[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)

Mr. MONK:: 1.	Did the invitations for tenders for the construction of the new Quebec bridge call for a carriage way as well as a railway over the new bridge, or was the carriage way left to the option of the tenderers?


Mr. SMYTH (Algoma).: 2.	Did the government obtain a written report from its board of engineers before giving the contract for said bridge? If so, what was the date of said report and by whom was it signed?
3.	On what date was the contract adjudged, and at what price?
4.	Who are the president, directors and manager o.f the company, which obtained the contract for said bridge?


Mr. GRAHAM:: 1.	The official design provided for a railway, street railway and roadways, but tenderers were asked in addition, to submit designs of their own and alternate designs were submitted, in addition to tenders on the official design, by the following:
The Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nurem-berg, A. G. Werk Gustavsburg, Brucken-bauanstalt (in Gustavsburg) Germany;
The Pennsylvania Steel Company and
The St. Lawrence Bridge Company.
The British Empire Company being the only one that did not submit an alternate design.
2.	A report was made signed by Messrs. H. E. Vautelet, Ralph Modjeski and Charles Macdonald, dated 26th October, 1910, stating that a satisfactory bridge, could be erected on the official design, or on either of the several designs submitted by the St. Lawrence Bridge Company. The Minister of Railways replied, requesting the Board to supplement that statement by a more positive one, as to which of the designs they named was the best, and requiring the Board to make a recommendation, as he considered that part of the duties for which they were engaged. A report was then made by Messrs. Ralph Modjeski, C.E., and Charles Macdonald, C.E., members of the Board, recommending the adoption of one design submitted by the St. Lawrence Bridge Company; the chairman Mr. H. E. Vautelet, dissenting. Under the order in council, appointing the board, it was provided that, -where differences arose, two additional engineers should be called in to assist in deciding the difference. Under this order Messrs. Henry W. Hodge, C.E., member American Society Civil Engineers and M. J. Butler, C.E., formerly deputy minister and chief engineer of the department were called in. As a result of their meeting, on the 11th February, 1911, a report was made recommending the acceptance of design ' B ' of the St. Lawrence Bridge Company. This design included all the accommodations for traffic provided in the official design. This report was signed by Messrs. M. J. Butler, Henry W. Hodge, Ralph Modjeski and Charles Macdonald, chairman, pro tern. In this report attention was also called to the fact

if the government desired it ' the highways can now be omitted without changing the above recommendation, or delaying the progress of the work.' After a full consideration, the government decided to build a railway bridge with footwalks, and on the 14th March, 1911, a report was signed by Messrs. Macdonald, Modjeski and Hodge, recommended that a contract with the St. Lawrence Bridge Company for the superstructure of a bridge of this character, by which a saving of $2,600,000 could be made, This design is, in every way, similar to design * B ' which was recommended by the Board, except that it provides, only, for the railway and footwalks.
3.	31st March, 1911, at 9.02 cents per pound.
4.	President and manager, Phelps Johnson, vice-president, F. C. McMath, directors: Phelps Johnson, Charles Cassils, F.
L.	Wamklyn, G. H. Duggan, and J. F. Weber, Montreal; F. C. McMath, Willard Pope and Bernard Colbrun, of Waikerviile.


*Mr. MONK:: 1.	What members at present form part of the Quebec Bridge Board of Construction?
2.	What is the total amount paid to dale for salaries and expenses of the Quebec Bridge Board of Construction?
3.	Is it intended to maintain said board in activity during the construction of the new bridge ?
4.	Has a contract been signed for the construction of the new bridge? If so, on what date?


Mr. GRAHAM:: 1.	The members of the Quebec Bridge Board, are as follows: C. N. Montserrat,
M.	S.C.E., chairman; Ralph Modjeski, M.I. C.E., M.A.C.E.; C. C. Schneider, C.E., past president American Society Civil Engineers.
2.	The total amount paid to date for salaries and expenses of the Quebec Bridge Board is $256,808.23.
3.	Yes.
4.	Yes. 4th April, 1911.	.


Mr. MONK:: *
1.	What amount did the British Empire Bridge Company deposit with the government as a guarantee in sending in its tender for the construction of the new Quebec bridge?
2.	Was the said deposit made in money or was it an accepted cheque? If the latter, on what hank was it drawn?
3.	How long was the said deposit or cheque kept by the government?
4.	On what date was it received and when was it returned to the tenderers?
5.	Did it produce interest in the meantime, and what was the amount of said interest?
6.	Was the said interest allowed to the said tenderers?


Mr. GRAHAM:: 1.	A large deposit was thought necessary and each tenderer was asked to deposit a
cheque for $500,000. The following cheques were received: The Maschineniabrik Augs-burg-Nuremberg, A.G. accepted cheque for $500,000 on the Canadian Bunk of Commerce payable, to the Minister of Railways and Canals and signed by the manager of the bank; The Pennsylvania Steel Company, accepted cheque for $500,000 on the Bank of Montreal, payable to the Minister of Railways and Canals, signed Pennsylvania Steel Company, per Edward M. Smith; The British Empire Company, accepted cheque for $500,000 on the Bank of Montreal payable to the Minister of Railways and Canals signed by tne manager and accountant; The St. Lawrence Bridge Company, two accepted cheques of $250,000 each ($500,000) on the Bank of Montreal, payable to the Minister of Railways and Canals, one signed by the Dominion Bridge Company, Limited and the other by the Canadian Bridge Company, Limited.
2.	The British Empire Company's deposit was an accepted cheque for $500,000 on the Bank of Montreal.
3.	Cheques of the Maschineniabrik Augs-burg-Nuremberg A. G. the Pennsylvania Steel Company the British Empire Company were received on the 30th September, 1910, and that of the St. Lawrence Bridge Company, on the 1st October, 1910. Cheques were returned to the unsuccessful tenderers on the 6th April, 1911.
4.	Received on the 30th September and returned on the 6th April.
5.	No. Interest is not paid on such deposits, but interest is allowed to the successful tenderer when the contract is awarded and the cheque has been sent to the Finance Department,
6.	Answered by Number 5.


LALTRIER RECEPTION AT MONTREAL.
*Mr. NANTEL:: 1.	What amount has been spent by the Harbour Commissioners of Montreal for the Lau-rier reception on the return of the First Minister from his recent voyage?
2.	What special sums have been expended, respectively, in ornamentation of streets, buildings and public places, in illumination and flags, in fireworks, and other general expenses in connection with the said reception.


Mr. BRODEUR:: 1. and 2. The government has no information.


SPECIAL NEWSPAPER TRAINS.
Mr. BEATTIE:: 1.	What is the cost of the operation of the special train leaving Toronto at 1.55 a.m., each week day morning for carymg Toronto newspapers to London? .
2	What correspondence is there leading up to this departure in the mail service?
99a3

3.	Wliat were the trains by which this mail was formerly carried and the hours at which they left Toronto?
4.	What is the cost to the Post Office Department of the new train?
5.	Do the newspapers pay any share of the cost of this train? If so, to what extent?
6.	Why was this special newspaper train established to run west of Toronto to London and not east of Toronto?


Mr. LEMIEUX:: 1.	There is no special train for the purpose of carrying Toronto newspapers to London at any hour. What is probably referred to is the regular mail train leaving Toronto at 2.55 a.m., and which costs the department $40,650.
2.	There is no correspondence except the reports of the officers of the department who deal with these matters.
Action was taken in response to repeated representations toy the representatives of the western peninsula of Ontario that, owing to the hour at which trains left Toronto at night, and the fact that trains left Toronto m the morning at an hour too late to make connection with trains leaving London and other points, unnecessary delay was occasioned to important mails, not only for the western and northwestern portions of On-tano tout for important points in the Central, Western and Eastern States.
3.	The train leaving Toronto at 6.20 a.m reaching Hamilton, 7.40 a.m. and London, 10.56 a.m., too late to make any connections with outgoing trains.
4.	Answered by No. 1.
5.	Newspapers contribute nothing to this train whatever.
6- The mail service between Toronto and Ottawa, Montreal and other eastern points is a direct one to these points alone, and' does not involve the delaying of mails for
TTS-?n,,t o?0lnta' either in Canada or the United States owing to failure to make connections with outgoing trains; and the amount of mail accumulating for Montreal Uttawa, and other points between the tinn of departure at night and that of the nex morning to these same points- is not suffi cient to warrant the expense of such ; train.


PORCUPINE FIRE SUFFERERS.
Mr. WALLACE:: 1.	When did the request for a supply o: mihtia tents for the relief of Porcupine firt sufferers first reach the government?
2.	What time elapsed between the receipt ol
request and the issue of the order for shipments of tents?	^
3.	When were the tents shipped?
.	4. What was the reason for the delay, ii
there was any?
5.	Was a guarantee required by the department before the shipment was authorized?


Mr. BEATTIE.: 


Sir FREDERICK BORDEN:: 1	The evening of Wednesday, July 12th.
2	The morning of Friday, July 14th.
3	Major Hallick of the Ordnance Corps left Ottawa Friday night, arrived in Toronto Saturday morning, where he found 500 tents and 4,000 blankets and a detachment of men awaiting him; he then immediately left for the burnt district with the men and stores.
4.	No delay.
5.	Before obtaining proper authority from Privy Council with a view to meeting the emergency, the full value of the equipment desired was requested by an official of the Militia Department. Free issue was however authorized by the Privv Council.
SMELT FISHING IN NOVA SCOTIA. Mr. JAMESON:
L Have any requests or petitions been received from Nova Scotia smelt fishermen, or on their behalf, of recent years, for a change in the open season for the taking of smelts with bag-nets?1 If so, from what localities, and what alteration in the season was requested ?
2.	What action, if any, was taken by the department with'respect to such requests?
3.	Is it the intention to make any change in the_ dates of the open season to meet the conditions adversely affecting the smelt fishermen in the localities complained from ?
4.	What was the number of bag-net licenses issued to smelt fishermen in each county in Nova Scotia for the year ending 31st March, 1911?
5.	What was the total number of licenses of the class mentioned issued for Nova Scotia during each of the past ten years, the quantity of smelts taken yearly by such method during the same period in that province, and the number of persons engaged in the fishery conducted under such license?


Mr. BRODEUR:: .
1.	Yes, such requests have been received from localities bordering on the Strait of Northumberland. Different alterations, looking to the closing of the season at a later date, were asked for.
2.	After -careful consideration the department decided that the present season for bag-nets is the most suitable one in the public interest.
3.	Not as at present advised, for the reasons, given in answer No. 2.
4. Inverness	 3
Richmond	25
Halifax	 7
Guysboro	 6
Antigonish	 5
Pictou	 39
Cumberland	 77
Colchester	 17
Digby	 7
Yarmouth	 10
Shelburne	 1

99B6
5.
Year.		Licenses.
1900-1901 . . .		.... 85
1901-1902 . . . .		.... 74
1902-1903 . . . .		.. .. 114
1903-1904 . . ..		.... 70
1904-1905 . . . .		.. . . 118
1905-1906 . . . .		.... 180
1906-1907 . . . .		. . .. 151
1907-1908 . . . .		.... 116
1908-1909 . . . .		.. . . 194
1909-1910 . . . .		.. . . 191
1910-1911 . . . .		. . .. 19V
Quantity	of Smelts	taken.
Year.		Lbs.
1900-1901 . . . .		. . 459,112
1901-1902 . . . .		. . 252,180
1902-1903 . . . .		. . 360,475
1903-1904 . . . .		.. 512,176
1904-1905 . . . .		. . 566,880
1905-1906 . . . .		. . 415,510
1907-1908 11 years . . . .		.. 454.447
1908-1909 .. ..		. . 659,185
1910-1911 . . . .		. . 718,354
1910-1911 .. .	[DOT] (not yet	published)These figures	embrace	smelts caughtwith gill-nets and	hook and line, as the	
quantities caught by each contrivance' has not been kept separately. The department cannot say how many in addition to the licences were engaged in this particular method of smelt fishing.


GOLD CIRCULATION IN CANADA.
Mr. MACDONELL:: 1.	How much gold is in circulation in Canada, including amounts in banks and in the hands of the government?
2.	How much of the above is United States gold, and how much British?
3.	By what authority is this United States gold accepted as legal tender in Canada?
i.	Is the government about to arrange with the United States for the circulation of gold coinage in both countries as legal tender? If so, is the government going to coin and issue gold of the same weight and fineness as the United States gold, and has Canada thereby decided to adopt the United States standard of weight and fineness?


Mr. FIELDING:: 1.	There are no available means of finding the amount of gold in circulation in Canada. It is obvious that gold coin in the possession of private individuals or corporations cannot be ascertained.
The banks do not in their returns to the government indicate the amount of gold held, silver coin being included in the "'specie' item. Inquiry will be made from the banks, and when return of their gold holdings is made the figures will be given.
2. The amount of gold held by the Min-inster of Finance, June 30, 1911, was:
British Sovereigns	$5,867,913.65
United States gold	coin	..	77,642,009.00Bullion-mint bars	..	..	222,933.99Total	$83,732,856.643	Section 10, chapter 14, of the Acts of 1910-'An Adt respecting the Currency'.
The same enactment was embodied in the first currency legislation after confederation-section 9 of chapter 4, Acts of 1871. The Act in which this section appeared was entitled 'An Act to establish one uniform currency for Canada'.
The enactment first appeared in tho legislation of the old province of Canada in section 11, chapter 158 of the Acts of that legislature for the year 1853, and was continued in force, in the old province of Canada, at least, until its re-enactment by the Federal Act of 1871, above referred to.
No arrangements are being made with the United States for the circulation of the gold coinage of Canada, when struck, as legal tender in the United States.
The standard weights and fineness for the gold coinage of Canada are as set out in 'The Currency Act 1910'. The standard weights and fineness of United States gold coins correspond with these provisions.


CANADIAN NAVAL SERVICE AND CORONATION.
*Mr. MACDONELL:: 1.	What midshipmen or naval cadets of the Canadian Naval Service attended the Coronation, and why did they not all attend, in accordance with a statement that appeared in the public press as emanating from the government to that effect?
2.	What was the method of selection, and who made the selection?
3.	Did the Governor General make a request that all the cadets should attend the Coronation, and if it was decided that they should all go, why was the change made?


Mr. BRODEUR:: 1.	P. W. Nelles and V. Brodeur. The invitation issued by the Imperial Government was extended to 3 officers and 35 men; the officers consisted of a lieutenant in charge and 2 midshipmen.
2.	The officers were selected to the best advantage for control of the men forming the contingent; selection was made by the director of the Naval service.
3.	An application was made to the Imperial Government for the invitation to be extended to the remaining midshipmen; this was conceded, but the reply was received too late to admit of the officers attending.


E988 RAILWAY SECTIONMEN.
Mr. MACDONELL:: 1.	Has tlie attention of the Minister of Railways been called to the statement made on or about 7th June last by the representatives of the railway sectionmen, before the Board of Railway Commissioners, that section gangs as constituted, had too much work to do to handle safely, and to the statement of the Chairman of the Board of Railway Commissioners to the effect that the commission has no jurisdiction over the question of lengths of sections to be worked by section gangs on railways, or the number of men to compose such section gangs ?
2.	If it is true that the above statements or statements to that effect, were made, is it the intention of the government to introduce legislation conferring on the Board of Railway Commissioners the necessary power to deal with such matters?


Mr. GRAHAM:: 1.	The attention of the Minister of Railways has not been called to such statement.
2.	Answered by number one.


DON POST OFFICE.
Mr. MACDONELL:: 1.	Who is the party who has the contract foi carrying the mails between the Don post office, or Donlands, and the city of Toronto?
2.	Was such contract let by tender, for how long and at what price, and on whose recommendation was it awarded?
3.	When was the Don post office moved, why, and by whose request or recommendation?
4.	Who is the present postmaster at Don post office, and when was he appointed?
5.	Who was the former postmaster at Don post office, and why and when were his services dispensed with?
6.	Is the present post office. site as central as the former site, and who recommended the removal ?
7.	Has the government received any petition or other request that the post office should be restored to its former site? _
8.	Did the government obtain a report from Mr. Henderson, post office inspector, on the new and old site, and does such report recommend the removal?


Mr. LEMIEUX:: 1.	J. C. White.
2.	By tender-4 years from 1st July, 1910. The lowest tender was reduced by negotiations carried on by the Post Office Inspector from $1,000 to $600 a year.
3.	4 and 5. James H. Smith, the former postmaster of Don, having tendered his resignation, Mr. J. C. White, the present postmaster, was, on recommendation of Mr. A. J. Anderson, appointed to the affice on the 18th July, 1910.
6.	As far as known to the department.
7.	Yes.
8.	No.


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: 


GRAND TRUNK TRAINMENS' STRIKE.
*Mr. MACDONELL:: 1.	Has the Minister of Labour received a copy of a resolution of the Order of Railway Conductors, passed at their grand convention held at Jacksonville, Florida, on or about the 21st May last, censuring the government of Canada and Mr. Chas. M. Hays for the failure to carry out the agreement entered into between the government, the Grand Trunk Railway Company and the men, in connection with the recent Grand Trunk railway strike?
2.	If so, will the minister lay the resolution on the table of the House, or otherwise acquaint the House with its contents?


Mr. KING:: 1.	A copy of a resolution passed by the Order of Railway Conductors at Jacksonville, Florida, on May 9 last, making certain statements regarding the strike of Grand Trunk Railway employees has been received.
2.	A copy of the communication received will be laid on the taible of the House.


REDISTRIBUTION BILL-MINORITY REPRESENTATION.
[Stage Direction]
"Mr. MACDONELL:
1.	Is it the intention of the government to introduce the principle of minority representation or representation of minorities as applicable to the cities of the Dominion or some of them in connection with the Redistribution Bill which will be made necessary by the present census ?
2.	If so, upon what plan or principle does the government propose that minorities shall be represented?
Sir WILFRID LAURIER.: This will be ccnsidered in due course at the time of the redistribution.


DRY DOCK AT QUEBEC.
Mr. PRICE:: 1.	Is it the intention of the government to build a dry dock in the harbour of Quebec?
2.	If so, is it to be built by, owned and operated by the government?
3.	If not to be built as a government owned work, will it be built on the three per cent guarantee allowed for such works?
4.	Is the government now negotiating with any syndicate, company or person for the construction of such work?
5.	If it is the intention of the government to have this dry dock built, when will the work be commenced and when will it be ready for operation?


Mr. PUGSLEY.: 
Mr. REID (Grenville).: The hon. minister has not stated if it is tlhe intention to build a dry dock in Quebec, and if, in the event of no syndicate undertaking the work, it will be done as a government work.


William Pugsley: The government have no authority to build it as a government work, the only authority for the construction of a dock being that contained in the Dry Dock Subsidies Act, -which provides for a bonus to the company.


John Dowsley Reid: Is it the intention of the government and of the Minister of Public Works to ask for authority and an estimate to go on with this work in case they are not able to go on with it under the Dry Dock Subsidies Act?


William Pugsley: I am sure my hon. friend is such an old parliamentarian that he will realize that any expression of the intention of the government would have to be signified by the submission of an estimate to parliament for the purpose, with the permission of His Excellency.


ATION CELEBRATION IN OTTAWA.
Mr. BEATTIE:: 1. Was any gathering or celebration of any kind held in Ottawa on Coronation day?
315i
2.	What was the nature of such celebration or gathering?
3.	What members of tbe Cabinet were present to take part in it?


William Pugsley: In connection with the celebration of coronation day, the Department of Public Works decorated the grounds of the parliament buildings very handsomely, and also gave permission to the city authorities for the occupation of the grounds by the public and more especially by the school children upon that day. It was understood, I believe, that there should be a procession of school children of Ottawa and the presentation of flags to them. I was not in Ottawa upon that day and it happened that most of the ministers were out of the city. The three ministers who were in the city, I understand, received no invitation to be present, the affair being entirely a civic celebration. I am informed that in the morning notices were posted up cancelling the celebration in consequence of a very heavy rainstorm and that the programme was considerably changed.


NEW ISSUE OF POSTAGE STAMPS.
*Mr. WHITE (Renfrew):: 1.	Is the government aware that the new postage stamps of King George's reign issued by the British post office are generally condemned by the people of the United Kingdom by reason of the poorness of the design?
2.	Is it the intention of the Post Office Department of Canada to have the new issue of postage stamps for the Dominion prepared from dies produced by the Royal Mint? If not, where will the dies be made?
3.	Is the Postmaster General prepared io lay before the House, as promised by him on March 16 last, the designs for the new Canadian postage stamps before they are finally adopted?
4.	By whom are the stamps being designed, and where will they be produced?


Mr. LEMIEUX:: 1.	No, except what has appeared in the press on the subject.
2.	(a) No. (b) In Ottawa.
3.	If any member of the House of Commons wishes to see the designs for the new Canadian postage stamps when submitted to the department, no objection will be offered to his doing so.
4.	By the American Bank Note Company, the contractors for the supply of postage stamps for the Dominion of Canada, acting in co-operation with and under the instructions of the Post Office Department of Canada.


IMMIGRATION.
Mr. PAQUET:: 1. What was the amount spent for Belgian immigration for the fiscal year 1910-11?
:

2. What was the amount expended for French immigration for the fiscal year 1910-11?


Mr. OLIVER:: 1.	$7,634.06.
2.	$31,362.36.
It may 'be mentioned that emigration effort in France is discouraged by law.
Mr. PA-QUET:
What was the amount, expended for immigration from the United States for the fiscal year 1910-11 ?


Mr. OLIVER.: 


Mr. PAQUET:: What was the amount expended for immigration from the British Isles for the fiscal year 1910-11?


Frank Oliver: 


Eugène Paquet: If a commission of $3 on a man, $2 on a woman, and $1 on a child, is paid to certain sub-agents in the United States for bona fi.de settlers induced by them to settle in western Canada, why are the other provinces excluded?


Frank Oliver: Because the Federal government has special responsibility for the settlement of the public lands in the prairie provinces.


Mr. PAQUET:: 1.	What amount was paid in premiums for the fiscal year year 1910-11 by the Canadian government for immigration ?
2.	What amount was paid in premiums for the same fiscal year for immigration from France and Belgium?


Mr. OLIVER:: It may be mentioned that emigration effort in France is by law discouraged.


AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE FROM UNITED STATES.
Mr. EDWARDS:: 1.	What was the quantity and value of butter, eggs, cheese, potatoes, bacon and hams, other meats, poultry, vegetables other than potatoes, fruits, and sheep and lambs, imported into Canada from the United States for home consumption during the month of May, 1911?
2.	What was the quantity and value of butter and of meats imported into Canada from Australia and New Zealand for home consumption during the month of May, 1911?
3.	What was the quantity and value of
cream, casein, and milk, exported from Canada to the United States during the month of May, 1911 ?	.


Eugène Paquet: 


Mr. PATERSON:: 1 The quantity and value of the undermentioned articles entered for consumption in Canada, from the United States, during the month of May, 1911, was as follows:
Quantity. Value.
Butter	..lbs.	199,061	$ 46,049Eggs	144,252	28,884Cheese	15,075	2,559Potatoes	29,173	24,494Bacon and hams, shoulders	and sides	..lbs.	602,929	73,253Beef, salted in barrels	. .lbs.	127,268	7,845Mutton and lamb, fresh..lbs.	71,426	7,770Pork barrelled in brine., lbs.	386,848	27,451Poultry and game, n.o.p	$	6,360Dried or smoked	meats,	&c	[DOT] .. ..	82,879	12,894Other meats, fresh ..	. .lbs.	96.895	10,829Other meats, salted ..	. .lbs.	29,200	4,066Sheep and lambs.. ..	..No.	12,226	51,063Melons	716	142Potatoes, sweet	and	yams	389	887Tomatoes, fresh	25,080	39,974Vegetables, n.o.p.. ..	.. ..$	132,917Apples, green	2,063	13,743Blackberries, raspberries.	gooseberries, &c	..lbs.	572,670	71,750Cherries	3,688	879Cranberries	.bush.	22	104Grapes	117	141Quinces, apricots,	pears,	&c	..lbs.	249	362	The quantity and value of butter and of meats entered for consumption in Canada from Australia and New Zealand during the month of May, 1911, was as follows:
Australia. New Zealand.
Lbs. Value. Lbs. Value.
Butter	 24,752 $4,916 13,496 $3,352
Mutton and lamb,
fresh	 193,470 12,981	
3	The quantity and value of fresh cream, fresh milk, and casein exported from Canada to the United States during the month of May, 1911, was as follow a :
Quantity. Value.
Cream, fresh	galls.	71,269	$63,731Milk, fresh	galls.	110	12Casein	lbs.	52,516	1,749


REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE, 1890-1911.
Mr. EDWARDS:: What was the total revenue from all sources, and the total expenditure for all purposes of the Dominion of Canada, for each of the fiscal years, 1890 to 1911, both years included?


Mr. FIELDING:: The total revenue from all sources, and the total expenditure for all purposes of the Dominion of Canada for each of the fiscal years from 1890 to 1910, both years inclusive, will be found on pages 2 and 3, Part 1 of the Public Accounts for the year 1910, and are as follows:

	Total		Total	
	Re^ipts	Disbursements.		
1890	41	$ 41,770,332	731891	88	40,793,208	191892	.. .. 3G,921,871	60	42,272,136	321893	.. .. 38,208,608	85	40,853,727	911894	.. .. 36,374,883	21	43,008,233	891895	.. .. 33,978,129	47	42,872,338	441896	.. .. 36.618,590	72	44,096,383	921897	.. .. 37,829,778	40	42,972,755	891898	.. .. 40,556,510	06	45,334,281	061899	.. .. 46,743,102	95	51,542,635	291900	.. .. 51,031,466	71	52,717,466	841901	.. .. 52,516,332	76	57,982,866	461902	.. .. 58,852,333	34	63,970,799	861903	.. .. 69,348,084	10	61,746,571	811904	
70,679,251	49	72,255,047	631905	.. .. 71,186,072	50	78,804,138	771906	.. .. 80.141,393	83	83,277,641	721907	.. .. 67,972,109	65	65,778,138	571908	.. .. 96,055,416	72	112,578,679	871909	.. .. 85,549,*597	76	133,441,524	291910	.. .. 101,616,475	58	115,395,773	70
The accounts for the year 1910-11 have not yet been published, but the statement of receipts and expenditures on account of that year appears in the ' Canada Gazette,' of June 17, 1911, page 4322, from which it will be seen that the total receipts for the year 1910-11 were $117,780,409.78, and the disbursements on account of consolidated fund $87,773,998.32, and on capital and special account-$33,696,222.17, making a total for that year of $121,470,220.49.


MINNEDOSA PUBLIC BUILDING.
Mr. ROCHE:: 1.	Has the site been decided on for the erection of the public building in Minnedosa, Manitoba P
2.	If so, which site, what is its size, cost and from whom purchased?
3.	Have the plans been prepared in whole or in part for the proposed building?


William Pugsley: 1, 2 and 3. No.


SICK MARINERS' DUES.
Mr. JAMESON:: 1.	What amount of money is in the trust fund resulting from the payment of sick mariners' dues by merchant and fishing vessels ? '
2.	In what manner is the amount to the credit of the fund invested, and where is the standing of the trust fund shown in the Public Accounts of Canada?
3.	What department of the government is responsible for the investment and administration of such trust fund?
4.	By what statute was such trust created?


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: .
1, 2, 3 and 4. There is no trust fund in connection with sick mariners' dues. The collections from vessels are paid into consolidated revenue, and the expenses aTe paid out of the appropriation ' Care of sick seamen in the maritime hospitals.'


MOTIONS AGREED TO WITHOUT DISCUSSION.
[Stage Direction]
For a copy of all correspondence on the subject of the Society of Colonization and Repatriation of Lake St. John and the dates thereof, with the First Minister, the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Public Works and the Minister of Marine.-Mr. Girard.
For a copy of all correspondence between the government, or any member thereof, and any person, persons or body corporate, having reference to the water-power on the Ottawa river at Carillon, the lease of the alienation of the same previous to the 1st January last, the lease in existence at present of said waterpower to the National Hydro Electric Company, Limited; a copy of all correspondence exchanged between the government and any official of the said company; a copy of the lease at present in existence, as well as of the one which preceded the one actually in force; a copy of the order in council authorizing the present lease of said water-power, and of any deed referring to said water-power to which the government was a party since the 1st January, 1906.-Mr. Monk.
For a copy of all correspondence between the Minister of Agriculture, or any officer of his department, or any member or officer of the government, and any person or persons appointed or proposed to be appointed as commissioners, enumerators, or other officials in the taking of the census during the present year, including all correspondence and inquiries as to the qualification or status of such commissioners or enumerators or officials, and all information in the possession of the government respecting such qualification or status.-Mr. Borden (Halifax).
For a copy of all papers, letters, petitions, applications, recommendations or other documents or material in connection with the removal of the site of the Donlands post office, and in connection with the appointment of the new postmaster, or the retirement or dismissal of the old postmaster.-Mr. Macdonell (South Toronto).

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day. being called.
Frederick Debartzch Monk: On the 6th of April last I made certain inquiries respecting an official inquiry at Sorel reported at page 6758 'Hansard' of this year. I asked:
Has an inquiry been instituted at Sorel by the government? If so, who is conducting it, and what is the object of that inquiry?


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: Immediately after the-charges were made in the House, as it referred to the department, an inquiry was entered into by the inspector of agencies and the agent.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Who is conducting the inquiry and what is the subject of the inquiry?


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: Statements were made in the affidavits filed before the House that affected the department, and we are investigating these allegations. Previous to that, certain


'9995 COMMONS
[Stage Direction]
statements were brought to the attention of the department, and these also are being investigated.
Frederick Debartzch Monk: When was the investigation ordered?


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: After the charges were made.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Is that inquiry being conducted by Mr. Wiallard, the private secretary of the minister?


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: No, but by the agent of the department in Montreal and the inspector of agencies.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: That is, by Mr. Wiallard?


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: Mr. Wiallard is one, Mr. Boyd is the other. [DOT]


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Is Mr. Wiallard the private secretary to the minister?


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: He was formerly my private secretary, but not now.
Has that inquiry been carried on; has a report been made to the government, and if so will it be laid before the House.


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: Some time before I left for England I gave instructions to have an inquiry made. Mr. Wiallard, our agent, became ill, but Mr. Boyd spent some time at Sorel making the inquiry and looking generally into the administration of the department there. I have not seen his report, but I suppose it is in the department.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Did the minister say there was a report?


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: I suppose there must have been, but I have not seen it; I do not know.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: If a report has been made will it be laid on the table of the House


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: Certainly.


TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILWAY-OVERCLASSIFICATION.
Mr. LENNOX.: The Minister of Railways said that he would probably inform the House to-day as to the information I asked for on Friday.


Mr. GRAHAM.: I have asked the Transcontinental Railway Commission to give me the information, but I have not received it yet.


DR. RUTHERFORD.
Mr. BORDEN (Halifax).: Is it true that Dr. J. G. Rutherford has resigned from the Department of Agriculture, and if so has any explanation been given?


Wilfrid Laurier: The Minister of Agriculture will be here this evening and perhaps he will be able to inform my hon. friend.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: 



WAYS AND MEANS-WINNER OF THE KING'S PRIZE AT BISLEY.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. FIELDING moved that the House go into Committee of Ways and Means.
['I am not worrying about the farmers at all. So far as the section where I live is concerned, the farmers who understand this matter have absolutely no use for it whatever, and I have every confidence that if hon. gentlemen opposite would submit it to the farmers of this country, they would find that they would not endorse the position they take. The fact that they are not willing to submit it to the people is a clear evidence that they have not any confidence in the policy that they are advocating at the present time.']
Mr. JOSEPH RUSSELL (East Toronto).: Mr. Speaker, I desire to-refer briefly to an event of very great national interest of which the cable has brought the news since our last meeting. I refer to the splendid achievement of a fellow-citizen of Toronto, Private W. J. Clifford, in winning the King's prize at the meeting of the National Rifle Association at Bisley. This, I need hardly mention, is the crowning honour of the great competition in marksmanship participated in annually by upwards of three thousand of the riflemen of the Empire, all the overseas dominions being well represented, tvhile the flower of the regular and volunteer forces of the mother country enter into the keenest competition for the honours of the meeting.
Private Clifford is of the Tenth Royal Grenadiers, a regiment that since rifle shooting has been in vogue as the pastime of the volunteers of Canada has been second to none in the distinctions it has achieved as a training school for marksmen. It is especially fitting, therefore, that the honour achieved by Private Clifford shall be shared by a regiment so generally recognized as worthy to bear it. It is the young rifleman's second visit to Bisley, but for several years Private Clifford has been conspicuous at the great Canadian meeting at Roekliffe, in 1909 for instance, winning one of the three prizes so generously offered by His Excellency, the Governor-General for competition here.
Besides winning the King's Prize, Private Clifford has won also, at Bisley this year, the Prince of Wales' prize for a competition entirely distinct, an achievement never before accomplished during the fifty years of the National Rifle Association competitions. Examination of the records shows that the same has figured only twice before since the very beginning, as the winner of these two prizes donated by royalty, but in each case the honour was achieved in separate years for each prize. Thus Sergt. Lawrence of the 1st Dumbarton won the Queen's Prize in 1882, and the Prince of Wales' Prize the following year; while Major Pollock won the Queen's in 1892 and the Prince of Wales' in 1896. It has remained for Private Clifford to set a new record for the new reign, and so to identify himself for all time with the generosity of His Majesty King George and Edward, Prince of Wales.
This is the third occasion, it is fitting for me to mention, that Canadian competitors at Bisley have brought distinction to their country as well as to themselves by winning the Queen's or the King's Prize. Hayhurst, already well-known as an Old Country rifle-
9998

man, led the way in 1895, shortly after he had come to Canada and joined the Thirteenth Regiment of Hamilton. Then Private
S.	J. Perry, a young Canadian of Vancouver, was the King's Prize winner in 1904; and Private Clifford is our third Gold Medallist.
Rifle shooting means much more to us as a nation than does any other sport. It is generally recognized as the mainspring of the interest in the training of many regiments, and it is the sole bond of communication between our volunteers in the several cities and provinces of Canada and between Canadians and their comrades in arms from over the seas. In addition rifle shooting is recognized as involving the best development of physical manhood and of character. No one but a good citizen, an exemplary man, can be successful as a marksman. The honour won by Private Clifford il specially worthy of recognition, and I therefore extend to him my congratulations and those of his friends in this country.


Frederick William Borden: I would ask the privilege, Mr. Speaker, as head of the Militia" Department, of saying-and I am sure I am expressing the opinion of all the members of the House-how much I am obliged to the hon. member for Toronto (Mr. Russell) for having brought this matter up. All Canadians must be proud of the unprecedented performance of Private Clifford in having won not only the King's Prize but the Prince of Vv ales' prize in the same year. The shooting has been particularly good this year at Bisley. The Canadian team won among other prizes the McKinnon Cup, and tied with the British team for the Kolapore Cup, but unfortunately for the Canadians the British team made a greater number of marks at the longest range and therefore retained possession of the prize. It must be specially gratifying to know also that this good shooting has been made with a Canadian rifle, so that we have not only the best rifle probably in the world, but we have men who know how to use it.


Mr. SAMUEL HUGHES.: I am delighted to support the remarks so ably expressed by my good friend from Toronto (Mr. Russell) and by my friend the Minister of Militia. I may point out that the Grenadiers are not only splendid men on the ranges, but that on every occasion the Grenadier regiment of Toronto has had the opportunity of active service, the men have done credit to themselves and to the flag under which they fight. I may point out further, as an inducement to officers commanding regiments throughout the country, that not only are the Grenadiers to-day commanded by an officer, Col. Gooderham,
who takes the greatest interest in rifle shooting, but it has had the good fortune in times past to have had commanding officers who have devoted a great deal of attention to the science.
I might also state that Clifford, the winner of the King's prize, is greatly assisted by his wife, who encourages him to go to the front, and inspires him with _ courage to do well for his country; and his corps. Furthermore, the Grenadiers on the ranges are coached by the wife of the colonel of the regiment, "Mrs. Gooderham. In making these remarks, I desire, in the first place, to encourage officers commanding regiments to take greater interest in rifle shooting, and in the next place to point out that the wives and lady friends of the soldiers might perform a splendid service for the country by encouraging these young men in rifle shooting, as the ladies I have mentioned do. I cannot let this opportunity pass without saying a word for the officer commanding the Bisley team this year, and for the men composing that team, it was my privilege to see them at Bisley not long ago. Colonel Stimson, the commandant, was performing the work admirably, and he was fortunate in having with him his sisters, who rendered the lives of the soldiers in their quarters very pleasant by giving them every inducement to maintain the high spirit of Canadian manhood. The same characteristics are found in Major Burland, the adjutant of the team, and we were very fortunate in having an excellent coach in Mr. Richardson, who is well known to all our friends. I should not let this opportunity pass without supporting my good friend the Minister of Militia by saying a word for the weapon with which these prizes were won, namely, the Canadian Ross rifle. That rifle has established itself, not only in Canada, but in England, and in every country on the continent of Europe, and is to-day well known and appreciated. It is said that a prophet is not without honour except in his own country. The Ross rifle stands first among the serviceable rifles in the world to-day, and I would not be at all surprised, before many years roll^ around, to see the principles of the Ross rifle, with a different calibre and cartridge of course, adopted as the weapon of the British Empire. I might in justice to Clifford point out that one of the troubles of rifle shooting in hot weather is nickelling, and Clifford has invented a substance, which he gave to every man on the ranges, to prevent that; and his uniformly good shooting has probably been partly due to this invention of his own. I am sure that the House, and the country will join in congratulating Clifford and the Canadian team not only on their shooting, but on their splendid manly conduct.


Mr. W. F. MACLEAN (South York).: Mr. Speaker, in connection with this matter, the Minister of Militia might go a step further and mark this event in an appropriate way, by introducing into this House a proposal to give a pension to the veterans of 1866, among whom no regiment has a better list than the Tenth Royals of Toronto. If the minister wishes to commemorate this event and encourage the volunteers of this country, he could not bring forward a more popular proposal. There came under my notice the other day the case of one of these veterans who died in the poor house. The time has come when we should recognize in a substantial way the services of these men on behalf of their country.


Frederick William Borden: I would like to say that recognition has been given to these men, and it is one of the things that I am most proud of in connection with my record as Minister of Militia, that I was able to induce the British government to give to those who took part in resisting the attempted raid at that time recognition m the form of a suitable medal. For some 30 years, from 1866 to 1896, the services of those men had been utterly neglected and disregarded. When the present government came in and_ took the matter up, within a year of the time it took office, a medal was granted by Queen Victoria in recognition of their services. I wish to say too, that at that time the veterans from one end of the country to the other expressed themselves as entirely satisfied with what had been done.


Some hon. MEMBERS: No.


Frederick William Borden: Yes, and I can prove it. When the application was made, they stated that all they wanted was a recognition that their services were appreciated by the government of Canada -they did not want any tangible present of money or land; and they were satisfied with what they received.



Mr. MIDDLEBRO.: Mr. Speaker, before you leave the Chair, I would like to draw the attention of the House to an article which appeared in the Toronto ' Globe ' of the. 21st instant; though I am not complaining of this particular article, which is simply a sample of articles which have appeared in the Liberal press throughout the length and breadth of Canada since this House reassembled. There appears to be an organized campaign for the purpose of misrepresenting the attitude of the opposition. I have no doubt that before the House reassembled the government had determined to go to the country, because it found itself between the devil and the deep blue sea. The devil was the ever-increasing sentiment in Ontario, and the eastern


Samuel Hughes: provinces against reciprocity, and the deep blue sea was the fear that if they waited and bore the brunt of that sentiment they would have to bear the odium of refusing the west the additional representation to which they are justly entitled. But the government made their choice before we reassembled, of which I propose to give evidence later on; and so, having decided to deprive the west of the representation it is entitled to, they are trying to make the country believe that the opposition, by a reasonable discussion-as they say, by their obstruction-are preventing the government from giving the west that representation to which it is justly entitled; and they have come to this conclusion also because of the manly, straightforward and unanswerable argument presented by our leader, Mr. Borden, during his recent triumphal tour of the west, and the growing feeling against reciprocity there.
So I think I am safe in saying that it is part of the party tactics that the House should reassemble and when the opposition should express their views upon reciprocity the government should shout obstruction. I may say here that either the right hon. the Prime Minister or the Minister of Finance (I am not sure which) has already stated in this House that every member on this side would be given an opportunity to express his opinions upon this measure, and that while they were so doing they would not be considered guilty of obstruction. Now, there are 55 members on this side of the House who have not had an opportunity of expressing themselves on the question of reciprocity, and none of the members who have spoken, have spoken twice. Notwithstanding that fact we are met with the statement in the Liberal press throughout the country that the opposition are obstructing. Now, what is the evidence before us, that the government had decided to go to the country before we reassembled. In the first place it is known that the government Printing Bureau is at work in the preparation of the voters' lists for the coming election. In the second place, while the hon. Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth) made up his mind not to run again, since the adjournment of the House, he suddenly reconsidered his decision, and decided to become a candidate in North York, upon the assumption that the elections were to be held this fall. In the next place the Dominion Election Act provides that with respect to the unorganized districts in the province of Ontario, every year there shall be prepared a list of the voters in the constituencies, unless a proclamation is issued by the government stating thaj^ such list need not be prepared. I find that in the years 1909 and 1910, that such proclamation -was issued, but on the 17th of July

of the present year a proclamation was issued by the deputy of the Minister of Justice stating that the lists should be prepared in these unorganized districts, and that they should be accelerated, all this notwithstanding the fact the hon. Minister of Justice stated in the House the other day (21st July) that neither he nor any one else expected an election for one or two sessions yet. In addition to that, I have in my hand a document entitled ' Instructions for the guidance of1 returning officers,' printed in 1911, since we adjourned in May 19 last. I have seen cartloads of these documents around the building here, and I am advised that they are only printed in such large quantities in a year when an election is expected.
I think if these several facts are taken together, or even if the last fact is considered alone it is sufficient to prove that the government had made up their mind that they were going to the country before we re-assembled here, and that we are brought back for the purpose of assisting them in their party tactics of deceiving the west into the belief that the onus for non-redistribution is on us. I would point out to the right hon. the Prime Minister that on the 8th of March the leader of the opposition (Mr. Borden), made a proposition to the government which the government did not accept, but which if it had accepted would have enabled the west to' have their'representation. Upon that occasion, Mr. Borden used these w'ords:
Now, Sir, I regard these proposals as reversing the policy of the people of Canada for the past thirty years, given by an unmistakable mandate at every election which has taken place during that period. What should be the course of the government at this time? Take the census, give the west its increased representation, then submit this question to the people of Canada and let them decide.
The government turned the proposition down four months ago, when they might have accepted it, have taken their census and have given the west their redistribution, It is not too late to do it yet, according to my way of thinking. The government can even now, accelerate their census, bring down their Redistribution Bill, and let reciprocity wait for a few months, until the west have been given their additional representation. We have existed 46 long years without reciprocity, and I think we can wait a few months longer. The hon. Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) told us this session that never in the history of this country was Canada as prosperous as she is to-day. He told us that the trade of Canada to-day is $765,000,000-a high water mark in its history, and our surplus this year $30,000,000 the highest on record. Surely it is manifest that we can wait two or three
months longer without reciprocity, and in the meantime let the government bring down the Redistribution Bill, giving the west the representation to which they are entitled, and then go to the country. If that is not done, there is no other conclusion to be arrived at, but that we are here assisting the government in carrying out their farce, which will have the effect of depriving the west of their additional representation. We bn this side would be only too happy to face the electors on this great question, but we can only regret the course of the government will have the effect of depriving that great and growing country of their just rights in the matter of representation.


Wilfrid Laurier: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend rose for the purpose of trying to convince this House, and the country at large that His Majesty's opposition in this House is not obstructing the business of the government, and is not obstructing the reciprocity agreement, which has been before the House now since the 26th of January last. However, my hon. friend had not proceeded very far before he gave away his whole case. He protests that the opposition is not obstructing yet at the same time, he says:
' Let reciprocity wait.' If he is not obstructing, why should not reciprocity go on? That is what we on this side^ of the House want. We do not want reciprocity to wait. The hon. gentlemen, on the other side of the House told us what we already knew, and I thank my hon. friend for being so candid in the statement that they did not want reciprocity to go through, but wanted it to wait, and that they are trying in this House to prevent it from going on. We have had speeches of one kind and another-we have heard the same arguments repeated ad nauseam.
The other day one of the most respected members in this House prefaced his remarks by saying that there was nothing new to be said upon this question. That is perfectly true. Yet, he took three hours or more to say what had been said over and over again.
My hon. friends ask us: * Why should we not have a redistribution?' Well, the question of redistribution, is not before the House to-day, neither is the census, but the reciprocity agreement is before the House, and we can go on with it. If the hon. gentlemen wish to prevent an election let us go on with the reciprocity agreement, and there will be no election. I have nothing to hide in this matter, but will speak to the House with perfect candor. When I saw evidences of obstruction taking place in this House day after day [DOT]


Some hon. MEMBERS: No, no.

Sir WILFRID LAURIER-when I read the reports of the speeches made here, while I was in England, and when I learned that my hon. friend (Mr. Borden), the leader of the opposition was making a triumphal tour of the country-


Some hon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


Wilfrid Laurier: I did not
need these cheers to know that hon. gentlemen opposite are satisfied with cheap triumphs. Any way, my hon. friend, the leader of the opposition was making this triumphal tour of the country, and I saw it stated that the opposition would not allow this reciprocity agreement to go through. As soon as I saw this I gave instructions to my hon. friend the Secretary of State to prepare the lists so that if the hon. gentlemen opposite should continue to want reciprocity to wait, we could appeal to the people as to whether it should or not.
We do not want reciprocity to wait. We want it to pass, either in this House, or before the country. I have nothing whatever to conceal about the matter. We are before the people, and if government is to be made a farce-if the minority abuse the privileges of a minority in order to prevent-


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh, oh.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


Wilfrid Laurier: Then, Sir, there are judges over us to judge between the government and the opposition. Surely these hon. gentlemen do not object to an election. They say they want an election, and when I tell them that they do not object, they cheer; but when we take steps to have an election, they find fault. But we understand all this. The last thing they want is to go before the country. Well, there is one way in which it is possible not to go to the country, and that is to pass the agreement, that the farmers of Canada may have the markets of the United States opened to their products. That is our position. My hon. friend tells me that they want redistribution. Well, redistribution Bills have been passed before now, and the usual regular course has been to take the census one year, and have redistribution the following year. The census was taken in 1881, 1891, and in 1901, and upon every occasion the Redistribution Bill was passed the following year-that is in 1882, in 1892, and 1902 respectively. If we follow the usual course, we have plenty of time for redistribution. It is true, my hon. friend the leader of the opposition (Mr. Borden, Halifax) told us on the 8th of March that we should have passed the redistribution first. But he did not reflect at that time that the census could not be taken before the 1st of June. The law on that point was
changed some years ago. At the time of confederation, the first of April was fixed as the date for the taking of the census. But everybody knows that the first of April is not a good season for taking the census. The roads in many parts are not then favourable for travel, but the first of June, as we all know, is a most propitious season for the census work. The date was changed and nobody objected. Does my hon. friend believe 'that it is possible to have redistribution in Canada within three months of the taking of the census? It is impossible to have it done. It never has been done either under a Conservative government or under a Liberal government. The country is too large and the means of communication too imperfect. You must wait until the last return is in before you begin your redistribution. We will have redistribution next year. If the opposition chooses to go on with tactics of obstruction, as they have been doing, then we shall have to consider what is to be done. And if, in the last resort, the only way is to appeal to the people and ask them to pass judgment between us and the opposition, we are quite prepared and ready for it.


Robert Laird Borden: The Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) has alluded to certain instructions which he said were communicated by him to the Secretary of State while he was in London. I have a very strong suspicion that those instructions were given to the Secretary of State before the Prime Minister went to London. Of course, they may have been repeated from there. So far as the frankness of my hon. friend from North Grey (Mr. Middiebro) is concerned, to which the Prime Minister has alluded, I want to call his attention to the fact that on the 8th of March, the very date referred to, I moved in this House that, in view of considerations set forth in the resolution, this reciprocity agreement.
-should not be proceeded with until the electors shall have an opportunity of pronouncing upon its merits.
The Prime Minister knew what my view with regard to the matter was at that time. He is pressing for a vote in the House. Well, we are pressing for a vote in the country, a vote of the people. The right hon. gentleman, who professes himself to be a Liberal of the British school and ' a democrat to the hilt,' is unwilling to afford to the people the opportunity to give that vote except at the sacrifice of redistribution. I gave my advice on that point on the 8th of March last. It has been already quoted, but I think it was very good advice and it will do no harm to repeat it. I said:
W bat should be the course of the government at this time? Take the census, give the

west its increased representation, then submit this question to the people of Canada and let them decide. We held out to the United States for twenty years a standing offer of reciprocity, and they did not accept it. It will not lessen their respect for us if we permit them for a few years to put a standing offer of reciprocity upon their statute-book. We have worn some shoe leather in going to Washington ; as I said before, let the Americans wear out some shoe leather in coming to Ottawa. They are submitting these proposals to a new Congress; let us in Canada' submit these proposals to a new parliament.
I stand by those words. As a matter of fact, the Prime Minister magnified altogether the difficulty of enumerating the people. I am informed that in Great Britain, within two or three days the enumeration of the people is made known, and I believe that if, immediately after the 8th of March, when I asked them to follow this course, the government had taken steps to hasten the enumeration, that enumeration could have been completed before the end of June. We might then have had a Redistribution Bill before this parliament at the present moment.
For, after all, what is the position of the government in this matter? Their position is that, although the people of Canada have got on without reciprocity for forty-five years and have prospered remarkably well during that time in their great work of nation building, they cannot wait for six months in order to give a redistribution of representation and allow the people as a whole to pronounce upon this issue of reciprocity. I say that is an unreasonable proposition. I say, the course I suggested on the 8th of March would be the reasonable one. The position at that time was that the old Congress had just come to an end-it expired on the 4th of March-without having ratified this treaty. Surely, under these circumstances, it would not have been an unreasonable thing for the government of Canada to say that, as Congress had dissolved through effluxion of time without ratifying the treaty and the treaty must be ratified, if at all, by a new Congress, it might very well be ratified in Canada, if at all, by a new parliament, and after an appeal to the people.
Now, the Prime Minister is very pronounced in his strictures upon the opposition, for the course they have taken. I would like to repeat what my hon. friend from North Crey has said. It was announced by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) himself when he introduced this proposition, if I remember his words correctly, that every member of this House should have the right to express his convictions with regard to the matter and to give his reasons to parliament and to his constituents why he either approved or disapproved of this treaty.


Robert Laird Borden: 


Mr. LANCASTER.: He said the same thing on the motion referred to.


Robert Laird Borden: Yes, I believe he said the same thing again as the reason why hon. gentlemen opposite should vote down the proposal I made. That course has been followed up to the present time. Hon. gentlemen on this side who have spoken on this question have refrained from taking up the time of the House a second time except in the case of a few when some matter of importance or urgency arose. The speeches made have been for the purpose of doing that which every member was invited to do-express his views on the subject.
The Prime Minister knows very well what the actual situation is.. He knows perfectly well that he and his colleagues on the other side of the House have made a careful estimate of this situation weeks and months ago, as to how they would stand with redistribution, and how they would stand without redistribution; and taking everything into consideration, they decided it would be a prudent thing for them to appeal to the country without redistribution. But when the right hon gentleman talks about obstruction, I would like to remind him of some occasions when he has not entertained exactly the same view with regard to obstruction as that which he seems to hold at present. He speaks of the minoritv abusing its rights. How does he regard the minority of which he was a memlber in 1885? W.as that minority abusing its rights? I venture to say that it was abusing its rights very much more than this minority has abused its rights up to the present time, and during the present session. What does he think of the course which he took in 1896?
Sir WILFRID LAURIER My hon. friend had better ask some of his friends on his own side.


Robert Laird Borden: I am asking the right hon. gentleman at the present time. I am bound to say that I find him very unwilling to give me an answer. It may be that the right hon. gentleman had some assistance from men who were sitting opposite to him at that time. I do not know about that. But at all events, I want to say to him that he was very willing to be a party to that alleged obstruction, and very willing to profit by it, and very willing to send the government to the country without supplies for more than a month, I think, on that occasion; and then he was very willing afterwards to take a course with regard to the Governor General's warrants which, to say the least, was of extremely doubtful validity.


Mr. EMMERSON.: The point is, You are another. Is that the idea?


Robert Laird Borden: Does not my hon. friend think that sometimes that is a good retort? I think my hon. friend himself will bear witness that sometimes it is a very good retort. Now I was not putting it forward in the sense in which my hon. friend from Westmorland (Mr. Emmer-son) suggested; I was putting it forward to the right hon. gentleman with a view to endeavour to bring him into a similar frame of mind to that which inspired him in 1885 and 1896. I was endeavouring to get him to look at this from the standpoint of a minority who are desirous, in the first place, that there should be a redistribution in order that all parts of the country may have their proper representation, and who, in the next place, are anxious that the people of Canada should have an opportunity to pronounce upon this agreement before the policy of this country for the past forty years is absolutely reversed; and surely that should not be done without any mandate from the people. The right hon. gentleman is apparently inclined to follow a portion of the advice which I gave him on the 8th' of March last. I said this:
Take the census, give the west its increased representation, then submit this question to the people of Canada and let them decide.
He is willing to submit this question to the people of Canada and let them decide, but he is not willing to give the west the increased representation to which they are entitled. He is following out our advice in part, he is not following it out in its entirety. I think he would have been well advised if he had taken the advice we tendered him on that occasion; that he would have been well advised to expedite the census, to have given the west its increased representation, to have given to every part of the country its proper representation, then to have gone to the people of Canada and let them decide whether or not the policy of this country for the past forty-five years shall be adhered to or shall be reversed.


William Stevens Fielding: There is a touch of humour in the present situation which serves to relieve what otherwise would seem to have been a rather tedious part of this session. For six months my hon. friends opposite have been shouting that what they wanted above everything on earth was an appeal to the people; and if there is anything they have made clear now, it is that if there is anything on earth that they do not want, it is an appeal to the people. We had a little premonition of this several .months ago. In the midst of the outcry the hon. gentlemen were making as to the necessity of an election, there appeared in the chief Conservative organ an article saying that if they Mr. EMMERSON.
were not careful Sir Wilfrid Laurier would spring an election on them, and after the lapse of six months, they now say that the greatest terror of their lives is that they should be compelled to go before the people.


Some hon. MEMBERS: No, no.


Mr. COWAN.: Take that back.


William Stevens Fielding: I would like to know what it is I have said that the hon. gentleman thinks I should take back.


George Henry Cowan: The Minister of Finance has never heard one word from this side of the House, or from any Conservative newspaper, to indicate that we were fearful of going before the people.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Take it back.


George Henry Cowan: Let me say that when a minister of the Crown rises in his place in this House and dares to make a statement which we, and he, and every one believes is not true


Mr. SPEAKER.: The hon. gentleman's language is not parliamentary.


George Henry Cowan: I do not wish to be misunderstood. I say that it does not comport with the dignity of debate for a member of this House to state that which he and we believe to be absolutely untrue.


James Kirkpatrick Kerr: It is contrary to custom to charge a minister with saying anything which he knows to be untrue.


George Henry Cowan: That is the expression I have used. I wish to say that we believe there is absolutely no evidence, that there is absolutely no word from any member of this House, or in any of the Conservative press in Canada, to indicate that there is one word of accuracy in the statement the minister has made.


William Stevens Fielding: I am not very sensitive in these matters of points of order, and in nine cases out of ten I would rather allow a disorderly interruption to pass than to raise an issue upon it. If the House is willing to let my hon. friend violate all its proprieties, I do not know that I would complain. Now I want to say, and I want to repeat, and my hon. friend can characterize it within parliamentary limitations to suit himself-I wish to state that, according to my judgment, hearing in mind all the circumstances and facts surrounding us, in my judgment, giving it for what it is worth, there is nothing in the world that hon. gentlemen opposite are so much afraid of as an appeal to the people.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Try it.


William Sora Middlebro: Why don't you bring it on?


William Stevens Fielding: My hon. friend from North Grey (Mr. Middiebro) knows that if he believed we were going to bring it on-


William Sora Middlebro: The point I was making was that the government were endeavouring to make the country believe that we were afraid of the redistribution of the west.


William Stevens Fielding: And I say that the hon.
gentlemen opposite are doing their utmost to prevent this government doing any business and that the business of this government is to give the country reciprocity. That is the first consideration-


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh, oh.


William Stevens Fielding: -and in due course, to give the country redistribution; and the hon. gentlemen, by the action they are taking are doing their best to prevent our giving 'either the one or the other Now, let us look a little at this situation. On the 26th day of January last, almost six months ago, I had the honour to submit to this House, the terms of an agreement entered into by my hon. colleague, the Minister of Customs and myself with the government of the United States, subject to the approval of parliament, for the bringing about of a betterment of the trade relations between these two countries. If we had come before the House with an arrangement which was definite and binding for a given period of years we might well have expected that such an arrangement would have received the almost unanimous consent of the House, because, let hon. gentlemen opposite say what they like, I state that it is an historical fact that from the beginning of confederation down to this moment there has never been in existence in the Dominion of Canada, a government which did not proclaim and support reciprocity.


Samuel Hughes: Does the Finance Minister profess to say that this is reciprocity?


William Stevens Fielding: Yes.


Samuel Hughes: That is the first I ever heard


William Stevens Fielding: I am exceedingly sorry that my hon. friend and I do not agree, but in our innocence we think this is reciprocity.


Samuel Hughes: Oh no.


William Stevens Fielding: This is the sort of reciprocity Canada has been seeking for 40 years. This is substantially and with very little change the kind of reciprocity that we had from the year 1854 down to 1866. This is the reciprocity that we begged the
United States for 30 years to give us. This is the reciprocity that was in view when the leading gentlemen on the opposite side of the House went down to Washington-shall I -say wore out much shoe leather in the elegant phrase of the leader of the opposition-they went there to ask for the very reciprocity that is now before this House.


Mr. BLAIN.: Never, never.


William Stevens Fielding: This is the reciprocity that was offered by Sir John Macdonald in the National Policy of 1879.


Wilfrid Laurier: Hear, hear.


George Henry Cowan: Rip Van Winkle.


William Sora Middlebro: If that is the case why did the minister cut the reciprocity clause out of the tariff of 1897.


William Stevens Fielding: If the hon. gentleman will read the debate he will find that in the very speech with which I brought down that tariff, I declared that the government of Canada still desired reciprocity and were prepared to have it. This is the reciprocity which as an historical fact beyond question every government in Canada, from the first day of confederation down to this moment, has been endeavouring to get from the United States. This is


Samuel Hughes: Could the minister give us some evidence?


William Stevens Fielding: Oh yes, I could, but I am bound to tell my hon. friend


Samuel Hughes: I am afraid the minister cannot.


William Stevens Fielding: I gave an outline of it to this House on the -day I brought the reciprocity agreement before the House. I then gave this history in general terms and if my -hon. friend will be good enough to read it he will find that it is given with the utmost accuracy.


Mr. MACDONELL (South Toronto).: A little illogical.


William Stevens Fielding: I do not think it was more illogical than the speech my hon. friend made the other day, but I wish to do my hon. friend the justice to say that although he made a speech which I do not think was logical and with which I did not agree it was the speech of a courteous gentleman and as such was entitled to our respect.


Mr. CROCKET.: What did the Prime Minister mean in 1907, when he said that Canada was not in favour of reciprocity?


William Stevens Fielding: The Prime Minister never said that Canada was not in favour of reciprocity.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh, oh.


William Stevens Fielding: I say it now that there has never been a man of cabinet rank on either side ' of politics from the first day of confederation down to this moment who did not claim that reciprocity was desirable if we could obtain it, but what the Prime Minister said and what hon. members on both sides have said, was that we had made our offers to the United States to get reciprocity, and that they had not treated us generously in the matter, they had not responded as we thought they should respond, and there came a time when the self-respect of the Canadian people led us to say: ' We will no longer beg reciprocity from these people, we will stand upon our rights and work out the commercial salvation of Canada independently of the United States.' That has been the attitude of the Liberal party from that day to this.


Mr. BOYCE.: Does my hon. friend say that the Prime Minister never made use of these words:
Canada to-day is not in favour of reciprocity.^ There was a time when Canadians, beginning with myself, would have given many tilings to obtain the American market, but, thank Heaven, those days have passed away.


William Stevens Fielding: I will repeat those words. There was a time when Canadians would have given almost anything to get reciprocity.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Answer the question.


William Stevens Fielding: There was a time when Canadians would have given a great deal to get reciprocity. When my hon. friends were wearing out shoe leather going to Washington, they would have given a great deal for reciprocity. Thank Heaven the day has come when we will only have reciprocity on fair and reasonable terms.


Mr. SMYTH (Algoma).: What did the First Minister have to thank Heaven for at that time?


William Stevens Fielding: I am bound to tell my hon. friend that the First Minister was thanking Heaven for something which hon. gentlemen at that time did not thank Heaven for, but for which they are thanking Heaven to-day. The Prime Minister was thanking Heaven for the better condition of life in Canada which had been brought about under the policy of a Liberal administration, and at that time hon. gentlemen opposite were preaching the cry that the policy of the Prime Minister and his colleagues was ruining the business of the country. Now, the hon. gentlemen have come to the point when they, too, thank Heaven for the commercial and financial prosperity which has come to the Dominion of Canada, and which they say is so good that they want it let alone.
Is this reciprocity? Yes it is substantially the same kind of reciprocity that was proposed in 1891 when Sir John Thompson issued his card to the electors of Antigon-ish, and asked to be returned because he and his colleagues were going to Washington to endeavour to bring about a reciprocity treaty, and he believed they would succeed. It was the same kind of reciprocity that the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) sought when he went to Washington. It is the same kind of reciprocity that was offered bv Sir Charles Tupper in 1887 and 1888. It is the same kind of reciprocity that every public man of eminence from the first day of July, 1867, to the 26th day of January, 1911, stood for before the public with the declaration that he was willing to have reciprocity, and would be glad to have it, always provided he could get it on fair and reasonable terms. If we had come before the country with a reciprocity treaty in the ordinary sense of the word, even then we might justly have asked the support of this parliament. But we realized that after all these years while it was still important to us, we thought, that we should	open up
the American market, we thought it better that we should not enter into a binding engagement for any particular term. And what do we find now? Hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House who, at one stage, said: Let us not make any binding treaty, let us have no entangling alliance-some of them and their friends in the press now turn around and say: ' What is the good of this reciprocity; you have no guarantee of its continuance?'


An hon. MEMBER.: Who said that?


William Stevens Fielding: I have read it in the press.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh.


An hon. MEMBER.: The Globe?


William Stevens Fielding: No, I have not read it in the Globe. That is the attitude of a number of my Conservative friends in many quarters, and there is some force in it because a reciprocity treaty binding for a given period of years would give some parties encouragement to make investment which perhaps they would not make on the faith of an arrangement of thjs character, and to that extent I frankly admit there is room for criticism of this reciprocity scheme. But take it all and all we thought it better we should not bind the parliament and the government of Canada for a given period of years, and we therefore arranged with the American negotiators that each party would make concessions in its tariffs. We said; We believe that these concessions will com-

mend themselves to the peiople of the United States and to the people of Canada; we believe that the arrangement when! confirmed by the respective legislative bodies will continue, not because anybody is bound to it but because the arrangement will prove so beneficial to the people of both countries that they will desire to continue it. But if perchance that proves to be a mistake, it the arrangement is not satisfactory for one side or the other, then without breach of faith either party is free to terminate the arrangement.


Samuel Hughes: In view of the remarks of the First Minister about the great good that i:s going to accrue to both countries from this measure, would the Minister of Finance have any objection to explain what construction he puts on the statement of Mr. J. J. Hill in the papers this morning, where he says the arrangement give very little but it prevents closer union between Canada and Great Britain.


William Stevens Fielding: I know of no more ridiculous argument than that; I am not referring now to the statement of the hon. member (Mr. Hughes) but to a class of argument to which this remark belongs.


Samuel Hughes: It was Mr. J. J. Hill's remark.


William Stevens Fielding: I know.


Samuel Hughes: The father of the Bill;
the owner of the we'st.


William Stevens Fielding: On both sides of the line parties friendly to reciprocity make the best case they can for the agreement, and that is reasonable and proper. We point out the advantages we believe will accrue to the people of Canada from this measure, and we are not so much concerned in its advantages for the people of the United States; that is their end of the business.


Mr. SCHAFFNER.: They looked after that.


William Stevens Fielding: If some member of the United States Congress takes a speech I have made in this House and says Mr. Fielding declares this is a great thing for Canada and therefore it is a bad thing for United States, there would not be much logic in that; and yet such is the kind of argument hon. gentlemen opposite are making. They find something that has been said in the United States Congress to support this measure and they say that because a member of congress has said something to help thi% Bill along it is therefore a bad thing for Canada. We are not concerned to explain or defend what has been said by any one in the United States concerning this measure. They are dealing with it from their point of view entirely.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Hear hear.


William Stevens Fielding: And I am frank enough to say that we are looking at it from the point of view of Canada, and how it will benefit the people of this Dominion.
1 'am mo more called upon to sutain or defend what any one has said in the United States than o member of Congress would be called upcr to explain or defend what is said by any member of this House. I, therefore, think there is nothing in the interruption of my hon. friend (Mr. Hughes). I say that this measure is the very kind of reciprocity we have all been seeking for years, and even were it proposed "as a definite treaty, we might in the light of history reasonably ask the support of this parliament for the measure. But, in its present form, we can point the country to how much stronger is the situation. It is distinctly set out in the correspondence which forms the agreement that while we hope that this arrangement will commend itself to the judgment of the people of both nations, nevertheless we do not undertake to interfere with the liberty of Congress or of the Canadian parliament to make at any time any change in the arrangement which they see fit. That being the position, would it not seem logical and reasonable that hon. gentlemen who may not view the matter with much favour, should, under these circumstances, say: We will let this measure go through, if it is a good measure we will all be delighted by and by, and no harm will be done, but if it proves to be a bad measure the government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier will be condemned for presenting it, and then the government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier will pass away, and hon. gentlemen opposite will come to power, and they can repeal the measure. I believe, Sir, that that view will be taken by fair-minded men in the country. There are men-we know it with regret-who honestly oppose reciprocity, and we are sorry for it, and we respect their views as we wish them to respect ours, but these very men will surely say: What harm can be done for putting this in operation; if it is good as the Liberals say the country will benefit by it; if it is as bad as the Conservatives say, it is another nail in the coffin of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and his colleagues, and in a very short time in the natural order of events an election will come on, and a change of administration will follow, and the new government can repeal the measure if they choose. I have heard that view expressed by Conservatives in personal conversation with myself, and it is a reasonable view. The people of the country generally will I am sure say since this agreement does not profess to bind the people of Canada, since it leaves the parlia-

ment of Canada absolutely free to make such change in the fiscal policy of the country as parliament may please, it should have a chance. If it be the will of the people constitutionally expressed, to say this is a bad measure, then the in-coming government can re-impose the taxes we now propose to take off. In view of that circumstance, surely there is no fair and reasonable ground for a policy of obstruction in regard to the measure. I therefore, hold that the position taken by hon. gentlemen opposite from the beginning has not been fair and reasonable. Oh, but, they say, we want redistribution, and the west particularly wants it. Some hon. gentlemen opposite shed tears for the west because they are going to have an election without redistribution. Well, redistribution affects the whole country, but I suppose as a matter of fact it chiefly affects the west, and while the west wants redistribution there is one thing it wants more than redistribution, and that is reciprocity.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


Some hon. MEMBERS: No, no.


William Stevens Fielding: 
William Stevens Fielding: He cannot very easily be humbugged; he cannot be humbugged by a Conservative member who shouts for free agricultural implements, while his leader votes against free agricultural implements. The western farmer is a pretty keen fellow; he is intelligent perhaps above the average, and he wants redistribution although I do not think he is bothered very much about it. He wants reciprocity any way, and he knows there is a great difference between the situation in respect to redistribution, and the situation with respect to reciprocity. You can have redistribution by the will of this parliament at any moment, but you cannot have reciprocity at any moment by the sole will of the parliament of Canada. For many years while the Canadian parliament was ready to have reciprocity the people across the line were not ready for it. Sometimes there was a movement favourable to reciprocity, but what did we find? Any change in the fiscal policy of the United States requires a combination of the House of Representatives, which is now Democratic, the Senate, which is now Republican, and the president, who is now a Republican. A combination of these three is necessary to effect a change in the fiscal policy of the United States. Every effort for years to secure that combination has proved a failure down to the time of the present reciprocity agreement.
Mr. FIELDING


Edward Arthur Lancaster: What about having equal safeguards in Canada instead of going it blind? .


William Stevens Fielding: If my hon. friend thinks that the constitution of the United States affords better safeguards than British in-situtions, I do not agree with him. Our safeguards are not of precisely the same character; but we have, as history shows, excellent safeguards, and we do not propose to give them up. There is one safeguard that we perhaps need, to prevent the business of the country being obstructed, but that, as Rudyard Kipling says, is another story.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: AVhat I am objecting to is not applying the fundamental principle of British institutions, which is government by the people. The people have a right to pass on this question. Let the hon. minister apply the British constitution, and we will have no quarrel with him.


William Stevens Fielding: We are living under the British constitution, and my hon. friend, who is a lawer, knows that if in any respect we violate it, he has only to appeal to the court.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: You do it every day.


William Stevens Fielding: If my hon. friend knew of a single point in which the constitution was violated, he would be the first man to call attention to it.


Samuel Hughes: Might I 'ask the hon minister if he considers it in harmony with the principles of responsible government for two men, however capable, to go to Washington and bind the parliament and people of Canada by a resolution which has never been submitted to them?


William Stevens Fielding: In the first place, as I have just shown, we do not bind them.


Samuel Hughes: You try to, but we do not intend that you shall.


William Stevens Fielding: When this measure passes, if it shall pass, it does not bind the people of Canada one hour longer than they are content through their constitutional authority to accept it. When hon. gentlemen opposite talk of this 'agreement binding the country, I can only say that they are not correct.


Samuel Hughes: Wherein does it differ from any other law?


Angus Claude Macdonell: Did not the hon. gentleman say in this House that the honour of the government and the honour of the country was pledged to it?


William Stevens Fielding: That is hardly correct. We were asked to put off the consideration of this matter, and I stated that the government of Canada was bound to bring this

matter before the House and push it to a conclusion. That is what we are doing. Parliament is not bound. My hon. friend is not bound; I could not bind him if 1 would. No member of this parliament is bound. The government is bound, and whatever a government does in the name of the country binds in a certain sense the whole country, but as a matter of fact every member of this parliament remains unbound and absolutely free.


Samuel Hughes: Will the minister kindly point out any statute on the books of Canada that cannot be repealed by the parliament of Canada? Wherein does this differ from any other law?


William Stevens Fielding: Yes. If the parliament of Canada were to pass an Act confirming a treaty for a given period of years, I siay, in a sense, this parliament could not repeal that treaty.


Samuel Hughes: It could at the end of the time.


William Stevens Fielding: My hon. friend said at any time.


Samuel Hughes: No, I did not.


William Stevens Fielding: I want to point out, first, that we do not bind the country; but I want to go and say that if we did bind the country, what right would these hon. gentlemen have to complain? They talk of two gentlemen going down to Washington, sitting in secret and binding the country. One hon. member made merry about this secret meeting at which the telephone was shut off and no one was allowed to come in. Has the hon. gentleman any idea that treaties or commercial arrangements of any sort are negotiated on the public streets? If two farmers want to make a deal about a mowing machine, they will probably sit down together in the kitchen of one of them and make an agreement. Do we not know that every business transaction between individuals in private life is negotiated privately? How was the treaty negotiated in bygone years under Conservative auspices? Was it negotiated on public streets? When Sir Charles Tupper went to Washington with Mr. Chamberlain in 1888 and 1889, and negotiated a treaty, which unfortunately the United States Senate never ratified, did he go on the public highway and invite the newspapers to come and listen to the negotiations? What childishness to put before the people of Canada. Every arrangement of this character, every important private negotiation, still more every important public negotiation, still more every international negotiation, is necessarily negotiated privately and in secret. But, Sir, in the previous treaties Canada has been in a measure
bound-bound for a definite period of years. We have not bound Canada to any definite period of years; but if we had done so, hon. gentlemen opposite would have no reason to complain. But there is this important difference: the Americans have reached a certain stage in this reciprocity matter which is of vital importance to us. Hon. gentlemen opposite at one time advanced the view-it was perhaps the most rational point in their argument-that we were not certain how the American Congress would deal with this matter. We knew that in times past, after certain progress had been made in the negotiations, the American Senate failed to approve. Why don't you wait, it was said, until the Americans decide for themselves? Well, we were not so much impressed with that argument as some of our hon, friends opposite were; but if there was anything in that argument, it is swept away to-day. Every step has been taken by the government of the United States. Loyally has the president kept his faith witn the government of Canada. He has put his great personality and his power behind that measure; he had quarrelled with members of his own party; he has called on patriotic Democrats and has said to them, ' I am sorry my own party is divided, come in and help this thing for the good of the country;' and he has won a response. Step by step he has done his part. The House of Representatives has passed the measure; the Senate of the United States has passed the measure; the president has recommended it, and the newspapers say that on Wednesday next, he will sign the Bill; and then, after having been for 40 years on the wrong side of the question, Uncle Sam will have put himself right. Are we to be right or wrong? We have been right in the past. We have always said to the Americans that we would deal with them on fair and reasonable grounds, but they would not consent. Row the current has changed. They have recognized the injustice-shall I say that?-at all events, the error of their way for the last 40 years in their trade relations with Canada. They have practically said, We think we have been wrong; we desire to come and make a Eair and reasonable arrangement. They have made a fair and reasonable arrangement. The only surprising thing in the minds of many Canadians is that we succeeded in making so good an arrangement.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh, oh.


William Stevens Fielding: It is a good arrangement for the great west, and the great west is anxious for it this very year, with the prospect of a crop of 200,000,000 bushels of wheat. The west wants to know which is the best market. Shall we sell it to England? Very well, if England wants it; but if there is a better market across the bor-



der, who will say the western farmer shall not have the right to send his wheat across the border?
A few years ago the government of Newfoundland entered into an arrangement with the government of the United States under which the fish of Newfoundland was to be admitted into the United States free of duty while the fish of Canada would not be so admitted. The Canadian government made a strong protest and for some years they succeeded in preventing the government' of Newfoundland from making that agreement. Why? Because they said ' Canada wants free fish, and because we want to arrange matters so that Canada, as well as Newfoundland, shall get the benefit of the arrangement.
To-day we offer the fishermen of Canada that which the Conservatives, wanted for them in that quarrel, and we know that the best farmers, the best representatives of the farmers, throughout the country all approve of it. It is a good thing for the grain grower. It is -a good thing for the manufacturer, because we have achieved that which they said could not be done. We have achieved a reciprocity in natural products, without having to make any important concessions in the matter of manufactures.
This reciprocity is a good thing for the manufacturer, and I venture respectfully to repeat a word of advice which I offered them not long ago. I say unhesitatingly that from the point of view of the manufacturers of Canada this reciprocity agreement is a good arrangement, are. h ' socr through, we may reasonably say to the western farmer: ' Well, you cannot have all you want in this wicked world, but this goes a long way towards meeting your demands, and we can fairly ask you to give and take, and let the eastern manufacturer have a fair show,' and we believe they will do it. But, if perchance the manufacturers in their great power should unite in opposing, and possibly condemning, or even defeating this measure, then there will rise up in that western country a storm cloud bigger than a man's hand, and the end will be a change in the fiscal policy of the country, which the manufacturers will find much greater than anything they conceived of.
Mr. SCHAE'FNER. Neither the hon. gentleman nor his party would think of hurting the manufacturers. The right hon. the Prime Minister says he will not hurt the manufacturers.


William Stevens Fielding: We say we have not hurt the manufacturers. We know, nevertheless, that many of the manufacturers have been needlessly alarmed, and we know that to-day they are opposing us in this matter. However, I am free to say Mr. FIELDING
that I think they have made a mistake, because it will be in their interests as well as in the interests of the country to have the agreement go through.
Redistribution and reciprocity-the west wants both-but they do not want them both at the same moment, and they do not expect them both at the same moment. In the year 1891, the census was taken on the 1st day of April, yet on the very eve of that census-in the month of March, I think, Sir John A. Macdonald appealed to the people, and we had a general election. The census came along a few weeks afterwards. The west had to wait for its redistribution for three or four years, and it had nothing in particular to wait for. Today I do not know whether the west will have to wait for redistribution or not, but if it has to wait, it will be because there is a more important measure than redistribution before it. As I stated, reciprocity in days gone by has been desired by all, but never before has it been within our grasp. At the present time it is offered to us, and the question is, ' Shall we take it?' We, on behalf of the Liberals of Canada, say, we believe the people want it and will take it. We challenge you to let it pass in this House, and a year hence we will meet my hon. friends in any manner they, wish. If they believe this is a dangerous measure, it can only be dangerous for a few short months. The elections will come on, in the ordinary course of events, before many months have passed. Redistribution will come on, and then they will have an opportunity not only of sweeping out this government-which they desire so much-but they will have an opportunity of repealing this measure and putting on the taxes which we wish to take off.
After nearly half a century we have now found the psychological moment when reciprocity is within our grasp. Shall we take it? ' Yes,' will be the voice of the people.


William Findlay Maclean: Mr. Speaker, this is not reciprocity. It is revolution.


James Kirkpatrick Kerr: The hon. gentleman has already spoken on the motion.


William Findlay Maclean: You can rule me out of order if you wish to do so, Mr, Speaker; however, I only spoke on an incident which arose.


William Stevens Fielding: We do not object. Let the hon. gentleman go on.


William Findlay Maclean: This is not. reciprocity. It is revolution. It is commercial union, or at least partial commercial union which must end in complete commercial union. The hon. gentleman who has just preceded me (Mr. Fielding) says that the agreement meets with the
1002!


l'Jll
[Stage Direction]
approval of the Republican party, the Democratic party, the Senate and President of the United States, This may be perfectly true. But why is it so? Because, for the first time, Canada has admitted the President of the United States into her councils in making the tariff of this country, It is the most humiliating thing that has ever occurred in this country. It is the first time a president of the United States by using the big stick-as he used it on the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) in Albany, in connection with the Payne-Aldrich treaty-forced him to make a change in the tariff law of this country. ' Then,' he said, ' you must come back to Washington and make an arrangement in regard to the duty,' and the hon. Finance Minister (Mr. Fielding) went to Washington and allowed the President of the United States, in secret negotiation, to participate in the making of the tariff of this country.
_ Where did we get our independence in regard to the tariff? We achieved it from the mother country, in days gone by. It was a hard thing to achieve, and once we had it we used it in bringing about a national policy, and making this country great. Now that national policy has been a success and our commercial and tariff independence has been vindicated, yet, we propose to give it over to the United States. No wonder all the parties of the United States are united in desiring to have this thing passed, because by so doing we are admitting them into participation in the making of the tariff of Canada. Surely that is not what we achieved our commercial independence for. We are putting the mother country out, to let the American people in.	.
An hon. MEMBER.: No, we are not, and you know better.


William Findlay Maclean: Yes, we are, and I will give you my proof. I want to show how radical this change is, and how it departs from all the traditions of the past. In years gone by we have had tariff proposals submitted to this House, and argued from all points of view, and interest; but inasmuch as this tariff has the approval of the United States, and cannot be changed without their consent and without negotiations, a revolution has been proposed in the country. And the proof of it is that the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Sifton), the hon. member for Welland (Mr. German), and the hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Harris) has to leave their party because they could not go to the government to have the tariff changed but had to go to the President of the United States.


Mr. BLACK.: That is rot.
316J


William Findlay Maclean: That is all very well for the hon. member from Nova Scotia (Mr. Black) he does not like it. But the reason he does not like it is that, it is true. The Prime Minister, when in England recently, was not the friend of the Empire; and to-day, before the Empire and the world, he appears as the friend and colleague of the President of the United States. He has allowed the President of the United States to have a say in making the tariff of Canada. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) has said we can rescind this tariff when we like. The President called a special session of Congress in order to deal with this matter, and they have passed this agreement. If Canada passes the agreement under those conditions, it is to be said that we can so disregard the President and Congress as to repeal that agreement within a year? The United States would have every reason for a hostile attitude towards Canada if we went into an agreement of this kind sanctified, as we. may say, by legislation and then repealed it within a short time. We could not repeal it without entering into negotiations with the President of the United States, if we want to keep our good faith.
I have just said that this is a great organic change in regard to our tariff the like of which was never proposed in this House before. Hitherto, we have made the tariff of this country in this House. This time, it has been made out of the House, and that is a change that every Canadian should view with alarm. Heretofore, Parliament has been able to modify any tariff propositions brought down. I remember when Sir John Thompson and Mr. Foster proposed tariff changes, it was, as they said to lop away the mouldering branches. But their proposals did not meet with the views of the majority of this House, and the result was that the Government of the day had to modify their proposals. In this case there can be no modi fication and, this is to be said of a tariff which, as has already been pointed out, was made by two men who did not know all the trade conditions of this country. I could name a county in New Brunswick that will be injured by this agreement.


William Pugsley: What county?


William Findlay Maclean: Carleton.


William Pugsley: We will see what the electors of Carleton say about that.


William Findlay Maclean: I have information that this will injure the Canadian farmers along the border. But here we have two men who do not know everything about tariff conditions in this country, and they assume to make this treaty, and, instead of our being able in the House of Com-

mons to make changes, I say that power has been seized by the cabinet-by a section of the cabinet for not all were consulted-and that junta in the cabinet undertake to make the tariff of Canada in collusion with the President of the United States, and that tariff cannot be changed unless.


Mr. TURRIFF.: That is not true.
Some lion. MEMBERS. Order.


James Kirkpatrick Kerr: I ask the hon. gentleman (Mr. Turriff) to withdraw that word.


John Gillanders Turriff: If my statement is contrary to the rules of the House, I withdraw it, and I say that the statement of the hon. member for York (Mr. Maclean) is not in accordance with the agreement that is made.


William Findlay Maclean: What is the hon. gentleman's (Mr. Turriff) opinion. I come back to mine that for the first time in the history of Canada our tariff has been made outside this House. And the proof is the rush the Americans make to grab it when the offer is made, and we are letting the President of the United States have a hand in making our tariff.


Henry Robert Emmerson: Will the hon. gentleman (Mr. Maclean) allow me a question? I wish to understand his argument. Does he mean to say that we have made the tariff with the United States as evidenced by the Bill passed by the Senate of that country on Saturday last?


William Findlay Maclean: There was no change made there. The gag was put on, and the same unconstitutional course pursued as is pursued here. And, for political reasons, they joined in it in order to have a say in this country. This is not only an organic change in our constitution, but it is the introduction of commercial union. In fact, it is partial commercial union. The right hon. the Prime Minister is still a commercial unionist, and it is the old commercial unionist who was discredited by the people in 1891 who will be discredited this year if he goes to the country. And when the right hon. gentleman said that he and his party were the champions of redistribution, and, though his organs demand it, yet, .the responsibility for the failure to pass redistribution, should it not be passed, must be upon him and his friends. I wish to give a proof that commercial union is back of this. Commercial union was the thing that united Germany. These were scattered and divided states, but commercial union drew them together so that they became one country. And the design of the United States is to absorb Canada by a partial and then a complete system of commercial union, if .they can get Mr. MACLEAN.
the people of Canada to go into it. Once the ball is started rolling, this will be the effect, unless the people of Canada unite. That is the real question in all this. Hon. gentlemen opposite have presented it to the people as a question of markets, of profits, of dollars, I hope that this question will be considered in its effect upon our national institutions. If the Americans can succeed in controlling our tariff, they will wipe out our British institutions. As President Taft said:	This will wipe out
trade between the mother country and other states of the empire. What are dollat-3 compared with our institutions? We have British institutions which give the people of Canada better government than the people of the United States enjoy. Reciprocity is supported in the United States because the leaders, and the trusts there wish to divert the attention of the people from the problems with which they are faced. And another thing is to make their country greater and give it the right to intervene in the affairs of Canada. I say this is the most deplorable piece of legislation ever proposed in this country. And I believe that when the people come to vote on this agreement they will vote against it, because it means the sacrifice of our institutions. And, as I have said before in this House, I know of nothing so dangerous to the ideals of the people of Quebec-' Our laws, our language, our institutions '-as to give the United States a say -in the affairs of Canada. They will drive British institutions out of this country if they can be driven out. But my contention is that no effort in this direction on the part of the United States or of hon. gentlemen opposite can be successful. The heart of Canada is sound, and it is British. It is for imperial trade all around the world, and we are going to have that band of English speaking people all around the world trading one with the other, in spite of Mr. Taft, in spite of the right hon. gentleman and his government. Our destiny is not with the United States, it is away from the United States. Hon. gentlemen are trying to drive us that way, as they tried to drive this country twenty odd years ago; and Sir John A. Macdonald said then, as every Canadian says now, ' A British subject I was born, and a British subject I will die. We will keep British institutions in Canada.


William Pugsley: But he was for reciprocity all the same.


William Findlay Maclean: He did not propose that two members of his cabinet should go into a secret treaty, or anything of this kind.


William Pugsley: Will my hon. friend allow me to ask him a question? Has his attention ever been called to the dispatch

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which was sent by the Canadian government on the 13th of December, 1890, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, reading as follows:
My Lord,-I have the honour to send to your Lordship to-day a telegraphic message ill cipher, of which the following is the substance :
With reference to my telegram of the 10th inst., this government is desirous of proposing a joint commission such as that of 1871, with authority to deal without limitation

Mark the word:
-without limitation, and to prepare a treaty respecting the following subjects:
1. Renewal of the reciprocity treaty of 1851, with the modifications required by the altered circumstances of both countries and with the extensions deemed by the commisison to be in the interests of Canada and of the United States.
And is my hon. friend also aware that the definition which Sir Charles Tupper gave in parliament to these words 'without limitation'; was that the Canadian government were making an unrestricted offer of reciprocity to the United States?


William Findlay Maclean: The hon. gentleman can read the dispatch, and he and the man who wrote the dispatch are responsible for it. I am responsible here for my position in this House, and to the trust that has been reposed in me by the people of South York, and they are against this proposition, they are against the raid that is made on the nationality of Canada, and they intend to vote against it. Now this proposal, as I have said, is revolutionary, and it is to be followed by the threat that the Minister of Finance made here today, and the farmers of this country will be justified, if they have no protection, in coming here next year and asking for the removal of what was once described in one of my election contests as the last vestige of the National Policy from the statute-book of Canada. That is what is ahead of the people of Canada today. We are to have no more protection of our industries, we are to allow the president and Congress of the United States to have a say in our tariff, and Canada is to become suzerain of the United. States, or we will become states of the union and send senators to Congress. We will have Canada reduced to the position of being a number of states in the American republic. Now we do not want that, and the issue is before us. The Minister of Finance today made it a mere issue of profit, or dollar, what the western farmer was going to get out of it. Now I venture to say that the western farmer has had his eyes opened; I venture the prediction that the people of the west will return a majority against this proposition. A great change
of opinion is going on throughout Canada over this pact.


Judson Burpee Black: You don't know what you are talking about.


William Findlay Maclean: The hon. gentleman, on election night, will find out that he did not know what be was hiking about.


An hon. MEMBER.: The hon. gentleman is out for a senatorship.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: There will be a good
many looking out for sematorships on that occasion.


Mr. TALBOT.: It will be a long time before you get a senatorship.


William Findlay Maclean: After the statements that have been made here today we demand that the west be given a voice in regard to this question. But the west is to be denied its full voice on this question by hon. gentlemen opposite, because they cannot wait, in turning over the destinies of Canada, and making the tariff of Canada in conjunction with the president and Congress of the United States.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The remarks of my hon. friend from North Grey (Mr. Middlebro) seem to have raised a storm of dissent from the government. The government find itself in an extraordinary and pitiable condition. I confess that I never heard a more pitiable exhibition in the shape of oratory than that which has fallen from the lips of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance on this occasion. Why, Sir, of all the childish positions I never heard the like before. Schoolboy tactics, childish tactics, the most pusillanimous kind of tactics, the most feeble kind of protest, to come from hon. gentlemen who are supposed to have a sense of the dignity and responsibility of the government of this great country. Sir, what did the Finance Minister say on the floor of this House in February last? what did the Minister of Customs say in February last, and what have they said on the hustings? What did the Finance Minister say in the city of Montreal? Ever since they introduced this pact they have been saying that it will not be many months very much earlier than you expect, before this whole thing will be submitted to the people of Canada. And did the opposition dissent from that? Not at all, the opposition never have dissented. The government have been crying that only for us they were willing to submit this matter to the people at once. They are working off their bluff upon the opposition and the people of Canada, when the very last thing that the government desires is an appeal to the people. How did the Minister of Finance vote upon

the motion of the leader of the opposition on the 8th of March? That was a concrete motion, a proposal by my hon. friend that this proposition should be submitted to the
people before it passed this House. How did the Finance Minist r vote on that question? He voted nay, that U sho Id not be submitted to the people, but that ii should be forced through this House by the force of the government majority, *and their party had to "be whipped into line by the lash of party discipline in order ;to obtain a majority. And yet, under these circumstances, the Minister of Finance can find it possible to say that his great concern was for the opposition, that the opposition forsooth, was the people. Why, Sir, the opposition is trying to have it submitted to the people. The Minister of Finance laughs, he doesn't believe. it. Has the hon. gentleman ever manifested such concern for the feelings of the opposition before, that, though he knows they are afraid of a certain thing, he will not give them that thing at once? If he is sincere, and believes that the opposition is afraid of appealing to the people, all I can say is that he is not possessed of that ability that I think he is, of that far-sightedness that I think he has, if he does not give us an election within the shortest possible time the statute 'allows. Why doesn't he give us an election and test the feeling ot the people? Why, it is not long ago that the hon. gentleman, as a responsible minister, announced that the opposition had no rights whatever in this House. His deep concern for us is very sudden; I fancy. Sir, that if the order were reversed and the party on this side of the House had control of the electoral machinery the people of this country would not have long to wait before they had an election upon this question.
The hon. gentleman says that the opposi-tira is afraid of this question, and he speaks with all the confidence of having made an agreement which is hailed with united acclaim by a grateful and thankful people. The hon. gentleman seems for the moment to forget the lamentable difficulties of the gentlemen who sit behind him. He forgets that a gentleman in whom he professed to have some confidence, not long ago, the former Minister of the Interior, Mr. Sifton, and a loyal supporter heretofore of the Liberal government, condemned this compact from beginning to end. The hon. gentleman from Welland (Mr. German) condemned it. The hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Harris) condemned it, and there are other gentlemen not possessing the courage that these gentlemen exhibited who, in their hearts and minds condemn it and, I venture to say, have expressed their discontent to the right hon. gentleman and the Minis-Mr. BOYCE.
ter of Finance but who are hushed or lashed into silence by the members of the government. I would have been glad for instance to have heard from the hon. member for West Peterboro (Mr. Stratton). It is well known that he found himself in a very difficult position. He was opposed to this agreement and his constituency was opposed to it, and I would like to have heard his clear and candid opinion upon the subject, but he, like others, was not allowed to do so.


William Pugsley: He made a very admirable speech in favour of it not long ago.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: And . the result is he has declined to accept the nomination for West Peterboro. He has received his reward, the promise of higher things, a seat in the Red Chamber where the wicked cease not from trouble, but from troubling. Perhaps if I were to get personal I might mention otiher instances. What, about the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald). We should like very much to have heard from him. We heard mutterings and murmurings from that hon. gentleman. He was very much dissatisfied, and while the debate on this question was going on that gentleman sat silent in this House although the mutterings and murmurings got into the papers of his own province. Strange things happen with regard to the hon. member for Pictou. I would ask the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Pugsley) whether he made an admirable speech in favour of reciprocity?


William Pugsley: I am sure he could do so.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Strange things have happened. That hon. gentleman was confronted with a party pistol put to his head in one hand and a soporific in the other. He had to take either the pistol or the soporific. He took the soporific, and he has been asleep ever since. Rumour has it the hon. gentleman is to be promoted for his sleepiness and his drowsiness on this subject to a very honourable position in the Cabinet. These are the rewards given to government members who keep their mouths shut although they are not satisfied with the government policy. And yet the Finance Minister says in a childish speech that the opposition are afraid of an election, an appeal to the people on this subject when the government is so lamentably weak, so feeble and in such a pitiable plight that it is absolutely unable to carry through a compact and will not submit that compact to the high court of the people who alone should decide a matter of such vital interest to them, because it fears to do so. That is the position of the Canadian government and it is no wonder that the member for North Grey (Mr. Middlebro) before you

left the chair to go into the Committee of Ways and Means should draw attention to the pitiable spectacle presented by this government. The position of the government is like that of two school boys each afraid to take the ice cold plunge and each saying: You are afraid yourself. That is a sort of logic that might pass with a boy of ten years old, but coming from an experienced parliamentarian like the Minister of Finance it does not do credit to him, to his position or to his government.
The Minister of Finance made a statement on his responsibility which I did not like, and which I am sure he will correct. He said that the Prime Minister had never said that he was not in favour of reciprocity. I quoted to him the words of the Prime Minister and asked him if he would deny them, and, Sir, he evaded that question and never answered it. I would now ask him directly if he will answer that question and say whether the Prime Minister ever uttered the words I read.


William Stevens Fielding: I do not know whether or not they were the words of the Prime Minister. I have known the Prime Minister intimately for a great many years. I have known his mind on the question of reciprocity as on others, and I never knew a time when he was not in favour of reciprocity. His fear was that he could not get it, and so he ceased to seek it.


Wilfrid Laurier: Hear, hear.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I would ask my hon. friend why he went on record against it? I will quote the words again:
Canada to-day is not in favour of reciprocity. There was a time when Canadians, beginning with myself, would have given many things to obtain the American market, but, thank Heaven, those days are passed and over.
Does the Finance Minister now say that the First Minister did not make use of these words?


William Stevens Fielding: I do not know whether he did or not.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: My hon. friend did not know whether he did or not, but at the same time he asserts that the Prime Minister never made the statement.


William Stevens Fielding: I state again that I do not know as to the particular speech of the Prime Minister, I said that I know the Prime Minister's mind on this question. I am not prepared to say whether or not he used these words.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: My hon. friend will allow me to state that he is shuffling. He stated that the Prime Minister never said he was not. in favour of reciprocity; I quote to him a speech in which the Prime Minister declares absolutely against reciprocity and thanks Heaven-


William Stevens Fielding: No he did not.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: And the hon. gentleman says he did not. I will give him something more to shuffle about. Has he read the proceedings of the Imperial Conference of 1907? Does he recognize this?
There was a time when we were wanting reciprocity with the United States, but our efforts and our offers were put aside and negatived. We have said good-bye to that trade and we noiv put all our hopes upon the British trade.
Does my honi. flriend recognize thoste words? Will the Minister of Finance say that the Prime Minister never used these words.


William Stevens Fielding: I take it for granted the hon. gentleman is reading from the official report.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I am reading an extract from Hansard.


William Stevens Fielding: If that is from the official record, I have no doubt that the official report is correct.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Then how can the Minister of Finance justify his assertion that the right hon. gentleman never said that the Canadian people were against reciprocity.


William Stevens Fielding: He never said that.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Now, I address myself to the right hon. the Prime Minister himself and I ask him if he did not use these words:
Canada to-day is not in favour of reciprocity. There wras a time when Canadians, beginning with myself, would have given many things to obtain the American market, hut, thank Heaven, these days are past and over.


Wilfrid Laurier: And they have come back now.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Ah, that is the answer of the Prime Minister. If the right hon. gentleman thanks Heaven that the days when the Canadian people were agitating in favor of reciprocity are past and over, what power is he to thank that these days have come back again. If he is to thank Heaven that such days are past and over, must he not thank the powers of Darkness that they have come back again. At the Imperial Conference, May 7th, 1907, the right hon. gentleman said:
If we are to follow the lines of nature and geography between Canada and the United States, the whole trade would flow from south to north, and from north to south. We have done everything possible by canals and subsidizing railways to bring the trade from west to east and east to wrest so as to bring

trade into British channels. All this we have done recognizing the principle of the great advantage of forcing trade within the British Empire. . . There is no boundary line except a purely conventional one over the whole territory of North America. Their habits are the same as ours, and therefore we are induced to trade and cannot help it by force of nature. But so far as legislation can influence trade, we have done everything possible to push our trade towards the British people as against the American people. . .
There was a time when we wanted reciprocity with the United States, but our efforts and our offers were put aside. We have said good-bye to that trade and we now put all our hopes upon the British trade.
I specially commend this to the Minister of Finance. The right hon. gentleman must confess to having used this language and yet he sits silent while his Minister of Finance thrice stated he had never declared himself as being opposed to reciprocity with the United States. I fail to understand such a thing occurring in a free parliament. The Minister of Finance was certainly in a desperate plight, and he made reckless statements. I have no doubt, Mr. Speaker, you now accept his apology for his missstatements and the manner in which he attempted to deceive the House, the position is this: this government is attempting now to force upon the Canadian people a policy which the government is aware is opposed to the wishes of that people, but by means of a servile majority behind the Prime Minister they are attempting to pass it into law. Then, they will go to the people and howl: 'Election.' They will send out their ballot-boxes and they will take to the hustings and say: Here is a treaty of reciprocity that we have been desirous of getting for many years; here is an agreement that was passed by parliament although actively opposed by the Conservative party; that agreement is now law and if by your votes you condemn it you will involve Canada in trade complications with the Uinted States and commercial ruin will befall this prosperous country. That is the kind of argument the government will use if this measure is allowed to pass and that is the kind of argument they have used before. They forced the Grand Trunk Pacific agreement through this parliament without consulting the people. They signed sealed and delivered it and then they went to the people and told them that it would invite disaster to the country to break that agreement. That Grand Trunk Pacific agreement was never submitted to the people. True, it is said by the Minister of Finance that this reciprocity treaty may at any time be set at naught, but he also told us that the honour of the parliament of Canada was pledged to make it law, and he knows very well that, the very terms of the letter he signed i with reference to this agreement pledged ,


Arthur Cyril Boyce: * the support of the parliament of Canada [DOT] to it. That the Minister of Finance cannot deny. I am entirely in accord with the sentiments upon this question which have been expressed by my hon. friend from North Grey (Mr. Middlebro). It is high time that the hypocrisy and childishness about this auestion shall cease. It is high time the people of Canada should know the feebleness of a government which can pretend to represent the wishes of the Canadian people and which at the same time admit that they are unable to carry on the business of this country and to further great public measures -which according to their policy are of great moment to the commercial interests of Canada. It is childish for them to sit there and say that because in the House of Commons the opposition is opposing it, they cannot get such a measure through, and at the same time, fearing to go to the country with that policy. Such a course is an advertisement of the fact that the government is afraid to meet the will of the people upon this question. I say, speaking for myself, and as a public man: let my right hon. friend bring on this election and the sooner he brings it on the better. As a man of long parliamentary experience, who for years has had the destinies of the countrv in his hands, he should realize that this agreement which we, on this side of the House and many on that side of the House so strenuously oppose, should be referred immediately to the will of the people of Canada, the last, our highest tribunal.
Speaking for myself, I welcome the day when my right hon. friend will submit this question to the people. I am not speaking boastfully; I am not saying that the people of my constituency are unanimously in favour of this; but I say that it is in the interest of this country that an agreement which involves so much, which involves a change of history, perhaps a change in the map of North America ultimately, should be submitted to the people, so that the people's message should be sent to this House either by a majority of members behind the right hon. gentleman authorizing him to go. ahead with this reciprocity, and all that it involves, or by a government which will maintain for Canada that proud position which it occupies at the present time as the chief star in the Crown of the British Empire-a government that will encourage her trade going east and west, that my right hon. friend gloried in-in London, not in Washington-and that all those instruments and institutions which are the means, of building up that trade shall 'be strengthened, so that Canada shall be united more and more closely to the empire. My hon. friend the Minister of Finance has made a great plea for reciprocity. He knows

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perfectly well what it will involve; he knows that it will involve the sectionaliz-ing of trade, the destruction to a great extent of the east and west lines, and to a great extent bring back the condition of things that existed before confederation. I cannot help thinking of my hon. friend's position and principles in 1886, when in the legislature of Nova Scotia, he aimed the invectives of his eloquence at the very prop of the policy of confederation, and endeavoured to dissolve the ties that bound the east to the west in this great country of ours. I am sorry for the position of the Finance Minister, when, alter fifteen years in that position, in which he has told us annually in his budget speeches of the great prosperity of this country due to the administration of the Liberal party, while now, at the end of that time, he demonstrates that deep down in his heart there is still lurking a seething canker of disruption. To what else can you attribute the sentiments that have been expressed by the hon. gentleman here to-day? I say it is time this hypocrisy snould cease, and that the country should know that the party to your left, Mr. Speaker, desires nothing more strongly than that the true position of this government should be made known to the people, that this agreement should be submitted to the people, and that the people should have an opportunity of passing their judgment upon it.


Henry Robert Emmerson: Mr. Speaker, although I am now and have been for a lifetime a strong advocate of a policy of freer trade relations with the United States, a policy of reciprocity, if you will, I would not attempt at this moment to make any extended remarks upon that question. I have, however, because of the interest I take in the question, sat here this afternoon and listened with some degree of wonderment, and with some degree of amusement, at some of the utterances that nave fallen from the lips of hon. gentlemen opposite. I have learned something as well. But I have wondered what would have happened had the government of Canada, in December of last year, refused to accept the invitation of the President of the United States to sit together with him and his representatives, to see if some policy of freer trade, mutually beneficial to both countries, could not be arranged; and I*wonder what would have been the attitude of hon. gentlemen opposite if the government of Canada, instead of taking the attitude which it did take, had said to the President of the United States: We want none of you; let well enough alone; we do not propose to do anything; although we are prosperous, although we are progressive, and are developing our country, we
have a slogan cry, we will not further advance, but will let well enough alone. I have been wondering what position hon. gentlemen opposite would have taken had there been that refusal, and I can imagine that we would have heard an entirely different song on their part when the matter came before this House. I have always had a great reverence and esteem for the public men of Canada. I have taken a pride in our institutions, in our government, and in the ability of the men, I care not on which side of the House they have sat, who have had to do, in years past and during recent years, with the administration of the affairs of Canada. But after listening to the doctrine preached by my hon. friend from South York (Mr. W. F. Maclean), that pride and esteem and respect has been greatly enhanced. My hon. friend has preached the doctrine that this whole movement has been a revolution in our constitution; and he or others on the other side of the House have stated time and again that Canada had listened to the wooing of the United States, and had sent two feeble and decrepit old men down to Washington, under the shadow of the Capitol, within reach of the claws of the American eagle, and my hon. friend preaches the doctrine that these two feeble old men went there and revolutionized


William Findlay Maclean: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a point of order. I did not make any 'reference to my hon. friends as being old and feeble men, and I did not use any such language.


Henry Robert Emmerson: I do not state, nor do I wish to be understood as stating or intending that my hon. friend (Mr. Maclean) made any such remark, but what I want to make clear is this:	my hon. friends
preached the doctrine that negotiations such as this affect the constitutions of the respective countries, and that the people of the United States created, or were creating, a tariff for Canada. In reply to a question which I put to my hon. friend (Mr. Maclean) he said that Canada with her 8,000,000 people, was represented by two men who have been characterized by my hon. friends opposite and by their press as two feeble old men, not knowing and not understanding the business-going down to Washington and revolutionizing the tariff and the constitution of the United States, as a matter of fact. They created sad havoc with that American constitution, and I have been wondering what the Daughters of the Revolution would say when they met in convention down in the New England states, and I have wondered what would happen when it was learned by the descendants of the signers of the declaration of independence what havoc had been wrought with the con-

stitution which was based on the declaration of independence. But, this perhaps, only serves to show how utterly absurd were the arguments brought forward bv my hon. friends. If our connection with the empire is to be in any way sapped or undermined, or is in any measure to be severed or loosened-it is a strange thing that the giants of the Conservative party in years gone by saw no such danger. *
Sir Charles Tupper in addressing the electors at Charlottetown in 1878, in advocacy of the National Policy, said: ' Pass this It is merely a readjustment. It is a National lohcy designed to do, , ,	What?
Designed to bring about a reciprocity in tt-Tt products between Canada and the c States-designed to accomplish that winch we had failed to aeomplish since the abrogation of the treaty in 1866.


An hon. MEMBER.: Might I ask the hon. gentleman a question. Does it not also bring m the products from all other countries as well as from the United States?


Henry Robert Emmerson: It is the same treaty, lie was referring to the treaty of 1854 which was abrogated in 1866. In July 1878 when Sir Charles Tupper went into the pro-vmce of Prince Edward Island, and was urging the people of that province-who were known to be strongly in favor of a free interchange of natural products between Canada and the United States-in order to enlist their sympathies and secure their support in favour of the Conservative party, he held out the bait, ' If you will place the Conservatives in power1-in this policy there will be incorporated the idea of protection" and it will force the United States to her knees, and will force her to come to Canada and give us what we have sought.' In this advocacy Sir Charles Tupper did not point out that in bringing that about there would be any danger with respect to our British connections-perhaps he did not see it-perhaps he did not have the perspicacity of these modern lights of the party. If he had seen this danger surely he would never have urged it upon the electorate of Canada.
In 1884 Sir John A. Macdonald said from his seat in this House that he was in favour of the fullest possible interchange of natural products between Canada and the United States. He added to that statement that the more trade we could have with the nited States the better it would be for Canada. Surely Sir John A. Macdonald-giant that he was in the Conservative party -giant among the public men in Canada- surely he would have foreseen what hon. members opposite pretend to see to-day- what my hon. friend from York (Mr. Maclean) has openly stated he sees, and what the hon. member for Alguma (Mr. Boyce)


Henry Robert Emmerson: 
Edward Arthur Lancaster: I appeal to you Mr. Speaker, as to whether there is anything m the argument of my hon. friend. I ask it the hon. Finance Minister should not seriously call the hon. gentleman to account for obstructing the motion to go into Committee of Ways and Means?


Henry Robert Emmerson: 
Henry Robert Emmerson: Resuming where I left off before recess, I would ask what my hon. friend from North Toronto (Mr. koster) had in his mind with respect to a possible severance of the ties of the empire, when, in 1891, he spoke upon the question of reciprocity. He was speaking in this parliament before the general elections of 1891, and before the conference was held at Washington at which he took part. He said:
With this National Policy, with this development of our natural resources, with this development of interprovineial trade, there is also a desire to widen the boundary of commerce on the other side. With the United States? Yes, and on the principles laid down in the order in council, taking the basis of the treaty of 1854, and adding to it, whatever may be agreed upon by the commissioners appointed on both sides. That is the principle as plainly as can be laid down. No one should be asked to say more than that in going into a trade negotiation with another country, and however the hon. gentlemen opposite may refuse to attribute to us an honest desire to carry out this policy, as they will in their great charity and distinguished probity, the government knows that the party behind it will trust it because it reflects the opinion of the men who support it.
Then, in the very same parliament, Mr. Foster read 'an extract, and the extract simply bore out what? (To use Mr. Foster's language):
It bore out this-that I said I saw no particular trend toward reciprocity in my reading of the sentiment of the United States, that from 1866 up to the present time, we had been counselled to watch and wait; to go upon the assumption of waiting and watching, to see
whether or not the United States would not meet us with a reciprocity treaty, and I said that I thought the time had come and fully come when we should leave that position, and with the greatest courtesy and good will possible to the United States we should do our own fiscal legislating in our own interest, as we see it from the standpoint of Canadians. That is all I said, that is exactly what I stated, and I think I am perfectly consistent in that respect. Since that time, however, a change has taken place and on the invitation of the United States government itself we are to send delegates on the 12th day of October to Washington, to confer with Mr. Blaine and the President of the United States and see whether or not we can have framed or formed a reciprocity treaty on the basis which we have set forth in our order in council, and which is as plain as can be made.


William Findlay Maclean: What year was that?


Henry Robert Emmerson: That was just previous to the elections of 1891. My hon. friend will find it recorded in 'Hansard,' and that is the best record possible for the utterances of 'any hon. member.


Mr. STANFIELD.: The hon. gentleman is reading from a paper-what paper?


Henry Robert Emmerson: I was reading an extract; it is a matter of no importance what paper it is in. I can give the pages of >
Hansard,' but I do not think my hon. friend is curious with respect to that. Now, Sir, I did not intend to make any extended remarks on this question, but I feel that I shall have to add a few remarks at the risk of being termed, as my hon. triend from Lincoln (Mr. Lancaster) termed me, an obstructionist. I suppose my hon. friend from Lincoln will hail me gleefully, 1 become particeps criminis with him in obstructing the business of the House.


Mr. HENDERSON.: Hear, hear.


Henry Robert Emmerson: I echo that hear, hear. Perhaps my hon. friend from Lincoln, and even my hon. friend from Halton (Mr. Henderson), fail to see that every utterance they make in this debate is an obstruction, and viewing it from that light, I pre-ume that is their purpose. Now the hon. member for Algoma ('Mr. Boyce), whom 1 now see in his seat, 1 regret to say, was somewhat personal. I would rather that this matter had been dealt with from an impersonal standpoint. He was ready to make merry with respect to the utterances of the Prime Minister in connection with the question of reciprocity. In 1878 Sir Charles Tupper argued that the support of the National Policy was but a means to an end, he said that to tne people of Prince Edward Island; and, in effect, he said that the end justified the means, and if you don't like a National Policy, if you are not

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quite prepared to support this policy of the readjustment of the tariff for one purpose, then support it upon the principle that the end justifies the means, because you *will thereby have reciprocity with the United States in natural products, which is so much in your interest, and which will add so much to your prosperity and development. I can only understand the utterances of the right hon. the leader of this government with respect to reciprocity in the light of everything he has said, I can only read in them that he was saying to the people of the United States, in effect. Well, we are not so particular, we are not dependent on reciprocity. And I say now we are not dependent upon reciprocity. I say we have never been dependent upon it. As strong an advocate as I have been of such a policy, I have never feit that the people of Canada needed to go down on their knees before the people of the United States and beg for reciprocity. But apparently the very indifference of the right hon. the Prime Minister with respect to the whole question as interpreted in his utterance, has served in a measure to bring about the psychological moment when the government of the United States are wilting to give what we have asked them for, asked over and over again during the last 40 years. Now, they have offered it to us, and it devolves upon us seriously to consider the responsibility that is placed upon us. Now, I am sincerely in favour of reciprocity. I believe it will expand the trade of all Canada, I believe that it is particularly in the interest of eastern Canada. More than that, I believe that while our trade with the United States has expanded during the past fifteen years immensely, I believe it will expend in a greater ratio still when this policy is inaugurated between the two countries. But more than that, I believe it will develop vmd expand our trade with Great Britain in a way that it has never been expanded in the past.
My hon. friend will have an opportunity of reviewing that; I am giving it as my judgment, and I will give you the reason.
I believe that the people of eastern Canada will become prosperous, that they will have a choice of markets, that the conditions wrought by means of such a reciprocity tariff in natural products will adjust the markets, protect the producers, stimulate production in the direction of agricultural, forest .and fishery products; in fact stimulate the development of the natural resources of eastern Canada. As that is stimulated and extended it only increases the purchasing power of the people of that section of the country. Increase the purchasing power of a people and you find them indulging in luxuries. We must all concede that to a very large extent the luxuries that we as a Canadian people in-Mr. EMMERSON.
dulge in are very largely imported from, or through Great Britain, and if we thus indulge in luxuries our importations from Great Britain will largely increase, to the mutual advantage of the two countries, particularly of Great Britain. We cannot, nor could we complain with respect to any increase in importations from Great Britain. She has a wide open door to our natural products, for all she can possibly take of them. We have not on our side had any door open to her products; we have not given them any great advantage, but, with an extended trade, with the development of our resources, and the increase in our revenue which must necessarily follow, we could fairly well say: ' We can and will increase this preference from a 331 per cent to a 50 per cent preference in favour of Great Britain.
Many hon. gentlemen in dealing with this question ask what the electorate are going to do. I do not pretend to have any prophetic sense, but I do say this, and I will make it as a prophecy that when the people of Canada are called upon, whether it be sooner or later, to deal with the question of reciprocity, or of the expansion of the trade relations between these countries, they will deal with it from one standpoint alone. It will not be with them as it is too often here, as a case of merely playing, they will not be indulging in the game of politics; the people of Canada, and particularly the people of eastern Canada, for whom I can more readily speak, will deal with it from a business standpoint, from the standpoint of their bread and butter; and I think I can fairly say, speaking from that eastern standpoint, that it is to the advantage of their bread and butter that they shall have an additional market, that they shall have at least the choice of an additional market, and that they shall not be confined to one purchaser, or even to two, but that they shall have as many purchasers as it is possible to have. It is all very well to say that this constituency, or that section of the country will do this or do that. I believe the people will largely deal with the question in the way I have indicated, and if the electorate of Canada do that, certainly I will be content and I think every hon. member in this House should be content.
My hon. friend has said that because this member or that member lias not spoken there is some doubt as to his convictions. I would be very sorry to be judged from that standpoint. My hon. friend from Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) did not speak, it is true, in this House on the question of reciprocity. I did not speak, but I would not wish my views to be judged from that fact. I do know that the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) dur-

ing the month of June spent practically all his time campaigning, not only in Pictou, but in every county of the province of Nova Scotia. Doing what? Advocating reciprocity.


John Dowsley Reid: He never did.


Henry Robert Emmerson: My hon. friend may be in a better position to know the facts than I am. I only know that what I am stating can be demonstrated beyond question.


John Stanfield: The hon. member for Pictou did not campaign in every county.


Henry Robert Emmerson: I want to be accurate I would not wish to say every county, I would say almost every county. I think that can be very well taken in a Pickwickian sense, but there is this to be conceded that he was actively campaigning and he was advocating reciprocity. Whether he bearded the lion in his den in the county of Colchester I do not know but perhaps he thought discretion was the better part of valour in that case.
But the people of Canada are not concerned as to who made speeches and who did not, it does not matter much whether this man goes down and somebody else come up in his place. We should have at least the earnestness and the courage of our convictions and not hide ourselves behind our electorate or our constituency.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Hear, hear.


Henry Robert Emmerson: The hon. member for West Algoma' says hear, hear. Then let us have a vote on this question. Then we will have at least a decision before the people of this country as to what the mind of the representatives of the people is as indicated by their votes and that must be the best indication. While challenges have *been thrown out, if I were in a position to throw challenges to anybody I would throw a challenge not merely to hon. members opposite but to those on this side as well, let us have a vote, let us each one record his views. There need then be no occasion for aspersions on the attitude of this or that member, there need be no reflections upon the course that this or that hon. member has taken. The hon. member for West Algoma (Mr. Boyce) had better refer to some very apt words once uttered by Abe Lincoln, if he will not consider me disloyal in making the quotation. Lincoln said: There is so much bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us that it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us. I think that is a very good motto to apply all around. However, it would not be a matter of reflection upon any hon. member in this House if he could stand in his place and give voice to his conviction by his vote as recorded on
the journals of this House. I think it would be well to have such a record and to have it at the earliest possible moment. There certainly would be no obstruction,
I am sure, as to that. Of course I would not for a moment insinuate that there is any desire to obstruct.	_
People can draw their own inferences, but I do think hon. gentlemen opposite are . very anxious to change places, and they have the hope; or at least they express the hope, that they have a good chance ot doing so. But, possibly, in striving to weave the purple robe of power, they have indulged in what some people may call, aye, what some people do call, obstruction. Are they going to pursue that course in the face of 'the attitude of the United States, when that great nation tenders us a contract signed and executed for the extension of our mutual trade. Under existing conditions, the responsibility resting upon us is, I believe, greater than has ever been placed before upon the legislators or the people of Canada. I venture to think that is the view the people will take of it. l believe they are wondering why a great political partv should fling itself m the face or the wheels of progress, to prevent the consummation of that which it is believed will stimulate the development of our trade and commerce.


Mr BEATTIE.: If the hon. member admires the United States so much, would lie please tell us why they took the great privilege of reciprocity from us m l*bt>.


Henry Robert Emmerson: Somebody spoke about Rip Van Winkle to-day, but I would not be so discourteous to my hon. friend as to apply the reference to him; I do say, however; that the time for post-mortem inquests is past.


Thomas Beattie: I remember, Mr. Speaker, that at a large convention held at the city of Detroit to advocate the abrogation of the reciprocity treaty Senator Chandler declared [DOT] ' We will starve the Canadians until they beg of us to take them into the union. Well, we are not in the union yet, and i fervently pray we never will be.


Henry Robert Emmerson: I think the hon. member's question should be barred by the Statute of Limitations. At all events it lies in the mouth of no party to raise it because, since 1866, Sir John Macdonald, Sir Charles Tupper, Sir John Thompson, the Hon. George E. Foster, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Alex. Mackenzie, Edward Blake, George Brown, and all the great statesmen of Canada, since the declaration made by the United States Senator at Detroit in 1866, have advocated reciprocity with the United States.
Mr MACDONELL (Toronto), Is the hon gentleman (Mr. Emmerson) not dealing wholesale in post-mortems just now?

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Henry Robert Emmerson: I am merely trying to lay the ghosts that hon. gentlemen opposite are seeking to raise. To-day, my hon. friend from York (Mr. Maclean) raised the ghost of the disruption of the empire, and the hon. member for Algoma (Mr. Boyce) raised the ghost of the termination of our national existence and presented a map of British North America carved into smithereens. I have, Mr. Speaker, strong views in favour of reciprocity, and I think it will be admitted that I have^ the courage to express my views. Had Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his government taken the responsibility of declining to negotiate with the United States when they made the request to us I wonder what would have been the attitude of hon. gentlemen opposite. I know what my attitude would have been. I have been a Liberal all my life, but strong as I am in adherence to Liberal principles, if this government had taken upon itself the responsibility of declining to enter into these negotiations, much as I respect Sir Wilfrid Laurier I would consider that he should forfeit my support and confidence and I do not think that I would hesitate to tell him so. I have expressed views in this House contrary to the views of the government, but I am happy to know that in this instance^ the policy they have adopted meets with my whole-hearted approval and shall receive my most cordial support.


Mr. GOODEVE.: The argument addressed to the House by the hon. member for Westmorland (Mr. Emmerson) simmered down was in effect, an appeal to this side of . the House to let a vote be taken upon this question. In answering that, it might be well to remind hon. members that the position of the Conservative party on this measure has been clearly set forth from the very beginning of this debate, and had the government seen fit to adopt the position taken by the opposition with regard to it there would have been no question of obstruction and this debate would have ended long ago. On the 26th of January last, the Minister of Finance brought down his resolution to amend the tariff of 1907 and after listening to his full presentation of the case and taking time to consider it m all its bearings, the leader of the opposition moved an amendment on the 8th of March which set forth clearly and fully the position which we have maintained up to the present time and which answers the question of the hon. member (Mr. Emmerson): why not take a vote upon it? Let me remind him of the exact position by reading that resolution, and I think he will be surprised, after his remarks of the last few minutes, to find that he is placed on record _ as having voted against the very position he now asks the House to take.


Angus Claude Macdonell: That all the words after the word that' in the proposed motion be omitted and the following substituted therefor:
The reciprocal agreement embodied in the resolutions submitted to this House by the Minister of Finance on the 26th day of January last, was also submitted on the same day by special message of the President to the Congress of the United States of America which was then in session.
That the said session has now expired and Congress has failed to approve and carry out the said agreement.
That a considerable length of time must necessarily elapse before the said agreement can be dealt with by Congress at a special session.
The next clause answers one other point made by the hon. member for Westmorland, when he referred to the hon. member for South York (Mr. Maclean), who said that this involved great constitutional changes. This paragraph covers his entire argument and fully vindicates the position taken by the hon. member for South York:
That the fiscal changes by the said agreement are of a far reaching character and constitute a substantial reversal of the policy which has been approved by the people of Canada.
The final summing up was as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the said resolutions should not be proceeded with until the electors shall have had an opportunity of pronouncing upon their merits.
All that we asked, and all that we have continued to ask, is that the electors shall have an opportunity of pronouncing upon these merits; and yet at this late hour, after nearly six months of wasted time, we find the hon. member for Westmorland, in his place in the House, saying, why not vote upon it? actually accusing men on this side of the House of being afraid of their principles, of trying to hedge themselves about and taking two positions in regard to this question.


Henry Robert Emmerson: I made no insinuation.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: The basis of his argument, if there was any argument, was that we were afraid to go to the people. He said he himself advocated going to the people. There is the resolution clearly and distinctly asking only one thing.


Henry Robert Emmerson: Will my hon. friend pardon me? I think he must have misunderstood me. What I was advocating was that we have a straight vote on this question in this House. I was not talking about a vote in the country. Before we have that, let us have a straight vote here.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: Exactly, and it was a straight vote we had in this House on this amendment. We placed our position fair-

ly and squarely before the country, that this agreement was so far reaching in its consequences that we should submit it to the people of Canada and ask their verdict upon it; and if there has been waste of time and obstruction, that is due to the government and the government alone.
I would like to say a word or two with regard to the very remarkable admission made by the right hon. leader of this government, an admission that I know was wrung from him much against his will by the strong argument advanced by the hon. member for West Algoma (Mr. Boyce), when he had placed before him his own words in which he had declared over and over again that we were through with reciprocity, that never again would this question be brought up; and I wish to point out to my hon. friend from Westmorland that these utterances were made since the date to which he has referred. I have the official documents to show that in 1899, in 1901, in 1907 and in 1909, at the Imperial Conferences in those yearns, the right hon. the Prime Minister said that Canada was through with reciprocity; and in the elections of 1904 and 1908 that question was not an issue. It seems difficult to impress upon hon. gentlemen opposite what these quotations from the speeches of the right hon. leader of the government mean. Indeed, I may say that as a young member of this House, during the three sessions that I have sat here listening to the various debates, I have been amazed at some of the things that I have learned with regard to the policy of the right hon. leader of the government. Over and over again 1 have witnessed the spectacle of various Hansards bcdng brought in from the library and quotations read from them of absolutely contrary opinions advanced by the hon. leader of the government on every great public question before this country; and gradually the conviction has been forced upon me that he has no fixed principle, and that he is ever ready, by pleasant phrases, eloquent in themselves, to obtain the plaudits of the people regardless of what the practical results may be. One is forced to that conclusion, however much against his will. At the Imperial Conference, of 1907 the right hon. leader of the government said:
But so far as legislation can influence trade we have done everything possible to push our trade towards the British people as against the American people.


Mr.   ASQUITH@: May I say I did not in the least dispute that. My objection was not, as I think I made clear, in any sense to complain of the Canadian preference; on the contrary, I recognize both its intention and its effect. Mv point was that natural conditions were such that it was inevitable that the Americans should get the best of it.


Wilfrid Laurier: Not only have we done it by preference, by legislation, but we have forced our trade against the laws of nature and geography. If we were to follow the laws of nature and geography between Canady and the United States, the whole trade would flow from south to north, and from north to south. We have done everything possible by building canals and subsidizing railways to bring the trade from west to east and east to west so as to bring trade into British channels. All this we have done recognizing the principle of the great advantage of forcing trade within the British Empire.
There is the whole kernel-if there is any kernel-of the remarks made by the right hon. the leader of the government. It is contained in this one phrase 'AH this we have done recognizing the advantage of forcing trade within the British Empire.' It was not merely a matter of sentiment, it was not merely that they must give the mother country an advantage, but it was because he distinctly declared that he recognized it was an advantage for the people of Canada to force the trade within the Empire.
Then, why this sudden change of sentiment? If it was an advantage in 1907, why is it not an advantage in 1911? We had the quotation cited by the hon. member for West Algoma (Mr. Boyce)-'thank heaven that time has passed.' Let me read the exact words of the right hon. leader of the government:
Canada to-day is not in favour of reciprocity. There was a time when Canadians, beginning with myself would have given many things to obtain the American market, but, thank Heaven, these days are past and over.
Yet when pressed by the hon. member from West Algoma (Mr. Boyce) as to why they were now asking for a renewal of the treaty the right hon. the Prime Minister said because those days had returned again. It would be interesting to have a frank admission as to what was in the mind of the right hon. the leader of the government when he said he thanked heaven that these days were passed for ever. Surely no man would thank Providence that something had passed away unless he felt it was for his own advantage or for the advantage of the country. Still, we have t'he right hon. gentleman thanking heaven that these days had gone for ever. Then, we have the most astonishing statement on the floor of the House that these days were back upon us. I think we should very much like to know what are these days which are now confronting us and compelling us to seek aid from the nation to the south. In that connection it must be appropriate to read what was said by another very prominent Liberal A leader for many years, and premier of Hie great province of Ontario. This was not away

back yeans ago, as my bon. friend . from West Algorna said, but in the year' 1910. Here is what Sir Geo. Boss said before the Toronto Club:
Iti 1866, when the old treaty was repealed, we were poor in banking capital, in skilled labour, in agriculture and manufactures. A treaty then would have afforded some relief- to-day conditions are different-diff irent bicause the repeal of the treaty removed every prop on which we had formerly leaned and the true temper of our Anglo-Saxon spirit was roused to action. I think no country in the world affords a better illustration of public spirit than Canada when the United States in 186G flung our poverty in our faces and told us our only choice was starvation or annexation.
I wonder what was in the mind of the right hon. gentleman when he said that these days were upon us again, when it was necessary to call for the unlocking of the door which had 'been flung in our faces I do not intend to weary you with following up this line of argument, but would like to call it to the attention of the House IS orS'?r ^at the right hon. gentleman and th'e Liberal press may be able to explain to the .people of Canada during the coming campaign what was in the minds of the present government when they said that these days of darkness, of distress, and poverty are upon us again, .so that we are compelled to seek succour .from the great nation to the south of us.
'Another argument wais advanced this afternoon by the hon. the Finance Minister. It was a very specious argument and one that, I think, I am safe in saying, occupied at least three quarters of this entire address. This argument has already been taken on the .platform -by the Liberal speakers throughout the country and is one which is likely to play ,a very important part in the coming campaign. When I referred to this argument .as being specious I spoke advisedly. The hon. Finance Minister said 'It i.s true there are those of my own persuasion, Liberals, who honestly differ from me in regard to this question. However much I may regret that, I would say I think there is an argument Which seems to appeal to me and it ought to appeal to them and to every reasonable man-it is this there is nothing fixed about this treaty. We have been blamed for going down to Washington and binding th-e people of Canada. However, I say to you that there is nothing to prevent a change being made .at .any time in regard to this treaty ' Now, I say unhesitatingly, that while technically he was stating -the fact, yet in practical results he was speaking what would not .and .could not possibly work out. Indeed, the hon. the Finance Minister himself was so convinced of the weakness of his argument that a little later on he said he doubted whether it would not be
Mr. GOODEVE
better if the treaty had been for a fixed time. What are the facts in connection with this? Gan we alter or phange this treaty at any time? I would like to ask the hon. Finance Minister supposing we decided to allow this resolution to go through, and the agreement was duly signed and sealed, if within two months we wished to alter it would he, and would the people of the United States consider that we had honorably kept faith with them? Bear in mind the position he laid before this House in bringing down his pact, that we were not to change it by one iota. The agreement as made by himself and his colleagues was to be passed just as it stood. Over and over again he had stated to thi-s House that we are in honour bound to pass it just as it was brought down. If that was the case, I would like the hon. the Finance Minister, or the Minister of Customs-who is in his place-to tell me the exact date when he would consider us as being .absolutely free to alter or change this -agreement. Would it .be at the end of two months? Would it be at the end of six months? or would be feel that the people of Canada bad done all they were in honour bound to do if they tried it for one year and then .altered it because it was found to be unsatisfactory? I think not

at least I believe the United States would not .so consider it.
And so I could go on to say, one, or two, or three years. And we see that on that account it certainly would not be keeping, faith; so we are bound by this agreement as fully as if we had entered into a treaty, with the added disadvantage that it is not for any fixed time, and there is therefore, there is always the possibility, as the Minister of Finance has said of disturbing trade.
Now, another argument in the same line. On the 30th of March, 1910, a committee was appointed to meet with the representatives of the United States in regard to the placing of the surtax-because, forsooth, we had made an agreement with France affecting a certain number of articles, and for that reason the United States threatened us with this discrimination. And the Minister of Finance came on this floor and proposed giving them certain concessions and defended his course in so doing. He said we did not want a tariff war. Well, Sir, if, when we were not bound to them in any way, the hon. gentleman felt justified in saying to our people that we were compelled to make certain concessions to the United States in order to avoid a tariff war, how much more would that argument apply once this pact went into force.
There is a further argument on the same line. I have only been here three sessions. _ But again and again, as certain changes in our tariff have been asked for by some of our own people, I have heard

the Minister of Finance, even while admitting that the changes proposed might be of some benefit to those who asked for them, yet a stable tariff is better for the people of Canada than constant changing and tinkering, and for that reason he refused to make the changes. And the Minister of Customs (Mr. Paterson) says ' Hear, hear.' I agree with him; the argument is in itself a good one. But apply it to this pact. If the minister's argument is to be accepted, what would be our condition in regard to stability of tariff? If we did not know it from week to week when our tariff would be changed, what would be the condition of our trade? Take, for instance, the fruit trade. What will be the result of the Niagara fruit men, and the British Columbia fruit men? The handlers of the product, the commission men would make their arrangements wth the fruit producers of the United States, and the industry would be changed from the present channel into the new one. That itself would mean loss. But, once these changes are made, any man or government would hesitate to alter these conditions knowing the injury that would result. Any man who has followed the political history of the nation to the south of us knows how the commerce of that country is disturbed every presidential year. And why? Because in every presidential campaign the tariff issue has been to the fore, and commerce is practically at a standstill awaiting the result, knowing that the change in fiscal conditions would mean much loss or gain to the people. Are we to place ourselves in that position? Are we to be tied to the tail of the fiscal tariff of the United States? It is easy for the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Customs to stand on this floor and say: We can try this, and if we do not like it we can change it. As I say, technically that is true, but practically and in fact, as I have shown, there are reasons why it is impracticable and impossible, and no man knows better than the two ministers who made the pact, and brought it down to this House. So, I say, it is no wonder that the Finance Minister pleaded with his own side, and with the press gallery-for I saw him watching the reporters when he made his argument-and even pleaded with men on this side, that we should make the trial on the ground that it could do no harm. But he knows that this is not a question to be played with; it is too great, too far-reaching, too vital to the great commercial interests of this Dominion to be played with >by any set of men. We are here to deal with these questions with a view to their broad national effect. For more than forty years we have gone on and prospered. Year after year in this House we have heard the minister say-and his 317
words have been repeated throughout the length and breadth of Canada by the Liberal press-that the progress of the country has been marvellous under the fiscal system adopted in 1878. My hon. friend from Westmorland (Mr. Emmersom) said that Sir John Thompson and Sir John Abbott and Sir John A. Macdonald had asked for reciprocity. But that was before they had adopted the great National Policy. But when that was put into effect, and as a result the poverty and distress-this hour of darkness so graphically referred to by Sir George Boss-passed away. We have developed our great natural resources while the people of the south have wasted and largely destroyed theirs. The time has come when we have reached the position in which we can manufacture our products against any people in the world; and at this time the people of the United States are very anxious to come in and partake of our great natural resources.
I do not propose at this time to go into that subject, though I should like to deal with the question .of lumber and pulp as affecting particularly my own province of British Columbia. But I confine myself simply to the remarks of the First Minister and the Finance Minister. I say again, I would like these hon. gentlemen to lay before the people how the Finance Minister proposes to try this pact, as he says, without disturbing the commercial interests of this great Dominion.
On that ground, if no other, I say that before a measure of such far reaching consequences is placed on the statute-book of Canada, we should weigh it well, and we should give the people of Canada an opportunity of expressing their will with regard to it. Every man knows in his heart that once this pact goes into effect we cannot change it at our will. It seems that we are turning back from the promised land into the bondage of the fiscal tariff of the United States, there is no question of that. Undoubtedly we should be tied up with them, we are bound more or less to consult them in whatever we do hereafter with regard to it.
I wish to refer to an extraordinary remark the Minister of Finance made this afternoon. It is true, he says, that we sent a message to the manufacturers saying that this agreement would not injure them, that it would only help the farmers and consumers. Here one naturally asks how, if it is going to aid farmers by giving them higher prices, it is also going to help the consumers by giving them lower prices. But there is another phase of this matter. The minister's statement was carefully worded. As the member for West Algoma said, the government undertook with one hand to hold a pistol to the hon. gentleman for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald), and in the



other hand they held out this sonorifie. And so I may say the Minister of Finance this afternoon, undertook with one hand to hold out a badge of peace to the manufacturers of this country, and with the other hand he held out a threatening pistol. There is no doubt of the meaning underlying his words. In almost these words he says: We have given the people of the west, not all they asked, but all we are prepared to give them at this time; and I would like to warn the manufacturers that if they continue in their opposition to this agreement the time may come when they will find themselves in a worse position than they are at present; but if they are prepared to lie low and to cease their opposition, they may receive no further harm. In other words, the Minister of Finance asks the manufacturers to give up their rights of citizenship in order to purchase immunity from the attacks of this government. That was the attitude of the Minister of Finance towards the manufacturers. But his government does not reckon with the people of Canada. This government will find that the people of Canada will not tamely submit to be trampled upon, nor will they allow any government to take from them their constitutional rights and privileges.


William Pugsley: I have not spoken at all during the discussion of this question, therefore I may be permitted to make a few remarks in answer to some of the observations of my hon. friend who has just taken his seat (Mr. Goodeve), and also to refer to the quotations which imy hon. friend from Westmorland (Mr. Emmerson) has made as to the attitude of the leaders of the Conservative party in the past. I understand my hon. friend from Kootenay (Mr. Goodeve) to admit that it was true that the Conservative party was at one time in favour of reciprocity, but that was before the promulgation of the National Policy of 1879. Did I understand my hon. friend correctly?


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: Yes.


William Pugsley: Then my hon. friend must have forgotten that upon the very last occasion when the Conservative party appealed successfully to the country they declared themselves unequivocally in favour of reciprocity with the United States. That was twelve years after the National Policy had been put into force. Now, my hon. friend from Westmoreland quoted from an election card which was issued by Sir John Thompson, -ini February, 1891, when he was appealing to the electors of the -county of Antigonish, in the province of Nova Scotia. .Sir John Thompson was not an ordinary member of the House, he was Minister of Justice in the government led by Sir John A. Macdonald, and he was recognized as Mr. GOODEVE.
the second in command next to the great Conservative leader. Sir John Thompson was a man in whose judgment the people of Canada had very great confidence. He had occupied a .position on the bench of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, and was recognized as one of the 'ablest lawyers in Canada. After the death of Sir John A. Macdonald, he was called upon to assume the leadership of the -Conservative party, which he did with credit to the party and with credit to the country. Every Cana-dan, whether Liberal or Conservative, deplored his s-udden demise at so early an age. Sir John Thompson, in his manifesto, made reciprocity the only question upon which he appealed to the people of Nova Scotia, it is the only great subject to which he refers. He tells the people of Canada, that the government of which he is a member have entered into negotiations with the government at Washington for the purpose of bringing about a treaty of reciprocity, which he believes would be of advantage to the people of both countries. Now, surely the hon. member for Kootenay must have forgotten this fact when he said that the Conservative party was never in favour of reciprocity Subsequent to the adoption of the National Policy. He has forgotten the election of 1891, when the government went to the country upon the policy of reciprocity. My hon. friend has called attention to a portion of the language of the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster), which will be found on page 60 and following of ' Hansard,' and in which that hon. gentleman, then a member of the Conservative government, stated that this government had done everything possible to extend interprovincial trade, he referred to the fact that the Canadian Pacific railway had been carried out by the Conservative party, and it had then been completed some six years, because it was completed from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 1885. He referred to the enormous- development which had taken place in this country, and said that notwithstanding the development of internal trade, notwithstanding the wonderful strides Canada had made as a result of the construction of the Candian Pacific railway -and the inauguration of the National Policy, yet th-e gov-e-mment had sought to widen and extend the bounds of commerce in every direction. Then he asked this question: With the United States? Yes he says, we are desirous, not only of extending our commerce with all the other countries of the world, but with the United States as well. He refers with pride to the fact that for many years the Conservative party had been taught to watch and to wait until a favourable opportunity- should occur, and he referred gladly to the fact that at last the moment had come when the government had been invited to visit Washing-

ton and to open negotiations with Secretary Blaine and the President of the United States, to bring about what? To bring about a treaty of reciprocity, based upon what? Based upon the .old reciprocity treaty of 1854, with such additions and extensions as the altered circumstances might show to be to the mutual advantage of the two countries.
Surely in the face of this evidence it cannot be said that the Conservative party had abandoned the policy of reciprocity after the introduction of the National Policy. This shows that upon the very last occasion when the Conservative party successfully appealed to the country they made reciprocity the principal plank in their platform, and it was upon that that they hoped to wrin, and did win, the approval of the people.
The hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) said more than has been quoted by the hon. member for Westmorland (Mr. Emmerson). He said at page 60:
The government showed itself consistent, in the first place, by declaring that there was a door open for negotiations, and that a delegation would be sent to Washington after the 4th March, and, furthermore, by sending a delegation and being prepared to "go again on the 12th October to do what no Canadian government has been e.sked to do from 1866 to the present time, that is, to talk over the trade matters and relations existing between this country and the United States, with a view to their better and final settlement. This statement which I make will he borne out by the papers, and I cannot see where we have been inconsistent or where we have prejudiced the intersts of Canada

And will hon. gentlemen mark these words:
-or have done aright which any government in favour of reciprocity ought not to have done.
There is the declaration of the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) in 1891, after the general elections of that year, showing that the government of which he was a prominent member was in favour of reciprocity with the United States. That course is entirely consistent with what the government had previously done because we find that prior to the election of 1891 and as early as December of 1910 the government passed an order in council in which it was provided that commissioners should go to Washington. And what were to be their instructions? They were to go to Washington with authority, without limitation, to make proposals towards the agreement for a treaty based upon the reciprocity treaty of 1854. I think it is important to bear in mind that they were not to be limited in their instructions, 317i
they were to, if possible, obtain a treaty for reciprocity not in natural products alone -it was'to be based upon the old reciprocity treaty of 1854. But so anxious was the government of that day to obtain better trade relations with the United States, so much did they believe that it would be in the interests of the whole country that this arrangement should be made, that they placed no limitation upon the authority which was to be given to the commissioners, they were given authority to deal with these matters without limitation and perhaps there are some hon. gentlemen here who can remember seeing in the press of that day some remarks that were made as to what was the difference between the Liberal policy of that time of unrestricted reciprocity and the policy of the Conservative party in making an unrestricted offer of reciprocity to the United States. Sir Charles Tupper's attention was called to the fact that these commissioners were to go without limitation to negotiate a reciprocity treaty. Sir Charles Tupper said that was an unrestricted offer of reciprocity, whereas the Liberal party was in favour of unrestricted reciprocity, and Sir Charles said that he pitied the man who could not understand the difference between an unrestricted offer of reciprocity and an offer of unrestricted reciprocity. To the ordinary mind there is not much difference.


Richard Blain: Was the policy of the two parties the same in 1891?


William Pugsley: In 1891 the policy of the Liberal party was broader, it was to include manufactured articles.


Mr. MEIGHEN.: Which was right? '


William Pugsley: It is not necessary to say which was right, because the arrangement which has been made to-day is absolutely in accordance with the limited reciprocity treaty of which the Conservative party was in favour. If my hon. friend will read the speeches which Sir John Macdonald made in discussing this question, he will find that Sir John, while stating that the old reciprocity treaty had been a great benefit to Canada, while stating that no argument need be presented to show that and at the same time saying it- was unfortunately discontinued by the United States government owing to a not unnatural irritation against England, he said that he felt it would be but little use to go to the United States then and seek a, reciprocity treaty. He also intimated that he would be prepared to go even beyond reciprocity in natural products and to give considerable reciprocity in manufactured articles, for the purpose of obtaining reciprocal trade arrangements so far as natural products were concerned.

I would quote from another hon. gentleman whose loyalty I think will not' be impugned in this House, because, although hon. gentlemen who are in the House today, members of the Conservative party, seem, so far as reciprocity is concerned, to have departed from the views of their old and their great leaders of the past, yet I hardly think they would impeach the loyalty of the hon. gentleman from whom I am now going to quote. I refer to the Honourable Sir Charles Tupper, who was for so many years a prominent member of this parliament, and who, for such a long period occupied a prominent position among the people of Canada. I find that Sir Charles Tupper, after the election of 1891, on the 4th of August, as reported at page 3346 of Hansard, said:
The chief point now is, without any quibbling or cavilling, that this government has arranged for a conference with the United States government in October next, without any confession such as hon. gentlemen opposite insinuate, that we are in any sense more dependent upon the satisfactory arrangements tliau are the people of the United States themselves. We go there, relatively, in as strong a position as they meet us; we go there

Willing to negotiate a reciprocity treaty, does he say? No, he says:
We go there anxious" to see whether an arrangement, consistent with the interest of both countries, can be brought about.
And yet to-day hon. gentlemen say that the man who is in favour of reciprocity with the United States is doing something which will imperil the position of Canada as- a portion of the British Empire. They say that the man who is willing to improve the trade relations between this country and the great republic to the south is doing what in fact is an act of disloyalty to the empire because it will tend to draw this country away from 'the great empire to which we are proud to belong, from that great federation of nations which all of us hope and which all the people of Canada believe and hope will for ever remain united and he for ever in the van of progress and development and will last until the end of time. And yet, because this government has simply done what Sir Charles Tupper tried to do, what the hon. Mr. Foster tried to do, what all the eminent statesmen of the past upon both sides of politics tried to do, hon. gentlemen insinuate that they are willing to do something which will weaken the ties that bind Canada to the mother land.
I wish to quote something further, and this perhaps will be of more interest than the remarks which I have quoted, to the people of my own province.
There was not only the order in council providing for the appointment of commis-Hr. PUGSLEY.
sioners, but after the general election in 1891 the speech from the Throne at the opening of parliament contained " the following clause:
*My advisers, availing themselves of opportunities which were presented in the closing months of [DOT] last year, caused the administration of . the United States to be reminded of the willingness of the government of Canada to join in making efforts for the extension and development of the trade between the Republic and the Dominion, as well as for the friendly adjustment of those matters of an international character which remain unsettled. I am pleased to say that these representations have resulted in an assurance that, in October next, the government of the United States will be prepared to enter on a conference to consider the best means of arriving at a practical solution of these important questions. The papers relating to this subject will be laid before you.
The reply to the speech from the Throne was moved by the then member for St. John (Mr. Hazen) who is now the leader of the Conservative government in New Brunswick, and Mr. Hazen then used language which-if we . did not know it was used by one of these younger Conservatives who have departed from the paths trodden by their leaders not very many years ago,- one would think was the language of a supporter of the Liberal party. His speech will be found at p. 8 and following of 'Hansard' 1891, and in it he expressed pleasure as the representative of the city and county of St. John, and as a member of the Conservative party, at the announcement made by the government that they were about to enter into negotiations for a reciprocity treaty with the United States. He went on to speak of the business and social relations existing between the people of Canada and of the neighbouring republic, he expressed the opinion that it would be an advantage to both countries if a reciprocity treaty went into effect, and he concluded by saying that he telt sure it would be gratifying to the people of Canada irrespective of party that steps were about to be taken to secure reciprocity. Nobody will charge that, these Conservatives were any less loyal than the men who now lead the Conservative party; no one will venture to suggest that these Conservatives were less mindful of the best Interests of Canada than those who now lead the party; no one will suggest that they would negotiate for a reciprocity treaty which they thought would have a tendency to draw Canada away from her allegiance to the mother country. But, these gentlemen opposite say to us: the times have changed, and what might be good for Canada in 1891 is not good for Canada to-day. Surely that argument does not apply to the contention that reciprocity is apt to lead tojJismember-ment of the empire; surely, if "to increase

our trade with the United States is likely to weaken our attachment to the mother country to-day, it must have had the same effect 20 years ago. Nay, Sir, there was greater danger of that 20 years ago because while *Canada had then entered upon a stage of development, Canada was not so prosperous as she is to-day, and her people were not in such a position of self-reliance then as they are now. Since then, the population of Canada has increased, her resources have been developed, her trade has extended, and to-day our people are far more powerful than they then were and far better able to stand for what they believe to be the true interests of Canada and the empire. A few words as to the benefit which I believe will accrue to the maritime provinces from this arrangement. We in the lower provinces are very greatly interested in the lumbering, the agricultural, and the fishing industries. We have a great many fertile valleys where vast quantities of hay are produced, and to many farmers it would be a great advantage to sell at least a part of their hay product where they can find a good market. They have looked in the past to the United States but they have been met with a duty of $4 per ton on their hay, and there will be found on file, letters from producers of hay in New Brunswick and Quebec urging the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Customs then negotiating for this arrangement to secure a reduction of at least two dollars per ton in the duty on hay. It was pointed out that many farmers in these provinces would derive great benefit from such a reduction. Well, instead of getting the duty reduced by $2 per ton, the Canadian representatives succeeded in getting the entire duty wiped out and Canadian hay admitted absolutely free of duty to the American market. In the St. John river counties there is a very considerable production of potatoes, and were the duty removed the farmers of these counties would find in the United States an excellent market for their potatoes. It is a fact I believe that during the present generation there have only been two occasions, and then because of crop failures in Canada, when the price of potatoes in the United States has not been higher than the price in New Brunswick. We have very striking evidence of that in the fact that across the border opposite the counties of Carleton and Victoria, in ths county of Aroostook in Maine, farms are today worth on the average about twice as much as farms of equal fertility on the New Brunswick side. A short time ago I made special inquiry in the county of Victoria, and the statements in this respect made some weeks ago in' this House by the hon. member for Carleton were verified by statements made to me by a number of
farmers. And so it is with other farm products. Make farm products of every kind absolutely free of duty, and there will be a large and profitable market for our farmers in the large cities of the New England states, and this they say, would add very greatly to the prosperity of our farmers.
Then, there is another very important in terest in "which our people are deeply <* m-cerned. If hon. gentlemen will look at the papers which are on file, they will find letters from gentlemen largely engaged in the lumbering business, in which they urge that, in .addition to trying to get the United States to take the duty off lumber, they should also try to induce them to Teduce the duty on shingles, which is now 50 cents a thousand, down to 30 cents. And these representations are not confined to lumber manufacturers of the province of New Brunswick, they also come from lumber manufacturers of the province of Quebec-and tha province of British Columbia. They report that the duty, which was raised' by the Paine-Aldrich tariff from 30 cents a thousand to 50 cents, is very nearly prohibitive. I call to mind a letter from a large manufacturer of the province of British Columbia, who stated that, as a result of this change, quite a number of shingle mills in that province were idle; -and I think Representations we)re| made from Nova Scotia as well as from Quebec, that it would seriously cripple the industry in that section of Canada. There is no duty on shingles coming into Canada. I remember that imy hon. friend from the city of Vancouver (Mr. Cowan) went down to the city of Fredericton to enlighten the people there. That city happens to he the centre of quite a large lumber manufacturing inindustry, and he pointed out in all seriousness that as a result of this reciprocity arrangement cedar logs would be sent from New Brunswick into the state of Maine, manufactured- into shingles and brought back to New Brunswick, where they would swamp the shingle market. My hon. friend did not know that for many years shingles had been admitted into Canada free of duty, and under this agreement the only concession made, is made by the United States, which is reducing the duty from 50 cents to 30 cents a thousand. Before the duty was raised to 50 cents, the shipment of shingles to the United States was a considerable factor in the prosperity of that section of Canada; and on the file there will be found a letter from the hon. member for York (Mr. Crocket), who, I believe, has been going from platform to platform warning the people of that loyal county against agreeing to this arrangement, because it will tend to sap the loyalty of the people of Canada. That letter is addressed to the hon. Mr. Fielding, and

in it the hen. member for York says that he has received a communication from a very large lumber manufacturing company which does business in his constituency, and which carries on - operations in some three lumber mills, calling 'attention to the increase which has been made by the United States in the duty on shingles from 30 cents to 50 cents a thousand, and expressing the hope that in any negotiations for the reduction of the tariff between the two countries the Finance Minister will succeed in having the duty reduced.


Arthur Meighen: Expressing whose hope?


William Pugsley: The hope of the hon. member for York.


Arthur Meighen: Read the letter.


William Pugsley: If I had the file here, I would be glad to do it.


Richard Blain: I understood that the hon. member for York, in this House, denied that statement.


William Pugsley: What did the hon. member for York say?


Arthur Meighen: He denied that he was giving expression to his own opinion. He was simply communicating to the Finance Minister a letter from one of his constituents.


William Pugsley: I have read the letter, iand any one reading it would take it ais an assurance from the hon. member for York that in forwarding it lie was entirely in accord with the sentiments expressed therein. If the hon. member for York thought that the entering into such an arrangement with the United States would tend to sap the loyalty of the people of Canada, it is a wonder that he did not say to the Minister of Finance: ' While I forward this plea on behalf of one of my constituents, yet I warn you, Mr. Fielding, that if you get the duty on shingles 'removed, so that these lumbermen will be able to send their shingles freely into the United States, it may tend to make them disloyal citizens; it is a very dangerous thing, and you ought to consider it most carefully before you get the United States government to reduce the duty on shingles from 50 cents to 30 cents a thousand.' The hon. membeT for York did not do anything of the kind.


Samuel Hughes: Will the hon. minister be good enough to point out where any one on this side of the House has ever objected to the United States reducing the duty on wheat or shingles, or on any other commodity going into that country, or where we have ever raised any objection to their managing their own affairs in their own way?


William Pugsley: 


William Pugsley: It has been .stated in this House over and over again that it would be a dangerous thing for us to encourage the United- States government to taxe off the duty on natural products, because it would enable the United States manufacturers to draw from Canada its natural resources and take them into the United States and there .manufacture the goods which ought to be manufactured in Canada; forgetting, of course, that the United States could do that to-morrow7 without any arrangement if it wanted to. All that the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Customs have done by this arrangement has been to sit down quietly with representatives of the United States government and say: Let us talk over what would be to the mutual interest of Canada and the United States to do in the way of reductions of duty. They have made no agreement which binds the people of this country for a single day after this arrangement goes into effect. They declare that this country shall foe absolutely free to make any change in its tariff on the items affected by this arrangement at any time; and while they express the hope that it will be found .so advantageous to the people of both countries that it will be continued for a considerable time, they both take pains to make it absolutely clear that they do not undertake to bind either the Congress of the United States on the one hand or the parliament of Canada on the other. Now, take the matter of lumber. Shall I say my eloquent friend-my interesting friend? Because when the hon. gentleman gets towards the rear part of the chamber, where there are many empty seats at times, and where he can move back and forth and give full vent to his eloquence, he certainly does become exceedingly eloquent. My hon. friend told the people at Fredericton; lumbermen who knew very well the nonsense he was talking-if he will pardon the word-he told these people that under this reciprocity arrangement our lumber would be taken into the United States, manufactured there, and sent back into Canada to compete here with the lumber manufacturers) of New Brunswick. My hon. friend forgot that for many years sawn lumber has been admitted into Canada free of duty.


William Sora Middlebro: Before leaving that point I would like to say I was present and heard the hon. metnber for Vancouver (Mr. Cowan) when dealing with the question of shingles say that their tariff is only reduced back to the old figures whereas shingles coming into Canada are free.


William Pugsley: Shingles are not made free under this arrangement. Shingles have been free for years, and we are making no reduction.


William Sora Middlebro: That is what we object to. They hold them at 30 cents. Whereas shingles coming into this country are free.


William Pugsley: That is because we prefer it that way. It has been so for several years, and it has been admitted in the interest of Canada that shingles should be free. I presume it is because the shingle interests in this country do not require any protection as against the United States. At all events I have never heard any suggestion that there should be a duty placed ujjon shingles, so far as Canada is concerned.
For reasons which have appealed to the government lumber has been free. There have been suggestions made at different times in regard to putting a duty upon it, but these suggestions have been very seriously opposed by consumers in Canada, and more particularly by those who live on the prairies, to whom cheap lumber is a most desirable thing. Lumber is made free under this arrangement, but the whole concession is on the part of the United States, and when you bear in mind the fact that the lumbering industry is a very important interest in the maritime provinces, you will agree with me that this is a very important concession, not only for the maritime provinces, but for all sections of Canada. It is of great importance to the province of Ontario-it is of great importance to the Ottawa valley, and it certainly is of great importance to British Columbia, because manufacturers of lumber in these provinces find a large market in the United States for their products. If hon. gentlemen will look at the blue-book they will find the exports of lumber and its products from Canada to the United States for the year ending March 31, 1910, amounted to $22,000,000.


An hon. MEMBER.: What were the imports?	.


William Pugsley: I do not know what the imports were. At the moment I am only dealing with the exports because this arrangement will not affect the imports for the simple reason that lumber comes into Canada free to-day.


An hon. MEMBER.: What kind of lumber?


William Pugsley: Sawn lumber. And sawn lumber forms a very important part of the lumber exports.


An hon. MEMBER.: This treaty makes absolutely no difference in lumber coming into Canada?


William Stevens Fielding: None at all, but it makes a great difference on Canadian lumber going into the United States.


John Dowsley Reid: Might I ask the hon. Minister of Public Works if he would allow me to read this letter of Mr. Crocket's:
House of Commons,
Ottawa, March 11, 1910. Honourable W. S. Fielding,
Minister of Finance,
Ottawa.
Dear . Mr. Fielding,-I have a communication from the Scott Lumber Company, Ltd., who operate two or three mills in my constituency, requesting me to lay before you, ' n connection with the recent negotiations between the Canadian and tile United States governments upon the tariff matter, the representation that the recent increase in American duty upon shingles has seriously affected the business of Canadian mills, particularly in the maritime provinces. They claim that the rate of 50 cents per thousand is unreasonable and almost prohibitive, and that in the interest of this trade, our government should at least endeavour to have it reduced to the old basis of 30 cents a thousand.
I trust that if the question of revision of the two tariffs is taken up, you will hear this communication in mind.
Yours truly,


OSWALD S. CROCKET.
William Pugsley: What does that mean? What the hon. .member for York (Mr. Crocket) does is this-the hon. Minister of Finance is about to enter into negotiations at Washington.. The hon. member for York receives this communication from one of his constituents, calling his attention to the fact that the increase of duty has made importation into the United States prohibitive, and Mr. Crocket expresses^ the hope that the hon. the Finance Minister will bear this communication in mind during the course of the negotiations. This the hon. Finance Minister did. I have no doubt in the world that the hon. member for York was absolutely sincere when he said that it would be in the interest of the manufacturers of this country that the duty should be Teduced, and, as a matter of fact the duty was reduced from 50 cents to 30 cents.


John Dowsley Reid: You misrepresented him before.


William Pugsley: I will not contradict my hon. friend further than to say that his memory does not serve him correctly as to what was said.


Mr. GORDON (Nipissing).: Might I ask a question? I would like to ask the hon. minister if in his opinion the following would be true reciprocity? Supposing I, as a manufacturer of shingles at the Canadian Soo send a carload of shingles oyer to the American Soo, and I am met at the border with a duty of 30 cents per 1000 according to the new arrangement, or a duty of 50 cents per 1000 according to the old arrangement; my competitors from the Ameri-

can Soo wish to send a carload of shingles over to the Canadian Soo and pays no duty -is that true reciprocity?


William Pugsley: There is nothing in the arrangement which would prevent Canada from making the duty just the same as in the United States.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Why don't you do it?


William Pugsley: Because it was never thought to be in the interest of the people of Canada to have a duty on shingles. So far as I know, we have not had a duty on shingles for years and years, if we ever had. So it is with regard to sawn lumber -we have no duty on that article. The United States had a duty of $1,25 a thousand, and thev have thrown off that duty entirely; the concession is wholly on the part of the United States, for Canada in that respect makes no concession.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: I desire to ask the hon. gentleman a question. The United States took off the duty of ,$1.25 on lumber and made it free, because they have a surplus. But we can supply them with shingles and they put on a duty of 30 cents. Why do they not make shingles free.


William Pugsley: All that the shingle manufacturer's of British Columbia asked was that the duty be reduced to 30 cents, it having been raised from 30 cents to 50 cents.


George Henry Cowan: I desire to correct the hon. gentleman (Mr. Pugsley); I happen to know that that is not correct. What the shingle mill men want is an exact equality of tariff.


William Pugsley: I can only say that I have read the files showing the petitions from the shingle manufacturers' association in British Columbia, and all they asked for is that the duty shall be reduced from 50 cents under the Payne-Aldrich tariff to 30 cents as it was previously, and that concession was obtained by the commissioners on behalf of Canada. The matter of removing the duty on lumber is of great importance to the people of New Brunswick, especially to the people of St. John. We have had in force in the United States for sixty years past what is known as the Pike law. Under that* law timber could be cut in the forests of northern Maine by American citizens, floated down the river St. John to the city of St. John, manufactured there in American mills by American citizens and shipped into the United States free of duty. I think I can safely say that that has been of enormous bentfit to the port of St. John. These mills have given employment to many hundreds of men. They have given employment also Mr. GORDON (Nipissing).
to many coasting vessels in taking the lumber from the port of St.John to the ports of the United States. Under the Payne-Aldrich tariff that law was repealed and on the fifth of next month that repeal comes into effect.
Therefore, this privilege will be denied to the American citizens who are living in the city of St. John and are manufacturing their lumber there. The result will be that they will have to pay on lumber going into-the United States $1.25 a thousand. I am told that, in view of the very large stump-age they have to pay to the land owner in Northern Maine and the large expense in floating the logs down to the port of St. John, this duty of $1,25 will be prohibitive-and in all human probability these mills will have to close. If, however, the proposed arrangement comes into effect, lumber manufactured in Canada will go into the United States free of duty and these industries will be continued. So far as that branch of the lumber business is concerned, it is of very great importance to the people of the city of St.John. I think the same remark applies to a lesser extent to the St. Croix river which is also-affected by the Pike law'.
Now, with regard to this question of loyalty: I cannot understand how the loyalty of our people can in any way be affected by this arrangement except in the effect it will have upon people who will be benefited by the reciprocal arr'angemetnt. The lumber manufacturers are going to be benefited. Are they going to become less loyal to the Empire by reason of this? The hon. member for Nipissing (Mr. Gorden). I believe, ships lumber to the United States. Possibly he will not deny that he ships almost his entire output to that country.


Mr GORDON.: I do not.


William Pugsley: At any rate that is the destination of a considerable part of his output. Under this reciprocal arrangement he will be able to ship a larger quantity than at present. That is not going to affect his loyalty. I venture to say that if his lumber output were increased tenfold he would be as loyal a citizen of Canada as ever and would fight for the old flag and teach his children to love the empire just as much as he does today. It is not going to affect the loyalty of the people simply because thev ship more lumber to the United States.


Mr. BRADBURY.: Will that make it, cheaper in Canada?


William Pugsley: Is that the argument that influences my hon. friend (Mr. Bradbury)? Does he want to prevent the manufacturer from getting the best market possible in order that he himself may buy what he wants at a cheaper rate?

You will also find on file a letter from the Riordan Paper Co. of which, I believe the hon. member for Argenteuil (Mr. Per-ley) is vice-president. The general manager of that company urged very strongly that there should be a reciprocal arrangement so far as pulp and paper are concerned.
If hon. gentlemen opposite would allow this question to come to a vote instead of, by taking a possibly legitimate course- though I do not think the country will so regard it-preventing a vote being taken, no doubt the hon. member for Argenteuil would vote against the reciprocal arrangement. But if that arrangement comes into effect, I am told it will mean $90,000 a year of a profit to the company of which he is vice-president. That speaks well for his patriotism you will say. Perhaps it does; perhaps the hon. gentleman (Mr. Perley) may feel that the arrangement will go into effect just the same and his company will get the benefit of a reduction of duty, while he will be able still to say that he was patriotic enough to sink personal considerations at the dictates of his conscience and that he voted against the arrangement.


William Cameron Edwards: That is pretty small.


William Pugsley: I do not think so. Here is a great Canadian manufacturing industry the product of which goes largely to the American market. If the result of this arrangement is going to be to add to the profits of that "company this very large sum of money, that is an important argument as applying to other like industries.


William Cameron Edwards: But, the hon. gentleman (Mr. Pugsley) gives the hon. member for Argenteuil (Mr. Perley) credit for being unselfish, but before he finishes his sentence he abuses him for it. That is pretty small tactics.


William Pugsley: The criticism itself is exceedingly small but that is not to be wondered at considering the source from which it comes. Now, Sir, havng reference to these large industries, having reference to the pulp and paper industries, having re-ferenee to the lumber manufacturing industries, while the result of this arrangement would add largely to the profits of those various businesses, I do not anticipate that these profits will all go into the pockets of the manufacturers. I anticipate that as the profits of the business' increase, the thousands of men who are engaged in the forests cutting the lumber, who are engaged in the streams bringing the logs down to the mills, who are engaged in the mills working and toiling to convert the raw material into the manufactured product, I presume they will share a portion of the profits which will be derived as a result of this 'arrangement, I assume that the
workingmen as well as the employer of labour will receive benefit from the increased profits which will come to the business, and therefore to that extent thousands of the workingmen of this country will benefit as a result of this arrangement.


Mr. RHODES.: When this arrangement comes into effect, how will it affect the consumers of lumber in this country?


William Pugsley: So far as the province of New Brunswick is concerned, and I believe the same remark applies to other sections of Canada, there is plenty of lumber for the consumers of Canada, and plenty of lumber to send abroad; and if the lumber is properly taken care of, that will be the case for generations to come.


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: I was not concerned about the quantity of lumber, I was concerned about the price the consumer will have to pay.


William Pugsley: Well, Mr. Speaker, 1 would not object at ail if the price of the natural product should be increased. I would not object if the farmer got more for . his product, I would not object if the lumber manufacturer got more for his product,, provided he shared it with the labouring man who helps to make his profit. Kor myself, I would not care if I had to pay more for it. I think it will be to the benefit of this country if the wages of the labouring men are increased, and if the labour of the farmer, the fisherman, the miner and the lumberman shall be better recompensed than it is to-day. I do not think that in this country, labour receives, or has received, its fair proportion of benefits from the wonderful development and progress which has taken place in Canada during the last 15 years. As a result of this development we have seen many people grow in wealth from being comfortable to becoming millionaires. And while the wages of the labouring men have increased, I do not think they have increased to the proportion I would like to see them increase. I trust that as a result of this arrangement, and as a result of the increased profits which will come to the farmer, the lumberman 'and the fisherman, the labouring men who are employed in helping to make those profits will receive their fair share of the increased benefit, as I think they ought to do. *
Now, a few words more, and I will not detain the House further. My hon. friend the leader of the opposition, when he was in the west, said I want it understood that I am unalterably opposed to this arrangement, and I am opposed to it, 1 thmlc he said, principally because it will tend to i draw Canada away from her allegiance to ; the British Crown, and draw her gradually i I into commercial,, if not political union
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with the United States. I think that was about what he said, judging from what 1 saw in the newspapers. Now, my hon. friend the Prime Minister said, That is all nonsense. I think there should be an adjective put before the word ' nonsense.' It does seem to .me. difficult to understand how men can put forward such an absurd proposition as that-to say that because the people of this country can be given a wider market, because they can be given greater facilities for trade with the United States, their loyalty will be weakened, that they will be drawn away from the British Empire. I say that does seem to me a proposition _ too absurd to consider seriously. Why, Sir, if that were so, would Canada not be less loyal to-day than she was 15 years ago? Fifteen years ago what was the trade between Canada and the United States? It certainly was not over $150,000,000 or $200,000,000, at the outside. What is it to-day? According to the trade and navigation returns for the year which closed on the 31st of March lust, our trade with the United States amounted to the enormous sum of $404,000,000.
An lion. MEMBER. Mostly imports.


William Pugsley: What does that show? It shows that our people are trading with the United States to a vastly larger extent than they were fifteen years ago; I do not care whether the trade is in imports or exports. Our commercial relations with them are becoming more intimate, because a larger number of people are trading with the people of the United States than there were fifteen years ago. Now are we less loyal to-day than we were then? I think not. I think there never was a time in the history of Canada when the people were more loyal to the empire than they are to-day, when the young men of Canada were so ready to" sacrifice their blood in defence of the old flag as they arc to-day. But an hon. gentleman opposite says that our trade -with the United States is mostly imports. Well, it is true. The imports were $285,000,000, and the exports were $119,000,000. Now, Sir, hon. gentlemen speak of trade gcing north and south. Do they bear in mind that this trade wnich we have today with the United States is more than one-half of the whole trade which Canada carries on with the entire world, that mote than one-half of our total trade to-day is with the United States? Surely that must be trade going north and south. The hon. gentleman says it is mostly imports. Of course it is. Our imports are double what the exports are. What does that mean? It means that we are bringing north into Canada $285,000,000 worth of goods, and we are sending south into the United States $119,000,000 worth. Is it desir-Mr. PUGSLEY.
able that that state of affairs should continue? What does it mean? It means that we are paying to the United States the gold which we draw from other countries of the world for exports that we sell to them. Would it not be to the advantage of the Canadian people that we should sell to the United States, at all events, as much as we import from them? I think it would. If we find it in our own interest to import $285,000,000 worth of goods from the United States, goods coming by train and by steamer, surely if we can send goods back in return we accomplish a two-fold object, we make it more profitable for the transportation companies who will have return freights, and, therefore, the rates ought to be reduced so that we shall get our imports to the people at a cheaper rate than at present, and it would accomplish the other purpose, that we would pay by the products of Canada for the goods which we buy from the United States, instead of _ being obliged to send our gold there which we draw from the other countries of the world.
_ No one can deny that it wou'd be to The interests of Canada that we should at least send to the United States as much as we import from them, but, as I have said, the larger trade which has grown up during these years has not in any way affected the loyalty of the people of Canada and I am one of those who firmly believe that it will be to the interests of the people of the whole of Canada that we should get larger markets for the products of our farms, our forests, our mines and our fisheries. I know that down in the province of New Brunswick we have fisheries of very great importance, of enormous value; they are handicapped bv the duty which the United States have imposed upon them. If that duty were removed it would greatly add to the profits of the fishermen. Hon. gentlemen may say that that will not be to the interest of those who consume fish in Canada, I say it will make but little difference in the price of fish; but even if it does we should be willing when we can get it so easily, to confer this small benefit upon the hardy fishermen of our country, we should remove this handicap from them, and enable them to carry on their business at a greater profit than to-day. They endure great hardships, what little they earn they earn in the hardest possible way and in the face of the great possible dangers, and any thing we can do to encourage the hardy fishermen along our coasts, to make their industry more successful and to produce greater profit to them, we ought to do most cheerfully.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: Does the hon. minister agree with the Minister of Marine and Fisheries that the regulations of the Inter-

national Fisheries Commission will still continue in effect and that therefore the advantage that the fishermen would derive from this agreement will be destroyed by the regulations?


William Pugsley: That has not a thing in the world to do with the matter, so far at least as the. maritime provinces are concerned. The International Fisheries Regulations apply only to a very small body of water in the county of Charlotte at the mouth of the River St. Croix. It has no application to the fisheries along the eastern part of Charlotte, or the coast of St. John county or the northern coast of New Brunswick or the long sea coast of Quebec, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. They have no application whatever because they do not affect these waters.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: The regulations apply there in regard to the bait and they affect British Columbia in the same way.


William Pugsley: My hon. friend I think is wrong. They apply only to fisheries in what are called boundary waters or international waters which are defined in the treaty and the regulations have no application to the larger portion of the seaeoast of Canada.
One other remark with regard to the lumbering and fishing interests of the province of British Columbia. The member for Kootenay (Mr. Goodeve) says there is no market for lumber in the United States. A member of one of the largest lumber manufacturing concerns in the province of British Columbia, whose output amounts to about 875,000 superficial feet of lumber per week, enough to load a large vessel


An hon. MEMBER.: Name him.


William Pugsley: The firm of Davidson & McRae, of New Westminster. I have been at their mill, which is one of the largest on the continent of America, and I believe they operate several mills giving employment at the woods and at their various mills to a good many thousand people. I have the authority of a member of that firm for the statement that in all probability, if this arrangement goes into effect, they will find a very profitable market in San Francisco and other cities upon the western coast of the United States for their lumber and that it will mean in all human probability an added profit of about $1 per thousand upon the output of their mills.
I was also informed that the removal of the American duty on fish oil will result in a profit to one of the big fishing companies being established upon the Canadian Pacific coast of somewhere in the vicinity of $200,000 a year. These are only samples of industries which are going to be affected
by this arrangement. I use the name of these large manufacturers of lumber with their authority. They did not give me the information in confidence but gave me authority to use their name in respect to this arrangement and the advantage that would accrue to the lumbering interests.
Therefore, believing as I do that this, arrangement will be greatly to the interest of the producers of Canada, to the great toiling masses of the people who are represented by the farmers, the fishermen, the lumbermen and the miners, I do, not see how any one who really has the best interests of this country at heart can oppose this arrangement.
Honourable gentlemen opposite have intimated this afternoon very plainly that they intend to exercise their prerogative as members of this House to prevent this question coming to a vote. They intimated that as plainly as words can intimate any thing. In the British parliament it was found necessary to take a course which was approved of by both the political parties to prevent useless discussion and to prevent a minority from taking such a course as would prevent the transaction of the ordinary business of parliament. That course was taken and had to be taken in the British parliament; that course was taken and had to be taken in the American House of representatives. It has been assumed by those who have had control of this parliament in the past that gentlemen who come here would recognize that it was their duty to have a full and a thorough discussion upon all questions which are brought before parliament. It was believed that would be the case, but it was also believed that when the time necessary for that full and free discussion had passed, gentlemen would allow a vote to be taken and allow the will of the majority to prevail until at all events the people had an opportunity of passing upon their conduct and upon the conduct of the majority. The threats which hon. gentlemen have made this afternoon tend towards almost if not quite revolutionizing the theory which has hitherto prevailed. That theory has been that gentlemen would recognize not only their rights but their duty and that is that the will of the majority shall prevail. That is recognized throughout this country as governing all assemblies, all meetings in which people are concerned, and at any meeting attended by the people of this country, whenever there has been fair and reasonable opportunity for the discussion of any question, the minority have always recognized that the view of the majority shall prevail so far at all events as that body is concerned; and so in this parliament I ask hon. gentlemen opposite whether, after hon. gentlemen have had a full
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opportunity, as they have had during the time that this question has been under discussion, of expressing their views, it is not tending to destroy free parliamentary institutions for hon. gentlemen to rise as they have risen to-day and threaten that this question shall not be allowed to come to a vote until the people have passed upon it.


An hon. MEMBER.: What about 1896?


William Pugsley: I don't care what took place in 1896; I was not here in 1896. I say it is not in harmony with the principles which ought to govern parliamentary institutions that gentlemen should rise in their places and threaten, simply because their views are not the views of the majority, that there shall be no opportunity to vote upon this question, and no opportunity, in a constitutional way, of giving expressions to the views of the majority of the members of this House. That is revolutionary; it is not in harmony with the principles of constitutional government. And if as a result of the obstruction of these gentlemen; if, as a result of their threats, there shall be no opportunity of having the votes of the members of this House recorded; if it shall be necessary to consult the people before the time they ordinarily would be consulted, I venture to say that the people of this Dominion will express their opinion favourable to the government, not only with reference to this great question, which is before parliament and the people of the country, but also with reference to the attitude of hon. gentlemen opposite, who although in a minority are seeking by abuse of the constitutional rules of this House to prevent the view of the majority from prevailing.


George Henry Cowan: 
James Kirkpatrick Kerr: If the hen. member is attributing to any member of this House an attempt to distort facts when addressing the House, he is not in order. I have understood the hon. member (Mr. Cowan) to convey that impression.


George Henry Cowan: Mr. Speaker, I have not charged the Minister of Finance with any such attempt. I say that he has given this afternoon another honourable instance of his veracity. Again, when he told the House to-day' that he proposed to throttle and gag the will of the people and to go to the country without redistribution, he declared an intention to perpetrate the blackest injustice on western Canada that any public man ever attempted. For my own part I represent a constituency whose population is two per cent, of the whole of Canada. If my constituency were taken as the basis of representation of the House instead of 221 indifferent looking members here there would be less than fifty. I represent as many people as five ordinary members like the Minister of Public Works. Will the Minister of Finance dare to tell the people of my constituency that they should have only one voice in the councils of the country instead of the four or five they are entitled to, and on a question that reverses the policy which Canada has followed with success for the last forty-five years? Will the Minister of Finance dare to come into my constituency and tell the people that he will deprive them of their franchise and of their full voice on a question which concerns not only their future prosperity, but the destiny of Canada per se and of Canada as a part of the British Empire? If that Minister of Finance dares to come into my constituency I undertake that I will compel his candidate to lose his deposit. I am in one respect delighted to find that my appeal to the House two evenings ago has been effective.
It may be that the gentleman to whom I appealed for assistance added their efforts to mine and convinced this govern-

ment that in these dog days this is no proper place for them, that their proper place is before the people of this country giving an account of their stewardship, giving some reason for the faith that is in them that this reciprocity thing i>s going to advantage any part of the people of Canada, It may be, I say, thay my appeal to the yonnger members of the government has been effective. It may be that, without an appeal 'to the Minister of Public Works, he has added his influence to that of the other younger members of the cabinet to induce the government to do its duty. I did not appeal the other evening to the Minister of Public Works. I recognized that the appeal to him would need to be of a different kind from the appeal which I made to the other ministers. The other evening, when I made that appeal, we were discussing the patented device by which the Liberals of Vancouver diverted from the coffers of the Dominion treasury into their own pockets no less than a million dollars. T was not sure at that time that that diversion would awaken in the breast of the Minister of Public Works that horror which I felt it might awaken in the breasts of the other members of the government. That sum is so far beyond $135,000 that I was not sure but that instead of horror at a moral outrage, it might be chagrin and envy that I would awaken in
his breast.
But IbefoTe I to the speech Public Works, that interesting the hon. member (Mr. Eimmerson) to
refer more particularly of the Minister of I wish to refer to effort on the part of for Westmorland uncover the mossgrown tombs of 1854. With Rip Van Winkle wisdom he went back to 1854 tas if the conditions of to-day were the conditions of that time, and he is going still. He has evidently forgotten that this is 1911 instead of 1854. To do more than make that short reference would be, I think, a mistake. Apart altogether from the waste of ammunition, there is but little sport in shooting at a dead goose.
I come now to the benign, the complacent Minister of Public Works. The Minister of Public Works, feeling the sting that resulted from my shoTt trip throuph New Brunswick, has come into the House and attempted to distort my statements made on the public platforms of that province.


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER.: I think the expression 'attempted to distort' is not parlimentary.


George Henry Cowan: I agree, Mr. Speaker, that it does not correctly describe the minister's attempt. In New Brunswick I was endeavouring to point out the effect of this reciprocity pact. You know that they call it a pact. They say it is not a treaty, it
is not a convention; the most they will allow us to call it is a pact, and I sometimes think that is an appropriate name. It is packed -full of all sorts of misfortunes and evil for Canada. In New Brunswick I was pointing out to the people of New Brunswick that men like the Minister of Public Works and men like the artist in truth who spoke this afternoon, .are declaring to the people of Canada that in the main essentials this is a renewal of the old treaty of 1854, with the accent On the old; and, Mr. Speaker, there is a great deal of truth in their statement. That old treaty, like this new treaty, does this. They both place natural products on the free list; but while they do that, they leave the tariff on goods not covered by the treaty twice * as high, or almost twice as high, when entering the United States as when entering Canada. For example, under the old treaty of 1854 the average American tariff was 24 per cent, while the average Canadian tariff was 101.
Again at the present time the average American tariff is 46 per cent, while the average Canadian tariff is 24 per cent. I would point out to the good people of New Brunswick, as I venture to point out to this House, that as long as that inequality obtains between the tariff of the United States, and the tariff of Canada, so long will the effect of that treaty be to transfer the manufacturing business	and the
carrying trade of Canada from Canada to the United States.	I pointed out in New Brunswick, and I wish to point out here, that our experience under the old treaty was that while the natural products of Canada flooded into the United States, the manufactured products of Canada were walled out of the United States by a high prohibitive tariff, but at the same time the American manufactured goods were flooding into Canada over the Canadian tariff walls like a gushing toTrent from the mountainside.
I think I can almost repeat the idea I expressed there. I pointed out that it was no time for Canada to enter into a treaty of this kind with the United States, and
that the time would not come for Canada to enter into such a treaty until the United States brought their tariff to a level with the tariff of Canada on all products. I mentioned the case of shingles; and let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I am not oblivious to the fact that shingles have been admitted free into Canada since the session of 1898. At the tail end of that session, when many of the members had gone home, and when interest in legislation had dwindled, a provision was sneaked through this House that American shingles should enter Canada free. Ever since that I know very well that American shingles have been coming

into Canada free, while Canadian shingles have been going into the United States by jumping a tariff wall, of 30 cents a 1000 at first and later of 50 cents per 1000.
If I might be permitted, Mr. Speaker, to disturb the peaceful slumbers of the hon. Minister of Inland Revenue, I would point out to him that if he could spare a few wakeful moments to the consideration of this question, he would find that the article in the ' Daily Times ' of Victoria, under date July 12, is a little off colour in regard to the facts. In that article he says: ' It is our duty to point out that it is not a part of the proposal under the reciprocity agreement to allow American made shingles to enter Canada free.' The profundity of that article, and the wisdom displayed in it is well nigh beyond comprehension, especially in view of the fact that at page 20 of the official document setting forth the terms of this agreement between Canada and the United States, item number 502, it appears that shingles are to enter Canada free. The Minister of Inland Revenue is out in his statement merely by the omission of the word ' not ' in this editorial or leader in the paper owned and edited by him. So that the hon. minister is a little wrong when he says that American shingles are not to - be admitted into Canada free. Because, as a matter of fact, American shingles are to be admitted into Canada free. When he examines item 502 of the official document, I imagine that, like the good honest man he poses to be, he will see .he has made a mistake, and that this is a discrimination against British Columbia, and that he will come over to our side and oppose this agreement. I knew that shingles have been free since the fall of 1898. I know at the same time that the effect of this agreement on the shingle manufacturers in British Columbia would be to compel them to locate upon the south instead of the north side of the boundary line. Because the reason with which I am endowed told me that the shingle manufacturer would not, for tfie privilege of paying 30 cents a thousand on his output, locate on the north side of the line when by locating .on the south side of the line he could avoid payment of that 30 cents on going into the American market, and still have access to the Canadian market without paying a cent.
Mr. PUGSLEY May I ask the hon. gentleman a question?


George Henry Cowan: I should be delighted.


William Pugsley: What hinders them from doing that now?-the Canadian market is free.


George Henry Cowan: They do it now, 'and have been doing it ever since this government came into power.


George Henry Cowan: 
William Pugsley: What I stated was that the petition of the Shingle Manufacturers' Association of British Columbia urged very strongly that we should endeavour to secure a remission of the duty on shingles from 50 cents per thousand to 30 cents. That is all they asked, and that is what I stated.


George Henry Cowan: Do I understand that the Minister of Public Works abandons his contention with regard to the lumbermen of British Columbia? He was speaking about the lumbermen of British Columbia,
and he dare not in face of that record made by ' Hansard,' deny my statement, he was speaking of the lumbermen of British Columbia. I propose to read the petition to him, and to the other members of the government, to show their opinion in regard to the tariff. That petition, or resolution, reads as follows:
Whereas the coast and mountain lumber manufacturers have repeatedly brought to the attention of the Dominion government, as well as the public generally, the necessity for protection on rough lumber, with the exception of hardwoods; and
Whereas the representations of the lumbermen have bad the endorsation on many occasions of every board of trade in British Columbia, and of the Canadian Manufacturer's Association; and
Whereas it is a matter of common knowledge, which the government can readily verify, that) American lumber manufacturers use Canada as a convenient dumping ground for their sur- * plus low-grade products, which at the present time is being sold in Canada from Washington, Idaho and Montana mills for less than the logs cost British Columbia manufactuers;
Whereas the American market is practically closed to Canadian lumber by reason of the protective tariff maintained by the United States government; and
Whereas the American market is known to be glutted with low-grade lumber, and is likely to he more so in the future, owing to the closer logging of timber limits; and
Whereas the lumber industry is the only industry of any magnitude in Canada not afforded some measure of protection; and
Whereas the lumber industry is the chief industry of British Columbia and its profitable operation in this province is practically made impossible through lack of protection on low-grade lumber;
It is therefore resolved that, in the judgment of the associated hoards of trade of eastern British Columbia, the Dominion government is not only amply justified in placing a duty of $2 per thousand feet on rough lumber, with the exception of hardwoods, but in all fairness should do so forthwith.


William Stevens Fielding: What date?


George Henry Cowan: This was at a meeting held at Creston, British Columbia, on Thursday and Friday, January 18 and 19, 1911.


William Stevens Fielding: It does not refer to reciprocity at all.


George Henry Cowan: Of course, reciprocity was introduced on the 26th day of January, 1911.


William Stevens Fielding: The document the hon. gentleman has read deals with the general question of protection on lumber, and does not deal with the reciprocity agreement. One of its complaints is that the Americans maintain a high duty on lumber. That condition has been somewhat changed by the reciprocity agreement. Therefore, his resolution, while it has a bearing on the general question of protection on Turn-

ber, has no bearing whatever on the question of reciprocity.


George Henry Cowan: It may be there is some merit in the contention of the Minister of Finance. Let me put it with a little more clearness than he put it. He says that this resolution was passed while he and the other father in Israel were closeted with President Taft in a room in Washington, and before he had announced the birth of his new born babe. His contention is that I have no proof that the view qf the lumbermen remains the same.


William Stevens Fielding: I did not say anything about that, I said the resolution the hon. gentleman read was passed before the reciprocity arrangement, and had no relation to it.


George Henry Cowan: He says I have not correctly stated his meaning. I regret very much if I have not, but I fear that his explanation is confusion worse confounded.
If he does not mean that that resolution expresses the real feeling of the lumber men of the west in regard to reciprocity and the duties of the government in regard to the industry of lumber what does he mean?


Mr FIELDING.: I say he read that resolution as having some bearing on the question of reciprocity now before the House. I say the resolution was passed, according to his own reading of it, before the reciprocity agreement was adopted and it complains in the terms of the resolution that the Americans have maintained a high duty on lumber. I say that condition has been to some extent changed by the reciprocity agreement. If the hon. member were discussing the general question of protection on lumber then outside of this question of reciprocity the resolution would be pertinent to such a discussion, but I say it is not the policy of this government to put higher duties on lumber and the leader of the opposition (Mr. Borden), speaking for his party, has never said it was the policy of the opposition, and if my hon. friend wishes to convey that the policy of his friend was to meet the wishes of the British Columbia lumbermen and put a higher duty on lumber, I say we have no evidence whatever that that is the policy of the opposition, and if any hon. member of the opposition from the prairie provinces is present he will not agree with the hon. gentleman.


George Henry Cowan: I am prepared to discuss this either in the light or in the darkness of this reciprocity proposal. I want to remind you that in 1894 the Americans put upon their statute books a statutory offer to remove the American duty on rough lumber if Canada would remove the Cana-Mr. FIELDING.
dian duty on rough lumber. In the following year Canada, believing in the good faith of that offer removed the Canadian duty on rough lumber. But the Americans forgot the pledge contained in their statutory offer and did not and have not to this day removed the American duty on lumber. In 1896 a new government came into power in Canada but they did not, as we, on this side of the House had a right to expect, seek to protect the interests of Canada as they should have done by reimposing that Canadian duty on lumber when the Americans made default in their statutory promises. As a result the American lumber came flooding into Canada and the Canadian lumber was barred out of the United States by a prohibitive tariff which they had promised to remove. The Minister of Finance says that under these conditions this resolution that I have read was passed. It was passed, however, under these circumstances, that the people of the West, as well of * the people of the East, knew that the Minister of Finance was chasing after the powers that be at Washington and attenpting to get a reciprocity treaty. But, nevertheless, there may be some virtue in the statement that this resolution which I have read was passed prior to his announcement of the reciprocity proposal.
However, I am fortunate in having under my hand the view of the lumbermen of British Columbia since these reciprocity proposals have been made to the people of Canada. It is the view of the lumbermen of British Columbia voiced by Mr. .7. E. H. Barnet, a lumberman who has made a success of his undertakings in Ottawa as in the West, made on behalf of the lumbermen of British Columbia on July 15, and I would ask the attention of the Minister of Finance to this statement in the hope that even in this eleventh hour.


William Stevens Fielding: Later, 11.25.


George Henry Cowan: Even at this hour of 11.25 he may be induced to return from his love and his desire to hand over the fiscal independence and the tariff autonomy of Canada to the people of the United States. Mr. Barnet's statement reads as follows:
' The red, white and blue, with its present number of stars, is sufficient for me, and I am not at all anxious to add another star to our neighbour's flag with my vote,' is the opinion on reciprocity forcefully expressed by Mr. J. E. H. Barnett, who arrived here yesterday from Renfrew, when seen at the Hotel Vancouver.
Though Mr. Barnet's timber interests in this and other provinces are figured in the millions, and since timber men on this side of the boundary line are commonly credited with standing to reap considerable benefit from any prospective reciprocity treaty between Canada and the United States, Mr. Barnet is too loyal to the flag of his own country to permit him-

self to be swayed by sordid selfishness when the prosperity of the entire Dominion is at stake.
To my way of looking at it, this question of reciprocity lightly or altogether in the nature of a commercial agreement, for if such were the case I would soon be found on the side of those advocating it, but a step that is likely to create a chilled feeling between Canada and the mother country. Frankly, I believe the whole scheme is just in keeping with the almost imperial commercial policy of the United States. This reciprocity treaty is simply a bait held out to us in the hope that we will be beguiled into such a trap, under the guise of keeping dangling before our eyes an entry for our products into a market estimated at 90,000,000 inhabitants. But let the too-confident Canadian beware of the wily sons of Uncle Sam, who do not care a rap for our prosperity, but for their own. They are not so philanthropicalfy inclined as to throw their doors wide open to us. What they will take from us is just a drop in a bucket compared to what they expect to ship into our markets. It is an absolute fact that American factories have been increased to such an extent for the past five years that if they want to continue to run at full blast they must find an additional market for their surplus products, as they put out nearly one-third more than the market of their own country can handle.'
In other words, unlike the Minister of Finance, the patriotism of the British Columbian is not measured by the price of a sack of potatoes on the Boston market, or the price of a car of lumber at the Chicago market.
The lumbermen of British Columbia are too intelligent to be fooled by a device of that kind. They realize that while $1.25 per thousand is taken off the lumber duty by the United States the effect of this treaty will he to increase the cost of living for the workingmen of Canada. If you increase the cost of living you diminish the return to labour and you diminish the purchasing power of wages. There are advocates of this reciprocity who maintain that the farmer of Alberta and Saskatchewan will get more for his wheat and cattle, but I remind hon. gentlemen that 80 per cent of the animal and agricultural products of the country are consumed in Canada, and if you increase the price of the 20 per cent sent out of the country you increase the price of the 80 per cent consumed within, and you necessarily increase the cost of living in this country. You lessen the purchasing power of wages and salary and capital; you interfere with that almost perfect equilibrium we have established in Canada between the three great industrial elements, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, by the national policy adopted in 1878 and in force ever since. That policy has brought about a condition of general prosperity in Canada in which the farmer, and the workingman, and every citizen of the country has had full and fair share.
To disturb that equilibrium is to disturb the prosperity of Canada. Under the reciprocity treaty of 1854, the effect was that the railways and steamboats were busy carrying American manufactured goods into Canada, and return cargoes to the United States of Canadian natural products, not to be consumed in the United States but to be carried by American railways to American ports and thence shipped to the markets of the world. The government of the old provinces of Canada realized that that treaty was destroying the manufacturing industry of this country and handing over the carrying trade to the United States, and in 1860 they imposed a tariff on leather goods, wearing apparel, cotton and woollen goods such as we could manufacture in Canada and with the revenue from that tariff they began to develop railway and canal systems so as to retain the carrying trade whch had been diverted by the treaty of 1854. So soon as the American authorities saw that Canada was adopting that policy, there arose a cry that this was an injustice to the industries and trade of the United States, just as if this treaty is adopted it will arise again if we attempt to change our tariff on any of the articles not covered by the treaty. That cry became so persistent that in 1866 the United States abrogated that reciprocity treaty. And they abrogated that treaty in the hope and belief that it would either drive Canada into the American Union or into bankruptcy. It did neither, but it did develop a crop of secessionists like the Minister of Finance, and a crop of commercial unionists like the whole party that constituted the Liberal opposition of Canada in 1891: a crop of unrestricted reciprocity advocates, a small, demoralized crop at the present day, who form the rump and remnant of the growth of 1866.
But, notwithstanding this crop, Canada had men equal to the situation; men who developed a policy of Canada for Canadians, Canadian development for Canadian labour and Canadian capital, a policy inaugurated in 1878 and in force at the present day. Now it is proposed to reverse that policy, which has developed the home market of Canada, a market able to take care of 80 per cent of the production of Canada. And how great is that production? The yearly production of Canada is greater per head of population than the yearly production of any other country of the known world, and the price which is received for Canada's annual production, in her home market at the door of the producer, is such that it makes the average Canadian a richer man than the citizen of any other nation of Canada's population in the known world. But, Sir, this policy would reverse that. This policy would revert to the old quagmire of 1854. It would



ask us to return to that which in 1854 was a necessity, but which in 1911 would be a curse. How foolish, how fatal to the future o+ Canada is this blind indifference to the fact that this is 1911 and not 1854. When I heard the Minister of Finance in January last expound the policy of Canada in 1854, 1 was reminded of my student days, when 1 studied with peculiar interest the works of Washington Irving, and wondered if our Minister of Finance in Canada to-day was but the reincarnation of Rip Van Winkle. Had he forgotten that fifty-seven, years have expired since 1854, that conditions have changed, that Canada has forged ahead to the very forefront of the commercial nations of the world, that Canada no longer is on the verge of bankruptcy, that her exchequers are no longer crippled, that her people are no longer scattered communities spread in sparse settlements from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I wondered if the Minister of Finance had been asleep for the last 57 years. I wondered if, with the prophetic eye of a seer, Washington Irving had predicted the life and work and experience of a Minister of Finance of Canada. And, again, when I remembered that this is a scheme for transferring the tariff jurisdiction of Canada from Canada to the United States, as the hon. member for South York (Mr. Maclean) declared today, I bethought myself that this may be true. I remembered that the effect of this tieaty was to destroy that which the Premier of Canada, with charming lip-loyalty, has declared to be a cardinal principle with him, British preference. I remembered that the mother land sent to us last year $3,500,000 worth of metals of different kinds, and that the effect of this treaty would be to wipe out and destroy fox ever that British preference. I remembered that the mother land last year sent to us $2,000,000 worth of automobiles, clocks, watches and such goods, and that the effect of this treaty, if ratified, would be to reduce that British preference by at least one-half. But, Mr. Speaker, I remembered that the effect of this treaty would be to establish a new precedent in the history of the British Empire. For the first time one of the members of that empire is bargaining with a foreign country to exclude the rest of the British Empire from the preference which by that bargain this country is getting in that foreign country; in other words, by a bargain with a foreign country, we are agreeing with that country to discriminate and differentiate, not only against the mother land, but against the other parts of the British Empire.
In 1892, James G. Blaine, who was at that time a great power in the United States, made a proposal of that kind to ths Canadian government. The government of that day was a Conservative government, Mr. COWAN.	[DOT]	, ;	!
and they rejected that proposal with scorn, on the ground that it involved a differentiation and a discrimination against the mother land. When I remembered that I was unable to understand why the Prime Minister of Canada should allow these things in favour of a foreign power and discriminate 'against the mother land. But, Sir, the explanation of the attitude of this government and of this premieT is to be found in the declaration of the premier in London, in the month of June, when he said in effect, that we, base Canadians, were mere fair weather members of the British Empire, willing to accept the protection and the benefits that pertained to a member of the British Empire, but unwilling not only to share in the common interest and defence of the empire, but even to take counsel with the other members of the British Empire in regard to that common interest and that common defence.


Mr. LOGGIE.: I have not yet said anything on this important question before the House so far, so perhaps I may express my views. I have listened with a great deal of interest to the hon. gsntleman who has just spoken, but I failed to take in any real argument made by him against this proposed trade arangement with the United States. The argument used by hon. gentlemen opposite against this arrangement is that we have opened up markets with the United Kingdom, and that to divert our trade from the United Kingdom to the United States would not be in the interests of Canada. I would like to remind hon,. gentlemen that if they look at the schedules they will find that there are a great many commodities exported by Canada which have no world market value. We have no market value, for instance, for many species of our fish in the United Kingdom, and we must Iook to the United States as our market for these species. I might also tell hon. gentlemen that if it be true that we have no market value for certain commodities, we must force these commodities on the markets of the United States, and inasmuch as the United States are willing to rebate the duty it will inure to the benefit of the producer in this country of certain commodities. From the northern portion of New Brunswick, for example, there are about 300 carloads of frozen smelts exported to the United States during the course of a year. The duty on these 300 carloads is approximately $50,000, which is paid into the United States treasury. Under the new arrangement that $50,000 will in-nure to the benefit of the Canadian fishermen.


William Sora Middlebro: I thought the consumer paid the duty.


William Stewart Loggie: On general principles thai doctrine is good, but it does not apply in this instance. I can give you concrete examples of oases where the consumsr would get the benefit of the reduction of duty. I am now giving you an instance of where the Canadian fishermen will get the benefit of the duty remitted by the United States because the species of fishes I allude to are those which have no world market value. Therefore you force them on the market of the United States. They are sold on commission, and the returns are made less the charges. If no duty is collected so much more money comes back to the pockets of the fisherman.


William Sora Middlebro: Are they not saying on the other side that if they pass reciprocity they will get their fish just so much cheaper?


William Stewart Loggie: I am not particularly concerned with what they are saying on the other side. ,1 think as the Minister of Finance says, they are making the best show of it.
I can demonstrate what I am saying in regard to species of fish which have no world market value. I do not mean, of course, that all the fish we export has no world market value, for I know different. Let me explain what I mean. There is no duty at the present time on lobsters either in the shell or in cans, but if there was a duty on canned lobster it would inure to the benefit of the United States consum-mer. I say, Mr. Speaker, that the Canadian fisherman and the Canadian lumberman will receive a large proportion of the duty remitted by the United States.
The hon. gentleman made a reference to the duty on shingles going from British Columbia into the United States, and stated that there was no duty on shingles coming from the United States into Canada. He went on to say he did not think that was reciprocity. I would like to remind the hon. gentleman that shingles are not the only item in the schedules covered in that way. Take for instance, cement, which is just the very reverse of shingles so far as the duty is concerned. While there may not be real reciprocity in shingles, the same thing applies to cement in the opposite direction. This disposes of the argument of my hon. friend. As the hon. the Finance Minister explained, there are a few commodities which neither country was prepared to put at the same rates of duty, but they are very few, as the schedules will show.
That seems to me the argument they are using in their press; and yet two hon. gentlemen opposite have stated on the floor of the House that there was no fault to find with the United States remitting their duties. If that be true, what is there 3184
in this arrangement? Is there anything more in it than Canada remitting a portion of the duties that are collected today?
Then, they tell us we have no mandate to reduce the rates of duty. But we are reducing duties by $2,500,000, and that money will go into the pickets of the people. We are lessening the cost of living to that extent. We certainly have a mandate to reduce the cost o-f living and to cut down duties on the necessaries of life as much as possible. It was my great pleasure to be in this city in 1893 at the convention of the Liberal party, and I can distinctly remember the plank in the platform asking for a tariff for revenue only, and also the plank in favour of reciprocal trade relations with the United States in natural products and in a certain well defind list of manufactured articles. What is this trade arrangement but a fulfilment of the promise made in 1893? We went to the country in 1896 and the country put us in power. We tried to put that policy into execution and whose fault was it that at first we did not succeed?


William Ross Smyth: Did you do it?


William Stewart Loggie: I am surprised at the hon. gentleman a-sking me the question. He knows very well that as soon as the Liberal party came into power they framed the tariff known as the British preference and they also sent a commissioner to Washington in the endeavour to carry out their promise. And when our overtures were not received by the United States, our Premier, with the dignity that ibe fits his position, said that overtures in the future must come from the United States. And when, in a critical condition of the trade of this country some 12 months ago, when the United States threatened to put on a surtax on our exports going to that country did we not do our duty? I fail to understand the letter which has been referred to, written by Mr. Crocket. The duty on shingles is 50 cents a thousand, and with the .surtax it would have (been 75 cents a thousand. It is a thing to be dreaded. The proposed policy of the United States meant that whereas, on the fish we are sending to them they collected duties amounting to $500,000, under the surtax they would have collected another $250,000, out of the pockets of the people of this country for the effect of the surtax; would have been to increase the duty 50 per cent. So, I say, it was in the interest of the country that some_ arrangement should ibe arrived at. And it was arrived at with very little sacrifice on the part of Canada. The principal article on which we made a reduction was cotton seed oil, and I do not think that reduction would hurt any manufacturer in Canada. So, I say, we have carried out the platform of the Liberal .party ladopted

in 1P03, and on which we came into power. In 1396 when this government came into power, the government was collecting from the iionsuming public about $19 for every 'hundred dollars' worth of goods that went thro ;igh the Customs House.
Lu st year we collected about $16 on every hundred dollars' worth, which is a reduction of about 15 per cent. And if this arrangement goes through, it will mean a further reduction of about three per cent- that is, we collect about $70,000,000 through the Customs House and under this arrangement this would 'be reduced by about $2,500,000, which is about three per cent. Yet these hon. gentlemen have the audacity to tell us that we have no mandate, though we are carrying out the platform on which we returned to power and which we have repeated at every election. I admit that the" question of reciprocal trade relations was not a live issue during the last three elections. But it was for the very reason I have already explained- that the Prime Minister had said that overtures in the future must come from the United States. But when those overtures were made we were called upon to act in accordance with the principles laid down by the Liberal party. Nor was this principle confined to the Liberal party, for, in 1894 a law was placed on the statute book making an open offer to the United States of reciprocal trade relations, in fish and certain other natural products. And yet, these hon. gentlemen tell us, forsooth, we have no mandate for reciprocity. It is greatly to the benefit of Canada to have many of these duties removed, because in the articles affected we find a market only in the United States. This is true of a * certain species of our fish-we have no market except the home market and that in the United States. We have practically no market for shingles except in the United States, and the same is true of laths. Inasmuch as we must market these articles there, duty or no duty we say it is a benefit to our people to have free access to this market of 92,000,000 of people. It will be a boon to us when this trade arrangement is finally put into effect.
For the opposite side, I would say that it would be a great calamity to Canada at large and a great calamity to the maritime provinces. Another argument alleged by hon. gentlemen on the other side is that this trade arrangement would interfere with capital invested in our great transportation 'Companies; it is alleged that the commodity of wheat will go north and south instead of east and west. Now, I would like hon. gentlemen to be reasonable in their criticisms. Does it not go north or south to-day? Is it not a fact that a man can buy a hundred carloads of wheat in Winnipeg to-day and take them down Mr. LOGGIE.
to Minneapolis, and have it ground, and
exported to any foreign market, and have ninety-nine per cent of the duty he paid refunded? Is it not a fact that the same hundred carloads of wheat can go through in bond for export without any handicap whatever? So what difference will it make?


William Sora Middlebro: What is the good of reciprocity if it does not go south?


William Stewart Loggie: One of the good things I see in it is that the people of Canada will be two and a half million dollars richer as far as consumers are concerned.
, Mr. MIDDLEBBO. Why?


William Stewart Loggie: Because the duties are reduced to that extent, and it will decrease the cost of living to that extent.


William Sora Middlebro: Then you mean that the wheat will go to the United States?


William Stewart Loggie: 
John Stanfield: What about condensed milk?


William Stewart Loggie: I do not know whether condensed milk is touched at all.


John Stanfield: It is reduced only fifty per cent.


William Stewart Loggie: I do not know about condensed milk. I believe cotton seed oil has been Teduced and made practically free, also typesetting machines. So I think the hon. gentleman is quite in error when he speaks of any large reduction on manufactured articles. I have read the schedules over very carefully, and so far as I recollect, there is practically no reduction on manufactured articles. So the argument that the United States bars by her heavy
duties Canadian manufactured articles, does not apply. We are only making reciprocal trade relations in natural products, that is, the products of the sea, the farm, forest and the products of the mine.


George Henry Cowan: The hon. member put a question to me a moment ago, and I am curious to know if he really wants to know why this arrangement will work against the interests of Canada.


William Stevens Fielding: If my hon. friend rises to a point of order it is quite right, but not otherwise.


George Henry Cowan: He has put a question, if he wants me to answer I will do so.


William Stewart Loggie: I have heard the speech of the hon. gentleman, and those of other hon. gentlemen. I confess that I may be very dense, but I have been unable to grasp any real reason


George Henry Cowan: I know that.


William Stewart Loggie: The gentlemen may have it in their minds, but they surely have not expressed it.


William Cameron Edwards: During the last week it was quite evident to this House that if the government have no mandate from the people in regard to the introduction of this reciprocity pact, a mandate had gone forth from the Prime Minister to his followers that they were to keep quiet, and I am under the impression that if the right hon. gentleman had been present in the last five minutes, and listened to the last speaker, he would have reintroduced that mandate, and kept them quiet still longer.
I wish to give one or two reasons why I think the position taken by hon. gentlemen opposite is not a logical one. First I shall refer to something said in reference to myself by the hon. Minister of Public Works (Mr. Pugsley). That hon. gentleman referred to the hon. member for Argen-teuil (Mr. Perley) as one who would benefit to the extent of $90,000 a year on lumber in the event of this compact going through. Notwithstanding that large financial benefit, when this hon. member opposed this pact the minister went on to impugn his motiyes for doing so. I ventured to suggest that that was a position unworthy of the Minister of Public Works. The hon. gentleman replied that he was not surprised, that such criticism should come from me. It is true I have not won for myself a name such as has the Minister of Public Works. I have not had the privilege nor do I want the privilege of taking part in any sawdust wharf transactions or McAvity deals. I would be perfectly willing for the rest of my life to occupy the humble position I do rather than to find myself in the limelight by such means a?


COMMOJNS
[Stage Direction]
lie has adopted. I can readily understand that to the Minister of Public Works the matter of an hon. gentleman placing his country and principle ahead of a matter of $90,000 would be something out of the question. We can all understand that would be something entirely foreign to the course he would pursue.
I have been somewhat interested to hear the hon. gentleman refer to Liberal principles. I have here a campaign document circulated very extensively by the Liberal party previous to the last general election, entitled: 'Party government in Canada, a western Liberal view.' Without passing any opinion on the contents in detail I would say it is on the whole very well written. There are one or two expressions in it which I wish to call to the attention of the hon. gentlemen opposite. The writer of this pamphlet referring to responsible government says:
The counting of the ballots on election night decides not only who shall govern during the succeeding parliamentary term but how they shall govern. The election of representatives to parliament is, in effect, a plebiscite or popular vote, rejecting or continuing the line of policy upon which the affairs of government, have, up to that moment, been administered. A general election is a sitting of the highest court of appeal, the court of last resort on all public questions. The decision given takes effect at once and in practice is only reversed at a future election.
Therefore, we have a guiding principle of our system of government that the election of a parliament decides the policy of the party which is to govern. By the proposal introduced by this government, if this reciprocity pact is put through at the present time, it seems to me it is placing the cart before the horse, that the government would put through a policy on which the people have given no decision, on whicli the people have not been consulted, and after the compact had been put through then the people would be consulted as to whether they liked it or not. That would be an entire reversal of the principle of responsible government as here set forth. The writer says further:
The real question decided by the vote at a general election is not whether certain members shall be elected or a certain government returned but what line of general policy or particular policy shall be followed, the decision being given by the individual voters at the polls according to their own views and interests.
Surely if that principle was right previous to 1908 it is the proper principle to follow now, to give the public an opportunity to express an opinion on this at a general election, the only time at which the people can have an opportunity to express an opinion. Further the writer says: Mr. EDWARDS
We cannot have successful responsible government without party, especially honest parties with whom principles are the end of party existence and not merely the means to party success. The evil of the party system is not in its use but in its abuse.
I commend that to the consideration of hon. gentlemen opposite, and ask that if the policy they are pursuing now is not rather a means to an end than a following of well known and definite principles.
One other paragraph in this pamphlet. Referring to the matter of the old fight in 1891 he says:
As Canada was entirely an exporter of natural products she clearly had the advantage, there was no hope of securing a renewal of the old treaty of 1851. The only possibility of securing free entrance of Canadian farm products into the United States was by giving free or preferred entrance to United States manufactures to Canadian markets.
That is the justification given for the course pursued in 1891 when the policy of the Liberal party was unrestricted reciprocity. Then it was set before the people that the only way in which we could get free entrance to the United States for natural products was to give a free entrance for American manufactured products to Canada. It seems to me that policy is now turned the other way round, and they are taking as the first step free trade in natural products to be followed by its logical conclusion, free trade in manufactured products.
We find the Liberal party following one course at one time and another course at another time, but each leading to the one end, namely, commercial union or free trade between Canada and the United States and the establishment of a common tariff on the North American continent against the rest of the world. It has been stated that if this compact goes into effect it will inure to the benefit of the farmers of Canada. If agricultural conditions in the United States are so much better than in Canada I ask any member of the government to tell me why it is that in the state of New York in the last ten years there have been 12,070 abandoned farms and
775,000	less acres of improved land; why is it that in Pennsylvania in the last ten years there have been 5,854 abandoned farms and 549,000 acres less of improved land in 1910 than in 1900; why it is that in the state of Ohio there have been 5,386 abandoned farms in the last ten years and 34,000 less acres of improved land in 1910 than in 1900; why is it that in the state of Vermont there were 506 abandoned farms in the last ten years and 494,000 less acres of improved land in 1910 than in 1900; why in New Hampshire there have been 2,411 abandoned farms in the last ten years and a decrease of 150,000 acres in the improved

acreage; why is it that in the state of Massachusetts in the last ten years there have been 1,203 abandoned farms and a decrease of 130,000 acres in improved acreage. Wlhy is it that in these six states just across the line there have been in the last ten years 27,380 abandoned farms and a decrease of the improved acreage amounting to 2,132,132 acres. These are official figures from the advance sheets issued by the Census Bureau at Washington and sent to me by Mr. Durand Chief Director of the United States Census Bureau. These are pertinent questions to ask those who argue that this reciprocity pact will advantage the Canadian farmer. Why is it that in the state of Massachussetts in 1909, 38 per cent of the farms were mortgaged and that in 1910, 41 per cent were mortgaged. And yet Massachusetts is alongside the Boston market so much vaunted by hon. gentlemen opposite, and it is within a few hours run o.f New York, Brooklyn, Pittsburg, Philadelphia and other large centres of population. Our people are being told in Ontario that if they had an opportunity of getting to the markets on the other side of the line the conditions in Canada would be similar to the conditions in the United States, but if the result of reciprocity is that they are to have in Canada conditions like those I have mentioned in the United States we don't want anything of this kind because conditions in Canada are infinitely better than they are on the other side of the line. And, yet, hon. gentlemen who advocate this pact offer no argument to answer such facts as I have presented. Do these gentlemen think it a fair deal to the farmers of this country to submit them to competition with people who have an advantage in climatic conditions? I can understand why people in certain parts of the world are in favour of free trade, but I cannot understand how any one truly interested in the prosperity of the Canadian farmer can advocate free trade. Under this pact the farmers of the Argentine Republic will be allowed to send their stufl into our market. The population of the Argentine is largely composed of Spanish, Italians and Indian natives and the labourer is paid 64 cents a day out of which he pays his board. The people of the Argentine do not have to build expensive houses nor buy fuel nor heavy clothing to protect themselves from cold, nor stables nor barns to protect their stock which run in the open during the entire year, nor, have they to maintain the high standard of civilization Canadians have, nor do they feel the responsibility of educating their children and beautifying their homes as we do. Nothing can be more unfair than to ask the farmers of Canada to compete with the farmers
of the Argentine and other countries similarly circumstanced. As to our wheat going to the American market, if it does go there the by-product of our wheat will go across the line also, and I would remind hon. gentlemen that the price of bran and shorts in Canada to-day is $6 and $7 a ton lower than in the United States, bran being quoted all through May and June in the United States, at from $29 to $30 a ton and white shorts at $34 a ton. If this pact goes through the Americans will have the benefit of the shorts and the farmers of Canada will have the shortage, and instead of the people of Ontario paying $23 and $24 a ton and the American $29 or $30 a ton the conditions will be reversed and the Canadian farmer will be paying the higher price. Add to that the advantage they have over us in the matter of climate and the abundance of corn which we cannot raise as they can, and give to them these advantages in the raising of cattle, and the farmers of Canada will be put out of business entirely.
Mr. NESBITT.: Wa will take out chances.
' Mr. EDWARDS. It is all right for hon. gentlemen in this House to say they are willing to take their chances, but it is only fair to the people of Canada to give them an opportunity to say whether they are willing to take those chances or not.


An hon. MEMBER.: Do not worry about the farmers.


William Cameron Edwards: I am not worrying about the farmers at all. So far as the section where I live is concerned, the farmers who understand this matter have absolutely no use for it whatever, and I have every confidence that if hon. gentlemen opposite would submit it to the farmers of this country, they would find that they would not endorse the position they take. The fact that they are not willing to submit it to the people is a clear evidence that they have not any confidence in the policy that they are advocating at the present time.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House went into committee of Ways and Means.
Mr. SMYTH moved that the committee rise, report progress, and ask leave to sit again.
Motion agreed to, and committee rose and reported progress.
On motion of Mr. Fielding, House adjourned at 12.40 a.m. Tuesday.
[Stage Direction]


Tuesday, July 25, 1911.