Mr. T. J. BENTLEY (Swift Current):: Mr. Speaker, last night as recorded in Hansard at page 3249 I am reported as having said, "You are correct in that supposition, Mr. Speaker". This was in reply to an interjection from Your Honour which I misunderstood. I thought you had said that my remarks at that point were for the purpose of proving that we should not have an increase in freight rates. It was this supposition with which I agreed. The word "not" does not appear in the report of what you said; hence my question of privilege to make it perfectly clear.



REPORTS OF COMMITTEES

[Stage Direction]
Fourth report of standing committee on banking and commerce.-Mr. Marquis.

[Stage Direction]
Right Hon. J. L. ILSLEY (Minister of Justice) presented the first report of the special joint committee on human rights and fundamental freedoms, and moved that the report be concurred in.
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
VETERANS AFFAIRS: RESIGNATION OF MR. TUCKER- FISHERIES: APPOINTMENT OF MR. REID
Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to inform the house that the hon. member for Rosthern, Mr. Walter Tucker, parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Veterans Affairs, has tendered his resignation as a parliamentary assistant, and that his resignation has been accepted by the government. In making this announcement I should like to say how much my colleagues and I have appreciated the splendid services rendered the government, the house, and particularly the war veterans, by the hon. member for Rosthern during the time he held the position of parliamentary assistant, and with what sincere regret his resignation has been accepted.
I would also inform the house that the hon. member for New Westminster (Mr. Reid) has been appointed parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Fisheries, an appointment which I am sure will be received with general approval by hon. members.


Mr. GRAYDON:: May I ask the Prime Minister whether there were any special or immediate circumstances which dictated the change in connection with the office of the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Veterans Affairs?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Nothing except what seemed appropriate in the circumstances.



IMMIGRATION


Hon. J. A. MacKINNON (Acting Minister of Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be able to inform the house that the government has effected an arrangement with Trans-Canada Air Lines for the charter of planes to bring immigrants from the United Kingdom to Canada.
This arrangement will provide facilities for the transportation of 10,000 immigrants from the United Kingdom before the end of the present fiscal year. Initial destination on this side will be Montreal and Toronto.
In order to provide for this increased movement by air, existing Canadian immigration staffs in the United Kingdom will be further expanded. Arrangements will be made at the immigration offices to assist prospective immigrants to obtain necessary documentation and travel facilities, and specially trained officers will be available to provide full information about conditions in Canada and to assist the prospective immigrant in preparing for settlement in this country. Priority of passage will be given to persons with assured employment awaiting them in Canada.
Officers of the Labour Department will be stationed in the immigration offices to advise intending immigrants as to prospects for employment, and, when practicable, to arrange definite placement in Canadian jobs prior to the immigrant's departure from the United Kingdom.
The offices of the immigration branch in London are being transferred to more spacious
Immigration

quarters, and a new office is to be opened in Glasgow within the next ten days. A third office will be opened in Liverpool before the 1st of July, and it is hoped that an office can be established in Belfast shortly thereafter.
It has been agreed by Trans-Canada Air Lines that experienced staffs and facilities of that organization will be made available for making the necessary arrangements to schedule the dispatch of immigrants when the necessary medical and civil examinations are completed, thus permitting of every possible facility to aid the immigrant desirous of taking advantage of this mode of travel.
It is considered that the new arrangement with T.C.A., together with considerably increased steamship facilities now available as a result of government action, will go a long way towards overcoming the serious shortage of immigrant transportation from the British isles which previously existed.
In addition to the arrangements which I have just announced in connection with the transportation of immigrants by air from the United Kingdom, I am glad to be able to inform the house that the government has decided to increase from 20,000 to 30,000 the number of displaced persons, not otherwise admissible, who will be allowed to enter this country for permanent residence. As has been previously indicated, the displaced persons who are admitted to Canada under the present program will be counted against any quota that this country may eventually accept as a result of an international agreement designed to solve the displaced persons problem.
It is perhaps worth reminding the house that Canada was not only the first nonEuropean country to take independent action to admit displaced persons who are not otherwise admissible, but that this country has admitted more displaced persons, on the grounds that they were displaced persons, than all other non-European countries combined.
The United States Congress is now giving consideration to the possibility of admitting a considerable number of these people. Up to the present none have been admitted to the Lffiited States as displaced persons, although some thousands have been given entry under their national quotas.
The total number of displaced person arrivals in Canada as at the 15th of April was 15,410. This is a record of which I believe we have a right to be proud.
As has been the case from the beginning, the displaced persons who will be admitted to Canada will be very carefully screened by the Canadian teams which have been established in Europe for this purpose.


Gordon Graydon: I should like to ask the acting minister a question arising out of his statement with respect to the immigration plan. How far does the United Kingdom plan go toward carrying out without interruption the highly successful airborne immigration scheme which was originated by Premier George Drew?


Mr. KNOWLES:: There would not be an election on, would there?


Gordon Graydon: Not so far as you are concerned in Ontario.


James Angus MacKinnon: A number of prospective settlers in Canada from the British isles had bought and paid for passage under the scheme referred to by the hon. member for Peel. It is not possible to bring them to Canada under that scheme now, but our arrangement will bring them to Canada.


Gordon Graydon: Has there been any consultation between this government and the Ontario government so that the number of immigrants coming into Ontario will not be substantially decreased?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Drew does not come to Ottawa.


Gordon Graydon: You do not get any members there either.


James Angus MacKinnon: The scheme to bring these immigrants to Canada is a dominion scheme, and it is in connection with such that I have made my announcement.


Gordon Graydon: That means that you have not consulted with the Drew government at all?


Mr. ISNOR:: Following the statement made by the Acting Minister of Mines and Resources, I should like to ask if there has been any change in the landing regulations covering immigrants coming to Canada. I understand that the former arrangement was that they would land at Halifax, but now it appears that they are going to be landed at Montreal.


An hon. MEMBER:: That is still in Canada.


James Angus MacKinnon: I stated that the main points for airborne traffic would be Montreal and Toronto, but I might add that that does not mean that the immigrant must carry on to Montreal or to Toronto or stop at Montreal or Toronto. The scheme is liquid enough to carry these immigrants on to their destination.


An hon. MEMBER:: It is a Canadian scheme.

Inquiries of the Ministry


James Angus MacKinnon: It is a Canadian
scheme.


Mr. McIVOR:: I appreciate the minister's statement that immigration offices will be opened in Belfast. That will certainly improve the standard of immigration from other parts of the British empire.


Gordon Benjamin Isnor: When I asked about the change in landing regulations, I was referring to movement by steamship.


James Angus MacKinnon: There has been no change in those arrangements. As a matter of fact we are arranging for increased numbers of immigrants to come by ship.


Gordon Benjamin Isnor: To Halifax?

On the orders of the day:


Mr. C. W. HODGSON (Victoria, Ont.):: Can the Acting Minister of Mines and Resources tell the house how many immigrants other than displaced persons entered Canada in 1946 or 1947 or since the war?


James Angus MacKinnon: As it will be necessary to get the figures, I will take the question as notice, but I would prefer that it be put on the order paper.


Mr. MERRITT:: May I ask the minister how much it will cost for passage by air for immigrants under the dominion scheme?


James Angus MacKinnon: I have not the figures before me, but I believe that the cost to the immigrant is approximately the same as under previous schemes.



FLOOD CONDITIONS


[Stage Direction]
Mr. DOUGLAS G. ROSS (St. Paul's): A request has been made by the board of trade of the city of Toronto to all hon. members to come to our city. They will all be coming to my riding and I want to welcome them.
Mr. SPEAKER:: Order. Has the hon.
member a question to ask in connection with the statement which was just made?


Mr. ROSS (St. Paul's):: I want to know whether the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Fournier) will be there tomorrow so that he will be able to see what damage has been done by floods in that area.


James Horace King: Order. I must call the
attention of the hon. member to the fact that we have not reached the orders of the day.

On the orders of the day:
Mr. DOUGLAS G. ROSS (St. Paul's): I wonder if I might have an answer from the Minister of Public Works to the question I asked him yesterday with respect to the floods at Long Branch and Toronto Island. Who has jurisdiction in this matter? I would like to know so that we can get something done.


Hon. ALPHONSE FOURNIER (Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, I am quite embarrassed to answer the questions put by the hon. member. There seems to be a competition between the two members from Toronto concerning flood damages in their district. Yesterday the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church) gave notice of the following question to come up on Monday:
Regarding the great damage to the federal Department of Public Works breakwater at Wards to Centre Island, Toronto Island, has the district engineer of the department yet reported on this, and what action is being taken to remedy the damage?
This question will appear on Monday's order paper and I shall try to give a joint answer to it and the question asked by the hon. member for St. Paul's (Mr. Ross).


Douglas Gooderham Ross: If I may ask a supplementary question, it seems to me the Minister of Public Works ought to know something about it already, because I asked him yesterday under whose jurisdiction this matter came. That is all I want to know. We want to get busy and get the thing fixed.



PENITENTIARY ACT


[Stage Direction]
Mr. T. L. CHURCH (Broadview) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 206, to amend the Penitentiary Act, 1939.
Some hon. MEMBERS:: Explain.


Mr. CHURCH:: It was one of the cardinal principles of Magna Carta that the people should have a large share in the administration of criminal justice. These institutions, whether rightly or wrongly, are managed by officers of the crown and nobody can visit them except officers of the crown. The bill would give jurisdiction to the grand jury and to members of parliament to visit them, to examine into complaints made, and make presentments without expense to the country. Another amendment is intended to meet the cases which occasionally arise of urgent requests of relatives of prisoners for permission
Criminal Code Amendment

to visit a dying parent or dependents. A recent case evoked wide sympathy. The last section of the bill provides that no person under nineteen years of age shall be admitted by any warden to or be confined in any penitentiary or other penal institution. Very strong representations have been made in this regard by some of the judges. These youths should be taken care of by the provinces.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



CRIMINAL CODE


[Stage Direction]
Mr. T. L. CHURCH (Broadview) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 207, to amend the criminal code (pistols, motor vehicles, level crossings and the payment of fines).
Mr. COLD  WELL@: Explain.


Thomas Langton Church: Mr. Speaker, I have waited until the sixty-ninth day of this session for the government to introduce such a bill. The marginal notes explain the various sections. The purpose of the amendments in sections 1 and 2 of the bill is to make it an offence to point, or use in a hold-up, not only an ordinary firearm but a pistol, or anything in the shape, form or size of a pistol.
The appalling fatal accidents and injuries from highway traffic and level crossings in Canada is mounting steadily and has become a public scandal. Almost every highway is coloured red with the slaughter. Nothing is done to avert these accidents as the mad race for speed goes on. Casualties from such accidents, and from drowning and fires in homes, are almost as numerous as those from the second world war in persons so killed or injured. The amendment would increase the penalty from "a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars and costs or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months" to a term of "not less than six months and not exceeding twelve months", without the option of a fine, and to "seizure and forfeiture" of the driver's car.
Section 4 deals with driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or narcotics.
Section 5 deals with hit-and-run drivers, who are responsible for the most cowardly form of murder in Canada.
Section 10 provides that the jury in motor car accidents shall decide the question of fact as to whether the accused is guilty or not guilty on the evidence adduced. On the trial by jury of persons who cause death or serious

injury, it is desirable that the functions of the jury should not be curtailed or abolished. There has been much criticism of many cases of gross negligence having been taken from the jury. The jury are required to take the law to be what the judge says it is, and, owing to the many cases withdrawn by order of the judge, trial by juiy in those cases is negatived, and there are so many loopholes that many persons guilty of gross negligence get off. The increased number of accidents requires that the law should be brought up to date to meet the changing conditions, while preserving also the liberty of the subject.
Section 11 deals with the payment of fines by instalments. Many people on relief and out of work, or on part time, cannot pay their fines and have to go to jail-many of them first offenders with families, and some of them returned soldiers-which is another way of imposing imprisonment for .debt. The Summary Offenders Act of fifteen years ago in Great Britain allowed time for the payment of fines, and it has closed half the jails in Britain. I would commend this provision to the study of hon. members. Law reform is a dead letter in Canada. We are miles behind Britain in law reform.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



ST. GEORGE'S' DAY

[Stage Direction]
Britain's contribution to liberty and civilization-their majesties' 25th W'EDDING ANNIVERSARY
On the orders of the day:
Thomas Langton Church: Mr. Speaker, I would call the attention of the Prime Minister to the fact that today, the 23rd of April, is St. George's day. I thought that the leaders of the house might pause and pay tribute to England and1 to its patron saint, St. George, who slew the dragon.
Britain has stood like the Rock of Ages in these troublesome days, and next to the Christian church has done more for freedom, liberty and civilization than any other agency. We should remember at this hour:
Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
I suggest that the leaders make some reply and that we sing God Save the King, the national anthem.
In the second place, this week end is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the marriage of Their Gracious Majesties the King and Queen, who were given such a tremendous reception in Canada in 1939, shortly before the second world war. A month ago I asked if some

Prairie Farm Assistance Act
recognition should not be made of this event, and the Prime Minister replied that appropriate action was being considered. I should like to know what is to be done.



VETERANS AFFAIRS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the Minister of Veterans Affairs whether he is yet in a position to state what use or disposition is to be made of the buildings at Kirkfield Park, Manitoba, which were built under the jurisdiction of his department
Hon. MILTON F. GREGG (Minister of Veterans Affairs):	Matters relating to this
question are now under discussion. A decision has not yet been reached, but will be I hope before long, and then I shall attempt to answer the hon. gentleman's question.



PRAIRIE FARM ASSISTANCE ACT


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Tuesday, April 20, consideration of the motion of Mr. Gardiner for the second reading of Bill No. 204, to amend the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, 1939.
Mr. E. G. McCULLOUGH (Assiniboia):: Mr. Speaker, the subject which is under discussion today is a bill to amend the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, 1939. This act came into force after we had a long period of drought on the prairies, and I think for two reasons: first, the parliament of the day had come to recognize that some sort of assistance should be given to the prairie farmers to help them in the years when they had crop failures because of drought, hail, frost, grasshoppers or any other condition beyond their control. It came into force for an additional reason, namely, that farm organizations at that time began to be used to exert pressure on the governments of the day to enact such legislation.
It would be well at this time to examine the features of the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, because on many occasions since 1939 amendments have been made to meet the needs for which the act was introduced.
I want to say at the beginning that since 1939 the Prairie Farm Assistance Act has been very beneficial to many farmers in the drought areas. Those who have been responsible for the act should be complimented, but in examining the various aspects of it, and its 5849-207i
administration, I find that there are still many objectionable features in it. First, the act should apply on an individual basis; second, it should be extended in scope, and third, it should provide greater protection against crop losses. Because of the experience which the government and the farmers have had with the act as it now stands, it is recognized that it is not adequate for the purposes for which it was intended, but I do believe that we have made a beginning on something which will more nearly meet the needs of agriculture in this country.
At the present time we have no national planning for agriculture sufficient to provide stability in that field. It cannot be overemphasized at this time that measures directed to give stability to our agriculturists cannot do that unless we have national policies which will assist in maintaining stability in agriculture.
In passing I think I should mention four real reasons for having a national agricultural policy and what it should embrace. First, we should have an agricultural policy providing for maximum utilization of land; second we should have the principle of evermormal granary; third a forward price fixing policy, and, finally, a national crop insurance scheme which will provide coverage for all our crops where there is an element of risk. It is recognized by all hon. members that not only our prairie farmers who come within the confines of this act, but also other specific branches of agriculture such as our fruit growers, our vegetable growers and others do need crop protection against losses.
As I said before, the experience of the government in the past should give us a basis on which to work out a larger scheme than is provided in the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. What we need is a scientific survey to introduce an insurance scheme which would be national in scope. Such an insurance scheme should be on a federal basis and under federal control assisted financially by the provinces and by the agricultural groups interested in such a plan. Such a plan should include all types of agricultural production which have an element of risk involved in production. The rates to producers should be on an actuarial basis, with federal and provincial governments paying fifty per cent of the premiums, or some other amount determined by a fact-finding commission. Rates of premiums should be regionalized to correspond with specific areas and risks involved.. Payment should in no case be higher than financial returns would have been had the crop been harvested and marketed. The
Prairie Farm Assistance Act

method of administration, of course should be under federal control, with proper local federal agencies to carry out such .a plan. Under such a plan, specialized production shoud be protected also. I refer to such branches, of agriculture as the potato growers of Prince Edward Island, the fruit growers of the. Okanagan valley, the tobacco growers of Ontario, and, of course, the wheat growers of the prairies. I am convinced, sir, that such a plan can be worked on a beneficial and economical basis.
I have calculated the administration costs of the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, and it amounts to approximately 3-7 per cent. I am sure that if the government would see fit to bring in a national crop insurance scheme this percentage could be lessened. It is for this reason I recommend that the government consider the advisability of setting up at once a commission to determine the feasibility of such a plan of crop insurance as I have outlined, or some alternative plan under which such protection could be provided to our producers at minimum cost. Such a plan as I have outlined is, I believe, in the national interests, would benefit the producers and would have a favourable effect on our whole economy.
When we recognize the fluctuations in income of our Canadian agriculturists it will be readily seen that there is need for such a scheme as I have outlined. Let me give an example. The net cash income of agriculture in 1918 was 1384,000,000. In 1946 it was $1,742,000,000. The low return for the wheat crop in Saskatchewan in that same period was $38,000,000; the high in 1946, $250,000,000. The fluctuation during that period is 660 per cent. Just as legitimate an argument can be made with respect to other phases of our agricultural economy. I would go farther and say that as an illustration in those later years we have had one-quarter of our working force in agriculture.
During that period that one-quarter of the Canadian labour force has received between 11 and 16 per cent of our national income. I think the time has come when we have to think in terms of the general welfare of the people of this country. If for any reason it should be thought I am asking this government for something unreasonable. I want to say that western agriculture has subsidized all classes of people in this country. I have in my hand a book put out by the Searle Grain Company in which they say that, according to their estimate, in the crop year 1946 the western farmers alone subsidized the Canadian consumer in the case of wheat to the extent of $110,000,000 in round figures; and

other instances could be mentioned in which the farmers of the west have subsidized the people of the country as a whole.
As I stated in the beginning, the Prairie Farm Assistance Act as constituted at present, and as it will be constituted with the proposed amendments, will be still lacking in many features. In the first place, it still provides an arbitrary basis of administration and payment. In some instances individual farmers receive benefits though their crop yield may be well over fourteen bushels to the acre. In the administration of the P.F.A.A. I have seen farmers in one section, who had good crops, receiving the benefits while because of section 7 (a) of the act other farmers with less than fourteen bushels to the acre, and in some cases with practically no crop at all, received nothing. Therefore I say the basis should be changed so that a farmer having what might be termed a crop loss would be entitled to an award. It is also possible for farmers suffering complete crop failure to receive no payment whatever. That is a situation which I think should be rectified in the proposed amendments. Furthermore these amendments do not take into consideration the fact that farm living costs have increased. So I would suggest to the minister that when we get into committee he bring in further amendments to rectify these three injustices.
Before resuming my seat I want to repeat the three points I think should be dealt with. I strongly urge that the act be amended to provide, first, that the maximum amount payable under the act should be $1,000; second, that payment should be on an individual basis, and third, that the act should be widened in scope to include all agriculture in Canada.
Mr. RENE N. JUTRAS (Proveneher): Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the remarks made the other day and this afternoon on this subject. I am afraid, however, I shall have to depart somewhat from the path that has been followed by those who so far have participated in the debate.
In the first place I think I owe it to my constituents to point out that there is very considerable urgency about the adoption of these amendments. I had hoped this would not evolve into a full scale debate on agriculture as a whole, and I hope we shall be able to pass these amendments very shortly, because I know personally of at least 150 farmers who are awaiting their cheques in order to buy their seed; and at this time of year, as you know, that becomes a very urgent matter.
These amendments more or less carry into effect the recommendations made by the committee last year. At that time we thought

there was enough power in the act to have our recommendations put into operation without the need for amendments, but apparently the scope of the act was not sufficiently wide, so it is necessary to have these amendments before those recommendations can be carried out. For that reason I am very grateful to the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner), who, having given us the assurance that he would carry out the recommendations, now has brought in these amendments. This means a great deal to the people of my constituency, because they have to do in large measure with the river lots and settlements, and the great difficulty we have had ever since this act has been in operation. I intend to go further into this question in the committee stage, but I do want to commend the minister for having brought in these amendments at this time.
I should like to take exception to some of the remarks made by previous speakers. With the possible exception of one hon. gentleman they have all made the statement that this act has been of great benefit to the western provinces. They should have said it has been of great benefit to two of the western provinces; because as far as Manitoba is concerned, instead of having been a great benefit the assistance given to that province under this act has been so small in proportion to the contributions the farmers have had to make to the fund that it has become a direct burden instead of a great benefit. If you review the statistics, the contributions and the amounts that have been paid out, I think the figures will confirm my statement. Two years ago I said that I did not think we in Manitoba could expect this act to be of any great benefit to us as it was written and being administered at that time. I repeated that statement last year, and the experience since then has only strengthened my belief.
One of the first demands to be made by those who have spoken so far is that this act should be operated on an individual basis. In other words everyone has argued that this legislation should be converted into a crop insurance scheme. In the past I have taken the stand that we should have a crop insurance plan; but to argue that this legislation should be converted into such a scheme I think is barking up the wrong tree. This has never been a crop insurance scheme, and was never meant to be such. We would have to change the act entirely to make it so. Furthermore I think everyone realizes that we would run into constitutional difficulties. I am not a lawyer, but no doubt some of our legal friends will speak in this debate, and I fear that any crop insurance scheme would fall within provincial jurisdiction.
Prairie Farm Assistance Act
The moment we would start to apply this act on an individual basis I feel we would have to change the contribution, which would have to be on a larger scale. In that event you could not possibly expect the farmers of southern Manitoba, for instance, to make the same contribution to the fund as the farmers of Weyburn or the farmers of the Souris area. The various districts of the provinces would have to be zoned, and naturally the rate in the Souris district would have to be much higher than the rate in southern Manitoba, or the rate in Weyburn, or in some other areas. In other words there would have to be different rates, as there are in all insurance schemes, because in certain parts the risk is much greater than in others. Therefore that raises an altogether different question.
To come back to my province, I said this act really had not worked to the benefit of the farmers there. To prove my point I should like to complete the figures I put on record two years ago, showing the amounts that have been actually collected in Manitoba and the amounts that have been paid into the fund:
Year	Paid Out
1946	 $ 6,000
1945	  30,000
1944	 159,000
1943	 13,000
1942	
1941	 36,000
1940	 611,000
1939	 876,000
With the exception, therefore,
Collected

754.000	.
779.000
482.000
340.000
355.000
334.000
of the first
three years of the act, the farmers in Manitoba
actually always contributed far more than they collected from the fund. I think the reason for this difference should be pointed out.
Hon. members will recall that in 1939, 1940 and 1941, the three years during which we received a little more than we contributed to the fund, section 3, subsection (2) (a), applied; that is, the twelve bushels to the acre basis was taken into consideration. It would appear that the only chance we in Manitoba have of getting any benefit from this act
would be that the basis, instead of being the four and eight bushels, should also include the twelve-bushel basis, because in those three years we collected something from the fund; but from 1942 on, when four and eight bushels was the basis, the amount distributed in the province was a negligible one.
The hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. McKay) said that if Saskatchewan received a great deal, it also contributed more than the other provinces.


Mr. ARGUE:: May I ask the hon. member a question?

Prairie Farm Assistance Act


Mr. JUTRAS:: Yes.


Hazen Robert Argue: Is lie in favour of Manitoba withdrawing from the scheme?


René Jutras: 
René Jutras: I never suggested that. I do not suppose it could operate entirely-perhaps only partly. I believe I made myself clear on that point-that the levy would remain, and then another contribution would be required.


Mr. QUELCH:: From the federal government?


René Jutras: Perhaps from both the federal and provincial governments.
It was stated in one speech that large number of farmers feel that payments should be
made on the basis of individual farm units, in those areas where crop failures are prevalent because of drought. I do not suppose it was the intention to have the act operate only on the basis of drought, because if that were so we in Manitoba would raise strong objection. The act was primarily to meet a drought condition. Gradually hail and floods were included, until at the present time the act makes no distinction between different kinds of disasters. As the act now reads, a crop failure is a crop failure. If the yield is below four bushels, or if it is below eight bushels, they qualify and receive payment; and that is the end of it.
If we were to return to the basis of drought and drought alone, we in Manitoba would have no choice but definitely to drop out of the picture; because I am sure we would have no chance whatsoever of ever receiving any benefit from the act. The only time we receive any benefit is from floods; and this year I understand that we stand a chance of receiving some assistance in certain large areas hailed out last year.
Without taking any more of the time of the house, I would suggest certain concrete points to the minister. First I suggest that the minister give full co-operation to the provinces -and I know he will. There is already some indication that some of the provinces will discuss the matter with the federal government with a view to converting the legislation into provision for crop insurance. I would urge that the minister give the fullest possible co-operation, and that permission be given to certain of the provinces to enter upon schemes of their own if they so desire. If this is not done, then I would recommend that the basis for Manitoba be somewhat different from the basis for Saskatchewan and Alberta. I believe I am being modest when I ask that instead of the square township we be allowed the 36 sections of land. It will be realized that it is most difficult to have the square township in the central and eastern parts of the province. If this is not possible, I suggest a section should be added to section 3(2) so that Manitoba may be allowed another classification. There is provision for four bushels and eight bushels, and I suggest that we be allowed a twelve bushel basis. At the present time payments are made on the basis of four bushels and eight bushels. If Manitoba were on the basis of twelve bushels to the acre I am sure we would still receive less assistance proportionately than Saskatchewan and Alberta are receiving under the eight bushel basis.
If you analyse the figures I have given and the reports that have been made since 1939, I
Prairie Farm Assistance Act

think you will find that a twelve bushel basis for Manitoba would correct the situation a little but would not put that province in a preferred class. It would simply give us a fair share of the benefits paid under this scheme.


Mr. J. G. DIEFENBAKER (Lake Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I followed with a great deal of interest the speech delivered by the hon. member for Provencher (Mr. Jutras), and also the earlier speech delivered by the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. McCullough). Their viewpoints are most interesting, in that they indicate the divergence of opinion in the western provinces.
The hon. member for Provencher has suggested that Manitoba more or less secede from the plan. There are material differences in the contributions made year by year by the provinces to this fund, as well as in the benefits payable thereunder. The report for the crop year 1946-47 gives the following figures:
Manitoba	 $ 845,631
Saskatchewan	 2,703,357
Alberta	 1,644,706
The hon. member for Acadia (Mr. Quelch) asked whether it would be possible to bring in a federal system of crop insurance on an actuarial basis. I think the figures which appear in this record are an answer to that. Between 1939, when the act came into effect, and 1947, the total receipts from the one per cent levy were $27,913,000, whereas the total amount paid out was $73,392,683, or more than three times what was taken in.
Having regard to the conditions which prevail in southern Saskatchewan and in parts of Alberta, I think the general opinion is that a federal system of crop insurance would be altogether too costly, in view of the losses which might result. Last year I referred to the extent to which certain areas had been subject to drought over the years, and I wish to place a portion of that record on Hansard. I should like to give the number of townships in the different provinces which have suffered from drought and received payments over a varying number of consecutive years. They are as follows:
	Saskat-	Al-	Mani-
	chewan berta		toba
Seven consecutive years	34	48	Six consecutive years ..	173	223	Five consecutive years .	478	368	3Three consecutive years	1,469	619	17Those figures indicate that	there	are areas
in southern Saskatchewan and in Alberta that are subject to repeated and continuous drought.
The hon. member for Assiniboia has suggested a system of crop insurance, but I 
shall not go into the details of that at the moment. I should like to refer to the report of the Saskatchewan reconstruction council, a study of crop insurance by Mr. R. E. Motherwell, wherein it is pointed out that if a system of crop insurance were put into effect in Saskatchewan it would mean that in large areas the farmers would have to contribute from sixteen to twenty per cent of what they sell.


Edward George McCullough: The hon. member realizes that I suggested that the federal government pay fifty per cent.


John George Diefenbaker: That correction is perfectly proper. I am simply showing how difficult it would be to bring in a federal system of crop insurance which would thoroughly compensate by way of premium for what actually would be paid out by way of insurance. The fact that the difficulties in the way at the moment are almost insurmountable indicates the necessity of serious study before such a scheme is instituted. There is nothing, however, to prevent the provincial governments from instituting a partial scheme which would bring in areas smaller than those now covered by the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. I am going to refer particularly to certain drought areas in Saskatchewan in which the people are denied any benefits under this legislation because the present qualifying area is too large.
I do not intend to enter into a controversy with the hon. member for Assiniboia because I am not antagonistic to his views. I think the summary which was made during the course of this study is well worth putting on Hansard as indicating some of the difficulties which might be experienced in bringing into effect a system of crop insurance. The conclusions represent a summary of the arguments regarding the problem of crop insurance. I do not want to read them into Hansard but with the leave of the house I should like to place on Hansard page 39 and the first few lines of page 40 as indicating the ten difficulties that will have to be overcome before a proper and complete system of crop insurance can be brought into effect.


Mrs. STRUM:: I have not had the privilege of reading that brief, and I believe it is quite a useful report. Was the summing up of the reconstruction council for or against crop insurance?


John George Diefenbaker: Usually when a royal commission makes recommendations it simply presents the arguments for both sides, leaving to the responsible government the final determination as to what shall be done.

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In this report they leave doubt as to whether they are in favour of a crop insurance plan. But they do suggest quite a number of changes in the Prairie Farm Assistance Act in order to assure a reasonable and proper return in certain drought areas in Saskatchewan.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: May I ask whether it is a provincial government submission?


John George Diefenbaker: Yes. The chairman of this committee was F. C. Cronkhite, K.C., who is often charged by the present government in Saskatchewan with responsibility for making investigations. Other members of the committee were well known people in Saskatchewan, including J. H. Wesson, the president of Co-operative Wheat Producers; William Walker, K.C., T. A. McCusker, Mrs. W. K. Cruickshank, J. G. Cooper and W. G. Baker-all representative citizens in Saskatchewan. I think that their viewpoint and summation, after investigation, constitute a worthwhile contribution to the subject. It is for that reason I ask that consent of the house be given to the placing upon the record of their suggestions and conclusions.


Mr. ARCHIBALD:: Before the hon. member does that, may I ask if the portion to be put on Hansard gives both sides?


John George Diefenbaker: Yes.


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER:: Has the hon. member unanimous consent to place this material on Hansard:


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Agreed.


John George Diefenbaker: It reads as follows:
1.	The plan would have to be preceded by a very intensive educational program to accustom farmers to the idea of such low protection and high rates.
2.	Considering the experience of the American plan, it is doubtful that a voluntary system of insurance would be workable, for in high risk areas farmers are, to some extent, able to judge crop prospects and often prefer not to participate when prospects are good.
3.	As a result of American experience and from our own general knowledge of southern Saskatchewan it is obvious that many farmers would not be able to pay the high premium charge.
4.	Any premium collected could best be done by the percentage of yield or percentage of sales method,-similar to the percentage levy now applying under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act.
5.	If the plan were not compulsory there would almost certainly be a tendency for the park belt area of the three western provinces to participate while the high risk areas of the prairie would not.
6.	Many farmers would object to such a plan on the grounds that it "cost too much" and that the "protection was too low."
7.	Some farmers would not engage in such a plan, if on a voluntary basis, believing that even if this crop did fail they would be assisted by relief.
8.	At present no yield data exist for individual farms. The American experience has shown that such yield data can be secured but that they will perhaps be highly inaccurate in many cases. It is obviously folly to base an insurance scheme on the experience of too short a base period. It would be especially difficult to go into the yield experience of some farms which have been farmed during recent years by a series of operators.
9.	It w-ould be difficult and inadvisable to assure each farm in a district for the same yield. Few enterprises respond so greatly to proper timing of operations as farming. If one farmer, assured of 7 bushels per acre, manages to achieve a 7 bushels per acre yield in a poor year by very efficient farming, and his neighbour, as a result of less efficiency, secures a yield of 3 or 4 bushels per acre, the fairness of paying the second farmer sufficient to bring his returns to the equal of the first may well be doubted. The basis of insurance would have to reflect the actual yield experience on each farm during a base period. Even such a basis would contain unfairnesses when the present operator of a farm differed in efficiency from the farmer -who worked the land during the base period.
10.	Any system of crop insurance would likely have relatively high administration costs, for the first few years at least. Especially would this be so in a voluntary plan.
There are a number of recommendations I should like to make with respect to the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, they epitomize some of the views expressed in letters I have received from rural municipalities and others. I feel that the amendments provided in Bill No. 204 are unimportant in the light of the larger issues that might well be determined once and for all in a comprehensive manner. The inclusion of settlement or river lots, however, does represent an advance. It represents the suggestions made last year by various members, including the hon. member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Miller), the hon. member for Souris (Mr. Ross), and others. I say this because in a radio speech last evening one of the ministers of the crown, the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton), apparently was in a state of high dudgeon over the fact that we in the opposition believe in placing proper criticism before the house and the country. Our criticisms represent the viewpoint of the people. The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) has never objected to suggestions, but apparently his colleague the Minister of National Defence last evening indulged in some, I do not know how to designate them- silly claqueries would probably designate them best-as to the duties of an opposition. We place these viewpoints before parliament and the government in order to secure changes. That is the position which an opposition must take. First it must criticize where it believes things are wrong, and it need offer no apologies for doing so. At the same time it ought
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to be constructive and bring to the attention of the government and the country the changes which in the opinion of the opposition ought to be made. I resent, sir, the remarks made last evening by the Minister of National Defence. If he would spend more time in looking after the matters concerning defence than in criticizing those who endeavour to be of assistance by making suggestions, things would be a lot better in this country.
The amendment making river lots eligible is a good one, also the further one regarding eligibility of areas adjoining qualifying townships. But these changes do not go far enough. I have brought the matter to the attention of the Minister of Agriculture on previous occasions. I realize the difficulties involved in an attempt to make an act cover all the anomalous circumstances and conditions that may arise during its operation. I have never refrained from criticism where I think criticism is due, but I believe that when commendation is due it should be given. I have found the officials of the Prairie Farm Assistance Act administration, when matters are brought to their attention, willing to give every consideration to representations made with a view to having injustices removed in so far as the law will permit.
I shall refer to just one case which is peculiar to my own constituency and other constituencies along the Qu'Appelle valley. As I said last year in the house, speaking of the rural municipality of Dufferin, in Saskatchewan:
Year by year a portion of that municipality, by reason of a valley which runs alongside of it, must suffer continuing drought; yet because it is not contiguous to a municipality declared eligible under the act, the farmers there resident are denied any consideration. From year to year contributions are made; from year to year the contributors are denied any return.
I again bring this to the attention of the ninister. There is not only Dufferin municipality but there are other municipalities along the Qu'Appelle valley where like conditions prevail, and where, as a result of climatic conditions peculiar to areas smaller than a township, the farmers are being denied the payment of a bonus. I ask the minister, will he not even now give consideration to reducing the area of qualification provided under the act? As I understand the situation, it is a full township or a contiguous rectangle of nine sections.


Mr. GARDINER:: Nine or more.


John George Diefenbaker: Yes, nine or more. I think the removal of the descriptive word "rectangle" would make a considerable difference. If you simply said "nine or more contiguous sections", instead of "nine or more

contiguous sections in a rectangle", it would remove part of the difficulty. I suggest that contiguity be done away with, and that where there is an area, with nine sections adjoining or joined one to the other, they should be entitled to the payment of a bonus regardless of whether or not they are adjacent to a qualified township.
The municipalities have brought certain other suggestions to my attention. They raise the question of a minimum payment to small farmers. As the situation is today, payment of the award goes to the farmer on one-half of the individual cultivated acreage. But to the small farmers, with fifty or sixty acres representing their entire crop, payment on a half basis at the same rate as for larger farms denies them the opportunity to carry on with any measure of security.


James Garfield Gardiner: Unless he is under four bushels.


John George Diefenbaker: That is right, as the minister points out-unless the crop is under four bushels. The suggestion has been made that there should be some varying rate in that regard. By the limitation of 200 acres there is recognition of the fact that payment should not be made to large acreages. That recognition implies that small farmers are the ones to whom the act is designedly intended to assure a degree of security. This being so I suggest to the minister that some sliding scale be evolved so that those with smaller acreages will not be restricted in the same way and to the same extent as those with larger acreages.
Then, sir, there is the question, what is a farmer? There are all kinds of farmers. Some professional men call themselves farmers. It may be a descriptive phrase but they are not entitled to be called farmers. I submit to the minister that the regulations limit too strictly the definition of the term "farmer". As it is provided today in the regulations, a farmer is one who lives on a farm and whose primary occupation is farming, or who lives not more than twenty miles away from the farm and has no occupation other than farming.


James Garfield Gardiner: That has been changed.


John George Diefenbaker: These regulations which I hold in my hand I received yesterday from the Department of Agriculture, and I understood they were the last ones.


James Garfield Gardiner: They are not the last ones. Changes have been made in accordance with the suggestions made by the hon. member and by some others before.

Prairie Farm Assistance Act


John George Diefenbaker: On a previous
occasion I suggested certain changes to cover farmers such as invalids and the like who find it necessary to move away from the farm although they continue the operations through someone else. "Farmer" is defined in the act as one "who as owner or tenant operates a farm in the spring wheat area or who as a member of a co-operative farm association is engaged in farming in the spring wheat area." But in the regulations it is defined at length somewhat differently.


James Garfield Gardiner: I should explain that in going to the department now you will not get the regulations as they have been placed before the board and later before the government for passing. The regulations have been amended considerably and are in the process of being further amended. By going and asking for the regulations at this time you would not get these regulations as they are being amended.


John George Diefenbaker: I got in touch with the proper departmental official yesterday and asked for a copy of the regulations up to date. I sent a messenger for it and the one I received was dated in 1944. I then communicated with the official and the information I received was that the copy that was furnished me was the last one. It makes it a little difficult in arguing a question in the house to find out that changes have been made but that they have not yet been promulgated.
Speaking now of the regulation the copy I have as the final unexpurgated edition of the regulations, rather than the newly revised and undistributed ones, I say that every consideration should be given, so far as family farms are concerned, to the advisability of extending the right of the head of the family, as for example, a widow, to leave that farm and be farther away than twenty miles. Second, I suggest that when a farmer continues to operate his farm and at the same time takes employment in a neighbourhood town or village adjacent to where he carries on his farming operations, he should not be denied payment of the prairie farm assistance.
A farmer found it necessary, by reason of crop failure, in June or July, knowing that he would have a crop failure, to leave his farm and get work elsewhere, leaving his family on the farm. The attitude taken, until the matter was brought before the board of review, was that he was disentitled to any consideration because he had an occupation other than farming. There should be no denial of entitlement in cases of temporary absence under such circumstances. The regulations should be brought before the committee of the whole, 5849-2081
after second reading of this bill, so that we shall know what they are and be in a position to suggest changes which will bring some of them up to date and meet the objections we receive from time to time. I hope that the minister will place in the hands of hon. members the new and revised regulations so that members will be in a position to suggest further alterations and changes.
Therefore, sir, I suggest three things. First, when we go into committee we should have before us the regulations and assist in the revising of them instead of having the revision done by departmental officials removed from parliament and from the representatives of the people in parliament.


Mr. SINNOTT:: Hear, hear.


John George Diefenbaker: The hon. member for Springfield agrees with what I have said in this regard. He is a former reeve of a municipality. He understands the situation and is able to make his contribution, recommendations and suggestions. Other hon, members in other parts of the house are in a position to do the same thing.
Second, I bring again to the minister's attention the necessity of including areas in Saskatchewan which are now disqualified. Third, I suggest a change in the area of qualification. I realize the difficulties in connection with the individual basis, although there are those who believe that it should be paid on an individual basis. The purpose of the act should be to give assurance to all who suffer drought loss that they will be entitled to receive the payment of the bonus so that they will be able to remain on the land and continue their occupation of farming. To achieve this I suggest a reduction in the area of qualification.
My next suggestion is an alteration of the present qualification to do away with the rectangular requirement and make it possible for areas, even though they are not in the form of a rectangle, to qualify under the act.
1 suggest a change in the act to cover the definition of "farmer" and indicate who shall be entitled under the regulations. Finally, there should be a sliding scale in the matter of payments where the yield is over four bushels an acre. This would assure a larger return for the small farmer for whose continuation in farming the act appears to be designed.
These recommendations and suggestions, sir, represent the point of view of municipalities not only in my constituency but elsewhere, and are placed before the house with the view of endeavouring to improve the act and to make it cover circumstances which it
Prairie Farm Assistance Act

does not cover now because of the anomalous conditions resulting from the regulations. They are advanced with a view to assuring that the purpose for which the act was originally conceived and the spirit in which it has been administered, to which I have already paid tribute, shall be continued, and to the end that the present injustices and inequities may be removed.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I should like to say a few words on this bill, Mr. Speaker, though the hon. member for Pro-vencher (Mr. Jutras) has covered it fairly well. I might also put in a good word for the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) who has pointed out several deficiencies which still exist under this legislation and which, if corrected, would make it more beneficial to the smaller farmers.
I have the misfortune, I would call it, to have in my hand the names of fifty-five farmers, representing 1,600 acres, who have paid into this fund year in and year out and who have not the ghost of a chance of collecting a nickel. One here has 165 acres; another one has 50 acres; another has 105 acres. Here is a widow with 93 acres, who never stacked a bushel of seed or feed last year but who has not a hope of collecting anything for the damage sustained from floods last fall.
I believe the purpose of an act of this kind is to protect the little fellow rather than the big operator. While it may be helpful to take in the lots along the Red river, which will cover a few farmers, I would say that is only a drop in the bucket compared with the damage suffered by several sections of the constituency of Springfield last year. As has been pointed out, Manitoba has contributed to this fund year after year but has derived very little benefit. So I say we should either make this legislation beneficial to all farmers or get out of this field altogether and make it a provincial or municipal or constituency set-up so that we may get fast action.
I quite agree with the hon. member for Lake Centre that to extend this scheme from one end of the country to the other would1 be far too complicated and expensive. Personally I believe a provincial set-up would be best, under which a section of the province having a good crop would share with a section having a poorer crop. I do not quite see how the act could be made to take in these smaller areas; but what chance does a poor widow have, with 100 acres of land drowned out, if she has to go to the provincial or dominion government for assistance? Her chances are pretty poor. Until this act is made to apply to these smaller farmers, I do not think it will be very beneficial, so that when we get in committee

I hope the minister will see his way clear to make some change in that regard.


Mr. D. J. McCUAIG (Maple Creek):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to say at once that I am in full agreement with the spirit of this legislation which, as I see it, is designed to take care of a particular situation. The basic underlying principle is logical and practical. It can do and has done the job in the most direct and economical way. In a year of crop failure when the farmer has no other return this assistance has enabled him to carry on his farming operations. It takes the place of the old form of relief which was given the individual by the municipality, the province or the federal government, and I am glad that the government has seen fit to take over this responsibility. Climatic conditions, over which the farmer has no control, may bring loss over wide areas almost to the extent of a national calamity.
I am strongly in favour of a contributory form of self-help; and I would be in favour of a contribution larger than one per cent in order that the return to the individual might be increased beyond the present $2.50 per acre, which will not take care of seed and living expenses.
I have lived for thirty-six years in a part of the country to which this act has been applicable from time to time, and I know something about its practical application. As it is administered at the present time, the spirit and intention of the original act are not carried out, and as a result hardship is imposed upon certain individuals. In dry years we may have what they call local showers, which will take in anything from a half-section to six sections or more. One point might even have a soaker, while half a mile away there might be only a light sprinkle. A streak of rain can act very much as a hailstorm sometimes does. As I see it, the only fair way to administer this act is on an individual basis. I would say the inspection would not cost any more, since every section and every farmer are now checked and a settlement made on the basis of the present legislation.
Let me give the minister an actual illustration of what takes place. Let us say that in a given township the full bonus of S2.50 per acre is paid. The township directly below does not get the $2.50. Why? Well, because sections 35, 34, 27, 22, 15, 10, 9 and 3 had one of those local showers, and in some of those sections they had as much as sixteen bushels to the acre. In the same township the sections on the east side, sections 25, 24, 13, 12, 11, 2 and 1, averaged only three bushels to the acre. On the west side of that same township there were sections 17, 18, 30, 31,

Prairie Farm Assistance Act
29 and 32, which did not get their seed back. That brought a real hardship on those men. As I see it, this act was designed to take in and take care of men who had a complete crop failure. The only opposition I have encountered with regard to reducing the sections from nine was because it would cost more money to operate the act in that way. I would ask the minister this question. Why chisel on this? \Miy make regulations that would cause a real hardship and, just by those regulations, exclude those men who had crop failures? There is no other reason.


James Garfield Gardiner: I should just like to say to the hon. member that it is not a regulation. That is in the law. That is one of the regulations which was brought here and decided on the floor of the house, which makes it law.


Duncan John McCuaig: I will accept the minister's correction. I am not as well versed in law and regulations as the minister is. Wfe shall call it a law. Why make laws which are contrary to the spirit of this act, and exclude those men? That is the point I want to make.
I am glad the minister made that interjection, because maybe I did not make myself clear.
Those men paid for this protection. They paid all they were asked to pay. The minister knows the practical side of this whole thing. He knows that, since this act came into force, getting relief or seed is just out of the question. A man is out of luck who is in those parts excluded from this act. He cannot go to his municipality. If he himself cannot finance, he suffers by it, as the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) so well pointed out.
It has been said in the past that the reason the number of sections was not reduced from nine, or a quarter, was the existence of submarginal land. After thirty-six years of farming there, settlers on the submarginal land are fairly well eliminated. They are not there any more. I would say that is not a factor in this matter now. What I would call submarginal land is land that has four inches or less of top soil. I would say that land with lour inches and above-six inches or eight inches-can be farmed and is profitable wheat land today under the present advanced method of tillage and the improved grain we grow on it.	.
Further, the minister should give serious consideration to getting this down on an individual basis because that, as I see it, is the purpose and intention of the act. It was to eliminate direct relief and all this rigmarole with regard to seed and relief that went on, as hon. members know, from the individual
to the municipality, to the provincial government and on to the federal government. I hope the minister will give his consideration to whether it is logical, practical and equitable. I cannot see that it is an equitable and just method which excludes one man who has suffered under the same conditions as the man who gets $2.50 per acre.
In some cases it is even worse than that. I have seen an instance where a township has been under the full bonus, and possibly immediately south-or even north or on either side, or even taken in a circle-there is a group of four, five, six or eight sections that would not be. They would be completely out of it, just because the balance of that township probably averaged up to over twelve bushels an acre. The minister is a man who is practical enough to know these things. He has been on a farm. He knows the condition. In fact I think he knows very well the place where I myself am situated, and knows that what I am saying is near the truth and contains practical suggestions. I would ask him to consider this matter seriously, and to place it on an individual basis or on a much smaller basis than nine sections. I would ask that it be not restricted to a rectangle or square, but take in, say three, four, or five sections, no matter in what direction you go. I hope the minister will take that into consideration:.


Mr. C. C. MILLER (Portage la Prairie):: It is not my intention today, Mr. Speaker, to repeat at any great length anything that has gone before. With much that has been said I am, of course, in agreement, because some of the problems mentioned by other speakers are the problems of my own constituency. On the other hand, quite a bit has been said, even by hon. members from my own province, with which I cannot wholly agree. For instance, I question whether it is practicable for the provinces as such to take over a system of crop insurance. After all, if there were any great crop failure that was province-wide, half province-wide or even of substantial proportions in any province, it might test severely the financial resources of the provinces were they standing behind a system of crop insurance. I think a province should be leery about stepping into this picture, and I think the experience will be that the provinces will probably be leery of participating in any such, scheme.
Then, with regard to the administration of it, if there were to be any contributory payments or deductions from farmers' grain, if the province were handling it, it would be impractical for the province to collect.

Prairie Farm Assistance Act
So far as the amendments are concerned, there is not a great deal with which we can quarrel. There are some things about which I should like to ask some questions when we get into committee of the whole, as no doubt will be the case with other hon. members. I have one suggestion I should like to make to the minister if he would turn to the bill.
I know that we are not supposed to refer to the sections at this stage, but it seems to me that there is a misprint in one of the sections in the minister's amendments; I refer to the new section 7(b). Just in order that we may be able to size up what it means, I wonder if the minister would look at it and see if it should not read "within an ineligible township", instead of "within an eligible township", in the second line of subparagraph (b) of section 7. That is in section 3 of the amending bill. It looks as though it should be "ineligible."


James Garfield Gardiner: One should be "ineligible" and one should be, "eligible". Maybe the hon. member is right.


Mr. ROSS (Souris):: It is a misprint.


Calvert Charlton Miller: The provision respecting river lots is of importance to two or three of us from my province, including the hon. member for Proveneher (Mr. Jutras). I, for one, am glad to see them included, although the manner of their inclusion may be subject to some criticism, since the procedure to include is to be set out later by order in council.
In fairness I believe I should express my views as to the possibility of Manitoba retiring from the scheme. I know that among many farmers the deduction of one per cent is not popular, and particularly is this true in good crop areas, such as the one I have the privilege to represent. On the other hand it seems to me that this is fair and cheap insurance in our crop areas. It would require only one complete failure for most of these men to get their money back. After all, all of us have carried fire insurance, and I know of no one who objects to the fact that he has not had to cash in on the amounts he has paid in as fire insurance premiums. Those of us who have had fire insurance are grateful that we have not had to cash in on our policies.
I believe that, to some extent, farmers would look at this matter in the same way, and would consider that perhaps that is the failway of looking at it. I would not be in a hurry to counsel Manitoba farmers to withdraw from the scheme, because the time may come when a catastrophe might befall us; and only one would be required for many of our farmers to get back a good deal more than they have paid in. The surplus of $2,000,000, the

amount we have paid in more than we have received, would not last long in the event of widespread catastrophe in my native province. We have the resources of the dominion government behind this scheme; we have more than the contributions made by the farmers in the form of their one per cent deduction. If there were such a catastrophe, regardless of the amounts by way of contributions which had been made, and regardless of the amount of money the government might have on hand from the scheme, the resources of the dominion would be behind the payments to be made to the farmers of Manitoba by way of compensation, within the provisions of the act.
That is the way I put it. Regardless of what other members from my province may say, I am not yet ready to counsel farmers, if they were to ask my counsel, to withdraw from this scheme. So far as I am personally concerned, so long as the scheme is fairly administered and so long as the funds paid into the government are honestly and fairly distributed, according to the spirit of the law, I for one do not think we can have any great objection to it; because we know not what year disaster may hit those of us who come from good farming areas, just as it has hit other areas which have not been so fortunate. We should be careful in suggesting the breaking up of the scheme until we are convinced that it is not fairly and honestly administered, or that it is not doing a good job.
I do believe, however, that the minister will have to give consideration to the insistent demands that the minimum area be cut down. I do not know whether the minister and his counsellors are adamant in their determination to retain the present area as the unit for the payment of losses. I know, of course, that the minister is fully conscious of the objections coming from all corners of the country where this act applies, relating to the restriction which states that it must be a township loss. It seems to me that that could be cut down.
I have argued before in the house that it should be cut down to an individual basis, and I do not yet see why that could not be done. The minister has not said that it would be financially impossible. He has not given any reason, more than to point out administrative difficulties, which would convince me that it could not be done. However, even if I am ' wrong in my argument that it should be on an individual basis, I still believe that it could be cut to an area much smaller than a township. It seems to me that if we were to adopt the quarter township as a unit much of the dissatisfaction now emanating from the area from which I come would be eliminated.

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We do not often have to claim under this act, although we did have a little trouble from flooding in one of the areas during the past year. Unfortunately most of the farmers affected were not well to do, because the flooding occurred in an area where the land is not quite as good. The result was that the flooding caused considerable suffering. There was not a sufficient area in either of the townships affected by the flooding to qualify those men for relief under the act, in spite of the fact that they had been paying their one per cent deduction, as had other farmers.
It seemed to me a pity that those people could not participate in the fund. If a smaller acreage had been required they would have participated. I believe that much of the dissatisfaction with the act is in its administration, and that a great measure of the faulty administration lies in the fact that the unit of crop failure fixed at the township level is considerably too large.
In view of the generality of this criticism, coming from all parts of the country, although I am sure the minister has had this matter drummed into his ears year after year, I suggest that once again he should give serious consideration to the matter, and accept perhaps the quarter township unit for a trial period.
I know of no difficulty which would arise in our area in that respect. It is possible that under this condition the cost might be too great, in view of the fact that farther west they may have many areas which would be entitled to make claims, thereby running the cost up to too high a figure.
May I state further to the minister that I do not believe the farmers of Manitoba who have paid into this scheme will ask to leave it, just because they are paying this one per cent. I believe, however, that if, as has been suggested by some hon. members, and particularly those to my left, the rate of contribution were increased, nothing could stop an insistent demand from the farmers of Manitoba to have that province excluded from the scheme, and that our farmers would have to work out some other method of meeting this situation.
As it stands today, however, it seems highly improbable to me that, with the reasonably good crops we have on the average, any farmer would want to withdraw simply because of the one per cent deduction. After all, these various schemes for the benefit of farmers in general can exist only if the farmers themselves co-operate and are prepared to do their share, not only when they are going to benefit but
also to carry out the general nature of the scheme. Perhaps they would benefit from one scheme and not from another. I believe I know the farmers in our western country pretty well, and I cannot believe that they would object to this one per cent deduction when they realize that, after all, it is a measure of cheap insurance, particularly, as the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) has said, because the fund does not really carry itself.
There were some other things I had intended to say but, with one exception, they have been said. The one remaining has been dealt with partly at least by the hon. member for Lake Centre. As hon. members know, I have always opposed too much power by regulation; and too much liberty or right to make regulations is vested under this act in bodies other than parliament. I am not taking general objection to them, but I believe that no body except this house should have the power to make a regulation changing the definition of the person or persons entitled to receive benefits under this act. It should not be very difficult to define those who should receive benefits. Section 6(f) is the section which gives the power to make regulations, and paragraph (f) reads:
. . . and excluding from the operation of this act persons who, in such circumstances and under such conditions as are prescribed in such regulations, have occupations in addition to farming or do not reside on farms.
I maintain that this act should define who is entitled to benefits under the act, and I contend that no body other than this house should have the power to change that. I ask the minister to consider bringing in an amendment to satisfy us on that score.
I want to go farther than the hon. member for Lake Centre went and say again that there should be no power in any body to make regulations that would change the definition of "farmer" in the act. The government can suggest whatever definition they think will be acceptable to the house, but once that is done, there should be no power to make any change.


Hazen Robert Argue: Mr. Speaker, I think a good deal of valuable information has been provided by this debate. It shows that, while hon. members are agreed about many things, there are still some differences. I was interested in hearing the hon. member for Provencher (Mr. Jutras) say he would be prepared to support the withdrawal of Manitoba from the act. I can well understand that the people in that province feel that they have received relatively small benefits from the act as compared with the people in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Prairie Farm Assistance Act

However I think there are one or two things the hon. member overlooked. In the last few years prices of grains have increased considerably and consequently the revenue derived from the one per cent deduction is much higher. I think that would account in large measure for the fact that in 1939, 1940 and 1941 Manitoba received more by way of benefits than was paid in by way of deductions.


René Jutras: The point I was making was that in those years the payments were made on the basis of twelve bushels to the acre, whereas it has not been twelve bushels to the acre since.


Hazen Robert Argue: That is a good point and I think it bears out what I have been saying. If we reach the time again when prices of grains go down, not only will the collections be less but the need for this act will be greater. I think there has been a lot of loose talk about the so-called submarginal areas and those areas which are most subject to crop failures.
The hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) stated that in Saskatchewan there were 173 townships which had received benefits for seven consecutive years. He will correct me if the figure I give is not accurate. I would point out that in Saskatchewan there are twenty-eight municipalities or 252 townships which have averaged crops of between 8-1 and 10 bushels of wheat per acre from 1918 to 1943. I do not think that area is submarginal. Over a period of years those farmers with proper agricultural practices have been able to make a living.


John George Diefenbaker: There was no suggestion of that kind.


Hazen Robert Argue: I realize that. I am just pointing out that when the benefits are paid on the basis of eight bushels down, or in some years on eight to twelve bushels, those areas which have a lower long-time yield get more in the way of benefits than those which have higher yields. I believe that any province should be careful before deciding to withdraw from this act. We do not know how long it will be, although we hope it will be many years, before grain prices fall. We do know that in the last four years there have been widespread crop failures. I believe that if we get continuing crop failures and if prices should fall, then even the province of Manitoba could not carry a scheme such as this.
Reference was made previously in the debate to the recommendations of the Saskatchewan reconstruction council in connection with crop insurance. A study was made by Mr. R. E.

Motherwell, B.S.A., who happens to be the grandson of the late W. R. Motherwell. In my opinion he prepared a most excellent brief. While I do not agree with all his conclusions, I certainly agree with many of them. I would point out that the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. McCullough) did not suggest crop failure insurance on an actuarial basis but rather on a basis of a fifty per cent contribution by the farmers and fifty per cent by the federal government.
Mr. Motherwell made an extensive survey of the results from crop insurance schemes in the United States which were based on individual farm yields. It was hoped that over a long period of years each farmer would pay in premiums approximately the amount he received in benefits, but the schemes did not work out very well. Mr. Motherwell summarizes as follows:
1.	Completely self-carrying crop insurance has not been successfully achieved for small grains in any country.
2.	Of all ventures in the field of crop insurance, the American experiment is the most noteworthy. This experiment showed several things.
(a)	That farmers in high risk areas were unable to pay the premiums necessary for their own protection.
(b)	That participation in high risk areas consistently decreased, even though general participation throughout the country increased.
(c)	That, especially in high risk areas, when a relatively large premium was subtracted from the indemnity receivable by the farmer after loss of crop, the payment was no more than a disaster preventive.
(d)	That unless a plan of insurance is compulsory, farmers will not participate in years of favourable crop prospects.
I have read those sections, Mr. Speaker, because I do not think a scheme of crop failure insurance on a self-carrying basis is satisfactory or can be put into practical effect.
Benefits have accrued from the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. It has been a help to those farmers who at various times have suffered a crop failure. It is also true that this is to a large extent a bonus, in that, of the sum of 873,000,000 in benefits which have been paid since the act was first implemented, $45,000,000 was paid from the federal treasury and approximately $28,000,000 collected from the one per cent levy.
The criticisms of the act have been pretty well covered by other speakers this afternoon. One of the most important is the criticism that the amount paid is too low. In 1939 the value of crops was low compared with their value today, but still the benefits under the act remain approximately the same, and the deductions remain the same. During that period costs of farming have increased tremendously, so that the financial difficulties of surviving a

Prairie Farm Assistance Act
depression or a crop failure have materially increased. The likelihood now is that smaller contributions will be made from the federal treasury because of the increased price of grain. I suggest that the same ratio as between deductions and the price of grain should remain. If that were done, certainly the benefits would be increased twofold or perhaps more.
It has been well pointed out that payment on the present basis of a township or on the basis of a quarter township contiguous to an eligible township results in grave injustice and real hardship. Many farmers find, when they have a crop failure through no fault of their own, that merely because they are not in the quarter township block which is placed under the bonus they have to suffer in comparison with a neighbouring farmer, even though their yield may be as low as his or even lower. The government should attempt payments on the basis of the individual farm. No doubt there would be administrative difficulties in doing that, but that should not prevent the government from going ahead and trying out the scheme on an individual basis to see whether it is practicable or not. Certainly the one-quarter township basis and the township basis as provided in the act fall short of being adequate to meet the situation.
Many of the regulations cause the farmers a good deal of hardship. If the regulations I have are up to date-I do not say they are, but if they are not the minister will correct me-a farmer to be deemed a farmer under the act must be an owner or tenant of a farm from May 1 to November I in any one year. If he resides on his farm and finds in July that he has a crop failure and leaves the farm to take employment elsewhere he has great difficulty in obtaining the bonus.
Another regulation provides that the farmer must live on the farm and have farming as his primary occupation, or that he must live not more than twenty miles away from the farm and have no other occupation than farming. I do not see why that twenty-mile limit is in there at all.


James Garfield Gardiner: Perhaps the hon. member was not in when I told the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) that this regulation is being changed.


Hazen Robert Argue: In what way?


James Garfield Gardiner: To remove the twenty-mile limit and some other objectionable features.


Hazen Robert Argue: There will be no limit then?


James Garfield Gardiner: The limit is the area. It must be persons who live in what is known
as the area; that is, the three western provinces. If a person lives in the United States or anywhere outside the area he does not draw the bonus.


Hazen Robert Argue: I would not ask that a man be allowed to live in the United States and draw the bonus. If a farmer lives in a town and is a permanent resident in the town and takes on another occupation than farming during his spare time he is ineligible for the bonus. Many cases have been brought to my attention of men with large families, who, owning one or two quarters of land, moved to town in order to have their children educated and have the convenience of medical attention, and who, because their farm was a small unit, accepted another occupation at various periods of the year, and as a result of thus trying to make an adequate living were discriminated against and declared ineligible for the crop failure bonus. I believe that an enterprising individual who has his own farm and equipment and who in his spare time accepts some other useful work in town should not be barred from receiving payment.
Another suggestion made by members of this group is that payments be arranged on a zone basis. If that were done it would remove the complaint of farmers in the province of Manitoba that they are not receiving sufficient benefits under the act. There are broad soil zones through the prairie provinces where farming conditions are relatively similar; I think the soil zones could form a basis under the act for collections and payments that would be fair to all.
I would go a step farther and advocate that the benefits of the act be extended to other parts of Canada, especially to specialized crop sections, such as the tobacco and fruit-growing areas of Ontario and the fruit-growing areas of the maritimes and British Columbia, so that the producers in these areas would receive some benefit when they experienced crop failure.
In addition, the benefits should be increased especially in view of the high costs of production. In view of those costs, a maximum payment of $6 an acre on the present acreage basis would not be too high. I do not think the farmers themselves would object if it were necessary to increase the present deductions.
The government should also take steps to have payments made on an individual basis or something approaching that. Because I think these changes should be made, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Zaplitny):
That Bill No. 204 be not now read a second time, but that it be resolved that in the opinion of this house the government should give further consideration to extending the provisions of the
Prairie Farm Assistance Act

Prairie Farm Assistance Act to other specialized crop areas, also that the benefits under the act should be increased, and that steps should be taken toward the making of awards on an individual farm basis.
I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that that kind of motion is provided for in Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms; that it is not an effort to kill the bill, but that it is merely a resolution stating that in the opinion of this house certain things should be done. We also in this group support the changes which are being made in the act at this time.


James Arthur Ross: Mr. Speaker, I want to say, first of all, that when this act was brought into being in 1939 it was certainly legislation of the right kind. It has been amended on several occasions, I think in 1940, 1941, 1942 and in 1947. I remember the hon. member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Miller) and myself asking for the amendments that are now being provided for to take care of blocks in various parts of the country. I also think the matter of providing assistance might be extended farther than it is. A quarter township might be provided for that was not necessarily contiguous to another township in the area. That might make some difference.
While I like the idea of individual assurance, I will admit that it will be difficult to administer. I have not seen my way through it to that extent yet, and I think we can go a step farther and take the quarter township if it happens to be near an area which has been declared a crop failure year.
As to the question raised by my good friend, the hon. member for Provencher (Mr. Jutras),
I do not believe that the great majority of the people in Manitoba really want to be taken out of this Prairie Farm Assistance Act. I agree with the figures which he has presented.
I was very proud this afternoon of my colleague, the hon. member for Portage la Prairie, who represents one of the surest and best crop producing areas in the prairie provinces. These people are not likely to have a crop failure in the particular riding that he has the honour to represent.
This is a very cheap form of crop insurance, and these people are assured of something. We do not know what the elements of nature might bestow upon our farmers in any one year, and it does mean something to these people to tide them over. I am sure the great majority of people in Manitoba do not begrudge the one per cent deduction toward that end. I want to go a step farther along these lines and say that our problems in the three prairie provinces are so much alike that we should attempt to assist one another. We

have been having a debate in this House of Commons which certainly has affected the people of the prairie provinces and of the maritime provinces to a greater degree than any other part of Canada. If we do not begin to assist one another in some of these difficult problems our undertakings will become more difficult than ever. On that basis alone I think we should be prepared to stay under this scheme and have our deductions made to assist one another in the difficulties that the three prairie provinces have so much in common, despite the fact that year after year most of the difficulties have arisen in Saskatchewan and, to a lesser degree, in Alberta and, at times, in a part of Manitoba. Therefore I would hope that nobody will press the case too far here or on our provincial government until something else is put forward to take the place of the operation of this act.
What I do want to discuss in all seriousness are the regulations. I know that this afternoon the minister said they were being amended. But I do not like the regulations being amended by order in council. Apart from my dislike, I wish to say that most of the difficulties we have had in explaining the operation of the act to the people and all the other questions that people who need assistance ask their members have to do with the regulations. The regulations were amended a year ago, and I have been asked many questions by people during the past year. Even as late as Easter when I was home I was asked questions about the regulations and I was not able to give them much information, despite the fact that I had studied this legislation closely.
The regulations are now being amended.
I make a plea to the minister that when we go into committee of the whole on this bill we be given the privilege of passing on these regulations rather than having it done by order in council. If that cannot be done I ask him to bring us up to date on the regulations and let us know as nearly as possible in detail what they are. The whole thing should be placed in detail before the committee of the whole when we are at the proper stage of this legislation.
I do not wish to take up any more time now; I shall have questions to ask when we are in committee, and I sincerely hope that the minister will agree with the suggestions I have made so that we may work in greater co-operation with the people who come under this assistance measure.


Mr. F. S. ZAPLITNY (Dauphin):: As the
seconder of the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Wood Mountain (Mr. Argue), I should like to say it is significant that, while the bill which is now before the

Prairie Farm Assistance Act
house is to amend the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, 1939, in certain particulars very little of what has been said this afternoon has referred directly to the amendments proposed by this bill. This is not because hon. members do not approve these amendments. Personally I think these amendments were called for and are very much in order, but the fact that the discussion has been on a different phase of the original act itself is indicative of the need for further amendments which are not included in the present bill.
Last summer we had the advantage of having a visit in the town of Dauphin from the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner), a few weeks after we had a rather disastrous flood in that area. The minister will recall that at that time local officials of the municipalities concerned took advantage of his visit to address a public meeting and invited him to meet the municipal officials in order that they might place their representations before him. He will also recall that in making these representations they were unanimous in the plea that the Prairie Farm Assistance Act be so amended as to make it possible for farmers to qualify for prairie farm assistance where they cannot do so under the present township plan.
I am not going to repeat the arguments I used in this house two years ago or last year in proposing certain changes in the act so as to make it more applicable in case of crop loss or damage from hail or flood. What other speakers have said today ought to be enough to persuade the Minister of Agriculture that a substantial change is required in that respect. But I do wish to impress on him the fact that the experience we have had in the part of Manitoba from which I come, shows that the farmers for many years paid their share of the prairie farm assistance fund, paid it cheerfully and without any grumbling, then were faced one year with a disastrous flood and, because of the regulations and the provisions of the act as it now stands, found that a great number of them were not able to qualify in spite of the fact that their [DOT]crops were completely washed out by the flood. One can understand that there will be a great deal of resentment and disappointment among those farmers. The figures which have been quoted today show that the farmers of Manitoba have contributed to the fund about two and a half times what they have taken out, which I think is a further argument in favour of certain changes being made in respect of the province of Manitoba.
While I am on that subject I want to make it clear, as I did two years ago, that while I respect the views of the hon. member for
Provencher (Mr. Jutras), I do not agree with his contention that Manitoba should seek to secede from this plan. Last year around Dauphin we had disaster strike a large area; and anyone coming from such a district will realize that but for the Prairie Farm Assistance Act these people would not be able to obtain assistance of any kind. It is perhaps interesting to note that, while the hon. member for Provencher made reference to the fact that a year or two ago the provincial minister of agriculture of Manitoba said that in his opinion Manitoba's contribution to the fund should be laid aside in order to build up a fund for a provincial crop insurance scheme, only a few days ago the premier of that province said that in his opinion what is required is an amendment to the Prairie Farm Assistance Act to make it more applicable to cases such as I have described.
That statement was made to a delegation consisting of several persons from around Dauphin who interviewed the Premier of Manitoba in an endeavour to obtain assistance from his government for those farmers who could not qualify under the present provisions of this legislation. It was estimated that approximately $10,000 would be required to cover those farmers who could not qualify under this act. That is not a huge amount when compared with the over-all picture; but even then this is what the premier had to say, according to the report appearing in the Dauphin Herald of April 15:
The premier pointed out that the obvious step to take was to have the P.F.A. Act amended so it would apply to units smaller than townships which have suffered flood damages.
And further:
If the province, he added, were to underwrite the mistakes made by the dominion government by providing assistance to farmers, the act would never be amended. He suggested that a delegation of the reeves of the municipalities concerned make a trip to Ottawa to ask that the act be amended to meet the needs of flooded Manitoba farmers.
Then the report goes on:
Mr. Garson said he would be in Ottawa for the next few weeks and would be glad "to lend weight and prestige of the government to the amendments asked by the delegation."
It is now April 23, and if this report is correct I would assume that the premier has been in Ottawa for some time. At least I understand that he is to be here tomorrow; and if he has carried out his pledge to this delegation he must have been lending his prestige and support to the necessary amendments in order that the act may apply to units smaller than the township or nine-section block provided for in section 7(b).
Prairie Farm Assistance Act


James Garfield Gardiner: Would the hon, gentleman permit me to state the position?


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: Certainly.


James Garfield Gardiner: The present position is that some time ago I wrote the provinces and the municipal associations, particularly, suggesting what was said here last year, namely, that we thought the provinces ought to take some of these smaller areas around the fringe of the areas taken care of by the federal government. As a result of those communications, I had a letter within the last three days -I am not sure of the exact day-from the secretary of the Saskatchewan municipal association, written on behalf of the municipal associations of the three provinces, suggesting that I call a meeting of representatives of the three provinces and the municipal associations to discuss such questions as those just referred to. As yet I have not had time to answer that letter, but it is on my desk now. It did not come from any of the premiers; it came from the secretary of the municipal associations.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: I am glad to have that information, because it throws a great deal of light on the situation. I do hope the minister soon will find time to call such a meeting for an early day, in order to work out the details of the suggestions that have been made ooth today and previously. I am tempted, of course, to ask whether the Premier of Manitoba is in Ottawa and whether he is making certain suggestions, but I realize that is not the kind of question the minister would be in a position to answer.


James Garfield Gardiner: I have not seen him.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: While I am on the subject may I say that if the attitude of the Premier of Manitoba is correctly reported in the newspaper article from which I have quoted-and I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of that statement-then it is quite clear that the government of Manitoba has no crop insurance plan in mind and is not taking any steps whatever to build up a fund or work out a plan for crop insurance on a provincial basis.


James Arthur Ross: Is any other province doing that?


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: I do not know. I am making that statement, only because the hon. member for Provencher said that in his opinion Manitoba should withdraw from the act. I am pointing out that until such time as Manitoba, or for that matter any other province that wishes to take a similar step, has a crop 
insurance plan worked out and a fund built up, it would not be wise to withdraw from this legislation. That is not something to be done overnight. It will take some years to build up a fund if it is to be actuarially sound, in order to provide provincial crop insurance. Until that is done, I consider it futile to suggest that Manitoba should withdraw from this act, though I freely admit that the farmers of that province have not been receiving as good a deal under this legislation as would be the case if the unit were smaller than the township basis now provided. While we in this house from Manitoba will continue to press for certain amendments, to which the minister intimated a few moments ago he would give sympathetic consideration, in order that the farmers of our province may have a fairer basis for compensation, at the same time I want to make it clear that, as far as I am concerned, I agree with others who have spoken in this debate, that it would not be in the interests of the farmers of our province to seek to withdraw from this act, because we do not know what may happen within the next one, two or ten years.
I also want to endorse what was said by the bon. member for Portage k. Prairie (Mr. Miller). I think he expressed a fine sentiment when he said that if the farmers of this country, or those engaged in any other occupation, want to work out a system of collective security for themselves with the assistance of the government they must be prepared to co-operate to the point where they cannot expect to get back immediately every cent they put into a fund of this kind.
I also agree that nlo farmer in any province would rather collect compensation under this act than have a crop, because the scale of compensation under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act is small change compared with what a farmer gets if he has a half decent crop. The maximum is $500, and in most oases a farmer will get much less. When farming is done on any sizeable scale at all, a couple of hundred dollars is small change these -days.
I want to impress on the minister and the house-because after all, this parliament will have to make that decision at some time- that if the principle expressed in the amendment moved by the hon. member for Wood Mountain were worked out in legislation, I think it would cover most, if not all, of the objections which have been expressed to the present provisions of the act. I realize that because of the structure of the rules of this house, it is not possible for private members to move amendments to the act itself, or with regard to the present bill to move amendments

Prairie Farm Assistance Act
which will involve the expenditure of public money. That can be done only through government action. That is why we want to express our point of view in a concrete way in the form of an amendment to the motion for second reading of the bill. If the government so desires, they may take the bill back, put in the particular amendments which hon. members from both sides of the house have been seeking today. Then, when they bring the bill back to the house, if those amendments we are seeking are in it I am sure they will receive general support in this house. I will leave it at that-


James Garfield Gardiner: Of course, if the government disagreed and then the amendment carried, the bill is defeated.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: If the government disagreed ?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes.


James Arthur Ross: You lose everything.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: I did not get the implication. If the government does not agree to the amendment, what did the minister say followed?


James Garfield Gardiner: If the government did not agree to the amendment on second reading of the bill and, if that amendment were carried, then, of course, the bill itself is defeated.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Oh no; not at all.


James Garfield Gardiner: It would be on an
amendment of this kind.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: I pointed out a moment ago that if the government desires to make amendments of the kind suggested in this amendment to the second reading of the bill, of course all they need to do is to facilitate the passing of the amendment, take the bill back, put the proper amendments into the bill and bring it back to the house. Then there would be no difficulty.


James Garfield Gardiner: The hon. member had better read the amendment carefully.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: On the other hand, if the government is opposed to the amendment in the first place, we know it will not carry in this house. We have had an experience of this type in the past. In fact we have discovered that a motion could even be passed in this house and then, if the government did not like it, they could reverse it in the space of. a few minutes.


James Garfield Gardiner: If this motion were
carried contrary to the wishes of the government, it would in itself be a defeat of the bill. It could be a defeat of the government and of the bill.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: Not at all.


Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):: The minister is accustomed to that.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: We are presenting to the government in a concrete form what I suggest is a summary of the suggestions which have been made by various members on both sides of the house today, in the form of an amendment to the motion for second reading of the bill. There is no reason why the government should be opposed to the amendment in the first place. But if they are, of course the amendment will not pass the house, and the bill will still be before the house. As I said, we approve those amendments which are in the bill; but we are seeking to bring in amendments which are not in the bill and which, even according to the Premier of Manitoba, should certainly be brought before the house at an early day.
As a matter of fact, the Premier of Manitoba is reported to be of opinion that the amendment which would put the qualification basis on a smaller area than the township could be put through this house and made retroactive so as to apply to the crop failures of 1947. If I read the bill correctly, I understand that those amendments before us, according to section 5, are to be made retroactive to the first day of August, 1947. If that can be done with respect to those amendments, of course it can be done also with respect to the more important and more significant amendment which we have been suggesting. In all fairness to the members of the house on both sides, who have been discussing this matter quite dispassionately and in a reasonable way, I think the government could accept the suggestions we have made and incorporate in this bill the type of amendment which is required.


James Garfield Gardiner: It is absolutely contrary to the general principle of the bill.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: Will you call it six o'clock, Mr. Speaker?


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: May I just comment on that last interjection by the minister, Mr. Speaker? He says it is contrary to the principle of the bill. It cannot be, because the principle of the bill is to amend the Prairie Farm Assistance Act; and that is what we are seeking to do.


James Garfield Gardiner: I think it may render the act ultra vires, if applied in amendment, in addition to that; and there are several other reasons.
Bell Telephone Company


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: That is a brand new argument which I will not go into at this time.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.



PRIVATE BILL


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Friday, April 16, consideration of the motion of Mr. Rinfret for the second reading of Bill No. 8, respecting the Bell Telephone Company of Canada, and the amendment thereto of Mr. McCullough (Assiniboia).
Mr. A. M. NICHOLSON (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, although this debate has been under way for some considerable time, a matter of such great importance should in my opinion have the careful attention of members in all sections of the house. I might remind the house that it was just about twenty years ago that representations were made to parliament to increase the capital from $75,000,000 to $150 million, an increase of 100 per cent, which, in the terms of the amendment before the house, would seem to be a reasonable amount.
I am sure those who were sponsoring the legislation at that time were of the opinion that no greater increase could be warranted. Now, however, we are being asked to increase the capital from $150 million to $500 million, or an increase of 233 per cent, or about five times the increase granted in 1928.
Let me make it clear at the outset that I have no personal fault to find with the Bell Telephone Company. The service they have given me and my family while we have used it has always been of a very high order. Some of my friends have been employed by the company over a period of years, and I have never heard any criticism of their labour relations or the working conditions.
But, Mr. Speaker, this corporation is now in the monopoly category, and before parliament is asked to put its stamp of approval upon the type of legislation before us we should inquire whether the public interest is being served by this type of legislation.
When the hon. member for Outremont (Mr. Rinfret) was sponsoring the legislation he drew our attention to some information contained in the Canada Year Book for 1947 in connection with the telephone systems of Canada. He mentioned that there were 3,151 telephone systems in 1945. It is inter-

esting to note that, although we have 3,151 systems, one of them has over 60 per cent of the total investment in Canada, whereas the remaining 3,150 have less than 40 per cent.
When reading, the hon. member left out one significant sentence in the paragraph. I am sure no offence was intended but, to keep the record complete, I think I should place it on Hansard. That sentence is as follows:
Of the 2,368 co-operative telephone companies no few'er than 1,121 were in Saskatchewan alone, 785 in Alberta and 212 in Nova Scotia.
Hon. members might find it of interest to have the complete story of the efforts which have been made by people in various parts of Canada to provide telephone service for themselves in areas where the Bell Telephone Company was not interested in making expenditures.
For instance, in 1946 in Prince Edward Island there were 35 co-operative companies; in Nova Scotia, 214; New Brunswick, 9; Quebec. 78; Ontario, 116; Manitoba, 5; Saskatchewan, 1,106; Alberta, 788, and British Columbia 3. This makes a total of 2,354 co-operative organizations which were in the telephone business in 1946.
But the facts are that the Bell Telephone Company is a near monopoly; it controls a very large investment in Canada.
In the Financial Post survey of corporate securities for 1946, I find some information which conflicts with that which was given by the hon. member for Outremont in piloting the bill. The survey of corporate securities states that 21-7 per cent of the outstanding stock of the Bell Telephone Company is held by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.


Mr. RINFRET:: I was questioned about one company.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: I think the hon. member or some others who are anxious to have this legislation passed and who have not yet spoken should take part in the debate and clarify this matter. According to the information given by the hon. member, only 14-8 per cent was held by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: That is correct.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: It is one of the first times anyone has questioned publicly the accuracy of the survey of corporate securities. In view of the fact that it. is some little time since the hon. member for Davenport (Mr. MacNicol) first drew this matter to the attention of the house, I think the publishers of

Bell Telephone Company
this publication would have made some correction, if they had given this information incorrectly.
I have mentioned that many of the directors of the Bell Telephone Company are interested in many other large corporations in Canada. There is no law against that; but I might mention, for example, that Mr. Sise, the chairman of the board, is also a director of the Bank of Montreal. The Hon. Charles A. Dunning, whose name was mentioned in connection with the Canadian Pacific claim for increased freight rates is also a director of the Bell, a director of the Bank of Montreal and a great many other organizations the names of which I shall not take time to mention. Mr. Angus, one of the Bell directors, is a director of the Royal Bank of Canada; and so on, down the list.
There is no law against that, but I think members of the house should be cognizant of the fact that we are being asked to give special privileges to a near monopoly which apparently is in a field where we should have public ownership. I notice that in 1928 the same objections were made as are being made during this debate. It is unfortunate that in the passing of twenty years so few of those who took part in an important debate are spared to carry on, but it is interesting to note that the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church) and the hon. member for Cariboo (Mr. Irvine) were here in 1928. They expressed their views effectively at that time as well as on this occasion. I was interested in reading the comments made by the then member for Mackenzie, Mr. Milton Campbell. On page 3089 of Hansard of May 16, 1928 we find a record of his speech. He quoted from a brief which had been presented on behalf of the province of Ontario as follows:
What a public scandal this is, to have the same directors sitting on the board of the Bell Telephone Company and also on the board of the Northern Electric Company, buying from and selling to themselves, with the assistance of Western Electric Company directors, and fixing the prices among themselves that the poor milch cow, the Bell Telephone Company, shall pay for such apparatus, equipment and supplies. Is it any -wonder the treasury of the Bell is depleted systematically when any money appears, and the contents pipe-lined over to the treasury of the Northern Electric and ultimately into the treasury of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. As a glaring instance of this, let me illustrate by citing the annual dividend payment of eight per cent and two per cent bonus, or about ten per cent paid by the Northern to the Bell, on the latter's share holdings in the former, amounting to $3,900,000. The dividend payment would be about $300,000. This amount is no sooner paid to the Bell than it is sluiced across the international boundary line and into the treasury of the American company as a payment under the 1923 service contract.
Mr. Campbell also complained about the fact that the telephone companies in the prairie provinces were obliged to buy the major part of their equipment from Northern Electric at prices fixed by a company controlled by Bell. According to the Financial Post "Survey of corporate securities", the Bell Telephone has the following subsidiaries: Kamouraska Telephone Company Ingersoll Telephone Company-North America Telegraph Company The Southern Ontario Telephone Company-Limited
Woodbridge and Vaughan Telephone Company Limited
Canadian Telephone Company
C'hapleau Telephone System
Charlevoix and Saguenay Telephone Company
Welland County Telephone Company
Labelle Telephone Company
Yamaska Telephone Company
New Brunswick Telephone Company
It is unfortunate that this whole matter could not be referred to a committee so that we could hear the officers of the Bell Telephone Company and give them a chance to justify the set-up and give their explanations for what has been done. It is significant that no hon. members on the government side have been taking part in the debate and giving us the information to which I think we are entitled.
During his remarks the hon. member for Outremont referred to the future plans of the company affecting rural service. He is reported on page 1701 of Hansard of February 27, 1948, as saying:
The estimated increase in telephones in rural areas in the next four years depends on the company's ability to obtain material and equipment. It is expected, however, that 38,400 additional telephones will be installed and an amount of $25,600,000 spent.
It always interests me that whenever somebody wants to get something done they figure that if they shed some crocodile tears for the poor farmer in any part of Canada they will get full co-operation. I presume it was thought that if some mention were made of plans for rural service it would expedite the passage of this bill to provide an increase in capital from $150 million to $500 million. The hon. member went on to say:
At the end of 1951 it is estimated that between 65 and 70 per cent will have service in the rural areas. These figures will be very close to the development in urban areas.
I made a study of telephone service in rural areas in Canada; and I wish to draw the attention of the house to the dominion bureau of statistics housing census of Canada for 1941, dealing with automobiles, radios, telephones and vacuum cleaners in Canada. I should like to give the house the percentages of the population having telephone service in the different
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Bell Telephone Company

provinces, broken up into total; farm; rural not farm, meaning those living in small villages, neither on a farm nor in a city; and urban. The percentages are as follows:
Total Farm Rural Urban (not farm)
Canada 	
Prince Edward	40	29	28	50Island 	22	17	16	36Nova Scotia	33	26	17	47New Brunswick ..	27	16	18	46Quebec	33	16	16	41Ontario 	52	51	39	57Manitoba 	33	24	22	45Saskatchewan ...	32	32	26	34Alberta 	28	18	13	44British Columbia	48	19	31	66
Members will note that, as far as rural telephone service is concerned, Ontario places first, Saskatchewan second, Nova Scotia third, Manitoba fourth, British Columbia fifth, Alberta sixth, Prince Edward Island seventh, with New Brunswick and Quebec being tied with 16 per cent. I do not know how the hon. member for Outremont can expect members of parliament to accept the claim that by 1951 it is estimated that 65 to 70 per cent of those in rural areas will have service, when in the period from 1880, when Bell first started to function in Canada, to 1941 the best that could be accomplished was 29 per cent. In the areas which the Bell is serving in Quebec and New Brunswick the farm percentage is 16 per cent. I am sure it will be difficult to increase that ratio by 1951 from 16 or 17 per cent to 65 or 70 per cent as the hon. member for Outremont has mentioned. It is very important that people in the rural areas should have telephone service in case of sickness, when life and death may hang in the balance.
We cannot allow a bill of this kind to pass without drawing attention to the fact that the Bell Telephone Company has been chiefly concerned in going into the larger cities where the greatest amount of revenue can be got most easily. In the province where it has its head office it gives a very good service in the big cities; but, according to the 1941 statistics, in rural Quebec only sixteen farm families out of one hundred have a telephone service. The people in the rural parishes in the province of Quebec and those who work on farms in outlying areas should have this modern convenience which is regarded as almost a necessity by most people, and so I think the sponsor of the bill should have some comment to make on the plans of the company to improve its service particularly in the rural districts of Quebec and New Brunswick. In Ontario the ratio is much better, but there I understand that the Bell Telephone Company cannot claim the credit for promoting the construction of rural telephone lines.

Another passage in the speech made by the sponsor of the bill deserves careful examination. At page 1704 of Hansard he is reported
to have said:
Section 5 of the bill, which deals with wireless and radiotelephone services, is intended to clarify the company's powers under its original act of incorporation with regard to the use of the latest improvements in the art of telephony, including radio and wireless telephone and television, in providing the communication service which it furnishes. Wireless and radiotelephone is a comparatively new development in the art of communication and lies in the field in which the company operates. It is important not only to the company but to the public service which the company provides that there should be no question as to its powers to furnish service by this means.
I cannot find anywhere authorities who take it for granted that this is a field which has been assigned to the Bell Telephone Company. With the developments that are taking place in wireless and radiotelephone services, it seems to me that section 5 of the bill should not be accepted in principle. If this bill had been presented to parliament without this particular section we should not have had as interesting a debate as we have had. Those of us who are concerned about public ownership cannot accede to the handing over to a privately owned company of the monopoly to operate wireless and radiotelephone services.
Further on, he said:
Wireless telephone or radio is assuming increasing importance in the economical development of the telephone system. Developments in recent years have progressed rapidly and there is every likelihood that wireless telephone or radio systems capable of handling large numbers of communication channels over long distances may in many cases prove to be an economical alternative to the use of wire lines. Since the economical development of the company's system involves the use of such new developments as become available, it is planned to use wireless telephone and radio systems as an alternative to wire lines.
I hope, Mr. Speaker, that the member for Outremont will not ask parliament to approve the principle of a bill containing such objectionable provisions.
In concluding, Mr. Speaker, I must not overlook to pay a tribute to my close neighbour the hon. member for Davenport (Mr. MacNicol), who made such an outstanding contribution in the earlier stages of this debate, also the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church), who was able to speak as eloquently in this debate as he did twenty years ago. I am glad to be associated with these two outstanding Canadian citizens in a struggle to keep for the people the right to have public ownership in the field of communication. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that the bill should not pass in its present form.

Bell Telephone Company


Arthur Leroy Smith: Mr. Speaker, I shall detain the house for only a few moments, and the effort which I shall make is an appeal to the C.C.F. to stop this filibuster. I shall be reasonable in the moderate language I use and shall make no wisecracks or smart replies. I am anxious that this house, particularly these hon. gentlemen to my left, should see just where we are going in the attitude which they have taken.
Since confederation incorporations of this kind have been made by the dominion parliament, but if the C.C.F. persist in the line which they have now taken, that power of this parliament is taken away from it completely. It will mean that a small group of people, with the limited time which we now have owing to major matters of importance which have to be discussed here, can gather themselves together and destroy a power which rests in this parliament. That is exactly what we are witnessing at the present time.
May I absolve myself immediately from any connection with the Bell Telephone Company. We do not have it where I live, and I have no acquaintance whatsoever with any officer of that company. It is spread wide in this area of Canada. A lot of figures were given just now. I speak only of the province of Alberta, but I think it is also true of the province of Saskatchewan. Alberta had a rural telephone system but it was a complete failure through lack of support. Therefore we have today in that province the farmers grouping together and forming their own organizations, maintaining their lines and so on, in order that they may have telephone service. In other words, the government of that province could not support rural telephones. Although I do not make it as an accurate statement, I think it is true of Saskatchewan also.
Two things seem to be at issue; one, the increase in capital. I have no hesitation in saying that at the moment, without knowing more than has been given to us here, it seems to me too large an increase. That is said without any complete examination of the facts. But on the run-of-mine reasons, if I may say so, that influence our minds it strikes me as a tremendous increase.
The other thing they say is that the Bell Telephone Company should have the authority in brother fields or fields of the same type of communication. I do not agree with them in that. Any company which is dealing with communications must have an eye to the future. I wonder, sir, how many hon. members in this house have read the address recently given by Mr. Frank Stanton, president of
the Columbia broadcasting system, whose acquaintance over a very good lunch I had an opportunity of making; and that is my only connection with him. He paid for it and we had a very good lunch. He visualized within the next twenty-five years, and with authority, that you would have a vest-pocket radio not larger than your watch, and you would also have a sending set not larger than your watch, with which you could communicate with your wife and tell her that you would be late for dinner, or whatever message jmu cared to send.
He also said that it is well within reason- these are not imaginings; they have gone a long way-that when you telephoned somebody you would see the person at the other end to whom you were talking. That will stop a lot of fellows calling up somebody and saying you are talking to your wife, because it may be the maid to whom you are talking or somebody else in your house. Then it is well within reason that within ten years when you get up in the morning and go to your radio you will have a newspaper in that radio in colour, folded and so on and you will have the news at your breakfast when you sit down to eat your morning meal. What company like the Bell Telephone Company should not anticipate things of that kind which are anticipated in radio and which are certainly well within reason within twenty-five years?
To hear some of my friends speak, one would think Alexander Bell was an enemy of society instead of being one of the greatest men that this world, and particularly this Canada, ever gave birth to.
Here is my point, and here is my appeal. Why not let this bill go to a committee? Cut down the capitalization if it is too high; eliminate some of the powers which are sought if they do not justly belong to this company. But let it be stopped now and never said of this parliament that a small group by a filibuster can thwart laws which we all have thought sound since 1867. Go to that committee and amend the bill in any way you wish. You can cut down the powers; you can cut down the capitalization. There you will have before you men who must justify what they are asking for.
It does not seem to me to be within the mouth of anyone to say that the sponsor of a bill of this kind should supply the House of Commons with complete explanations, authorities and plans for future operations and construction. None of us would ever sponsor a bill ini this house, unless it were something with which we had grown up, some business with which we were entirely
Bell Telephone Company

familiar if that were so. I doubt very much even whether hon. members who sponsor bills with respect to divorce would be able to rise in their places and do what they do here with respect to such bills. Therefore I make this submission in all sincerity. I think I cannot be accused of rudeness or unkindness of any sort, but I do say: let this go to a committee; let us examine the people who want this, the officers of the company. We can send for them. If the 8500 million is out of line-at the moment I think it is-we shall make them justify it.
What is at the bottom of this? In opening on this matter the leader of the C.C.F. party said that this company may grow to a size where it would be difficult for a government to take it over and operate it. I am paraphrasing, but that is exactly what he said. Is that a reason? Because a political group say that,-I have told them again and again that I respect their views, and I do-is that a reason why obstruction-because that is what it is-should be carried on in this House of Commons to make us who are supposed to be powerful in legislation the laughing stock of any man of business; and by that I mean anybody who earns his living or operates a business or anything of that kind?
Let me close with this. I will go with them on a committee to bring everybody before it whom they want. I do not think I am on the committee, but probably I have a friendly fellow member who is, and we shall be able to bring anybody here whom they want. But for us now to be compelled to withhold judgment because a group, for purposes best known to themselves, delay this matter and talk it out, so to speak-I think the words "talk it out" are to the utter disgrace of this whole House of Commons- something should be done so that these things cannot be talked out. I am thinking of the hon. member for Vancouver North (Mr. Sinclair) and the hon. member for Quebec-Montmorency (Mr. LaCroix). If this sort of thing is allowed to continue what does it mean? It means that the smallest group, two men within an hour, can ruin what the rest of us want. Therefore I appeal directly to my hon. friends and say to them: let us have the committee; let us get the evidence. If you want to alter it, 'alter it in committee: if you want to defeat it, defeat it on third reading, but let us have an end to this one-ring circus which is operating in this house at this time.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: When this bill was called the first time for second reading I made as full and complete a statement to the house as I could. I took

every minute at my disposal in the forty minutes that I had. I might say right away to the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Bryce) that the reason a private member is presenting this bill is simply that a minister cannot present a private bill. The reason I had prepared a statement at that time was to crowd in as much as I possibly could in as few words as I possibly could use. Because I spoke for forty minutes, I was congratulated by some hon. members on the other side on helping them to talk out the bill.
If one reads the introductory statement that I made he will recognize that practically every obstacle and every objection that have been made to the bill have been answered. This is a private company, first of all, and there cannot be any question of public ownership at this time. It is a private company, duly incorporated; and surely the principle of this bill is not whether or not this company can be publicly owned.
I gave a long history of the company to show that this was not a monopoly of the octopus type that my hon. friends on the other side wish it to appear. In the beginning the company had authority to cover the whole of Canada except British Columbia. In January, 1908. they relinquished the territory now comprising Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. Later they relinquished the territory taking in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. In Quebec and Ontario they have retained a certain amount of the territory, though not all. They are not a "grab-all" concern. They are a competitive monopoly carrying on business in Quebec and Ontario with 893 other companies, 578 in Ontario and 315 in Quebec. There are also thirty-three other non-connecting companies or systems.
If my hon. friends wish to call this company a monopoly in the sense used the other day by the hon. member for High Park (Mr. McMaster), when he said he could not dream of two telephone systems operating in the same area; if that is what they mean by a monopoly, I am with them and this company is a monopoly. Within its territory there is only one telephone system. But it is a monopoly that is fully and completely controlled by the board of transport commissioners. Its rates have been subject to regulation since 1892. It has been subject to all pertinent, provisions of the Railway Act and the regulatory jurisdiction of the board of transport commissioners since 1906. The issue of capital stock has been subject to the jurisdiction of the board since 1929, or for the past nineteen years. No other private company in Canada is so well controlled by the board of transport commissioners.

Bell Telephone Company
Objection has been taken to the increase in capital. I submit that this is not a principle of this bill and should not have been discussed on second reading. In my statement I gave the financial position of the company at the present time. I gave details as to the intended construction and gave the estimate of the company at that time, amounting to over $700 million. I did not separate the amounts in the various years. They are as follows:
1948	 $74,000,000
1049		 76,000,000
1050		 71,000,000
1951		 71,000,000
1952		 70,000,000
For the following five years an expenditure of $68,000,000 a year is anticipated. A moment ago the hon. member for Mackenzie (Mr. Nicholson) said we were trying to make stock by appealing to the rural areas. I did not say the whole of the province of Quebec was controlled by the Bell system, but only part of it. And I said in my introductory remarks that within the Bell system area in 1945 some 39 per cent of the establishments had service. In 1947 this figure had reached 55 per cent, and it is estimated that by 1951 between 65 and 70 per cent will have service. That is within the area served by the Bell system, not the other companies. That was my statement and I repeat it.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Does that mean that percentage of the people have telephones in that area?


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: Yes, in the area served by the Bell system.
In my introduction I also said I realized the increase was substantial, but that the program contemplated is also substantial. In my final remarks I said hon. members would have full opportunity in committee to examine the various questions involved.
During this discussion three suggestions have been made by hon. members who have let their imagination run wild. One was that this amount of money was to be used to purchase the provincial systems. My answer to that is an emphatic no. Another hon. member thought we might use this money to build a line through the United States to by-pass the western provinces in order to deprive them of large revenues. My answer to that is that there is no such intention. At the present time there is a line operated by the Trans-Canada telephone system, which is some sort of co-operative system in which all telephone systems including the provincial systems share
both as to revenue and as to cost of operation, and which serves as a sort of clearing house for the purpose. So there is no such intention.
Another hon. member suggested this additional capital might be used to purchase, through War Assets, a complete communication system developed during the war by the army, navy and air force. There again my answer is that there is no such intention. The new capital will be used as I have indicated, to extend the company's plant and facilities in Ontario and Quebec, and there is no intention on the part of the Bell company to invade the territory of any other system in those provinces.
Another matter brought up was the splitting of shares, and again I suggest that is not the principle of the bill. I might say to the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. McCullough) that never before has the Bell company split its shares. This was imposed in the other place. It does not mean any change in the situation for the shareholders, except that out of the grand total they will have four times as many shares. The ratio will remain constant.
As far as revenue is concerned, the hon. member for Cariboo (Mr. Irvine) spoke of ten per cent which might be reduced to two and one-half per cent. That is impossible. The percentage will remain the same; it will be eight per cent, but it will be eight per cent on S25 instead of eight per cent on $100. Since the shares are now selling at $165, however, the percentage of dividends at present is 4-65.
Someone brought up the question of radio and television. Again that is not the principle of the bill, but of only one section. The company has no intention of going into the business of broadcasting radio or television programs. It will continue, as it is doing at present, to link various programs initiated by others. It has the power, which it asks to have confirmed, to operate in the radiotelephone field. This it does under proper licence obtained from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which permits it to operate mobile telephones and the like, in order to bring service to outlying districts and in order to have it as stand-by equipment in ease of storm damage, and so on.
I dealt with all these matters in my introductory remarks. At that time I did not deal with rates, because I did not consider that matter came in on second reading. The principle of the rates is quite a complicated matter, which might be fully dealt with in committee.
One thing I should like to explain is the question of free connection. If every hon. member would take a pencil and piece of paper
Bell Telephone Company



*OMMONS

[Stage Direction]
and put two dots on the paper representing two telephones, in order to connect those telephones they will require one pair of lines. If they add one more dot, representing a third telephone, they will have to add two more lines, so that there the ratio will be one to one as against one to two as it was before. If they add another telephone, they will have to add three lines, making six lines for four telephones. If they go on to five telephones they will require ten lines, or a ratio of two to one. If they continue on to ten telephones and interconnect them they will have forty-five lines connecting the ten telephones, or a ratio of 4-5 to 1. If they go on to 10,000, which is the limit for a central office, they will require 49,995,000 lines to connect them, or a ratio of 4,999-5 to 1. That is why it is more expensive to instal telephones in large cities.
The Bell company has been said by hon. members everywhere to be a well managed and efficient company. We are told that they have a fine group of directors, who are jealous of the reputation the company has built up for service and efficiency. They wish to keep that wonderful reputation. They wish to maintain good relations with their employees, so that those employees will be able to say, as the hon. member for Churchill (Mr. Moore) said, that this is one of the best of private companies for which an individual could wish to work.
They want to keep that reputation among their clients, and at the present time they are concerned because they cannot provide a better service than they are doing. They are concerned because there are 95,749 unsatisfied applications for service. That is an increase of 1,700 over the figure I quoted last time. There are some 69,000 reported eases of people having a party line who would like to have a single line. There are some thousands of people like myself in the country who would like to have single lines but who cannot obtain them.
In 1902, by chapter 41 of the statutes, parliament imposed upon the company the obligation of furnishing telephones on demand. They are not in a position to do so today. They ask to be put in that position. They are operating a public service and they know it. They are trustees for the public and they know it. That is why they come before parliament and they say, "We need what we are asking in this bill in order to be able to discharge our obligations to the public. We expect to be obliged to explain why we need those powers." Are we to refuse this company the opportunity to discharge its obliga-

lions? Are we to deny to people who have not a telephone today, the use of a telephone
service?
The principle of this bill-and that is the only principle which applies to the whole of this bill-is whether or not we shall authorize this company to perform its obligations toward the public. The company says it needs the provisions contained in the bill. The hon. member for High Park says that the Bell Telephone Company is all the time trying to find out what the necessities of the future will be. Then I ask hon. members to let this bill go to the committee. The committee will study it attentively. It must do so. It is its duty to do so, because it is an important bill. The committee will decide whether or not the company is entitled to obtain what it asks for.
We are on second reading of a private bill. I wish to refer hon. members to Beauchesne, third edition, notation 769. There they will see that on second reading of a private bill the situation is different from that on second reading of a public bill. The second reading of a private bill is only a conditional approval of the principle. It is conditional upon proof before the committee of the various facts that are set out in the bill. That appears in notation 769 of Beauchesne. Therefore the objection that has been made, that if we give second reading to this bill the principle will be accepted, does not hold water. The principle is accepted only conditionally. If the company cannot prove what it advances; if the experts cannot show that they need this money, then the committee is entitled to reduce the amount or to do whatever it pleases.
Everybody knew this rule, or at least everybody is supposed to know it is there. That is the rule with regard to a private bill. What are we met by? We are met by a sugar-coated six months' hoist by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles), which is meaningless in the light of this notation 769. I think the purpose of the amendment was just to kill the bill. We are also met by another amendment by the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. McCullough), an amendment which also is meaningless, because it would mean that we amend the Companies Act in a private bill. I will ask you, Mr. Speaker, to declare this second amendment absolutely out of order.
"This bill has been pretty well discussed." That is the hon. member for Selkirk speaking. The C.C.F. group has made its position clear on this bill. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre spoke. If, as the hon. member

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act
for Cariboo (Mr. Irvine) says at page 2829 of Hansard, they are not trying to talk out the bill because it would not be democratic for him or anyone else to occupy all the time on this or any other bill in order to prevent it from coming to a vote, then I say: let it go to a vote. We have already voted on the question, and the decision of the house was three against one. Let us go to the committee in order to give to this company what the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church) asked for, namely, a fair, square, honest and honourable consideration of the bill on its merits. Let us not prejudge the merits until we get to the committee.
Some hon. MEMBERS:: Question.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: Mr. Speaker-


An hon. MEMBER:: Shame.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: I hope that we in this parliament will never reach the time when a private member of this house will feel shame at rising to his feet to exercise his democratic right to speak. I want to say at the outset that, as a private member of this house sitting in the opposition, I resent another member sitting in the opposition getting up and handing us a curtain lecture about a filibuster.


Arthur Leroy Smith: Is any of it untrue?


An hon. MEMBER:: Not a word.


Thomas John Bentley: Every word of it.


Mr. SKEY:: It is nothing but the truth, and the hon. member does not like it. He can dish it out, but he cannot take it.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: The hon. member says I do not like the truth. He does not seem to realize, nor do hon. members who interrupt, that, when the hon. member for Calgary West (Mr. Smith) was castigating those who were exercising the right to speak-and incidentally he spoke ten times as long as I did when I rose to speak on this matter-he was also castigating the members of his own party, the hon. member for Davenport (Mr. MacNicol), the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church) and the hon. member for High Park (Mr. McMaster). All those hon. gentlemen rose and spoke on this bill; and I ask them, do they like the truth or do they not?


Mr. MacNICOL:: And the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Green).


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: Yes, and the hon. member for Vancouver South. Surely they do not want to attribute to other members of the
opposition motives which they would not accept for themselves. I am sometimes surprised that a party-


An hon. MEMBER:: I am not surprised at anything.


James Horace King: The hour for private bills having expired, the house will revert to the business before six o'clock.



ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE


[Stage Direction]
Right Hon. J. L. ILSLEY (Minister of Justice) moved that the house go into committee to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to present a bill to amend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act to make provision inter alia for a contributory superannuation scheme for future members of the force and present members who elect to come thereunder, and also for the granting of compensation to members suffering injury in the course of duty and pensions to widows and children of members losing life in the performance of duty.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Golding in the chair.
Mr. ILSLEY:: I asked that this order be taken up now, Mr. Chairman, because I feel that it should not take any time at all to dispose of it. The resolution is self-explanatory. As members of the house probably know, the pension scheme for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is based upon an entirely different principle from that which applies to the armed services and to. the civil service; and it has been thought for some time that it was desirable to apply the same principle in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as applies in the other services. This is the main and practically the sole purpose of this bill. The bill is a fairly lengthy one, and it is almost impossible to discuss it intelligently on the resolution. Therefore I hope the resolution will pass the committee and be reported back tonight, so that the bill can receive first reading. Then, if the time is opportune it can have second reading on Monday, or as soon as we can get to it. The bill can be circulated immediately, or at least tomorrow morning.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Chairman, I do not intend to discuss the resolution at this time. However I should like to make one thing perfectly clear. Since this would appear to be the only amendment to be brought in this year regarding the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, I suggest to the minister that when second reading is proceeded with on Monday,
3284	COMMONS
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act
if in discussing the principle of the bill certain suggestions are made outside its exact ambit, no objection should be taken. Anything that can be done to have this legislation expedited will, I am sure, meet with the approval of all hon. members. But I wish to make it perfectly dear that a number of members wish to make some observations regarding the general administration of the mounted police; and I trust no objection will be raised, in view of the fact that we are consenting at this time to expedite the passing of the resolution and first reading this evening.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Mr. Chairman, the bill is a long one, and I shall take no exception to any suggestions made for the improvement of the mounted police.


Thomas Langton Church: I am glad that at last the government is going to do something by way of superannuation for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Their duties have increased about fourfold owing to the war, and the conditions following it. I am glad to see that the scheme is a contributory one for those members who are at present on the force, if they wish to come in, and for future members.
The minister has added on some of the ordinary provisions which superannuation schemes of civilian police forces throughout the country have had in the past. We have, in connection with our Toronto police force, a contributory system under which the members of the force pay in seven per cent of the fund. But that did not provide for those constables who might be injured in the discharge of their duties, or for widows and orphans.
I am pleased to see that the proposed superannuation scheme is a contributory one; it should not be any other way. It is also pleasing to note that it makes provision for those extra emergencies as will be found in the systems of superannuation in municipal police forces of the country-injuries while on duty, and widows and orphans.
There is one other matter in this connection about which I should like to speak. As I said, the rate used to be seven per cent for the Toronto police force. Then an actuarial report was made by Mr. N. A. Mackenzie, an economist; and he found that, owing to the large number who would be superannuated, the fund would become insolvent. For that reason the city of Toronto had to make provision for the sum of $40,000 over a period of ten years to make it solvent.
It might be said that, since this involves an arrangement between employer and employees, this system might be placed under the Workmen's Compensation Act. However, that could not be done because, like some other public

bodies, including public utilities, they had to qualify under the Workmen's Compensation Act, and under the heading of employers and employees. It will be recalled that that act also operates on a contributory basis, and the contributions have reached a very large sum. The more employees and employers contribute, the better for the fund and for the economic condition of that fund.
I admit that a scheme of that kind could not be applied to the mounted police. They are performing a duty which does credit to the minister and his department. Their work has been greatly intensified in the years since the war, and it must be a heavy burden upon the Department of Justice. However, the force is attracting an even better type of men, and they are all very good. Those men are doing excellent work and, so far as I can see-and I see quite a few of them-I would say that they are doing good work.
A great part of the work of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police today comes under the system which has been in operation since confederation, a system through which the enforcement of federal law comes under provincial attorneys general. They, in turn, turn it back to the municipalities, and the municipal police systems.
That is a condition which should not obtain. I believe the time is coming when the Minister of Justice will have to give some compensation to the municipalities which are doing a large part of this work. We know that the municipal police systems throughout the country are enforcing federal laws, and they get nothing for it. It is a direct charge on real estate.
I believe the system should be expanded so that the government could grant to the municipal police systems of the various provinces moneys for the services they render. For example, during the war the city of Toronto spent sums of money running into millions of dollars to maintain our police force and in the enforcement of justice, but the Toronto police commission does not get a dollar from any federal authority for the enforcement of federal laws. Yet they had to enforce tens of thousands of orders in council. I believe there were, all told, over
100,000	orders in council during the war. That was a burden placed upon the municipal police systems, so far as enforcement was concerned.
May I compliment the present minister upon the work he has done since taking over the department. It would appear that in this measure we shall at last have something to offer an even better class of men, many of whom are returned soldiers. They and their

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families will now have some better protection when they meet with banditry across the country, risking their lives in every day of the year. Some provision will be made under the new system for widows and orphans of those men.


Mr. BRYCE:: Will the proposed superannuation scheme be exactly the same as that now in force in connection with wardens in the penitentiaries service?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, it will not be the same. I cannot at the moment set out the various points of difference, but there are some.


William Scottie Bryce: I shall deal with them later, then.


Arthur Leroy Smith: Mr. Chairman, I am very much in favour of the principle of this bill. I believe I have had association with the mounted police as close, perhaps, as that of anyone here. For fourteen years I prosecuted and for sixteen years I defended. I met only one member of the mounted police among hundreds-and I mean hundreds-concerning whose * integrity I ever had any doubt. I wonder if the same could be said of any other group of persons anywhere. I know the time they have put in; I know the care they take; I know the learning they must acquire-and they must learn it pretty much by themselves.
It has been said thousands of times-and it cannot be said too often-that for the finest police force in the world this parliament cannot do too much. In my judgment it is only now beginning to be fair to that splendid body of men.


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I ask one question? If it is too big a question I shall not press for an answer. The wording of the resolution indicates that the bill will cover other matters besides those referred to in the resolution. Are those other matters many and could the minister indicate what they are?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I have concentrated so much on the main provisions of the bill that I cannot give an indication of what else there is. I did know about them a few months ago, but I do not at the present time. The main provisions of the bill are indicated in the resolution.
Resolution reported, read the second time and concurred in. Mr. Ilsley thereupon moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 211, to amend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



PRAIRIE FARM ASSISTANCE ACT


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Gardiner for the second reading of Bill No. 204, to amend the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, 1939.
James Horace King: We have before the house an amendment which was moved by the hon. member for Wood Mountain (Mr. Argue), seconded by the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Zaplitny), reading as follows:
That Bill No. 204 be not now read a second time, but that it be resolved that in the opinion of this house the government should give further consideration to extending the provisions of the Prairie Farm Assistance Act to other specialized crop areas, also that the benefits under the act should be increased, and that steps should be taken toward the making of awards on an individual farm basis.
I have considered the amendment very carefully and have to rule it out of order on two grounds. First, I would call the attention of hon. members to citation 551 of Beauchesne, second edition, which reads:
It is a fundamental principle that no resolution or amendment to increase a charge upon the people can be moved with the Speaker in the chair; it must be initiated in committee by a minister acting on behalf of the crown.
I would also call attention to citation 760 which reads:
The principle of relevancy in an amendment governs every proposed resolution, which must, therefore, "strictly relate to the bill which the house, by its order, has resolved upon considering" and must not include in its scope other bills then standing for consideration by the house. Nor may such an amendment deal with the provisions of the bill upon which it ;s moved, nor anticipate amendments thereto which may be moved in committee, nor attach conditions to the second reading of the bill.
For those two considerations 1 declare the amendment out of order.


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, the bill before
the house is to amend the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. As has been stated by a number of members, this act was placed upon the statute books in 1939 for the purpose of taking care of conditions that had developed in an area of western Canada subject to drought. The proposal has been made by some hon. members that there should be a zoning of the three western provinces in order that different payments and different collections might be made in different areas.
I would point out that when the bill was first drafted and passed by this house in the
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form of the present act that question was fully discussed. One of the reasons it was not thought possible to zone successfully and to the advantage of the farmers was the very point made by a number of members. I think this was emphasized more by the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefen-baker) than by the others.
The suggestion was made that the problem which exists could be taken care of by insurance. The hon. member for Lake Centre and others questioned that on the ground that under no plan of insurance could one raise sufficient funds on an actuarial basis to take care of the losses which would occur in the drought areas of western Canada. Because of that fact, it was thought wise that the basis upon which funds would be obtained to take care of the losses ought to be as broad as possible.
In other words, it was felt that there should not be any zoning in order to obtain funds, that the basis should be the whole of Canada, not the province of Manitoba or the province of Saskatchewan or the province of Alberta. It was felt that the only way in which to get sufficient funds to take care of losses which might occur through drought in western Canada was to collect money at the expense of all Canada. I only need to hold up a map of each province showing what has occurred this year in order to indicate why that is true.
This is a map of Manitoba showing the condition in 1947. The red areas are those having under four bushels per acre and the blue areas are those having under eight bushels but more than four bushels per acre. The areas affected are this block in the Dauphin area, this block in the Red river area and this block in the western area. It does not show up as much on this map as it does on the others because the areas affected in Manitoba are not large.
This is a map of Saskatchewan showing the areas affected by drought this year. We hear very little in other parts of Canada about drought this year out west, but if hon. members will look at this map, they can see that the greater part of the province is affected. A considerable part is under four bushels to the acre with a larger part being under eight bushels.
Taking the map of the province of Alberta while the area is not large one must remember that the agricultural areas of the other provinces are not as large as that of the province of Saskatchewan. However, you can see all down the east side of Alberta up north and west of Edmonton is affected. These are maps for this year only.

I repeat, we are not hearing very much with regard to the difficulties that the farmers in western Canada are experiencing as a result of drought. I indicate these areas which are affected only to point out that if you are to take care of areas like that by any means of assistance, the area against which you are going to levy the collection must be a very large area. So we said: We will take one per cent on all the grain delivered in the prairie provinces. That is the first source from which we get funds. Then we provided that in addition to that, we would take all the money that is necessary in order to make up the amount that is to be paid from all the taxpayers in Canada. In other words we take the very broadest basis that can be taken for the collection, and then we make the payments in the areas that are affected by drought. So I suggest that it would not be wise to narrow in any way the basis on which the amounts are levied.
Someone has suggested that this is somewhat similar to unemployment insurance. It is in this sense that a certain amount is paid by the treasury. Someone has suggested that if we paid 50 per cent of the amount into the fund we could administer it on an insurance basis. On the basis on which we have been operating, we have paid out of the federal treasury two-thirds of the amount, and the other one-third has been collected at the rate of one per cent on all the grain delivered. Under unemployment insurance the government pays 20 per cent into the fund, the employer 40 per cent and the employee 40 per cent. But under this prairie farm assistance plan as it has worked out, the government is paying about 66| per cent and the farmers, not only the farmers who may obtain benefits under it but all the farmers in that area, are paying the other one-third under compulsion.
I do not think it would be wise, at any rate at this stage, even to attempt to put it on an insurance basis, even if the federal government had the authority to do so. But rve have always been informed, ever since this legislation was first considered, that it would bo ultra vires of the authority of this parliament to pass legislation providing for insurance in connection with losses of this kind. For that reason, if we were to adopt the insurance plan, it would have to go back to the provinces, and for the reasons I have given only one of the provinces, namely Manitoba, would have a chance of surviving under such an insurance plan. The other two provinces, under no system of assistance that could be given on an insurance basis, could survive.

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If we needed any further proof of that we have only to remember that, following the advice we have received back over the years that only the provinces can bring in an insurance plan in connection with crops, we have had provincial schemes in connection with hail insurance. The losses from hail are not anything like the losses from drought; yet, in spite of that, every one of these provincial schemes has run into difficulties in financing m a provincial basis and some have given it .ip altogether, leaving the insurance to go oack to private companies. So I would suggest to those who are urging that this should be put on a basis of insurance that the area from which you could collect for it would be altogether too small, even if you applied it to all of western Canada.
Some say, Why should we spread the collection over other parts of Canada? I remember the arguments in 1939 with which the house agreed, and some of those arguments have been heard in this house on a number of occasions during recent days in discussing .mother matter. It is generally acknowledged throughout Canada that the great development we have had in this country from about 1890 onwards was due to the railway development in this country and its association with the opening up of western Canada. I think it is generally agreed in all parts of Canada that we could not have had the great industrial development we have had, and certainly we could1 not have maintained our railway organizations on the standard on which they have been maintained, had it not been for the production of the area with which we are concerned when dealing with prairie farm assistance.
One other point ought to be made. When we were discussing this question in 1939 the idea that was in the minds of many people in Canada was that the area which we were talking about had been proven to be nonproductive. Some people even went so far as to say We ought to move out of that area the one million people who had settled in it. Well, we did not do so. Since then, we have gone through the war, and during the period from 1939 down to the present we shall have paid into that area under the scheme by the end of this year S90.000.000. Of that amount we shall have collected 830,000.000 from the fanners in western Canada and we shall have paid out of the treasury of Canada approximately $60,000,000.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Would the minister
describe that area in a little more detail. What does it comprise? Does he mean in all the drought area?


James Garfield Gardiner: In all the area pictured on the maps that I held up. As I was saying, about $90,000,000 has been paid to the farmers there, $60,000,000 of which has been paid out of the treasury of Canada, the other $30,000,000 being put up by the farmers paying the one per cent levy. What I want to say about that area is this. While we might have thought it had served its purpose so far as producing food products is concerned, nevertheless during the war we have taken more tonnage by a very considerable amount out of that area in the six years of the war than was ever taken out before in a six-year period. In the years when we were breaking up the new prairie and seeding it to cereal crops we no doubt surprised all people living outside western Canada with the production of that area. Then we ran into the drought period from 1930 to 1937, and many people outside that area had the idea that we were through producing in that area. But, as a matter of fact, from 1939 down to the present we have produced more in the area that is known as the drought area in western Canada than was ever produced in it in a corresponding period since it was first broken up. In other words, it is a case of our keeping people in that area and teaching them how to live and how to handle their land to the best advantage, and if that is done over one or two generations they will know how to live there and will be able to produce enough to keep a greater population in the area.


Mr. BLACKMORE:: Has the minister figures to indicate the production since 1939?


James Garfield Gardiner: I have not them here at the moment; I could give them fairly closely, but I think it is generally acknowledged by all members of the house that the production is very much higher in the area. The reason, then, for continuing this act and for extending it to some extent is the fact that the area is productive; and the reason why all the people in Canada have been willing to pay toward the maintenance of the scheme is that shipments of food out of that area have supplied employment and food for people not only all over Canada but in other parts of the world, and during the war it was the source from which much of the surplus food came that made it possible for us to maintain our armies overseas. I think that is all I need to say with regard to that question.
There are a number of matters which have been brought up by hon. members with regard to which I should say a little. Some have said that we should base the decision as to whether we are to pay on a smaller area. I am surprised to find that many of those
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dealing with this question still talk about wheat and so many bushels per acre as though they were the main consideration. That is not the consideration at all under this act. We do not care whether the people grow wheat or whether they run cattle. We are not concerned whether they grow feed grain or flax or what they may grow. We use wheat only as a barometer to tell whether it has been dry weather in the area or not, and we believe that wheat yield proves -whether it has been dry or not better than any other crop that is grown, and it is grown more generally over the area. Therefore we say that if the farmer has not produced more than four bushels to the acre on an average, it is proof that it has been dry. Whether he has been running cattle or no matter what he had been doing, he is entitled to payment. We say further that, even if there is a farmer in the district-and this is one of the reasons why I am not in favour of dealing with individuals-who had twenty or twenty-five bushels to the acre on a piece of good summer-fallow of, ilet us say fifty or one hundred acres, and his neighbours or the people all around the area have had an average of four bushels or less per acre or eight bushels or less per acre, that is no reason why the man who has twenty or twenty-five bushels should not be paid. You would have to go into his books and find out everything that he did. whether he produced cattle on grass that had dried out during the season, whether he was feeding hogs for which he did not grow feed grain and a great many other things that have to be examined into before you could say that one fellow was entitled to payment and the other was not.
All we examine into is the question whether in a considerable area it was dry. We say that if the average crop over that area was four bushels or less per acre, then there is a crop failure. If it is eight bushels or less per acre, then it has been dry enough that some assistance ought to be given when the price of wheat is over eighty cents a bushel, and if the price of wheat is lower than eighty cents a bushel, then some assistance should be given up until the yield is twelve bushels to the acre in the area.
Some have said that you could get it down to a section or down to three sections, or you could get it down to four or five farms or half a dozen farms. Those who understand conditions out west know this, and even men in eastern Canada know this, that you can find areas in any country or in any township where you would have three or four farmers on light land. For example, you could go outside Ottawa on the way to the airport and find 
land that used to be occupied by farmers which is now a sand pit. You could find areas like that all over the country. To say that because three or four men insist on living on an area that is nothing more than a- gravel pit or a sand pit and try to farm there, they ought to be maintained there, is not in accordance with the principles of this bill as it is drawn up. We say to these men, We are prepared under the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act to move you off that land; we will help you pull down your buildings; we wall pay the freight to ship them somewhere else; we will provide you with land in an irrigated district at a certain rate; we will move your equipment there for you. If, after they have had that offer, they will not accept it and still insist on remaining on poor land we say that this act should not provide for that small group of men, within a township that is not eligible, having assistance. Therefore we do not feel that it would be wise to undertake to do it on a smaller district than it now is.
The suggestion has been made that we ought to lower the area from a township to a quarter of a township. In effect, that is what we have already done. We say that wherever there is a block of land of a township or more that is eligible under this act we shall make payment; but we say that if there is a quarter of a township or more that, when we check up, we find has more than fourteen bushels to the acre we can take it out, and we will say that if, around the edge of that block, there is an area that is under eight bushels to the acre we can put it in. In other words, there is not any necessity for dealing with anything less than a whole township in the solid block.
But when you are dealing with the area that I have described in the province of Saskatchewan, the great block which I have shown on the map, every section of land in it is under the act for payment. All that the bill permits us to do is to say that we do not have to go over that whole area and look into the production of every quarter of a township and take one quarter township out and put another quarter township in; when we are satisfied that the average in each township is below the eight bushels to the acre we make payment. The only place that there is any reason for giving consideration to the quarter townships is around the outside of the solid block.
Under this legislation, one of the sections we are amending is the one which has to do with the matter of taking out quarters of townships or putting in quarters of townships, and all the operation takes place around the edge of the solid block which is all in. I say, in effect, that that does put you in the posi-

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tion that, wherever there is any question about it at all, it is on the nine sections or quarter township basis, and I do not think it is necessary to go below that in order to make units which would meet the wishes of hon. members.
Someone has said that the deductions and payments are the same

I think it was the hon. member for Wood Mountain-


Hazen Robert Argue: Approximately.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, they are approximately the same. The deductions and payments remain approximately the same as in. 1939 when the act was drawn. The suggestion is made that payments and deductions should go up and down with the variations in the prices of grain. Again I would call the attention of the house to the fact that we are not paying on grain. We are paying on cattle; we are	paying on feed	grain	for	hogs. Weare not	paying on wheat; we	are	paying onanything which a man happens to be doing in the area. He can in relation to agriculture	get payment	even	if	he doesnot sow a bushel of	wheat	or	if he has
not an acre of wheat during the whole period. AVe are paying him because of the condition through which he is going, and that condition affects him no matter what he is trying to produce. Therefore it will not be possible to vary it on the basis of wheat. But even if we attempted to vary it on the basis of the prices for farm products in general, I do not think we would be accomplishing what, we had in mind when we passed the act.
My reason for that is that when you have only four bushels of wheat to the acre and the price is $1 a bushel, your return is only S4 an acre and you need whatever payment there may be more at that time than you need it when wheat is worth $2 a bushel and instead of 14 an acre you get $8. In other words, it would not be fair to the man you are dealing with if you increased the payment he is to get, or even if you increased the amount, he is to pay in. over the period when prices are high. What we are desirous of doing under this bill is accumulating surpluses when prices are high, which make it possible to take care of your people on an equal basis when prices are low.
Up to the present our experience has been that we are faring a little better under this act than we anticipated in 1939. At that time, when we were first getting this measure through, I was asked in the house how much I expected it- would cost the treasury, and I think at that time I said our estimate was that it would cost the fund about $4 for 5849-209J
each SI put up by the farmers. Well, it has worked out that it is costing about $3 for every $1 put up by the farmers; and the only reason we have been able to keep it down to S3 is that in 1942 we did not need to pay out anything. That year there were only twelve townships in all western Canada that had less than eight bushels to the acre, so that no payments were made and everything collected that year was accumulated, to be charged up in the other years.
At the present time, when we have high prices for grain, one per cent means a great deal. But I would suggest to hon. members from Manitoba that in only two years has that one per cent meant enough to cover what Manitoba drew out of the fund the first year. That year Manitoba drew out- $849,000, and the highest collection ever made in Manitoba was $889,000, and in another year, $859,000. I think the hon. member for Souris (Mr. Ross) and the hon. member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Miller) are quite right in suggesting that Manitoba could have a year like that again. It could have a year twice as bad, because it did have years twice as bad before any such assistance was given, and we could run into that condition again. So that., while they are paying in more than they are getting out for the time being, a time might easily come when they would greatly benefit by the plan.
Perhaps I should say more than I have said already with respect to the meeting that may be held as between the municipalities, the provinces and ourselves with regard to the areas. I think I know what hon. members have in mind when they suggest that we ought to put this plan on an individual basis. They have in mind that group of people who are in the corners. They say that showers do not go in squares; that they simply go across the country, and that when you cut this out in squares you leave the odd corner where a few people live who are just as badly off as the people living inside the solid block. AVe have always acknowledged that; we have always said that is true, but we have called attention to the fact that this was first considered to be a municipal problem. The municipalities were supposed to look after indigent people, just as they were supposed to look after unemployed people and those who are in difficulties for other reasons. AVhen that task became too great for the municipalities, under our constitution the province had to assume the responsibility, and kept on assuming it until it became so big they could not take care of it any longer. Then they came to Ottawa and said, these people are going to
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starve unless somebody takes care of them; and we entered upon the task.
The basis on which we entered into it was this. We said that when there were twenty-five municipalities in a province which could not take care of themselves, then the dominion government would consider going in and helping. But we said that when the number gets down to ten we shall get out. We were operating on that basis prior to 1939. In that year we said that we would take as our obligation any full townships in the three provinces that were in difficulties, but we suggested that the provinces, or the provinces and the municipalities combined, ought to take care of these corners.
We went along in that way for two or three years. Then we found that they were not going to do anything about it, so we took in quarter townships around the edge. But we said that we would take on quarter townships only on the condition that we were allowed to take out the quarter townships which did not need assistance and which also were around the edge. That is what we have done from that time up to the present. But many people are living in these corners all the way around each block who, as I indicated a moment ago, are not getting assistance under this plan. Every year we have suggested to the government of the province-it did not matter what government it was-that we thought they should go in and pay something toward the care of these people if they wanted us to look after them. If they can provide a scheme of their own to take care of them we are quite satisfied; but we think, if they wish them brought into our plan, the province should contribute.
Now, for the first time, they have all got together in these meetings which were spoken of today, and agreed that we ought to meet to consider this matter. So I would suggest to those who have said we ought to do some things which are not in the amending bill at the present time, that in my opinion the best place for these matters to be discussed is at this meeting which we shall arrange by some method or another, just as soon as we can get away from this house and from some other activities. We shall have a meeting called somewhere, I hope out in western Canada, where we can discuss this question through to a final conclusion; and when we have done so I hope the provinces and municipalities will be able to make some provision by which we can take care of most of the cases that have been discussed here, particularly such cases as were referred to by the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker), having to

do with blocks on one side of the Qu'Appelle river, when the greater part of the municipality is either down in the valley or extends up the opposite side where the crops are fairly good.
These problems can be taken care of under a plan that may be worked out. Whether the provinces will want to administer the small areas under some plan they will provide, I do not know. We have always said we would be quite satisfied to carry on the administration over the whole area, provided that the provinces, or the provinces plus the municipalities, would put into the fund some amount bearing a reasonable relationship to the amount all the taxpayers of Canada were contributing, in order to deal with the solid block of people who are suffering from drought.
That, I think, is all I need to say at this time.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: If an arrangement such as that described by the minister is arrived at, would he consider making it retroactive to 1947?


James Garfield Gardiner: Well, I do not know. I think I know what my hon. friend has in mind. This bill was not drafted in the first instance to take care of anything but drought, and we have been making payments under the provisions of the act for other reasons. We have been making payments, however, where the destruction that has taken place has covered a township, whether it is by hail or by flooding. Every member of this house knows that ordinarily, w'hen flooding takes place, the responsibility for assistance is with the province. We had very heavy storms in western Ontario, and an appeal was made to us for assistance. We said. No; that was a provincial responsibility. A year or two ago we had the same thing in Quebec, and we said that was a provincial responsibility. We had the same thing up in northern Alberta, and we said that was a provincial responsibility, until finally they showed us that under this act we had authority to pay on full townships.
This year it has been shown in the province of Manitoba that up in the Dauphin area there are additional townships that are affected by flooding. But we still maintain that the responsibility for flooding, generally speaking, is a provincial responsibility, and that the province ought to show some interest in the matter and some inclination to work out a solution for any problem that exists. As the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Zaplitny) will remember, he and I attended a meeting in Dauphin last summer when all this matter was discussed with officials of the province there

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and with the officials of the municipality. I think we finally reached an understanding that a plan ought to be worked out by the province and submitted to the federal government, and that the federal government might, under the item providing $100,000 we had voted last session, find funds with which to assist in dealing with the problem there.
We did not have a plan working last summer, with the result that the suggestion is made by the hon. member for that area that he would like to have anything that is done made retroactive. I would call his attention to the fact that anything that is done, in addition to what has already been done, would have to be financed by the province. That is, we are taking care of the full township plots, and we would expect that if anything were done beyond that in that area-at least anything beyond the nine sections that might be around the edge of it-it ought to be taken care of out of funds provided by the province. So I am not in a position to say whether it should be retroactive or not.
But I would say that the most important thing for the Dauphin district is not the application of this act at all. The most important thing for the Dauphin district is to do something similar to what we did some years ago in the northeastern corner of Saskatchewan. There is an area there that flooded every spring. The farmers were not able to get on to it until June, and that was too late. The provincial government went into that area and put in drains which drain off the water before it reaches the land, take it down around another way and keep it off that land altogether. I think something of that kind must be done in the Dauphin district, and that is not something which can be handled under this act. It is much more important that we get busy, as soon as possible, with some understanding as between ourselves and the province, and then between the province and the municipality, to have that job done and done in a way that will avoid that flooding. Then the people in that district will not need assistance under this act. and I hope they will not object to paying their one per cent, for all time to come, to take care of the other people.


James Arthur Ross: Might I ask one question? Will the regulations be placed before the committee?


James Horace King: May I suggest to the hon. member that he wait to ask his question until we have reached the committee stage.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee. Mr. Golding in the chair.
On section 1-" Township."


René Jutras: There is one question that I should like to ask on this first section. The new part reads:
. . . and includes any group of settlement or river lots declared by the governor in council to be a township for the purposes of this act.
The explanatory note says:
This amendment is to provide that the act may apply to areas surveyed as settlement or river lots in the same way as it applies to areas surveyed as townships.
I do not know whether the minister can answer my question tonight, but at all events it will be on the record for the officials. Does this mean that river lots are constituted in a separate block as townships, or is there also the alternative that they may be part of the township? I am just wondering if it leaves out the two alternatives, leaving the discretion to the commission, for instance, to constitute a certain number of river lots into a block or declare it to be a township. Or is the alternative left of leaving them as part of the township.
To illustrate this point, I will give one instance where it would appear that the river lots are taken out entirely. In my constituency there is this year a township, I understand, township 62, which illustrates that point very well. The Red river divides the township north and south practically in the centre. Then there are two rows of river lots on each side of the river. Since it is more or less in the centre of the township, it leaves a strip of sections which are survey sections on the east side and on the west side. My understanding is that the township in question, namely township 6-2-1E, qualifies this year; but, on the other hand, apparently all the river lots in the centre, which are really in this case a part of the township, do not qualify. That is my understanding.
So I do not know if it can be worked out to leave the two alternatives in the act. But I think it would be preferable to leave the two alternatives there; to leave in the intention of the act anyway, the two alternatives open as the case may be required from Jear to year. I do not know if I have made that point clear, but it looks like an anomaly to say that the township qualifies and yet all the strip of land in the very centre does not qualify.


James Garfield Gardiner: Hon. members who are familiar with the river lots will know that these strips run diagonally as compared with many of the township lots. That is, they were there before the western part of Canada was surveyed into townships six miles square. They
Prairie Farm Assistance Act

ran back from the river at right angles to the river, to begin with; and these strips were formed on both sides of the original. We started out, as a result of the undertaking given last year, to try to draw in what would have been the township boundaries if the survey had been made after the river lots had been put there, to try to make them coincide as nearly as possible with where the lines would have been. The river lots are so much on an angle to where those straight lines would be that this was found to be impossible. If we could have done this, we would simply have drawn a map, made it a schedule to this bill, brought, it in and said: Those are the townships. and any one of those areas must have less than four or eight bushels to the acre before they are paid a certain amount. But we found that it was impossible to do that, so we are taking authority here to go into those districts and layr out areas which are, to all intents and purposes, the same in area as a full township.
It will be found, just as has been indicated by the hon. member, that there may be a township where a piece has been taken out of the middle of it or of the side of it. That is, all over western Canada there are partial townships, and we have another section in this act which is intended to deal with those partial townships.
The legal township is six miles square, but when they come to the next meridian, because the lines you draw toward the north pole come together, eventually there is a correction on these meridians. Those corrections ''ary all the way from six-mile square blocks to blocks which are six miles north and south, but only part of a section or part of a mile east and west.
In this bill we are making provision for dividing these for the purpose of making payments. In other words, while they are not six miles square, they are legal townships. Just alongside these strips of land which run diagonally out from the river, there may be a part of a township which is left, and under the bill they will be designated as separate townships. And these areas which are in the river lots will be separate townships.
I am not altogether certain that there will not be some places where it will be found possible to take what is part of a township and include in it some of the river lots in order to make a complete township for the purposes of this act. But eventually the map will be drawn and it will be properly made out. so that we are not deciding the matter until after the facts are known. The boundaries will be there before. Then, when the

facts develop which make it possible to pay under the act, we shall pay under the act.


James Arthur Ross: I should like to ask the minister a question; and I am not sure if this is the proper place to ask it. I would ask him about those regulations which are being altered. Would the question be properly asked under this section? I do not see any other place where I could raise the question.


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not think there is any	amendment here with regard to
regulations.


James Arthur Ross: No, but the minister was making a statement to the effect that there was some confusion in the discussion this afternoon.


James Garfield Gardiner: If I remember correctly, the hon. member for Souris was here at the time the bill was originally introduced.


James Arthur Ross: No.


James Garfield Gardiner: Well, I think I remember informing the house at that time as to the regulations. The regulations, as they were drawn in the first instance, including this 20-mile limit, and all that kind of thing, were discussed on the floor of the house.
One of the reasons it has been found difficult to cover what is in the regulations by law lias been the fact that we are receiving continuously representations from members and others indicating the difficulties people get into.
Take, for instance the question of widowed mothers having to move into towns and leaving their land. Sometimes they move a little more than twenty miles, or they may have moved into a town more than twenty miles away in order to obtain hospitalization. That question was brought up. If we had been committed to twenty miles by the legislation, we could not have done anything. But having the authority to amend the regulations, we were able to say, Well, in cases where people have gone to hospitals and had to go more than twenty miles, and where they have had to remain there for a period of time-sometimes two or three years- for treatment of different types of diseases, payments can be made.
It is to meet a situation of that kind that authority has been left to have regulations made by orders in council. I am not able to make them myself. The board cannot make them. But the whole council can change those regulations from time to time.
Another case was that of soldiers. During the war soldiers just picked up from their

Prairie Farm Assistance Act
land, enlisted and went overseas. They did not think anything about prairie farm assistance. Probably they did not know they would have any crop failures while they were away, or at least did not think they would have. But they got overseas. Those people were the owners of land, the real operators of it, although they hired men to look after it.
It was found that, strictly speaking, these men did not have a claim unless we did something about the matter in the regulations. We dealt with those cases and said that when a man was overseas he was an exception. All kinds of cases of that kind have come up, and we have dealt with them. I think hon. members will agree that we have attempted to administer the act so that it would not create undue hardship, and so that it would not give favours to anybody. I believe that is pretty well agreed, because it was so stated many times this afternoon by hon. members.
If there was any reason for thinking that we have been abusing the authority which was there, then I would agree with those hon. members who say we ought to write into the act what we are going to do, and say. That is the only thing we can do. But I would suggest that this is not legislation which lends itself to that kind of thing. A great many situations develop which ought to be dealt with from time to time, whether this house is in session or not. And we asked the house to give authority to the government. They gave it to the government at that time. I consider it wise to leave it there unless we run into difficulty which might be considered serious.


James Arthur Ross: You have reports of individual cases and then you take the matter up with the cabinet council; is that the situation? I have had many cases such as the minister has mentioned which have come to my attention in the past few years. I believe they have been ironed out; I will admit that. But I would ask this further question, as to whether there is any provision for flooding in connection with this act. Where farmers have been flooded out, can something be done for them? Can settlement be made for those farmers?


James Garfield Gardiner: Not for an individual farmer. If he is in an area six miles square, or alongside one six miles square-I think it is nine sections-he can get assistance.


James Arthur Ross: If it is nine sections it does not have to be contiguous to any other area?


James Garfield Gardiner: It would have to be adjoining a six-mile square area, or a township, unless it is one of those along the river, where they are not six miles square. For instance, take along the Qu'Appelle-and I do not know the situation at Portage as well as I do at Qu'Appelle-there are areas only two miles wide which really constitute a township.


Calvert Charlton Miller: I was going to ask about that, as to whether the minister had any idea how they would settle areas on the river lots, because some of them are very narrow and very long. Would it be a question of acreage?


James Garfield Gardiner: Approximately that. As I remember the map, there were stretches where possibly they were six miles long, and where along those six miles you can take strips which are six miles wide, or approximately that, and draw the line down the road allowances and then across the top, and you have a six-mile square block. It will not be at right angles with the block around it, but it will be six miles. We will try to map it out into blocks of that kind, and map it out without relation to what happened this year or what might happen.


Calvert Charlton Miller: It will be comparable in acreage area with the ordinary block?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, that is right.


Mr. McKAY:: Since the minister has been discussing the 20-mile clause, may I ask another question? Just how flexible is that regulation? I understand what was said this evening regarding the subject, but I am wondering if it has anything to do with the particular case I have in mind.
For instance, if that clause definitely states that a man cannot reside twenty miles distant from his farm, what is it composed of? How is mileage based? Is it road allowance? How is it calculated, because there are areas in the province where there are very few road allowances.


James Garfield Gardiner: If hon. members will not hold me definitely to what is read as the regulation which may be finally decided upon, I shall read it to them. But it was just suggested a while ago that we might have it before us. This has not yet been adopted, but it has been recommended that an owner is not a farmer for the purposes of the act (a) unless he is an owner or tenant of a farm from the first day of May to the first day of November in the same year, or (b) unless he lives in the spring wheat area and his primary occupation is farming from the first day of May to the conclusion of the crop season.
There is nothing in that about twenty miles.


Eric Bowness McKay: No-
Prairie Farm Assistance Act


James Garfield Gardiner: If he is the owner or renter of land and lives in the area, and his primary occupation is farming-and it will be noted that it does not say "only occupation"-from the first day of May to the conclusion of the crop season, he can draw under the act. The next section provides that he must be responsible for the farming operations and the disposal of the proceeds of the farm.
I have one case that is before me now. A father who homesteaded in western Canada years ago moved back to Ontario to live. His boy is now on the land in Saskatchewan and the father wants to know why his boy cannot be paid this year. I have written to him to say that if he will either rent the land to the boy or give it to him the boy will be paid, but so long as he insists on only hiring the boy and sending him out there he cannot be paid under the act. The man can fix that himself; we do not need to fix it for him. He can put his son on a rental basis and the boy himself will be paid. I do not think it is necessary to change the regulations in order to meet a case of that kind. Under the act the boy can be paid, but the man himself would not be paid when he lives in Ontario.


Calvert Charlton Miller: Is there any question of a split as between landlord and tenant? I presume that the minister's own farm is rented. Is there any rule that the landlord will get his portion of what is paid?


James Garfield Gardiner: The intention is that the tenant or the operator of the farm shall get it, because the idea is to keep the operator on the farm until he gets another crop. We have never put anything in the way of an owner making any deal he likes with his tenant. The only thing is that he cannot seize the money while it is in our possession; he cannot get possession of the money until the man gets it. In other words, it would have to be a cash rental.


James Arthur Ross: He has no claim.


Calvert Charlton Miller: He might not have any claim on the tenant either.


James Garfield Gardiner: There are some other paragraphs to which the 20-mile limit did apply, but does not now. One is:
(e)	if renting from a parent, unless he has a written lease executed prior to the first day of May of the year of award.
That has been there all the time. There is another one that concerns the 20-mile limit:
(2) Notwithstanding paragraphs (a) arid (b) of subsection 1 where a farmer dies or becomes mentally incompetent and the operation of the farm is continued by a person who
(a) is related by blood or marriage to the deceased or mentally incompetent;

(b) is the sole beneficiary of the deceased or mentally incompetent; and
(e) is operating the farm on behalf of a beneficiary who is living in the spring wheat area and is primarily dependent upon the farm for a living.


Arthur Leroy Smith: A township is a piece of land six miles square. In the west, where the township line intersects the range line, we are given such townships. I have seen cases where two such adjoining townships were ineligible, but adjoining halves of such townships were eligible. Has the minister ever considered changing the actual numbered townships of six miles square so that we can take in, say, the east half of one township and the west half of the adjoining township and still have a piece of land which is essentially a township?


James Garfield Gardiner: That comes up almost every year, but it is usually related to some specific case w'here they think something would happen if we would do that. We do not think it would be wise to operate that way. There would be great difficulty in administration, because you would have to check each area to see whether you could take the south half of one township and the north half of another. Then you would have to go over and check whether you could take the west side and put it on with the east side of the next township. It will be seen that this would increase the administration costs approximately four times in order to do it successfully for everybody.


Edward George McCullough: The hon. member for Weyburn was asking about the regulations with regard to the twenty miles distance which a farmer may live from his farm. Does the Minister of Agriculture realize that we have a lot of power farming in Saskatchewan? Would the minister give us assurance that a farmer who is farming a parcel of land more than twenty miles from the town in which he lives would be eligible for an award?


James Garfield Gardiner: It has been recommended that everything about the twenty miles shall be left out. However I have warned the committee that the regulations are not yet brought to a finality, but I have no doubt that they will be. If they are, there will be no 20-mile limit at all.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: Is there any regulation as to the minimum size of a farm?


James Garfield Gardiner: Twenty-five acres is the smallest.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: There is no change contemplated in that respect?

Prairie Farm Assistance Act


James Garfield Gardiner: No.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 2 agreed to.
On section 3-Blocks ineligible for award.
James Garfield Gardiner: I will ask my colleague to move an amendment to this section.


Alphonse Fournier: I move:
That section 3, line 13, be amended by deleting the word "eligible" and substituting therefor the word "ineligible".


Edward George McCullough: The
Minister of Agriculture gave a detailed account of the administrative difficulties in putting this act on an individual basis, and he referred also to the additional cost which would be entailed. In his address he indicated that he did not consider that any farmer who would get twenty bushels or more per acre in an eligible township or portion thereof, which would be one-quarter of a township, should not be eligible for an award; he said that no one could argue that that person should not be eligible for an award. I take exception to that. I think it would be more reasonable to say that in no case should a farmer who is eligible or who has a crop of less than eight bushels per acre not get an award.
The hon. member for Acadia indicated that he thought we should get closer to the individual farm basis. With the present amendments it is possible to have six sections lying along an eligible township and those six sections not be eligible simply because they are in an ineligible township. Under section 7 it is quite possible for the government to take out certain farmers and put them in an ineligible block of nine sections even though they may suffer either a total or partial crop loss. I think there is an injustice there.


James Garfield Gardiner: I think there is too, but the suggestion we make is that that is a problem that the province ought to help us deal with. I am not saying that because the government is such and such a government, for we have said that ever since 1939, no matter what government was in power. We say that that strip of six sections alongside the drought area-it would probably be in one of the corners spoken of-ought to be dealt with under the act but that if they are to be dealt with under the act the provinces should help us in the financing.


Edward George McCullough: I was
glad to hear the minister say that the municipal association was meeting with the government with a view to coming to some decision whereby some of these injustices would be 5849-210
ironed out and provision made to take care of them. But here you have in an eligible township, say six sections with a fairly good crop, and in order that the department may take a block of one-quarter of a township it includes three more sections where the farmers have poor crops. Those farmers do not feel that they should be included in any sort of relief system administered either by the municipality or by the provincial government, nor would it be reasonable to expect that, when they are suffering crop losses for the very same reason as these other people and they get no award under the act. We could amend this section in a way that would ensure that the farmers who had suffered crop losses would be paid something, without in any way increasing the expenditure of the government, and so I move, seconded by the hon. member for Weyburn:
That section 3 of Bill 204 be amended by deleting all the words in lines 5 to 11, both inclusive, thereof, and substituting therefor the following:
"(a) where any farm is located in a township contiguous to an eligible township, it shall be eligible for award; but no farm which has an average yield of more than fourteen bushels of wheat per acre, no matter where it is located, shall be eligible for award."
This does not in any way penalize any farmer who should get an award, but it reduces the expenditure of the government through not paying any award to a farmer who, I think, should not get an award because he has a decent crop, namely, fourteen bushels to the acre. I think that is only reasonable.


James Garfield Gardiner: I am afraid that the hon. member 'has not read the section.


Edward George McCullough: I have
read it.


James Garfield Gardiner: Then he did not understand it. This amendment applies only to areas along the meridians and other places where you have part townships. The legal township is six miles square, but the amendment proposed by the bill provides that in areas along the meridians where the township may be only two miles wide or even one mile wide, the section will apply to one-quarter of the township, not a quarter of thirty-six sections but a quarter of twelve sections. As the explanatory note says:
3. The act now provides that a block of sections having an area of not less than a quarter of a township may be taken into account under section 7. This was interpreted to mean a quarter of a full thirty-six section township, and as a result it was rarely possible to apply section 7 to the fractional townships lying along meridian lines. The proposed amendment cor-
Prairie Farm Assistance Act

reets this by making the section applicable to one-quarter of the township under consideration, whether of thirty-six sections or less.
Even if it is only four sections, one section can be taken out. The amendment proposed by my hon. friend would delete the proposed 7(a) and 7(b) and substitute something else for it.


Edward George McCullough: Does the proposed amendment not merely change the meaning of section 7 in the original act so that the townships which lie alongside of a meridian can for administrative purposes be considered under the act?


James Garfield Gardiner: No, it means exactly what the explanatory note says it means. It means you do not have to take thirty-six sections lying alongside the meridian to make one-quarter of it eligible under the act. That is all it means. I think the hon. member understands the position. Meridian 2 is possibly the nearest to him. When you run up the east side of meridian 2, some of the townships are only two miles wide, some four miles wide and some five miles wide, and at the boundary line six miles wide. Our amendment provides that you have only to take a quarter of that township, no matter whether it is composed of twelve or thirty-six sections.


Edward George McCullough: The
amendment which I have moved eliminates 7(a) and replaces it with another, and of course it changes the whole subsection to provide that where any farm is located in a township contiguous to an eligible township it shall be eligible for award, but in no case where there is an average yield of more than fourteen bushels to an acre shall an award be made.


James Garfield Gardiner: It takes away the whole intention of the amendment proposed by the bill. If my hon. friend's amendment were made to the original section it would mean exactly what he says; but, as it is drawn, it strikes out the whole intention of the present amendment in the bill.


Edward George McCullough: That is what I want done.


James Garfield Gardiner: But quite apart from that, if you were to apply it in this way to those areas you would have to apply it to the township areas as well. The hon. member's amendment says:
. . . where any farm is located in a township contiguous to an eligible township, it shall be eligible for award; but no farm which has an average yield of more than fourteen bushels of wheat per acre, no matter where it is located, shall be eligible for award.

My hon. friend's amendment does not deal with this section at all, but with sections in the earlier part of the act which provide for payment, and which say that the payment is to be made at so much per acre to each farmer who lives in a township. But this section does not say anything about that.


Edward George McCullough: That is one of the sections which are not up for amendment at all at this time.


James Garfield Gardiner: Of course I would be opposed to my hon. friend's amendment even if it were moved in the right place.


Victor Quelch: Is it the intention under 7(a) to include sections of land with an average yield of less than eight bushels in the rectangular block? The minister remembers the case I brought to his attention a year or so ago where a township had been declared eligible; then within the township it was found that there were six sections of land with a yield of over twenty bushels to the acre, and under the act it was not possible to take those sections out. Therefore it was decided to add to the six sections four more sections that had practically a total crop failure, but the average yield was still about fourteen bushels to the acre, and that was done. I think the minister will admit that it does not seem fair where you have already declared a township eligible to take out four sections of the land without a crop failure. Was it. not really the intention of the act to include in that block only land with a yield of only eight bushels to the acre?


James Garfield Gardiner: No. I do not think it is possible to find a piece of land of nine sections of the kind the hon. member has described. I have seen land, and I am sure my hon. friend has also, farmed by certain farmers in a certain way where, on five or ten acres, they will get twenty bushels to the acre in any kind of year. To say simply that you cannot take that land, in order to get nine sections within a township, would make it impossible to get nine sections anywhere. That is again the idea that we are paying on wheat. We are not paying on wheat at all.
I do not know the Acadia area very well, but I have been over it a number of times. As the hon. member will admit, I think it is one of the most difficult areas in either Alberta or western Saskatchewan, and I know that people there are experiencing considerable hardship, and will until certain things can be done which have not been done and may not be done for a long time. But I do not think you can take care of all these difficulties by any rule-of-thumb thing that we can put into this act. We simply say that if there is an area there that has an average of dess than

Prairie Farm Assistance Act
four bushels to the acre they are entitled to $2.50 an acre. If we say it is under eight bushels to the acre they are entitled to SI.50 an acre.
To say that you would have to find an area that has not anybody in it who has twenty bushels to the acre or fourteen bushels to the acre would just make the thing inoperative. You would take out probably half the people who are getting assistance, and it would not be just to them to take them out. On the other hand, if you said that every fellow who has under four bushels to the acre is to get paid no matter what he does, some fellows would sit in the house probably and wait for their $4 an acre and do better than if they worked, particularly if they are living on a piece of sandy land. My hon. friend knows there is land of that kind in the area about which he is talking. If a man insists on living on that sandy land and says that he can live there and get $4 an acre by living there, I do not think we should help him to do that. Some people could have activities elsewhere of a kind that makes it possible for them to live there. I do not think we should do either one thing or the other. I do not think we should shut the man out who may have twenty bushels to the acre on a very limited acreage of wheat but who may be trying to feed a hundred head of cattle for which he has no grass, and at the same time take another fellow in who just insists on living on a piece of land whether he can ever grow more than four bushels to the acre or not. It is in order to avoid both of these things that the act is drawn as it is.


Victor Quelch: What I cannot understand is this. When a township has been declared eligible and it is found that a certain amount of land has a yield of about fourteen bushels to the acre and you then desire to take that land out, why should you be forced to include with that land other land which has had a crop failure? Would it not be better to reduce the block from nine sections and put in certain land other than the area which has a yield of fourteen bushels to the acre? That land could be taken out, and you would not be forced into the position of having to include land which has had a crop failure in order to make up the nine sections. It seems to me to be an injustice that, in order to take out land which has an average yield of over fourteen bushels to the acre, you have to take out as well land which has had a crop failure. That is what is being done at the present time. That is the unfair part. I think it would be better to say that any section of land with a higher yield than fourteen bushels may be taken out of the eligible position. If you did 5849-2101
that you would not be forced into the position of having to deprive people with a crop failure of a bonus in order to make up the nine sections. It would not cost the government more; if anything it would cost the government less.


James Garfield Gardiner: The only further answer I can give my hon. friend is that that question has been brought up to me at at least a dozen different farm annual meetings, and they have always started just as the hon. member is starting. I have always convinced them that I was right, and I was right; I am quite sure I am right, and we intend to stay with it as long as we think I am right.


Victor Quelch: One other question. Has the minister ever given consideration to dividing the township into two categories, one of four bushels and the other of eight. This year for the first time I have had several townships referred to me where one-half had a yield of under four bushels and one-half of four to eight bushels, and they wanted to divide the township into two divisions so that one area could be paid for four bushels and the other area could be paid for eight bushels. Has that ever been considered?


James Garfield Gardiner: It has been considered, but it has been decided in exactly the same way as other suggestions that we would take half of one township and add it on to the half of another and make a whole township. We would have to go over every section of the country and divide it all up and examine it from that point of view. That would increase the cost so much that I do not think it would help very many.


The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN:: If the amendment is to be put, this is what is disturbing me. The rules provide that the Speaker or the Chairman may get the views of hon. members on this question. What I should like to know is whether this amendment will increase the expenditures.


Edward George McCullough: I wish to refer you, Mr. Chairman, to the argument of the hon. member for Acadia who has just taken his seat. His argument was almost identical with that which I made in moving the amendment, namely, that it would reduce the inequalities now and pay awards to those who, I and all hon. members are agreed, are deserving of them.
My second point is that it does not, of necessity, increase any expenditure of money. With all due respect to what the Minister of Agriculture has said that ten or more agricultural bodies have met him and put up similar arguments to those put forward by
Prairie Farm Assistance Act

the hon. member for Acadia, I for one disagree with him when he says he is right in his argument, because an award is made to a person who really has an income, having fourteen bushels or more on an average on his farm, and in certain instances a farmer who has a complete crop failure does not get an award. I think my motion, whether you rule it out of order or not or whether the government is prepared to accept it or not, is a reasonable one, and I maintain that it should be given consideration by the minister.


Victor Quelch: I should like to support the amendment. I do not think it can be argued that it would mean an increase in government expenditure; I think it would mean the opposite.


James Garfield Gardiner: It means expenditure, I do not know whether it is more or less. Let us look at this thing and be a little bit reasonable. The amendment says that you are going to strike out all the words in lines 5 and 11, both inclusive, from this bill. It starts with "where". Paragraph (a) is struck out.


Edward George McCullough: Yes, but (a) is included in the amendment as drafted.


James Garfield Gardiner: You have a new (a).


Edward George McCullough: That
is right.


James Garfield Gardiner: It has nothing whatever to do with the question that is being discussed here. Let me get the original bill and indicate to the hon. member the section which deals with the question he is trying to deal vith in this amendment. It is section 3 of the original bill, not section 7. You are amending section 7. Section 3 of the original bill says that, subject to this act, the minister may in any crop year award to each person who was a farmer from the first day of May to the first day of November in such year a sum by way of assistance according to his cultivated land in any township with respect to which application for assistance has been made by the rural municipality in which that township is situated or in a case where no such rural municipality, by the government of the province in which the township is situated.
Subsection 2 provides the sum to be awarded by way of assistance under subsection 1, and paragraph (a) does not apply, because in this case the limit of eight to twelve bushels does not apply. Paragraph (b) provides that if the average yield of wheat in the township is more than four bushels and not more than eight bushels per acre, the award shall be $1.50 per acre. We have provided here how the payments must be made in all townships,
[Hr. McCullough (Assiniboia).]
and now you want to say in another section that payment is to be made in some other way. This is not the section that should be amended. All section 7 says is that you may take in nine or more sections along the edges of the whole area. Now you are going to take that out, so that the nine sections will not be eligible, and provide that anywhere in the whole district you must pay on a basis different from that provided in section 3.


Edward George McCullough: The
minister read section 3 of the original Prairie Farm Assistance Act of 1939. My amendment dealt with the bill now under consideration. The intent of the resolution is, of course, to do away with paragraph (a) and replace it with the amendment I moved, making an exception to the eligible blocks under paragraph (b) of section 7 on the basis indicated in the motion. So I think it is quite in order.
Amendment (Mr. McCullough, Assiniboia) negatived on division.


William Henry Golding: Shall the
section as amended carry? Carried.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: Are we now on section 3 or section 4?


William Henry Golding: Section 3 has been amended, and I declared it carried as amended.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: The question I should like to ask applies to the other sections anyway. A short time ago the minister said he felt it was the responsibility of the provincial government concerned to look after those portions of the townships which could not qualify under the present act. As the scheme is now set up, the only levy made is the one per cent, all of which goes into the fund under this act. In other words, the provincial government does not participate in the levy. Would the minister recommend that in the event of the provinces concerned agreeing to look after these fringes, so to speak, which cannot qualify under the act, they would participate in the levy? Or would they impose a levy of their own? In other words, how would they set up a fund in order to have something with which to work in conjunction with this act?


James Garfield Gardiner: The suggestion I have made from time to time since 1939 is that the amount they put in should bear a proper relationship, having regard to the land involved, to the amount of money put up from the federal treasury. The amount collected should, of course, go into the general fund to deal with everything.

Prairie Farm Assistance Act


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: In other words, you would be asking the provincial governments to put up as their share as much money as the federal government does, exclusive of the prairie farm assistance fund?


James Garfield Gardiner: No, not as much as we put up.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: I mean in proportion.


James Garfield Gardiner: We now put up two-thirds of all the money involved, but I would say we are covering 95 per cent of the land that might be affected. If that estimate is correct, then we would ask them to put up about five per cent of what we are putting up.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: That is what I was trying to get at.


James Garfield Gardiner: It may be ten per cent or twelve per cent; I am guessing at it.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: It means that the provincial governments would have to accept responsibility for an amount equal to what the federal government would put up if they endeavoured to look after these fringes that do not qualify?


James Garfield Gardiner: In proportion.
Section as amended agreed to.
On section 4-Levy of one per centum from purchase price of all grain purchased by licensees, etc.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: I believe this is a very useful act, but I do not think it should be considered separately but rather as part of the whole program for agriculture. We have two other acts that have done a great deal for the western provinces, the P.F.R.A. and the wheat board act. We are beginning to eliminate the risks and provide ourselves with safeguards against emergencies. In effect, the long-term contracts are price insurance. The P.F.R.A. has helped us to insure a water supply. The dugouts all over the west have been a tremendous help in maintaining the livestock population, and under the P.F.R.A. we have taken a great deal of submarginal land out of production.
These things when integrated could work into a stabilization of our whole agricultural industry and help maintain a high level of prosperity and spending which would be a great aid to Canada's whole economy. I suggest to the minister that we extend this program to include the principle of insurance. I was interested the other evening to hear the Minister of Reconstruction outline the provisions of the amendments to the Export Credits Insurance Act. As reported at page 2774 of Hansard he said:
More than seventy different countries received a variety of agricultural products, raw materials, and manufactured goods from Canadian exporters, insured by the corporation.
Under that act we insure against such things as war, revolution and defaulting governjnents. If we can insure our exporters against risks of that kind, which include such tremendous upheavals as war and revolution; if we can insure our agricultural products when they reach the export stage, surely we can work out a system of crop insurance on the first level to cover the man who is actually in the business of producing. I do not think we should consider it too expensive a proposition to put on an actuarial basis. It would not be nearly as expensive as the loss of a crop is to an individual. Speaking as a farmer, I would much rather put in five or six bushels or more, when I had the bushels, than lose an entire crop and have nothing but the very small payment now being made under this act. I think it is only intelligent to put it on the basis of insurance and remove it from the category of relief, because it was originated with the idea of helping the farmers set up a system to pay for each other's relief and thus take us off the federal treasury.
I am' glad the minister made a statement a few minutes ago as to the amount the government has put in. I do not think it is too much when one considers the contribution agriculture makes in this country, and the sacrifices agriculture has made in accepting lower prices when we might have had higher prices.
I think we have accepted the principle of insurance. We have unemployment insurance; we are considering health insurance, and we are also considering a contributory old age pension scheme. This may be slightly off the subject, but I think it is part of the argument. A contributory old age pension will be insurance against old age, and I think it is not too much to ask that we should begin now to put agriculture on an insurance basis, so that in years of crop failure we shall have more than a relief standard.


Eric Bowness McKay: There is one question I should like to ask the minister before this section is carried. It deals with a levy of one per cent that- was deducted for the servicing of the act. I wish the minister would tell me whether any consideration has been given to the zoning of the province into high or low risk areas; because as he is quite aware, owing to climatic conditions there are such areas. While it might be difficult to zone the province, I think
Prairie Farm Assistance Act

it would be quite feasible and it might result in a better reaction in the west with regard to these deductions which are being made.


James Garfield Gardiner: I imagine that the hon. member was not in his seat when I spoke on second reading.


Eric Bowness McKay: Yes, I think I was.


Mr GARDINER:: I dealt fully with that question. If the hon. member will read Hansard, he will find that is so. It constituted most of the speech I made. I pointed out that the matter of making it possible to pay under this bill necessitated the widest base possible from which collections are to be made, and we have made that base the whole Dominion of Canada. In so far as the farmer himself is concerned, we have made the basis all the farmers in the west. Just as the hon. member for Souris pointed out, if you tried to make it any higher, and districts that are never going to collect would raise some objection, and naturally so. As long as you keep it to one per cent, they say: All right, we will go along with you. But when we start to make it five or six per cent, or get it up to twenty per cent or sixteen per cent which is necessary to carry it in the areas that are affected, we would run into trouble.
I cannot argue that question of insurance, because, when this bill was drafted, I was definitely told by every legal authority we are advised by, that we just cannot pass insurance legislation on a question of this kind. I took the matter into the senate. I was asked to go there myself. Mr. Meighen was the leader of the opposition in the senate, and the legal adviser to the senate was there. Mr. Meighen asked him the definite question. He said: Is this insurance? The legal adviser said that, in his opinion, it was not, and because of that he thought it was intra vires. It was on the strength of that advice that it got through the committee over in the senate, and finally through the senate itself and came back here. I am absolutely convinced from all I have had to do with it that we cannot bring in crop insurance.
The only other thing I can say about it is that for fifty years 'to my knowledge 'the farmers in western Canada asked for crop insurance; or rather for forty years up to about ten years ago, they asked for crop insurance and never were able to get it. When I came here I made up my mind that we would not talk about crop insurance but would talk about prairie farm assistance, and we got that inside of two years. I would rather take what we obtained after two years of discussion of

something which can be given, than to go back and start talking about something which we talked about for forty years and could not get. I do not want to go back and talk about that.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: This section makes provision for the further collection of money- and I raised this point this afternoon-whereby the dominion government is taking care of anything up to a township. The provision here now is to deduct from the mills. While the farmers paying into this fund are subject to that with regard to the areas not coming under the dominion government would the minister consider giving a grant to the provincial government to take care of this matter of the smaller parts?


James Garfield Gardiner: We are asking the exact opposite. We are asking the provincial governments to give us a grant in order to help take care of them.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: Those farmers are already paying in. You do not want them to pay twice.


James Garfield Gardiner: They are already paying in, but they are paying in one-third of what they can draw. We are suggesting to the provinces that, since we are taking care of the six-mile square lots and the quarter township alongside of it, the provincial government should step in and help to take care of the small section. We say: If you come in and contribute proportionately to what we are contributing for the large areas, then we are quite prepared to carry the whole thing along under this act.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: In answer to the minister's argument, I want to point out several things we have achieved in Canada in the way of over-all security, in spite of constitutional difficulties. 'According to the British North America Act, health is a matter in which the provinces have complete jurisdiction. The same thing is true with regard to labour. Yet we have achieved, through conferences and agreements of various kinds, a large share of the federal government's jurisdiction in matters of social insurance, health and so on. As a matter of fact-


William Henry Golding: Order.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: Coming back to this bill, the thing I wish to illustrate is that we did not leave it on the basis of our original decision.


James Garfield Gardiner: We did not here either.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: The point the minister was making was that, because in the beginning

Prairie Farm Assistance Act
Mr. Meighen or someone else said we could not go into crop insurance, then we can never go into crop insurance.


James Garfield Gardiner: May I just explain? I should like to get this bill through, but I shall take only a few minutes. If we were trying to have our authority over insurance law amended-it is one thing to say you can amend the constitution; but I was in the provincial house for a long time and in the provincial house we had a great deal to do with insurance legislation-I am satisfied that the insurance companies across this country would not consent to our being given all the control over insurance. If we start out with that objective of taking control over insurance before helping farmers, the farmers will never get anything.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: Are the insurance companies the government?


James Garfield Gardiner: No, they are not; but they have influence in nine provinces.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Do they?


William Henry Golding: Order. It is a well-known fact that speeches in committee must be strictly relevant to the clause under discussion. The clause under discussion does not deal with insurance.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: The point I wish to make is that we are not bound to this quantity or this percentage of contribution; that we have in large areas of government made adjustments between provincial rights and federal rights. I do not see that the life insurance companies are mentioned in this section. I see nothing about the life insurance companies, and yet they were dragged in during the last two or three minutes. I do not see that we have any concern for life insurance companies in our crop insurance plan. We are considering the ability of the farmer to protect himself against risks. I submit that we could extend this act, just as we have extended so many other kinds of legislation, by agreement between the provinces and the federal government; just as we have done with regard to unemployment, which is a labour problem, and which, under the constitution, is dealt with by provincial legislation; and just as we shall do one of these days with health insurance which is within the jurisdiction of the provinces. I
submit that we could extend this act to set up a graduated scale of contributions whereby those areas with the greatest risks would contribute most, just as we do with life insurance. You do not insure at the same rate if you are twenty years of age as you do if you are older.


William Henry Golding: Order.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: Yes, I know, Mr. Chairman. But on the same basis this insurance could be on the basis of graduated risks; if it were on that basis, I do not think you would have the objection there is from those areas where there is less risk, and I think there would be much greater support for the act.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 5 agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported.
James Horace King: When shall the bill be read the third time?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Now.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Next sitting.


James Garfield Gardiner: In view of the fact that only one word was changed, "eligible" to "ineligible", could third reading not be given now?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Agreed.
Bill read the third time and passed.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

[Stage Direction]
Mr. ST. LAURENT: On Monday we shall consider in committee of the whole Bill No. 203, to amend the Unemployment Insurance Act. Then we shall proceed with the second reading of Bill No. 198, to amend the Dominion Elections Act; Bill No. 35, respecting the provisional fur seal agreement between Canada and the United States; the bill concerning amendments to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act; Bill No. 9, to amend the Northwest Territories Act; Bill No. 11, to amend the Dominion Water Powers Act, and finally the resolution in the name of the Postmaster General concerning the Supplemental Payments Act.
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
[Stage Direction]
Monday, April 26, 1948