roads, it was a vicious system on a government road.
Now we find that the expenditure has increased from 1896 up to the present day from $50,000,000 up to over $100,000,000 on capital account. The minister stated that 86
the capital account on the Intercolonial and the Prince Edward Island road amounted to $94,000,000. It is over $97,000,000 on the Intercolonial alone. The hon. member for Westmoreland (Mr. Em-merson) who sits opposite smiling at me, perhaps does not credit it. For his benefit I will give the figures, and if he can show where I am wrong in any particular, I will be glad to hear from him. For construction account on the Intercolonial there is $77,673,576 to the end of the current year. The difference between working expenses including the Windsor branch, and the revenue received including the Windsor branch, is as the difference between $122,000,000 and $130,000,000, or $8,000,000. To this is to be added the expenditure on the Cape Breton Railway, the Oxford and New Glasgow Railway, the Eastern Extension Railway, the Montreal, European and Short Line Railway, the Drummond County Railway and the Canada Eastern Railway, making on the whole $9,750,727, or an amount equal to about $95,000,000 plus the amount we owe during the current year. That will bring it up as nearly as possible to $100,000,000, and that is not taking the Prince Edward Island Railway into account. But that is a small amount to the people of this country, we are perfectly indifferent about it. The people would rather have this enormous expenditure on the Intercolonial than to be without it. What does it amount to ? Two postage stamps per year for each man in the country. Two postage stamps was the argument I heard, perhaps outside this House, and I am not permitted to refer to debates in the House. Let the people of the Dominion support the burden. We have no objection to the Intercolonial, we like to see it a prosperous and flourishing concern, but we insist that the road shall be well managed, the same as any other public institution.
The minister says that the reason he can not make it pay, the reason that the Intercolonial Railway is not in the position of other railroads, is that we do not charge as high freight and tariffs as they do on other roads. I have heard that remark before, and I have heard it supported by the schedule of rates charged on the different railroads, which was filed by a minister in making his address to the House showing that the people using the Intercolonial only paid about one-fourth of the freight that the people pay on other railways. In ordinary rates, people pay as much on the Intercolonial as the people pay in ordinary rates on any other road in the Dominion of Canada. People pay just as high rates for freight and passengers on the Intercolonial. It is true there are some things we carry on the Intercolonial at a lesser rate For instance, for the purpose of developing the coal trade in Cape Breton,



we carry coal on the Intercolonial for less than we can afford to. We do so for the purpose of encouraging the coal trade, and other collateral trades, and for the purpose of developing a larger trade for Halifax. We have built elevators there for grain, and we carry grain to Halifax for less than we could possibly haul it and pay expenses. Parties exporting lumber on the Intercolonial pay less rates perhaps than are paid on other roads. But for ordinary freight and passenger rates on the Intercolonial, as fair a price is charged as on any other road in the Dominion. Let a party make inquiries, any party who is an expert in reference to tariffs, and he will find that what I say is the fact. But what is the remedy ? The suggestion was made the other evening in a debate on this question, that people who use this road do not wish to use it in forma pauperis. If we do not pay rates sufficient in the carriage of freight and passengers, the hon. gentleman stated, we are perfectly willing to pay higher rates. What a commentary all this is on government-owned railroads. Look at the tendency of the present day. In every civilized country in the world, France, ^Holland, Belgium, the German Empire, the Austrian Empire, what is the tendency ?
The tendency is towards state-owned railways. We have the lamentable spectacle here of a Minister of Railways admitting that he cannot make both ends meet on the Intercolonial Railway, that he is going to give it up, that he is going to try another system. It is a commentary upon our government. What is the form of management proposed? If you are going to do away with the present system there are two or three plans that perhaps might suggest themselves to ordinary persons. First, there is the plan of leasing the road to some other railway company that will manage it better than the government do. Or, you might govern it, as my hon. friend suggests, by a commission. There is a new idea proposed by the Minister of Railways and Canals. He speaks of a board of which his deputy is one of the members. Two of the parties who now manage the Intercolonial Railway are to be members of that board and they are to add another man to it. The country will have no confidence in a board of that kind. If the minister cannot govern the road and cannot make both ends meet under the present system no board that he appoints, governs and rules will have the confidence of the country. You might appoint a commission for the purpose of doing it. I doubt very much if a commission will be much better. The people of the maritime provinces, no matter how badly the road has been managed in the past, no matter how far short of meeting the expenditure the revenue has fallen, Mr. J. G. HAGGART.
are fond of the Intercolonial Railway, and they will support no government, as I found out when I was in power, that will part with the Intercolonial Railway. It is a parting with the undertaking if you lease it to a railway company. There is another way suggested, and that is to grant to the different railways that connect with the Intercolonial running powers over the road. But, it is impossible to work that out. The granting of powers amounts to nothing. The three railway companies that will connect with the Intercolonial Railway are the Canadian Northern, the Grand Trunk and the Canadian Pacific Railway. In order to have joint running rights upon the road each of them would have to appoint agents for the purpose of picking up business and operating their trains upon the road. That would involve a three-fold expenditure which is unnecessary for the purpose of running the institution. There is still another way in which you could do it; you could create a company of which these three companies would be members. The Canadian Northern, the Grand Trunk and the Canadian Pacific Railways could form a joint stock company for the purpose of operating that railway in connection with their own roads, or for the purpose of pooling the earnings in the interest of the three. That possibly might be done, but in order to put the Intercolonial Railway in a position to compete or to make money there would have to be a considerable expenditure upon it, not in acquiring branch roads, not in building branch roads, but in affording modern facilities for what is perhaps the best paying traffic of any in connection with a railway, that is the tourist traffic. You want to build hotels in every part of the country traversed by the road, you want to offer the best possible facilities to the tourist to come into the country. All of that requires money. Of the three parties that might join in the undertaking two could not afford to pay anything. Is the other company going to pay the whole amount for the joint benefit of the two which can pay nothing? It is an impossible arrangement, yet that is the only way in which it could be undertaken. Then the minister is forced to the alternative of appointing a board. I think he was a little jealous of the idea suggested by the hon, leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) of appointing a commission for the purpose of managing the road. I must say that I differ from both of them. I have no faith in commissions. I believe that a proper man at the head of the Railway Department, free from political influence, big enough to stamp his foot and put it down on any interference and who would govern it on correct and modern principles, would make the Intercolonial a paying concern. It is our only

hope if we are to have a government railway system in Canada that there should be a spirit encouraged amongst the people of the country which would result in making it possible to have good management, free from political influences. When I was running the Intercolonial Railway, of course, approaches were made for the purpose of securing that road. We could have rented the road for what would have been a valuable addition every year to the revenue of the country on conditions such as would have preserved to the people the rates that they at that time enjoyed. I hope that the minister's board may be a success. I wish, from the bottom of my heart, as I know every member on this side of the House and from this section of the country wishes, prosperity to the Intercolonial Railway. May it fulfil to the utmost extent the wishes and desires of the people of the country in building up trade and commerce and developing what may possibly be the cheapest railway transportation in the country. We believe that with proper management it can be done. No matter what the deficits are, I am with the hon. member for Westmoreland (Mr. Emmer-son) when he says:	Do not part with
the road; try it again and again, and the day will come in this country when there will be a management of the road which will redound to its credit, and which will show that in this country we possess a form of government equal to that in any of the older countries. Those having their reputations as business men at stake, will agree with me, I am sure, that such a management of the road would be a credit both to the country financially and in every other respect. I have nothing more to say. I am not going to discuss the details of this question which has been so fully dealt with by the minister. The opportunity will be afforded me if necessary in the committee. I have only to add that I hope that whatever the minister or the government may do, they will not part with the principle of government ownership of the Intercolonial Railway. I hope that their followers sitting at the back of them will also voice that opinion. Let it be a heritage for the people of the maritime provinces, and if the government adhere to that principle they will receive the support of the people in other sections of the country as well as those of the maritime provinces.


Robert Laird Borden: Before you ieave the Chair, Mr. Speaker, I desire to say just one word. My hon. friend the Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Graham), this afternoon, certainly did give to us statistics regarding the operation of the Intercolonial Railway that seemed to be of a very excellent character indeed. I was very much struck by them, but I do not
know whether in the statistics he embodied all the essential tests of the good management and effective operation of a railway. I am not sufficiently familiar with the practical operation of a railway to judge of that. However, the statistics as far as they went seemed to be exceedingly good but the results disclosed at the end of his very eloquent speech are not such as we might have expected from hearing these statistics for the first time. The hon. gentleman disclosed to us a deficit of about half a million dollars, and when I asked him why the statistics were so good and the results so bad he told me it was entirely due to the fact that the passenger and freight tolls on the Intercolonial are lower than upon the other great railways.
1 cannot of my own knowledge controvert that statement, but during the past two or three years those who know something about it have informed me that with the exception of the commodity of coal - and perhaps one or two other articles-the tolls of the Intercolonial Railway are just as high both for freight and passengers as upon any other great Canadian railway. We have therefore a responsible minister of the Crown assuring us on his responsibility as a minister that the) reason for the extraordinary discrepancy between the good statistics and the bad results of the Intercolonial are because the Intercolonial Railway tolls are lower than they should be. But on the other hand I have the statement of men familiar with the practical operation of railways in this country who say it cannot be assigned to any such cause. When we come to discuss this question more particularly in committee, the House will be entitled to some comparative statement from the minister which will prove beyond doubt in what respect the tolls paid by the people of the maritime provinces upon the Intercolonial are lower than those paid by the patrons of the other great railways.
The Minister of Railways used a remarkable argument in the course of his able address when he said that in the near future the Intercolonial would be face to face with a critical condition because of the approaching completion of the Grand Trunk Pacific. I endeavoured to follow the remarks of the hon. gentleman with a good deal of attention and I think I am right in understanding that this was one of his arguments for advocating some necessary change in respect to the management and operation) of that railway. His point was that upon the completion of the Grand Trunk Pacific, that road would necessarily be in competition with the Intercolonial Railway; that the revenues of the Intercolonial Railway would decrease because of the business diverted to the Grand Trunk Pacific, and that hence there might

be demanded a very thorough change of policy on the part of the government with respect to its road. I would remind the Minister of Eailways that before he was a member of this House, such was not the position taken by those who spoke for the government in the transcontinental debates of 1903 and 1904. I could quote from the debates of that session a great many arguments from the government benches, exactly the contrary of the argument he has used this afternoon. However, I will merely give one citation from the speech of the then Minister of the Interior (Mr. Sifton) who in my opinion made the most effective argument of all from the government benches in support of their policy. Speaking of the Intercolonial Railway, he said
We are told by our late colleague (Mr. Blair) that the facilities are. not sufficient as J"t. and that some millions more will be required to enable that road to cope with the business which it has to meet under present conditions. Well, I do not know whether that be correct or not; I do not know enough about the Intercolonial to say, but I think perhaps we may all agree over that which we ao know, which is a matter of common knowledge, that the Intercolonial had all the business within the last year or two that it cculd do, and its facilities are not more than sufficient to enable it to do the business which li has at the present time.
The hon. member for Hamilton (Mr. Barker) had argued that the Intercolonial ought to be permitted to carry the traffic brought by the National Transcontinental Railway from the west to Montreal, on to the maritime provinces; and the government. through the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Sifton) met that argument in this way:
Now, what is the proposition of the member for Hamilton. It is that the Intercolonial, with its barely sufficient equipment to do the business which it has now, shall take three or four times as great business as the Grand Trunk, that it shall take the business of the Canadian Pacifiic Railway, and that the business of these railways shall ibe suddenly precipitated upon the Intercolonial Railway, and that railway shall be expected with its insufficient facilities to do the business of the whole three, and my hon. friend says that is a consummation to be desired.
And he goes on to draw a harrowing picture of the conditions if the Intercolonial Railway should be called upon to assume the burden of that transportation. It will therefore be seen that the argument from the government benches at that time was that the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific through the province of New Brunswick would not injure the Intercolonial Railway or take away any business from it, but, on the contrary the increase of business would be such that both of these lines


Robert Laird Borden: would be necessary through the province of New Brunswick to handle the traffic. I desire to point this out to the Minister of Railways so that he may know that the argument presented by him for the government this afternoon was the very antithesis of the argument which the government set up in 1903.
The hon. gentleman (Mr. Graham) referred to the efforts of the Grand Trunk to carry this traffic to Portland. Well, the hon. gentleman knows that that phase of the question was thoroughly debated in 1903 and 1904. The hon. gentleman (Mr. Graham) seems rather to despair of the Grand Trunk doing anything else. Why it is five years ago since we despaired of its doing anything else, and we then pointed out that all the clauses and all the agreements and all the contracts that were placed before parliament would not and could not be sufficientto prevent the Grand Trunk from carrying its traffic to Portland in the future as it had in the past. The Prime Minister in discussing the matter at that time said he had no expectations whatever that the Grand Trunk would divert from Portland the traffic it then had and carry it to the maritime ports of this country. He said very frankly that he did not expect .that but he did expect that owing to the provisions of the agreement then placed before this House, all the traffic which the Grand Trunk Pacific would gather up in the west, all the new traffic as he expressed it, would be carried not to Portland but to the maritime ports of Canada. There was a good deal of scope for criticism of that statement. Hon. gentlemen on this side at least could not very well understand how there should or could be any such sharp distinction as that. They did not see and do not yet see how it can be expected that the Grand Trunk will make some curious division of traffic and that which might be assumed to have been created in the past shall go to Portland but all that which might be assumed to be created in the future shall go to St. John and Halifax. No one sees that yet, so far as I am aware, and I am convinced by the remarks of the Minister of Railways to-day that he least of all sees how any such arrangement as that could be carried out.
The minister has by his further remarks given us the best possible illustration of the absolute futility of any such contract as that entered into by this government in 1903 and 1904. What were the remarks of my hon. friend this afternoon? He said that the Intercolonial Railway could not very well be successful, could not very well be remunerative, could not very well command the western traffic which it ought to command unless it could get 'hooked' up to some great railway corporation. I rather think that the great difficulty with regard to the Intercolonial Railway in the past has

been that it has been hooked up too much to political pull and patronage and not sufficiently hooked up to ordinary businesslike and efficient methods. That is the difficulty with the Intercolonial Railway, but I shall come to that later on. The minister desires that it shall be hooked up to some great Canadian railway system. Let us go back for a moment to ten and eleven years ago, let us go back to the proposals of the government in 1897 and 1898. I very well remember the discussion of those years because I was a new member in this House, and was naturally attracted by a very important debate such as that, especially as it had reference to the Intercolonial Railway in which the members from the maritime provinces feel an absorbing interest. What was the proposal of the government at that time? It had entered into a contract with the Drummond County Railway and another with the Grand Trunk Railway, and I would point out to the Minister of Railways the glowing predictions uttered at that time. A very able gentleman then occupied the position of Minister of Railways and Canals, the late Hon. Mr. Blair. At page 4264 of the ' Hansard ' of that year Mr. Blair, speaking for the government, to the parliament of Canada and to the people of Canada, said:
The idea has gone abroad and has sunk deeply in people's minds, that because the Intercolonial Railway has not been a paying property-or, in other words, has scarcely in all its history been able to show a balance on the right side of its accounts-there was something inherently vicious in the government ownership of railways, and that the less a government had to do with them the better. That was an idea which I think I am justified in saying strongly impressed itself upon the people's minds. But I think I shall be able to show this committee that if there has been one thing more than another which has led to this state of affairs, it is that the Intercolonial Railway has been cribbed, cabined and confined. I will give this committee, before I get through, good reasons for believing that after this extension shall be concluded, and after it shall have an opportunity of getting into successful competition, the days of deficits will be over, and we shall be able-I do not say to pay interest on the capital invested- I do not think the country looks for that- but by the business arrangements which we shall be in a position to make, and by the facilities which will be secured to us in Montreal, to show a balance on the right side of the account and to reverse the record which has been exhibited in the running operations of this railway in times past.
Further on:
I do say, as far as I have been able to exercise any little judgment I may have, that the extension of this railway to the city of Montreal will reverse the position it has had in the past by creating business which cannot fail to produce vastly important results.
Then at page 4269:
But the fact, as I say, that we have carried only a small proportion of through passengers and through freight in times past, shows under what disadvantages the road has been operated. We look for an entire change in this respect.
Further on:
And, as I was saying a moment ago, if you examine the details of the contract which has been entered into between the government on one hand and these companies on the other, you will perceive very clearly that we have been solicitous and careful, that every term and every condition should be introduced which would ensure us an opportunity to gain our share of the western trade. As you will see, we have engaged with the Grand Trunk to carry the freights for us from the west to Montreal and to deliver these freights to us when they get them there, not to take them around by the Richmond line or by Levis-not to carry them off on the Grand Trunk, but to deliver them to us. So, when we send our canvassing agents through the west, as all railway companies do, and ought to do, and those agents pick up traffic and make contracts, we may be sure that the business will fall into our hands when it reaches Montreal.
From this you will observe the position taken by the government at that time. Mr. Sifton expressed it during the debate of 1903 in a still more striking way. He said that the Intercolonial Railway had had its terminus in a ploughed field and they had brought that terminus to the city of Montreal and had placed that railroad in a position to compete for and obtain its fair share of the great traffic of the west. The government in 1903 had made a contract with the Grand Trunk, the terms of which are embodied in ' Hansard ' at page 4088 et seq. The government claimed that this contract with the Grand Trunk Railway would enable the government of this country, by the agreement thus constituted, to obtain its fair share of western traffic and through traffic and that it would necessarily result in placing the Intercolonial Railway on an entirely different basis from that which it had occupied in days gone by. There were to be no more deficits, the Intercolonial Railway was to obtain its fair share of western traffic and the agreement thus consummated by the government was to result in an absolute revolution in the returns which the people of this country were to expect from the Intercolonial Railway. We have had 10 years' experience with that contract. What is the answer of the Minister of Railways to-day? His answer to the people of this country, his answer to the parliament of this country, is practically that the agreement of 1897 and 1898 between the government of Canada and the Grand Trunk has resulted absolutely in no change or benefit to the Intercolonial Railway or the people of Canada, that the agreement has been practically evaded, that it has not resulted

in the Intercolonial Railway obtaining any fair or proportionate share of western traffic. I ask hon. gentlemen of this House and the people of this country, in the light of that, how much we are to expect from the agreements which this government in
1903	and again in 1904 made with the Grand Trunk Pacific Company, which is only another name, after all, for the Grand Trunk Railway?
Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that the Minister of Railways and Canals in the address which he delivered this afternoon, has unwittingly passed about as severe a criticism upon the agreements of 1903 and
1904	as have ever been addressed to the parliament or the people of this country. He has shown the absolute futility of any such agreement whether contained in the Act of 1897 or the Act of 1903, so far as the purpose may have been to divert traffic over the Grand Trunk Railway from Portland in the United States, to the Canadian ports in the maritime provinces. Under these circumstances, how does my hon. friend propose to get the Intercolonial Railway hooked up to any great railway system in Canada to a greater extent than it was hooked up to the Grand Trunk Railway by the agreement of 1897. How is it possible to devise an agreement which, on the face of it, would be stronger or apparently more effective for that purpose ? My hon. friend would not, I think, be prepared to suggest how that agreement, in its terms, could be made stronger. Yet we see the result. Every prediction of the government in 1897 has been falsified, not only in the spirit but the letter. The deficits, instead of disappearing, have increased, and we are faced to-day with a deficit of half a million dollars. The only reply which the minister can give is one that cannot very well be confirmed, and that is the people of the maritime provinces are getting lower freight rates than the people of any other province.


George Perry Graham: I was speaking about the lower rates without any particular reference to this year. The deficit this year is largely attributable to the vast falling off in traffic which has taken place on all railways. The falling off up to December 31, was over half a million dollars.


Robert Laird Borden: I do not desire that my remarks as to the results of the operations of the Intercolonial Railway shall be confined by any means to the year we are now considering, because it is well known that when every other railway worthy of the name on this continent was earning dividends on the capital invested in it, the Intercolonial Railway was considered to have made an excellent showing if it came out without a deficit or with a surplus of a few thousand dollars. There must be some explanation of this. The opposition took Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
a certain position in this regard in 1903, when the government brought down its proposal. I am not going to argue the case over again but will simply invite attention to what we then proposed. I moved a resolution in that session declaring, among other things, the following :
That this House is of the opinion that the Intercolonial Railway and the Prince Edward Island Railway should continue to be owned and operated by the government of Canada.
That the government system of railways should be developed and improved in the province of Quebec and the maritime provinces, and should also be extended from Montreal westward to such point or points as will enable it to transport to eastern Canada and to our national ports on the St. Lawrence and on the Atlantic the rapidly increasing products of our great western country.
That the management of government railways and of all railways, under the control or direction of the government, should be tree from party political control, influence and interference.
In the same session, or the session following, there were questions put and answers brought down which indicated that the Intercolonial Railway, if it had been operated froip Parry Sound to Halifax, could have carried grain at a rate which would have shown a profit and which would also have ensured to it a fair share of the western traffic. However, I shall not go over that portion of my argument more than to recall to hon. members the fact that we did take that position at that time.
My hon. friend the Minister of Railways has spoken of bettering the condition by leasing the Intercolonial Railway to some great railway corporation. If that policy, he said, is not adopted and carried out, then it will be necessary for the government to adopt the suggestion of the hon. member for Westmoreland (Mr. Emmerson) and acquire certain branch lines in the maritime provinces, especially the province of New Brunswick. I fail to understand how the acquisition of these branch lines in New Brunswick will bring us to our share of that western traffic which, according to every minister of railways, whom I have heard discuss the subject, is absolutely necessary to the future success and operation of the government road. The acquisition of branch lines in New Brunswick will not give us any special advantage in securing our fair share of the great western traffic to which we are looking in the future. Nor do I see how the acquisition of these branch lines is going to offset the disadvantage relied upon by the Minister of Railways-if it be a disadvantage-of the low rates which he says the people of the maritime provinces enjoy at present as compared with the people of the rest of Canada. Yet my hon. friend puts the two as alternatives. He

says there are only two things to do. One is to lease the Intercolonial Railway to some great railway corporation; the other is to acquire these branch lines. Take the latter alternative, will any man tell me how the acquisition of these branch lines in the province of New Brunswick will remedy the disadvantages of which the minister has spoken? I may be singularly obtuse, but I cannot understand how that will get the Intercolonial Railway out of the difficulties into which, according to the minister, it is now plunged.
I do not know whether or not the Minister of Railways is considering the other alternative. The question was put across the floor in the early part of the session, and the answer of the government was that there had been certain proposals made to it in that regard, but that these proposals were not even considered. But now we come to another important, and a very important part, of the minister's argument this afternoon. He said that some change might be necessary. I think he went so far as to say that in his opinion some change was necessary in the management of the Intercolonial Railway, and he spoke of the appointment of a board. My hon. friend from South Lanark (Mr. Haggart) has referred to my proposal of some years ago that the Intercolonial Railway ought to be placed under the management of a committee. Mr. Speaker, I have not the slightest confidence in, nor do I place the slightest reliance on the word 'board' or the word 'commission,' but I do place some reliance on the management of the Intercolonial Railway by business methods and the absolute elimination of party political control. I do not say, mark you, the elimination of political control or interference. By political interference I mean political in the highest sense of the word. It may be absolutely right and proper that the government and parliament should on occasion exercise what you might call political control in connection with the management of the Intercolonial Railway. But what I am referring to is party political interference, that political patronage, that party pull, which tends to make the Intercolonial Railway, whether the one party or the other be in power, a great political machine. I know, from my own experience in the maritime provinces, that there are certain party hacks there who regard the Intercolonial Railway as belonging to the Liberal party, while that party is in power, and not as belonging to the people of Canada, but to be used for the ends of the party so long as it remains in office. And I am not party man enough to deny that if the Conservatives were in power, there might be men calling themselves Conservatives who would have as fantastic and as absurd a view regarding the ownership and management of that road.
The essential thing that requires to be done is to put the management of the Intercolonial Railway under such conditions that the party hack should have no right to interfere. My hon. friend says that the management of the Intercolonial Railway is to-day all that it should be. I know something about the management of the Intercolonial Railway, and I do not believe that it is to-day what it should be. I believe that there are men by the score, by the hundred, on the Intercolonial who are not bound by the ordinary ties of discipline, because forsooth they were put where they are by political pull and interference; and that same political pull and interference prevents them from submitting to that discipline which is absolutely essential to the proper arid efficient management of any railway. I know whereof I am speaking, and if it were necessary or desirable I could give some illustrations of that fact. The name amounts to nothing; the principle amounts to a great deal; and when my hon. friend the Minister of Railways and Canals tells us that government responsibility would be to some extent interfered with, I venture to think that he speaks, if I may say so without offence, a little without the book. What have we been doing in Canada in recent years? Did we not appoint a commission to superintend and carry on the construction of the Transcontinental Railway? I suppose that was an endeavour to take that work out of party politics, if it were possible to do so by appointing men to carry it on separately from any department of the government. Have we not appointed a Civil Service Commission, and is not government responsibility, in the sense in which my hon. friend spoke, interfered with somewhat by the appointment of that commission? And did we not three or four years ago appoint a Railway Commission for Canada, which has to-day imposed upon it some of the duties, and which under the statutes of this country has assumed some of the functions which were formerly discharged by the Railway Committee of the Privy Council, consisting of members of the government?
I venture to think-and I am speaking to business men who will I am sure weigh my words-that when the government of any country undertakes to engage in a business such as that of transportation, some of the old ideas about govermental responsibility will have to be modified a little. The business of transportation in Great Britain, in the United States, and m this country has been committed almost entirely to private enterprise. As my hon. friend from South Lanark (Mr. Haggart)

has well remarked, it is not so in other countries; because if you eliminate Great Britain and the United States, you will find that at least1 two-thirds of the railways of the world are owned and for the most part operated by the state. But in Great Britain and the United States, it is not so. Therefore when we in Canada engage in a business which in the great English speaking countries of the world has been committed to private enterprise-when we engage in that business in competition with private enterprise, it seems to me that we ought not to be bound too much by the fetters of that governmental responsibility to which my hon. friend the Minister of Railways and Canals attaches so much importance. Suppose the parliament of Canada put the Intercolonial Railway under a commission or a board, or under the management of one man-these are details as to which I care nothing-and give to that man a status which would enable him to manage the road free from party patronage, free from political pull, free from political interference, the parliament of Canada could take back what it had given, and, if it found that that system was not a successful system, it could revert to the earlier methods or seek some new method of dealing with the railway. You do not take away any of the responsibility of parliament or of the government except for the time being, and you take it away only in respect of the operation of the road and in order that it may be carried on as an efficient business enterprise and by efficient business methods. Therefore, I venture to think that the suggestion which has been made in this regard ought not to be put aside too lightly by the Minister of Railways and Canals. He speaks of a board of four men, but he is absolutely nebulous as to what their duties and responsibilities shall be. You have a general manager of the Intercolonial Railway now. What would it advantage the Intercolonial Railway or the people of this country if you appoint four men and leave the methods of operation exactly as they are at present? You might as well appoint Ministers of Railways and Canals and expect good results as to do that. What we must arrive at by any satisfactory solution of this question, which has been under discussion for the past twenty-five years, is some means of applying to the management of the Intercolonial Railway just ordinary, plain, honest business methods. Three or four years ago we advocated making the Intercolonial Railway subject to the Railway Commission just like any ordinary railway in this country. I see no reason why that should not be done. Whether the Minister of Railways and Canals appoints a board, a commission or one man, I think that he will arrive at good results, he will accomplish more than any of his prede-Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
cessors have accomplished, if he will so frame his statute and his regulations that the road will be carried on by the same methods that private enterprise has applied to the transportation business. If he does that, I venture to think that good results will follow.
I see no reason why the Intercolonial Railway should not be operated successfully There seems to be an impression in the minds of some of the hon. members of this House that the Intercolonial Railway runs through a wilderness. Why, it runs through some of the finest districts in Canada, in the province of Nova Scotia, the province of New Brunswick and the province of Quebec. Is the country between Quebec and Montreal not one of the finest districts in Canada? Does not the Intercolonial Railway in the province of New Brunswick run through a splendid fertile region, with great timber and other resources of many kinds? Does not the Intercolonial in the province of Nova Scotia run through a thickly populated country, and is it not carrying the freight of great enterprises such as the Dominion Iron & Steel corporation and the Nova Scotia Steel Company? And can you imagine a finer district anywhere in the Dominion than that portion of the province of Nova Scotia through which it runs? I do not put out of sight the consideration that the minister has placed before the House in respect of the competition of water carriers; but let no one imagine that the Intercolonial is running through a wilderness. It is running through just as good a country as there is on the face of the earth to-day, and there is no reason why it should not be carried on by honest, straight business methods; and there is no reason that I can understand why it should not be operated successfully and bring a fair return, or some return at least on the very large amount of capital which the people of this country have put into it.
With regard to the question of branch lines, that has been very fully debated, and I do not intend to touch upon it to-night. I would be in sympathy with any reasonable movement for providing feeders for the Intercolonial Railway in the maritime provinces or the province of Quebec. My view of the Intercolonial is that it cannot stand still; it must develop or we must give it up, one or the other. You will not find any live Tailway in Canada today that is in a condition of stagnation. The people of Canada and the government of Canada must both make up their minds to either one thing or the other, to give up the Intercolonial altogether, as my hon. friend the Minister of Railways partly suggested this afternoon, that is, pass it over to some private corporation, or to develop that railway, to apply the same enterprise

and efficient business methods, not only to the operation of the road, but to its development, which we might expect if the road was absolutely transferred in title to a corporation. There can be no half way measure about it, it must either be efficiently developed or it must be handed over to some corporation. I rose, however, in the main, for the purpose of pointing out to the Minister of Railways that the glowing predictions of his predecessor of the results of the extension to Montreal, have not been fulfilled, and to point out the extreme difficulty of accomplishing such results as were predicted in that case, by the mere terms of a contract. That has not been possible in the case of the extension of the Intercolonial to Montreal, and it will not be possible, I think, under the contract which this government, in 1903-4, entered into with the Grand Trunk Pacific.


Henry Robert Emmerson: I am sure that any one who has been at all familiar with the part which I have taken in discussions with respect to the Intercolonial, will not condemn me for prolonging somewhat this debate. My voice has been heard at this session already, and on former occasions I have felt impelled to give an expression of my views. I have listened with the closest attention to that which has fallen from the lips of the hon. gentlemen who have preceded me this afternoon and evening, and I am bound to say that I have not been able to elicit very much comfort from anything that has been said either on one side or the other. You, Sir, will agree with me that it is a lonesome task to plough a lone furrow; and when I listened to the remarks of the Minister of Railways and to the subsequent remarks of the hon. member for South Lanark (Mr. Haggart) with respect to the Intercolonial and its branch lines, and when I listened with close attention to the remarks of the leader of the opposition, it will be understood that I could not get much comfort from any of them. It is a somewhat unpleasant position to stand half way between, and to find none who agree with the views which I hold with respect to so great a question as the Intercolonial Railway. Let my attitude not be mistaken. I have now been in public life upwards of twenty-five years, and I have never yet, and never will be, charged with being an opportunist, or with concealing my convictions on public questions, whether they are adverse to one party or the other. It may be said that I hold extreme views with respect to the Intercolonial; that may be true, but they are honestly held, and are the Tesult of a life studv of the conditions which prevail on that Toad, are the result of a familiarity with it that could only be obtained by the association which I have been permitted
to have with the employees who are engaged on that road, and by the knowledge I have of the people of the maritime provinces and of the conditions which that railway is designed to meet.	_
Now, Sir, I can congratulate the Minister of Railways and Canals on the very able speech which he made this afternoon. I think that if ever there was a speech delivered that was confirmatory of the attitude I have taken in this House, it was the speech of my hon. friend the Minister of Railways. It will be borne in mind perhaps that the views which I hold are, in the first place, that we should continue to own and operate the Intercolonial as a government road, and that its operation should be expanded, that it should be developed in every Tespect. I am sure that in the very clear, and concise, and eloquent speech delivered by the Minister of Railways, every point that I have taken with respect to that railway has been established, has been demonstrated beyond question.


Robert Laird Borden: Why was not the minister's speech a comfort to the hon. gentleman ?


Henry Robert Emmerson: My hon. friend need not anticipate. He has established my premises, he has supported every assertion I have ever made, he has demonstrated by comparison with other railways that the Intercolonial has been one of the best managed railways in Canada, that it has been efficiently managed, that its rates are low, that its earnings are as a consequence small, that its expenses are not great in comparison with those of other railways; he has demonstrated all these, and he has shown that the Intercolonial has served a great purpose. He started out with saying that, as a first condition, we must remember that the Intercolonial was a set-off of the canals, that they were both to be viewed in the same light at the time of confederation, that they were designed to come down through the decades of our life as a confederation in that same relative position, the one off-setting the other.
My hon. friend the Minister of Railways and Canals clearly agreed with that condition. Then he brings out the point that it is the duty of this parliament, as it is the duty of the people of the country, to recognize the Intercolonial and the_ canals as twin systems, each to be treated in precisely and practically the same way, the one serving as a highway for central Canada and the other as a highway for eastern Canada as well as for central Canada with Tespect to its traffic. He proved that beyond all question, and my hon. friend the leader of the opposition only took exception^ to one point in the argument of my hon. friend the Minister of Railways and Canals. He joined issue upon the question as to the tariff

rates of the Intercolonial Railway, My hon. friend the leader of the opposition states that he wants it demonstrated to him that the rates prevailing on the Intercolonial are lower. I did, on a former occasion, I think, two years ago, place on the table of this House the tariff rates prevailing on the Grand Trunk, the tariff rates prevailing on the Canadian Pacific Railway, the passenger rates and traffic rates prevailing on these respective railways, and I, at the same moment, placed before this House the passenger and freight rates' prevailing on the Intercolonial. I need only remind the House of that which demonstrated clearly and beyond question on that occasion, that the freight rates on the Intercolonial Railway with respect to every classification of freight were lower than on either of the other railways. I showed then what increase per cent of the Grand Trunk and Canadian Pacific rates over the Intercolonial rates was. on certain classes of freight. I gave the rate with respect to different distances, commencing with five and over ten miles and ranging up to 700 miles, I pointed out the difference both as to export tariff rates and as to the ordinary tariff rates and I also pointed out that the increases over the Intercolonial rates ranged all the way from fifty to one hundred per cent with respect to certain classifications." I called the attention of parliament at that time to the local comparative rates on coal in carloads, and I showed then, in comparison with other railways, that the Intercolonial rates were from 25 to 10 per cent lower dependent upon distance. I also showed that with respect to lumber, to give one illustration, the rates on a 650 to 700 mile haul on the Intercolonial are 57 per cent lower than the export rates on either of the other railways, and with respect to the ordinary haul 76 per cent lower than they are on either the Canadian Pacific Railway or Grand Trunk Railway. The passenger rates were found to be lower dependent upon the mileage. Hon. members need only turn to the ' Hansard ' of 1907, page 5338 and following pages, to find confirmation of the statements whicli I am now making. If my hon. friend the leader of the opposition is anxious to know he can there learn because these are the actual freight tariff rates prevailing on these railways. The originals, as they came from the railways, were presented to parliament and the facts and statements were there made. Only in that respect was there any difference between my hon. friend the leader of the opposition and my hon. friend the Minister of Railways and Canals with respect to the Itercolonial Railway. I have said that I do not get very much comfort even if my position with respect to the Intercolonial Railway as to its operation has been established by the remarks oj my hon. friend the Minister of Railways and Mr. EMMERSON.
Canals because of his conclusions. He has, after saying that the railway had been efficiently managed, that there was nothing wrong with it, that its administration could not be better in comparison with that of other railways, asked the question: What shall we do with the road? Why is it necessary to do anything with the road? He has clearly shown that during the past year, in common with the other railways on this continent, that railway had a decrease in its earning power that has been very marked particularly in the maritime provinces because of the depression in the lumber traffic. It will be borne in mind that the lumber traffic of the Intercolonial represents 26 per cent of its whole traffic, and I am sure that T am within the facts when I state that there has been a practical stagnation in the matter of the transportation of lumber along the Intercolonial during the past twelve months in consequence of the condition of the lumber trade in Great Britain. In that particular alone there has been an immense falling off in the earnings of the Intercolonial Railway and the falling off in that regard has been followed by a lessening of its earning power in other respects, to the extent, as the Minister of Railways and Canals has shown, of $500,000. He has shown that, despite that falling off and despite an increase in the wages paid to the employees, there is only an anticipated deficit of half a million dollars this year. Have we not had a surplus on the Intercolonial Railway for the past five years? Then, what is there to complain of? What is there to be done? If the management of the Intercolonial has been good, in comparison with that of other railways in Canada, if there is nothing to complain of with respect to it in that regard, why should it be condemned simply because there have been deficits? Surely, Mr. Speaker, that will not be contended in this House. We had a report laid on the table of the House the other day showing that the deficit of the Welland canal alone, during the past five years had averaged nearly $180,000 per year. Some hon. member lias computed the figures with respect to the deficits on the Intercolonial from 1867 down to the present and has shown that the average deficits on the Intercolonial, commencing with its inception, when it was a railway running from Riviere du Loup to Halifax, Moncton and St. John, have only been about $245,000. On that one little canal alone there is an annual loss of $170,000. Is there talk of doing anything about that? The minister has told us that the canals of Canada are a balance of the Intercolonial Railway, but if you add but one other canal you will have a greater annual deficit on these two canals than you have all told on the Intercolonial Railway. Of course, if you take the canals of Canada as a whole

there will be, according to the statement oi the minister himself, a deficit of upwards of one and a quarter million dollars. How is it we never hear the question asked. What shall we do with the canals, or, shall we put them under a commission, or, shall we transfer them to a private corporation in the interests of the country? If these questions are asked about the Intercolonial, surely they could with equal reason be asked about the canals which also have deficits.


Mr. ANDREW BRODER.: Of course the hon. gentleman is aware that the traffic on the canals is free to the whole country. There is no analogy between them and the Intercolonial Railway.


Henry Robert Emmerson: I am thankful to my hon. friend for the information, but I think there is a great analogy for there is an investment of $90,000,000 of the people's money in the canals and an investment of $80,000,000 of the peoples' money in the Intercolonial both investments being to develop the trade of the country. But there is this additional point in favour of the Intercolonial, that its construction was undertaken as well to bring about the confederation of the then scattered provinces into one Dominion.
My disappointment at the speech of the Minister of Railways is to be found in the fact that his conclusions do not seem to agree with his argument. He argued that the excellent management of the Intercolonial under government operation showed up well in comparison with the private operation of privately owned railways, and that while the results of the book-keeping were not so favourable to the Intercolonial yet that was brought about by peculiar conditions. I agree with the Minister of Railways up to that point. However, he concludes that although the government administration of the railway is good and although the Minister of Railways through his department can manage it in excellent fashion, and although the conditions justify low rates, yet he says we must go back to company operation before the Intercolonial Railway can be made a success. A success in what way? The hon. gentleman proposes to make it a success by trying an experiment. He proposes to form a board of management, a sort of advisory board he says. But let me ask: What is the necessity for an advisory board or a managing board if the management is as excellent as he said it was under the present administration.	*


Haughton Lennox: Hear, hear.


Henry Robert Emmerson: Why the necessity for any change? If the minister brushes aside the question of placing this railway under an independent commissioner or commissioners, independent of this government or
of any future government and only answerable to parliament; if he declines to place that railway under the direction of a servant of this parliament, then, what is the necessity for turning aside' from the excellent management of the railway during the past few years,-and I agree with him that the management has been excellent. If it is desirable to have a board of management then I would invite the attention of the minister to the character of the board.
I understand from him that three of the gentlemen who are to comprise that board are now connected with the Department of Railways. One of them is the deputy minister, and a very able deputy minister he is as I have had opportunity of knowing. The other two are to be men who have been for years in the employ of the Intercolonial and who have had the management and control of it under the Department of Railways. If this is to be an advisory board we have had for many years the advantage of the advice of these two gentlemen, and we have had for four or five years past the advantage of the great experience and knowledge of the deputy Minister of Railways. I do not know to whom the minister refers when he speaks of two other gentlemen who have been for years in the employment of the Intercolonial Railway, but I suppose I can assume that they are gentlemen who have controlled and managed the Intercolonial Railway in the past. Is that management going to be any better because they are clustered together in a board? Assuming that one of them is the present manager of the Intercolonial Railway, are you going to have him any more efficient or any more alive by attaching him to others and making it a hydraheaded management ? I do not think so. I ask the minister, and I ask hon. gentlemen to consider how it can be expected that any better results will be obtained in the management of the road from these very same men. Well, sir, I do not look for any great success, nor do I look for any great improvement in that direction.
I should be glad indeed to see the hopes of the minister realized but I cannot now see anything but failure written all around the proposition and in that I think many hon. members who have a knowledge of the conditions will agree with me. But that is neither -here nor there, I simply call the minister's attention to it. I asked myself what my hon. friend meant when he said that if this experiment failed these other questions would be considered. What other questions ? Is it the transference of the Intercolonial Railway to a company-operated road? I would hope that that question had been settled in the mind of the minister. He has convinced me and I believe, he has convinced the country that he can manage the Intercolonial Railway efiiciently. He has

demonstrated to this House this afternoon that it is possible to so manage the Intercolonial that it will be in the interests of the people and that it will become what it was designed to be a government-operated road in the interests of the country. The very moment you discuss the question whether the government of this country shall part with the Intercolonial Railway, you are face to face with one great issue, whether you will have a government-operated railway or whether the people will tolerate a railway-operated government, surely the time has not come when we cannot operate that railway, when we cannot as a people manage the railway in the interests of the people. If it should be shown to me that the Intercolonial Railway could be managed under some system with greater advantage to the people of Canada, that it would develop the east to a greater extent under a private corporation, I would be willing to accept that alternative, but the prevailing opinion to-day is in favour of that measure of government-operation which we have. That feeling is not confined to eastern Canada, you will find it in Ontario and in the west. That opinion should be recognized by this parliament.
I quite admit that the corporations are anxious to secure the road. The minister has pointed out that the Canadian Pacific Railway already have access to the Atlantic coast and that in a very few years the Grand Trunk Pacific will find an outlet there. He says then that there must be an outlet for another railway and that the Intercolonial Railway offers an excellent outlet for some trans-continental line of railway. There are only three railroads that have aspirations towards becoming transcontinental ; the Canadian Pacific Railway is now a transcontinental line, the Grand Trunk Pacific is seeking to become one and we intend that it shall be, the Canadian Northern hope to become one. The possession of the Intercolonial Railway by the Canadian Northern Railway would be of immense advantage to the Canadian Northern. Their system is now oO miles west of Edmonton and they hope to reach the Pacific coast. They connect Edmonton and Port Arthur. I read in the newspaper press that there are now proposals to supply the link between Port Arthur and Sudbury. Soon they will have a through line from Sudbury to _ Montreal. There will still be a missing link between Montreal and the sea-board and it would be of immense advantage to them to reach Halifax or Cape Breton. They would then be in contact with their Nova Scotia system. They have a line of railway from Halifax westward around the south coast of Nova Scotia, known as the Halifax and South Western.
If they could connect their western system with their eastern system it would be a great advantage to them, and I do not say Mr. EMMERSON.
they are not justified in having hopes and aspirations in that direction. The question is, is it in the interests of the people of Canada to have them secure that road ? I can well understand that it would establish them in their credit, that they would be placed in an entirely different position before the financial world from that which they are in to-day. It would be of immense advantage to them but would it be of advantage to the people of Canada ? If the experiment which the minister is to undertake with respect to the management of the road during the next year be a failure, if it bring about no better results than he is now obtaining, I would like to know whether there is an idea that we should discontinue our operations of that road in favour of the Canadian Northern? If that were the proposal before this House I would unquestionably take my stand against it. I would be recreant to what I deem to be my duty to my constituents, I would be falsifying the record of a life time, if I were to support any such idea. I cannot agree with the Minister of Railways that the Intercolonial Railway must of necessity be the outlet for a transcontinental railway in order to achieve the success which he would like to see it achieve. It must be borne in mind that the Intercolonial was not built for the wheat traffic. It must be borne in mind that in 1903, when we had under consideration the bringing of the produce of the west to the Atlantic seaboard, it was the opinion of the people of this country, it was the opinion of the members of this House, that the Intercolonial Railway should not be that channel of communication, and that by reason of its conditions by reason of its grades, it would be impossible for it to carry that traffic, and if it is true as the minister states, that the Intercolonial Railway must be an outlet for a transcontinental line, why did we not make it an outlet in 1903?


Some hon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


Henry Robert Emmerson: My hon. friends think they get some comfort from that idea. I hold and every man on the other side must recognize, that the Intercolonial was not designed for the purpose of carrying the wheat from the west, it was extended to Montreal, to secure the traffic of central Canada, uniting Ontario and Quebec and the maritime provinces. It was intended to unite the provinces of Ontario and Quebec to the maritime provinces. It was never built as a transcontinental line and it was never expected that it would become such a line. If the Intercolonial is given the advantage of management and the advantage of the traffic of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, if its facilities are enlarged, if its branch lines are extended into the remote sections of the maritime provinces, it will accomplish the object

which led to its construction-not the carrying of traffic from the wheat fields of the west, but the traffic from industrial centres of Ontario. These industrial centres are pouring out each year an increasing quantity of products for which they are seeking a market, and in order to secure that market they require the best possible transportation facilities. They require to reach the remote sections of the maritime provinces at the lowest cost and with the greatest advantage. But under the conditions prevailing with respect to ing Intercolonial Railway and its connecting lines, these advantages are not given the manufacturers of Ontario, and these manufacturers consequently cannot reach those remote markets. The Intercolonial Railway will be a great success if it could but assemble that traffic and distribute it within the zone of its influence. That zone can be widened and extended by the acquisition of these branch lines. And if it is extended and if rates fair and reasonable to the consumer as well as to the manufacturer are afforded, I venture the assertion that the Intercolonial Railway would be an immense success, not merely in bringing together the people of the different provinces, but in earning a surplus which would increase each year. I remember on one occasion I had a computation made as to what the financial returns of the Intercolonial Railway would have been had we charged on our traffic for one year the rates charged on the Canadian Pacific Railway in eastern Canada, and I found that we would have had a surplus on that year's operations o: two and a ha'.f million dollars. Surely with these opportunities within our reach, it is the duty of this government and parliament to place the Intercolonial Railway in such a position that these results will be brought about. My hon. friend the Minister of Railways realizes that. His own argument demonstrated that it could be done, and I am sure that there is no man who would dispute the conclusion, that if it can be done it should be done.
I do not wish to say anything further with respect to any management or any proposed management or method of management. Opportunities for criticism will naturally be offered, but it seems to me that the minister should take into consideration the additional expense involved. I am not one of those who had very great faith with respect to the Civil Service Commission. I venture to declare myself from my place in this House on that subject. We find to-day that we have established a commission at Ottawa for the purpose of doing-what? For the purpose of selecting employees for the civil service in Ottawa, and $30,000 were voted the other day simply to run that commission. But formerly the work entrusted to that commission was
done, and well done, by the heads of the departments. But if this board in connection with the Intercolonial Railway is created, there must of necessity be additional expenses; and while I am not in accord with the Minister of Railways regarding this proposition, because I do not think it is in the interests of the Intercolonial Railway or the proper administration of his department, yet I think that he should be given full latitude to manage that railway in the way he considers the most efficient. I am criticising his proposition, as others no doubt will, but yet it is not a matter of vital concern. The question which is vital, boiled down, is this, that the Intercolonial Railway shall be continued as a government-operated railway, that it shall be extended, that its influence shall be made wider, and that it shall be made better able to do, not the transcontinental business, not the assembling of traffic from the fields of the west, but the gathering up of the products of Ontario and Quebec and distributing them to the markets of the east and to the point of departure to markets beyond the sea. If we should aim to do that, in my judgment we will be fulfilling the expectations of those who have the interests of this country at heart, and assist in developing our industries.


Mr. W. S. LOGGIE (Northumberland, New Brunswick).: I cannot let this opportunity pass without saying a few words on the very important question before the House. The matter of the construction and operation of the Intercolonial carries us back to the days of confederation when that road was made a link in the chain which binds the maritime provinces to the rest of Canada. As my hon. friend from Westmoreland (Mr. Emmerson) pointed out a few days ago, there is a clause in the British North America Act providing that the construction of the Intercolonial Railway shall commence within six months of the passing of the Act, and we have during the last forty years operated that road as a government railway. In 1896, when the present government came into power, the earning power of that railway was in round numbers about $3,000,000. During the last twelve years by adding the mileage between Ste. Rosalie and the Chaudiere, namely, 112 miles, and between Fredericton and Loggie-ville, 125 miles, we have increased the earning power of that road by $6,000,000. We have increased its earning power 300 per cent, whereas we have not, except by a very small percentage, increased its mileage.
We have therefore to take this position that we can do the transportation from the east to the west and from the west to the east-I do not mean as a portion of a great through line from the prairie provinces; but in the great industrial centres of

Canada, mainly in the commercial metropolis of the Dominion, the city of Montreal, we can gather up a very large proportion of our traffic; and we are handed a portion by the Grand Trunk Railway, according to an arrangement between the government and the company. But I want you, Mr. Speaker, not to forget when we are talking about traffic from the west, which we are not in a position to gather up as perhaps we would be if the railway extended to the prairie provinces, that at the present moment we have a practical monopoly of gathering up the traffic in the east. We are told by the department in reply to the hon. member for Guys-borough (Mr. Sinclair) that the Intercolonial Railway traffic from the east to the west is fifty-six per cent. As far as that fifty-six per cent of the traffic is concerned, what does it matter how many railways there are carrying the traffic from the west to the east? They will not affect it. We have a traffic arrangement with the Grand Trunk Railway Company by which we take their traffic at Montreal in exchange for our traffic to them. When they take that traffic from us, it is surely reasonable that we should have something that we can offer to other roads, if the Grand Trunk Pacific should say that it wanted all the traffic to Moncton. We must not get the blues over this project. It is a matter that has engaged the attention of this country for the last forty years, and there has been adverse criticism by both parties. When the Conservative party was in power, there was adverse criticism by the opposition. I am very glad, however, on this occasion to hear my hon. friend the ex-Minister of Railways (Hon. John Haggart) say: Do not part with the Intercolonial Railway; the time will come when it will be a heritage to the maritime provinces. Let me say, Mr. Speaker, that these are my sentiments -to stand by the tie that binds the provinces by the sea with the provinces of central Canada. The very word Intercolonial means an interchange of traffic. You have this steel road taking Ontario flour from the west to the east, and fifty-six per cent of the traffic of the Intercolonial is from the east to the west; and if it be true that our rates are lower than those of any ordinary railroad, will any gentleman tell me that the people in ;he west are not receiving a share of the benefits arising from those low rates ? It does seem to me that if there are low rates on the Intercolonial Railway, the advantage is mutual. There was 44 per cent of the traffic going east carried over the road during the past year. I venture to say that a very large proportion of that arises in the city of Montreal and is not handed over by the Grand Trunk Railway at all. If we look on the bright side of this matter, we shall be able to realize the picture of Mr. LOGGIE.
the ex-Minister of Railways on the Conservative side of the House (Mr. Haggart) who said to-night that we must not part with the Intercolonial Railway, and I echo in the strongest terms that sentiment. I realize that it is the heritage of the maritime provinces and the link uniting those provinces to the other portions of the Dominion. If you leased the railway for ninety-nine years, you would to all intents and purposes be selling it, and the effect might be to break that tie. I shall not forget very quickly what the hon. Minister of Railways said to-day about linking the Intercolonial Railway to one of the great transcontinental lines. In the Act relating to the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific, there is a clause providing that the Intercolonial Railway should be linked to the Grand Trunk Pacific from Moncton to Halifax and from Moncton to St. John. That clause reads like this:
Securing to the company running powers and haulage rights over the Intercolonial Railway or any portion thereof, upon such terms as may be agreed upon between the government and the company.
I am sure that is good doctrine. That is using the rails of the people's railway from Moncton to the sea-board, and it does seem to me that it would not be unreasonable to apply the same principle to another great transcontinental railway that will very soon reach the city of Quebec. That is, use the rails of the Intercolonial railway from Quebec to Moncton-retain the management of the people's railway and give haulage rights over it. I	know
that	there	is	objection to	that.	Iknow	that	it	will be said	that	it isa long haul, and that local traffic would not be gathered up. I quite admit that'. It seems to me all the same that some favourable arrangement might be made along these	lines.	I	have another	alternative.
This is a project of mine, and you will pardon me, Mr. Speaker, if I make it known. The Act relating to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway gives the government this power:
Reserving power to the government to grant running powers and haulage rights sufficient to enable any railway company desiring to use the said eastern division, or any part thereof, to do so upon such terms as may be agreed upon between the companies, or, in the case of their failure to agree, then upon such terms as may be deemed reasonable and just by the government, having regard to the rights and obligations of the lessees.
Now my proposition is this: We will have one of the best pieces of railroad in the world between Quebec and Grand Falls. We have power to allow the Canadian Northern to run over the rails down as far as Grand Falls. Then the country requires in the very worst way a railroad constructed

between Grand Falls and St. John down the St. John valley. Therefore, we have a through road for the Canadian Northern from the Pacific to the Atlantic by using a certain number of miles of the Transcontinental Railway, namely the distance between Quebec city and Grand Falls, and there you will have a road filling a gap which very much needs to be filled, because every hon. gentleman in this House knows that the necessity of a road down the St. John River valley is one of the most urgent needs in New Brunswick to-day. When this gap is filled, a line will be afforded from one ocean to the other ocean. So far as I am personally concerned, that project would satisfy me very well. I would never think of saying to the Canadian Northern, you take over the management of what we have managed for forty years, and administer it. The government have done so that its earnings have increased from $3,000,000 twelve years ago to $9,000,000 this year. Now, Mr. Speaker, so far as the management of the railway is concerned, 1 am willing to listen to any suggestion that hon. members may have to make. They can eliminate the partisan feature from it. 1 he road intersects my county from one end to the other, and I can tell hon. gentlemen that I do not know anything wrong in the management of the road. I do not know that the partisan feature which is dwelt upon so much, affects the revenue in the least, I do not know that there is a man on that railway who is not earning the dollar a day that he receives. So far as I know the railway is well managed, and it is a pleasure for me to compliment the Minister of Railways on the statement he has given us to-day, both as to its management during the year past and also so far as the present year has gone. Now I cannot help but say this, Mr. Speaker, that the great corporations base their expenditures on their revenues and have to pay interest on capital. Their management endeavour to manipulate profits so that the interest for dividends is provided for. If, however, there comes a bad year and earnings do not reach nearly -what was anticipated, the inevitable must happen, namely, no dividend is declared, but as a rule, there is no noise about it. Now, what is the case with the Intercolonial in this regard; it is this: The expenditure and revenue are based on practically an equili-brum, and when a panic year happens, and earnings fall off, then the only result can be>
a deficit, because provision was not made for any great surplus over expenditure. So far as I am concerned I would favour, if necessary, raising the rates 5 per cent all round, 10 per cent if necessary, 15 per cent if necessary. I am satisfied that as a party', and as a people we owe it to ourselves to make that railway self sustaining, knowing that it is the chain
that was forged many year^ ago to bind the maritime provinces to upper Canada, and that chain is clearly provided for in the British North America Act. Therefore I say that for my part I am opposed to the Intercolonial passing into the hands of any corporation to manage it, but I would allow another corporation to use the rails on terms that are reasonable and fair. I am willing to give the Transcontinental most favourable terms from the starting point to the seaboard, I would give them less rates than they could possibly afford, to pay interest on the capital invested, if it used its own rails. Now, Mr. Speaker, any proposition to part with the management of the Intercolonial seems to me like breaking faith with the maritime provinces. I see no reason for pessimism. The prospects are bright. My hon. friend from South Lanark (Mr. Haggart) said that the road could be made self supporting. I do not think there is much danger if the Grand trunk Railway should say they are going to hand over to the Grand Trunk Pacific what was our share of the freight going east. They cannot give it for Campbellton, they cannot give it for Newcastle, they cannot give it for other points between Levis and Moncton, it is true they can give it for Moncton. Let me tell you that they receive more from us than they give us and in a fair exchange we can take care of ourselves.


Mr. LLOYD HARRIS (Brantford).: I do not think this discussion should close without the House hearing from one of the private members from the province of On-ario. We have heard from the Minister of Railways to-night, a statement on the Intercolonial and I must admit that after listening carefully to the statements he madet I came to the conclusion that perhaps after all the opinion I have had in the past was wrong. He made out such a case for the good management of that property that once or twice I began to think that perhaps the Intercolonial was managed better than any other road. I have consulted the report of the Minister of Railways, and studied the figures which are given as regard capital expenditure, and revenue, operating and working expenses. According to my calculations I find that during the 41 years the road has been in opera-tian, the Intercolonial has produced a surplus in 18 years, and in 23 years it has produced a deficit. Then I analysed it a little bit closer. I wondered whether the bad management was all since the present government came into power. I took the number of years in which there were surpluses from 1878 to 1895, and I found that they numbered six and that the number of years in which there were deficits was twelve. The percentage of surplus years was not as great as we would like them to

have been. From 1896 to 1908 I found that the good or bad management, as shown by surpluses and deficits, was a little to the advantage of the present government, as the number of years in which they had surpluses was seven and the number of years in which they had deficits was six.
However, I have got back to the point 1 started from. I have had my own opinion as to the management of the Intercolonial Railway, I have discussed that question with members of this House, I have discussed it with business men outside of the House, in the maritime provinces, in the province of Quebec and in the province of Ontario and in these private discussions every man with whom I have talked has been of the opinion that the Intercolonial can snever be properly and successfully* managed under a government department as it is at the present time. If we feel that, if we believe it, I cannot see why we should not have the courage to stand up and say so. My hon. friend from Westmoreland (Mr. Emmerson) stated that he had cold comfort in the speeches which he had listened to, and I am very much afraid that he will find less comfort perhaps in my few remarks than he had from the others. We are discussing at the present time the theory of government ownership. We have had an opportunity of experimenting with government ownership in this country for forty-two years and over. If we were running a business and we found that one department of it was being carried on at a loss, what would happen? We would change our methods of management or get rid of that particular department of the business. Are we running a business when we are representing the people in this House? Is not this simply a great big business undertaking and should it not be run on strictly business lines? I was very much struck with the statement which was made by my hon. friend the Minister of Railways and Canals and also with another statement which was made by my hon. friend the hon. leader of the opposition. The hon. Minister of Railways and Canals made the statement in his remarks that the views of the political parties on the Intercolonial Railway depend on whether they are in or out. The hon. leader of the opposition made the statement that the Intercolonial has been too much hooked up to political influences. You have these two statements made by prominent members on both sides of this House, and I think that ninety-nine, perhaps one-hundred per cent, of the members of this House believe that these statements disclose the cause of the whole trouble, and account for our failure to properly manage the Intercolonial. If that is the case I think we should face the situation and endeavour to seek a solu-Mr. HARRIS.
tion which will be in the interest of the country at large, because any solution which can be arrived at with regard to the management of this property will necessarily and decidedly be to the interest of the country at large. The first principle of government ownership is to give the people the special utility to be owned and managed by the government at cost. When I say cost I do not figure as my hon. friend from Northumberland, New Brunswick, (Mr. Loggie) does. He says that the revenue and expenditure of the Intercolonial Railway are on an equilibrium. That is very good. If we ran our own private business with the revenue and expenditure on the same kind of equilibrium we would all be in the poorhouse in short order. I am of the opinion that the Intercolonial should be managed in such a manner that it will not only pay its operating or running expenses, but that it will earn a fair and and decent amount of interest on the capital employed in the construction of the property. That is a principle that every hon. gentleman^ I am sure, will agree with. The ouly management I will be satisfied with and I believe the only management that other members of this House will be satisfied with is the one that will produce results of that kind. I was very much surprised to hear the hon. member for Westmoreland make the statement on the floor of this House that local rates in the maritime provinces are lower than they are in any other part of the country. Is that not right?


Henry Robert Emmerson: They are lower than any where in the world.


Lloyd Harris: In that case then the other provinces are having a very decided and great wrong done to them because the people in the maritime provinces have no right to have local rates lower than we have in Ontario or than the people in Manitoba and the western provinces have.


Henry Robert Emmerson: You get your canals
free of tolls.


Lloyd Harris: I do not propose to take up this canal question because I think it is a very dangerous thing to get into any sectional discussion. The hon. membeT for Westmoreland (Mr. Emmerson) tells us that the deficits on the Welland canal are so and so. The only thing I will say about that is that if we have deficits on the Welland canal we have a perfect right to have them for the simple reason that the good old province of Ontario which stands as a buffer state between the east and the west has to pay the deficits; so, why should we not have them if we want them ? Now, we evidently cannot agree as to the best means of managing this property. The hon. member for South Lanark (Mr. Haggart) is

not apparently willing to agree that any of the methods which have been mentioned here to-night would be satisfactory. Others have agreed that a commission would be satisfactory. I personally do not believe that a commission would assist us very much. I do not think that we would get any better results by management under a commission than we get at the present time for the simple reason that I do not believe that we could get a commission which could be completely separated from political influences, and therefore management by commission would have the same drawbacks that we have at the present time.
I am not going to make any suggestion as to how the property should be managed but I am glad the question has come up and that we have had an opportunity of expressing our views and opinions upon it.
I hope, before anything definite is done, that we will have a further opportunity of seriously considering the question with the view of getting together in a fair, proper and reasonable discussion and endeavour to arrive at a solution which will help us out of a position which is not a good one for the country generally and especially for that portion of the country through which the road Tuns.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House went into Committee of Supply.
Capital- Intercolonial Railway towards double tracking part of the line, $69,000.
George Perry Graham: This is merely to carry on the work between Moncton and Pain-sec junction, which has been going on for some years.


Mr. RHODES.: Will this vote complete the work?


George Perry Graham: It is considered it will complete the section between Moncton and Painsec junction.


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: What will be the total cost of double tracking that section?


George Perry Graham: The total expenditure
to the present time has been $783,973,
Improvements at Loggieville, $25,500.


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: What is this money
being spent for?


George Perry Graham: Three-stall engine house, concrete engine pits, remodelling and enlarging the station building, loading platform, freight house, tracks and grading. There is a revote of $14,450.


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: Is this a divisional point?


George Perry Graham: It is really the end of the Canadian Eastern section from the junction down to Loggieville.
Increased accommodation-Truro, $52,000.


Mr. STANFIELD.: I do not rise to find fault with this vote, which I may say is a veTy necessary one. I would like, however, to call the attention of the minister to the very unsanitary condition of the present Truro station, and I shall not delay the House more than a minute or two because I feel sure it will be unnecessary to dwell on the matter at any great length. I have in my hand a clipping from a Truro paper which contains a statement signed by Dr. S. L. Walker, health officer of the town of Truro. It is stated in this newspaper that the report of the medical officer is to be forwarded to the Minister of Railways and myself but my copy has not reached me.


George Perry Graham: Nor mine.


John Stanfield: I will direct the attention of the minister to what Dr. Walker says in conclusion, and then I shall send him over the report so that he may read it. Dr. Walker says:
Taken as a whole the Truro railway station is a positive menace to the health of all who enter it for any purpose, and were it under the town's jurisdiction it could be condemned by the board of health.
I would like the minister to look into this matter and have a remedy applied with as little delay as possible.


George Perry Graham: I certainly agree with my hon. friend (Mr. Stanfield) that there appears to be a very undesirable condition of affairs at Truro station. The report to which my hon. friend refers was brought to my attention by himself but I have not yet received my copy. I can assure the hon. gentleman that I will give it attention. Of course we will get rid of all these things when we build the new station but in the meantime we will look into that report.
Some resolutions reported.
Mr. FIELDING moved the adjournment of the House.


Richard Blain: What business will be taken to-morrow?


William Stevens Fielding: We shall go into supply on the Public Works estimates. At the first convenient opportunity in committee I would like to have the supplementary estimates for the current year considered.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House adjourned at 11.05 p.m.
[Stage Direction]

Wednesday, March 17, 1909.