PRIVILEGE


[Stage Direction]
"gazette"
Mr. H. R. ARGUE (Wood. Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of privilege arising out of an article appearing in the Montreal Gazette of Friday, February 27. It is headed "H. A. Argue gives dig at Saskatchewan government on Wheat Board Act". My initials, Mr. Speaker, are not H. A., but H. R. Further, I was not digging at the Saskatchewan government, and my further point of privilege is contained in the first sentence of the article, which reads:
With an election in the offing in Saskatchewan the government's forthcoming resolution to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act to provide for controls over oats and barley similar to those now on wheat "is a good political gesture at this time." H. A. Argue (PC)-
I object, Mr. Speaker, to that very degrading indication that I am a member of the Progressive Conservative party.


Mr. GRAYDON:: On the same question of privilege, Mr. Speaker, there is no rule so far as I know which prevents any person from paying a compliment to a member of the house.



RAILWAY GRADE CROSSING FUND


[Stage Direction]
Hon. LIONEL CHEVRIER (Minister of Transport) moved that the house go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to introduce a measure to increase the amount to be appropriated for the railway grade crossing fund from $200,000 to $500,000 each year for nine years, commencing on the first day of April, 1948.
He said:	His Excellency the Governor
General, having been made acquainted with the subject matter of this resolution, recommends it to the consideration of the house.
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Gordon Graydon: Mi. Speaker, I should like to address a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs, of which I have given notice to his parliamentary assistant, having been unable to reach the minister. The minister may want to defer an answer until later or make a statement now. Does the government endorse and approve the three-power statement issued yesterday by Great Britain, France and the United States respecting Czechoslovakia? What immediate effects, if any, will the recent change in the Czechoslovakian government have on our relations with that power in the diplomatic, financial and trade fields?
Right Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Secretary of State for External Affairs): To the first question all I can say is that the statement published in the newspapers has not been before the government for consideration. To the second question, the matter of our future relations, financial and otherwise, with Czechoslovakia is now under consideration, and that consideration probably will not be completed until we get more accurate and fuller official information. When it is completed and a decision has been arrived at, it will be announced to the house.



CRIMINAL CODE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. J. G. DIEFENBAKER (Lake Centre):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Justice. Today's press reports a circumstance that has been recurring with some frequency of late, namely, criminal trials having to be declared abortive because of illness of one or more jurymen. The question I wish to ask the minister is this: is consideration being given to amending the criminal code to the end that one or two supernumerary jurymen will be sworn in at
Inquiries oj the Ministry

[DOT] the time a criminal jury is empanelled so that the difficulty I have mentioned will be obviated?


Right Hon. J. L. ILSLEY (Minister of Justice) :: Consideration has been given to taking some steps by way of amendment to the criminal code to meet the situation complained of, but whether the steps will be those outlined by my hon. friend remain to be seen.


John George Diefenbaker: Something will be done?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Consideration is being given to something being done.


Mr. HACKETT:: Will the minister say whether there is any hope that the revision of the criminal code which has been under discussion for some time may be initiated this year?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I expect to make an
announcement later in the session as to the appointment of a commission or body of some kind to undertake a revision of the criminal code, but a question arises as to what powers these commissioners should be given. In all probability their duties should be different from those commissioners who are appointed to revise the statutes. That also is a matter to which consideration is being given.



VETERANS AFFAIRS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. G. R. PEARICES (Nanaimo):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Postmaster General? Are ex-servicemen being released from employment as temporary letter carriers in Victoria, B.C., on the grounds that they failed to qualify at a civil service examination? If so, will the Postmaster General waive the necessity of passing these examinations in the case of ex-servicemen who have given satisfactory employment for periods of over twelve months as letter carriers?


Hon. ERNEST BERTRAND (Postmaster General):: This is a question which will be answered by the minister who has the civil service commission under his jurisdiction. However, I might say that if a returned man tries an examination and does not succeed, we keep him on for some time and try to give him a chance to pass another examination later on. Of course if he fails in two examinations we have to replace him.



SINGLE STUDENTS TRAINING ALLOWANCES

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. G. H. CASTLEDEN (Yorkton):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Veterans Affairs. What recent steps have been taken to increase the amount of $60 payable to single student veterans while in training in Canada, to make it possible for them to meet the rapidly rising cost of living?
Hon. MILTON F. GREGG (Minister of Veterans Affairs): Mr. Speaker, no steps have been taken to increase the allowances of single veteran students on vocational training or at universities, except to those who have fully dependent parents, and in these cases the increase is $10 a month per parent.



PRAIRIE FARM ASSISTANCE-OVERPAYMENTS UNDER WHEAT ACREAGE REDUCTION SCHEME

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. F. S. ZAPLITNY (Dauphin):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Agriculture. Is it the policy of the Department of Agriculture to deduct overpayments made under the wheat acreage reduction scheme from payments now being made to farmers under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act? If so, will the minister tell the house under what authority this is done.


Right Hon. J. G. GARDINER (Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, I shall have to inquire into the matter and answer later.



QUESTION OF SHIPMENT TO .EUROPEAN COUNTRIES FOR RELIEF PURPOSES

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. W. CHESTER S. McLURE (Queens): I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Fisheries. Has the minister made any contracts, for the sale of maritime processed fish, with European countries for relief purposes? If not, when can it be expected that this will be done?
Hon. J. A. MacKINNON (Minister of Fisheries):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Queens gave me notice of his intention to ask this question. In reply I wish to say that no firm contracts have yet been entered into by the Canadian government or foreign relief agencies for the purchase of fishery products in Canada. Negotiations are currently under way for the sale of a relatively small quantity of Atlantic coast dried fish and Pacific coast

.	Canadian Wheat Board Act
canned herring under the United States aid to Greece program. All departments of government concerned are making efforts to have Canadian fishery products included in the current and prospective European relief programs.



HONG KONG


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Gordon Graydon: May I direct a question to the acting leader of the government? When the evidence of the Hong Kong commission is tabled in the house will the government give consideration to having copies printed so that it will be available simultaneously to the press gallery and to the public in order to avoid any congestion that perhaps may normally arise in connection with a matter of the kind?
Right Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Secretary of State for External Affairs): I am not as conscious as the hon. member seems to be of the probability of there being congestion to secure copies of the evidence when it is tabled. All that I oan say to him is that the question he has asked will now appear in Hansard and it will be given consideration.



INCREASE IN COSTS OF FEEDING-REIMPOSITION OF PRICE CEILING

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. J. H. BLACKMORE (Lethbridge):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Agriculture? Has it been brought to the minister's attention how seriously the costs of feeding beef have increased' within the last year? When may the house expect an answer to the question I asked the government yesterday?


James Garfield Gardiner: The first part of the question is not a question; it is a statement which is not a fact. The other part of the question does not apply to my department.



CANADIAN WHEAT BOARD ACT


[Stage Direction]
Right Hon. C. D. HOWE (Minister of Trade and Commerce) moved that the house go into committee to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to present a bill to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act, to authorize the board to provide pensions for members, officers and employees and to make provision for the increase of the fixed minimum price on wheat deliveries; to extend the control of international movements of wheat products and to empower the governor in council to extend the present system to oats or barley.
He said: The purposes and essential features of the bill to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act, which will be founded on this resolution, are fourfold, as follows: (a) to make provision for pensions for members, officers and employees of the board; (b) to provide authority to increase the SI.35 fixed minimum price, and to make corresponding increases in payments to producers who have delivered, or will deliver, wheat to the board within the five-year pool period; (c) to extend the control of interprovincial movements of wheat to wheat products; (d) to empower the governor in council, by regulation, to extend to oats or barley the regulations now applicable to wheat.
The proposed amendments are important to every grower of wheat and coarse grains, and in fact to consumers of coarse grains. Growers of wheat will find an urgency in the passage of these amendments. The first' three amendments should not be contentious, and while there may be differences of opinion regarding the wisdom of the fourth amendment, I trust that debate at least in the resolution stage need not be unduly prolonged.
Before discussing the merits of the amendments, it may be worthwhile to review briefly the history of the wheat board and its present responsibilities. The origin of the Canadian wheat board can be traced back to the board of grain supervisors established in 1917, which directed the marketing of Canada's wheat during the war period and until 1920 when it was abolished. The government resumed its activity in wheat marketing in 1931 by undertaking stabilization activities which unfortunately failed in their objective in that there was little stability in wheat prices from 1931 to 1935.
The present Canadian wheat board was established under the Canadian Wheat Board Act of July 5, 1935. The board now consists of three commissioners and an eleven-man * advisory committee. The primary function of the board has remained the handling of wheat, but during the war in particular it was assigned a number of other functions, such as rationing elevator space, handling, on various occasions, flaxseed, soy beans, sunflower seed, rapeseed, the equalization funds for oats and barley, the administration of drawbacks in respect to flour and other wheat products, and the minimum support and ceiling prices for
Canadian Wheat Board Act
[Stage Direction]
oats and barley. The most important change in general policy took place in 1943, when the government took over, through the board, all stocks of unsold cash wheat and stopped trading in wheat futures on the Winnipeg grain exchange. At that time the board became the monopoly trader in all wheat moving in interprovincial or international channels.
Throughout the war years, Canada provided practically all the import wheat consumed in the United Kingdom, and special arrangements were made to give the United Kingdom priority in obtaining its continuing requirements of wheat. In 1946 a four-year contract was made between Canada and the United Kingdom, involving purchase by the United Kingdom of 600 million bushels of wheat in the four year period ending July 31. 1950. In order to enable Canada to carry out its obligations under this contract, the wheat crops grown m the years 1945, 1916, 1947, 1948 and 1949 were pooled, and the present wheat pool act provides that initial payments on wheat delivered to the pool will be based on S 1.35 per bushel.
The la9t ten years have seen a full cycle of problems in the marketing of Canadian wheat. The first phase from 1938 to 1942 saw the steady accumulation of record supplies, which reached a carryover of some 600 million bushels in July 1943. During this period, the handling and storing of these unprecedented quantities of wheat was the major administrative concern of the board. In the second phase, from 1942 to date, somewhat lower production and increasing demand has reversed the trend and the problem is becoming one of moving stocks to seaboard as rapidly as possible. The carryover was reduced to 73 million bushels, as at July 31, 1946, and will probably be little more than that at the end of the current crop year.
As would be expected, in the light of these huge shifts in the supply and demand situation, major adjustments have been required from time to time in board policies, and amendments to the wheat act have in fact been necessary each year. This year is not an exception. Although there is no important new element in the picture, the continued failure of supply to overtake demand has created new situations, which render further amendments to the wheat board act desirable.
An obvious requirement is a pension fund for the staff of the board. The Canadian wheat board has been operating continuously since 1935, and up to the present time, but no provision has been made for a pension for any member of the staff. The proposed amendment provides the board with authority to establish a pension fund with the approval of the

governor in council. A scheme is contemplated which would require contributions equally from employees and the board. The contributions of the board to the fund would be considered part of the expenses of the board's operations. This is, of course, increasingly recognized today as a necessary expense of doing business. It may be questioned whether, on balance, it should be considered merely as an expense. In many cases, the automatic saving and security provided by a pension are valued more than an equivalent increase in pay, enabling the employer to hold trained personnel and to reduce costly turnover. When the bill is in committee I shall be able to give figures as to the number of employees involved and the approximate cost, but I think it is sufficient to say, at this stage, that it is intended that the pension plan, when introduced, will be similar to the superannuation provisions for civil servants generally.
The second amendment deals with an increase in the initial payment for wheat delivered to the five-year pool. Practically final results on two of the five years involved in the pool are now available. The 1945 wheat deliveries totalled 235-4 million bushels, and the Canadian wheat board holds a surplus of approximately $44,000,000 on this crop. The 1946 deliveries totalled 333 million bushels and the board holds a surplus of about $110 million derived from this crop.
The 1947-48 crop year is more than half completed, so it is possible to make fairly close calculations for this current year. The board estimates wheat deliveries at only 270 millions, which leaves about 20 million bushels for sale at class 2 price, outside the domestic and United Kingdom markets. Most of the wheat is either sold, or is committed, at the fixed domestic or United Kingdom prices. Therefore, it is fairly safe to estimate that there will be a surplus of about $80,000,000 on the 1947 crop.
There are, of course, many unknown factors concerning the 1948 and 1949 crops at this time. We do not know what the production and marketing will be, and our assumptions can only proceed on the basis of average crops. The market possibilities are also somewhat obscure but the Canada-United Kingdom wheat agreement provides for the sale of 140 millions at $2.00 per bushel in 1948-49 and the same quantity in 1949-50, the price for this latter year to be settled later. We must re-emphasize that there are major hazards in attempting, at this time, to arrive at the financial position of the five-year pool as at its terminal date, July 31, 1950, when

__________ Canadian Wheat Board Act
we now have complete information for two crops, incomplete information for the current year, and only a few guides for the last two crop years.
However, it does now appear that the guaranteed initial payment of $1.35 a bushel for No. 1 Manitoba northern, basis Fort William-Port Arthur or Vancouver, provided for in the act, is lower than necessary to maintain a prudent margin over the five-year period. It is consequently proposed to raise that payment. The proposed increase will, of course, be applicable to the 1945, 1946 and 1947 crops already delivered or being delivered, and to the 1948 and 1949 crops.
The amount of the new initial payment, or sum certain, is not included in the bill. Instead, the government is taking power to increase the initial payment from time to time, whenever the cash position of the pool would appear to justify such action. Any such increases in initial payment will of course be retroactive to producers who have already sold and delivered wheat to the pool, within the pool period, and will represent a guaranteed price for future deliveries of wheat to the pool, for the balance of the pool period. It is the wish of the government that, if prices continue strong, the advantage shall not be withheld from the producer, and that steps shall be taken to pass on the benefits as quickly as the circumstances may warrant.
The amount of the increase in the initial payment now contemplated will not be announced until this bill becomes law. The reason, I think, is obvious. Should these amendments fail to receive approval, the government would have no power to increase the amount of the initial payment that is at present specified in the wheat board act. There would be no purpose in debating the subject of price at this time, as this must be a matter for the government to decide. I am sure that there will be less confusion and less expenditure of time if we consider the amendments covered by the resolution which have to do with the general principles of procedure and operation of the board, without bringing in the question of the amount of the proposed increase in the initial payment.
The third amendment proposes to include control of wheat products as well as wheat. The Canadian Wheat Board Act now prohibits the sale or movement of wheat from one province to another province, or outside Canada, unless the wheat is the property of the board or the movement is permitted by it. There is, however, no control over the movement of wheat products across provincial boundaries. I am advised by the wheat board *849-107
that, since something over 100 million bushels of w'heat are now annually milled in Canada, of which about half is for the domestic market, the lack of control over interprovincial movements of flour could be a source of serious weakness in maintaining effective control of the basic wheat situation.
The fourth amendment proposes to empower the governor in council by regulation to extend to oats and barley the regulations now applicable to wheat. Strong representations favouring the marketing of oats and barley through the wheat board have been received from farm organizations in both western and eastern Canada, among them the Canadian council of agriculture. The government desires to meet the wishes of farm organizations in this regard, provided a workable plan can be agreed upon. However, the government is well aware that the compulsory marketing of oats and barley through the board represents serious difficulties. The success of such an enterprise must be dependent on a large measure of agreement on policy matters as between organized farmers of both the producer and the consumer class, as well as on the co-operation of provincial governments. Therefore this government will wish to have concrete evidence of such agreement and such co-operation before it can assume the responsibility for putting this amendment into effect.
The difficulties of which I speak stem from the basically different uses made of wheat on the one hand and of oats and barley on the other. Wheat is pre-eminently a grain for human consumption, "the staff of life," the most efficient and economical foodstuff known to the human race. About three bushels out of every four of the Canadian crop are consumed as food by people at home and abroad and, of the balance, about half is required for seeding the next crop. The great bulk of the crop-on the average over eighty per cent- must be moved across interprovincial and international boundaries. Consequently the federal government can, under its legal responsibilities, regulate and have effective control of the wheat trade as a whole.
Oats and barley, on the other hand, are preeminently animal feed crops. Human use, including porridge, beer and whisky, amounts to less than two per cent of the oats crop and five per cent of the barley crop of Canada. In fact, only about thirty per cent of the oats and forty per cent of the barley ever leave the farms on which they are grown, except in the form of livestock. A large proportion of these grains that leave the farm are sold as feed or seed to other farmers. In recent years only about twenty per cent of the prairie oat and
Canadian Wheat Board Act
[Stage Direction]
barley crops have moved, under the government's freight assistance policy, to eastern Canada or to British Columbia. Incidentally this is a far greater proportion of the crop than had ever moved out of the prairie provinces prior to the initiation of the government's freight assistance policy.
Normally a relatively insignificant portion of these crops moves into export. In short, the movement of oats and barley is from farmer to farmer. This presents peculiar problems in establishing and maintaining prices which would be accepted as fair in both the east and west, under a federal government monopoly of interprovincial trade. To put it another way: while the wheat board is handling wheat it is primarily concerned-to quote the Canadian Wheat Board Act-with "promoting the sale of grain, produced in Canada, in world markets." The wheat board, in handling oats and barley, would be concerned primarily with sales of western grain to eastern farmers, at prices that both seller and buyer will consider fair and reasonable. I am informed that at a recent meeting of the Canadian federation of agriculture this possible conflict of interest between farmer buyers and farmer sellers was recognized.
Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):: Was that "recognized" or "reconciled"?


Mr. HOWE:: Recognized. The point I am making is that while wheat, oats and barley are all classed as grains, their marketing, from the point of view of their place in the whole mechanism of production and trade, as well as their use and customary manner of handling, are quite different and distinct. This raises not only practical marketing problems but also constitutional questions. As my colleague the Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley) observed last year, speaking of the dominion government entering this field alone-if I may be allowed to paraphrase him-a scheme that would work for oats and barley would not be constitutional, and a constitutional scheme would not work.
It is with this dilemma in mind that we are introducing the present legislation. There is no question of the dominion's constitutional authority to regulate interprovincial trade or export trade in oats and barley, but there is very considerable doubt as to whether that limited power would in itself provide effective control of commodities which are so largely marketed locally. This amendment to the wheat board act will open the door as far as the federal government is concerned. The next step will be to determine whether the three provincial governments most directly con-

cerned-that is, in the prairie provinces-wish to join with us in placing compulsory regulation of the trade in oats and barley in the hands of the wheat board.
Presumably this could be done most conveniently by use of the device known as "conjoint" or "complementary" legislation. The device of "enabling" legislation, once employed in a number of fields of agricultural production marketing, has been held ultra vires by the privy council as a method of delegating provincial powers to the dominion. Co-operative arrangements have, however, been worked out and given the force of law in several fields of agricultural marketing, by "conjoint" or "complementary" legislation. In such cases the province or provinces concerned that wish to take advantage of the dominion legislation pass directly whatever complementary legislation is necessary and within their power, and appoint the dominion administrative agents as provincial agents as well. This may perhaps indicate a path for provincial co-operation which must be a preliminary to bringing this legislation into force.
The government is prepared to take whatever steps lie within its power to assist in establishing marketing arrangements that will help to maintain economic and stable prices for Canadian agricultural products. The government must, however, be satisfied that any given scheme for this purpose is a practical one, a constitutional one, a workable one and one that will command the support of the interested groups concerned. Until it is satisfied that these conditions have been met, the government will not be prepared to undertake the marketing of oats and barley through the wheat board. It will be noted in the resolution that marketing arrangements shall come into force only at the beginning of a crop year. I believe the attitude of the government in this regard will be understood by all hon. members who are familiar with grain marketing and related agricultural problems.


Mr. J. A. ROSS (Souris):: Mr. Speaker, I listened very attentively and1 certainly with interest to the address just delivered by the new Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) on this resolution which reads:
Resolved, that it is expedient to present a bill to am and the Canadian Wheat Board Act, to authorize the board to provide pensions for members, officers and employees and to make provision for the increase of the fixed minimum price on wheat deliveries; to extend the control of interprovincial movements of wheat products and to empower the governor in council to extend the present system to oats or barley.
The minister commenced his remarks by stating he thought the first two or three items

Canadian Wheat Board Act
would not be controversial but that certainly the third might cause considerable debate. As he expounded his views on the resolution I think he certainly proved to this house that several of the amendments now being proposed will be rather contentious.
The minister said the wheat board act came into being in 1935 and that the first important change was made in 1943, when it took over the handling of all wheat in this country, I believe under the war measures act. Then he went on to deal with the various amendments proposed. The first had to do with pensions. He pointed out that authority was to be given to the board to provide pensions for its officers and employees on a contributory basis, fifty per cent being contributed by the employees and fifty per cent by the board, which means that, since the board's contribution comes out of the board's funds, ultimately that portion of the cost will be borne by the grain producers of the country.
Then the minister went on to deal with the initial payment, and made the remarkable statement that the amount of the initial payment would not be embodied in the bill. He set forth the surplus for the 1945 crop year, which we all realize is the last complete year we have, since the complete report for 1946 is not in yet. The minister gave an estimate of $110 million and' a further estimate for the crop year 1947, which we are about half way through, of some $80,000,000. I believe the total of the figures he gave is about $234 million. The amount he gave for 1945 is not identical with the surplus shown in the wheat board report for that year but the two figures are within a few million of each other; and in these days, with all the things the minister is doing and all the things he did in the past, I suppose we should1 not quibble about a few million dollars.
I do not know whether it is parliamentary to term a bill political trickery, but honestly I have never seen another bill of this nature introduced in this house. The minister went on to speak of the third amendment, which will deal with the movement of wheat products within the country; and the fourth, which he said from the start might be very controversial. The minister said compulsory marketing often gives rise to very serious difficulties, and I believe he referred to a statement made some time ago by the law officers of the crown. This all seems remarkable when we think of the debate that took place in this house about a year ago on another bill to amend the wheat board act. That bill was passed by this house on March 13, 1947, and during the discussion there was quite a controversy. At that time no mration whatever 5849-1074
was made of the amount of wheat to be delivered to the United Kingdom during the four-year period referred to; and that point has been mentioned again today. Nor during those discussions was there any mention in the bill of the price to be paid by the United Kingdom under that contract. So when anyone says that after many objections and amendments to the bill of last year a great many on this side of the house voted for the United Kingdom-Canada wheat agreement in its entirety. I maintain that is hardly the fact. I voted for the Canadian wheat board, as I have always done, and I continue to be a supporter of the board. But I want to say we have never had an opportunity in this house to vote on the United Kingdom-Canada wheat agreement by itself, in its entirety.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Hansard says differently.


James Arthur Ross: I followed the debate closely; I have read Hansard carefully several times, and I maintain that is not a fact. We have never opposed the gift to Britain. We have always said they deserved it, and that by all means we should give it to them, but that the cost should be borne by the taxpayers of Canada. We have never voted to saddle the producers of this country with that unfair burden, nor were we ever given the opportunity to vote on that question by itself. In the debate last year the hon. member for Yorkton (Mr. Castleden) moved an amendment, which is to be found at page 857 of Hansard for February 27, 1947, as follows:
The provisions of this act shall be made applicable to oats, barley, rye and flax, and shall mutatis mutandis apply to such kind of grain as they apply to wheat.
I followed the hon. member, and at page 858 of Hansard I opposed such legislation as giving altogether too much power to the government to proceed by order in council. I have always opposed legislation by order in council in peacetime. I went on to say:
Today our producers have no idea how their coarse grains may be handled during this coming crop year-
That was in 1947, and the same thing is going to apply in 1948. I could go into a great deal of detail, but I can tell you there is quite a controversy among the barley producers of the west as to what their plans should be for 1948, especially if the embargo is continued which shuts them out from their natural market for malting barley. Following my remarks last year the Minister of Agriculture had this to say, also at page 858:
I 'am quite certain that neither the farm organization nor the farmers generally would want the act to go quite that far . . . Wheat,
Canadian Wheat Board Act

as we grow it in -western Canada, is grown intentionally for -the purpose of feeding human beings . . . Therefore we set down a certain method of marketing it. Oats and barley, on the other hand . . . are grains which are grown largely for the purpose of feeding them on the farms where they are grown or of selling them from one farmer to another-
I believe the Minister of Trade and Commerce covered that same point in his remarks a few moments ago. Following that the Minister of Justice had this to say, at pages 865 and 866:
. . . wheat being mainly an export commodity . . . we think we keep within the confines of our constitutional powers when we deal with wheat. But the law officers tell me that the situation would be much more doubtful when you are dealing with commodities which are predominantly sold in Canada. Take a commodity three-quarters of which is sold in Canada or within the provinces . . .
That is certainly the situation at present with respect to oats and barley. There is an embargo which prohibits the shipment out of Canada of any oats or barley except for seed purposes. The minister said his law officers had informed him that it would be unconstitutional-


John George Diefenbaker: But this is an election year.


James Arthur Ross: I said I had never seen such a bill introduced in this house, nor had I read of such a bill in the history of this nation. I think those of us who have lived with this wheat board act will agree that the board was brought into being to market wheat, which is an export commodity, and to obtain the best price possible for the producers. I do not think there is any argument at all about that. Throughout the war years, under -the war measures act, and today by legislation the board has been and is being used as a price control agency, to keep the price down. Instead of setting floor prices for the -producers it is setting ceiling prices. It has been subsidizing the consumers of Canada and Great Britain and is doing so today. That was not the original thought when the wheat board was brought into being. I have pointed out at various times in the past what the operations of this board and price control measures in Canada have cost *the producers of this country. I know there is some argument about having exact figures in the matter. However I have used the Searle index in the past, and I shall continue to use it. Speaking in the house at this session I pointed out that according to their figures, from 1943 until December 1947 wheat producers had suffered a loss of $857 million, represented by the difference between the

world price and the price offered by the Canadian wheat board. I repeat that statement. That is what it cost Canadian producers in the matter of wheat alone.
The minster has dealt with figures to which I have already referred relating to surpluses for three years, both actual and estimated. I placed a question on the order paper, in response to which I received a return, and in that return are figures showing the bushels of wheat handled by the wheat board in 1945. The bushelage is placed at 237,297.000, and the surplus in the report is $39,000,000 some odd. The total bushels of wheat handled by the board in 1946 is given as 335,108,000, and for 1947, the present marketing year, it is estimated that the board will handle 270,278,000 bushels.	The total for three years is
842,684,414 bushels of wheat. That is what I presume we are chiefly concerned about in the resolution at -this time, namely the total bushels of wheat handled by the board in those three years.
The total figures the minister put on record a few minutes ago amounted to $234,000,000, actual and estimated. So that is the amount which will have to be divided over this amount of wheat. I cannot for the life of me understand why an initial payment price is not embodied in the bill at this time. Once we were away from the house last year the exminister of trade and commerce made speeches throughout the country, and other ministers of the government also made speeches, stating that there would be payment of at least 20 cents a bushel made as soon as parliament assembled at this present session. Now we have before us this vague measure suggesting that in the amending legislation no price will be embodied in the bill. We have that factor. There has been reference to the movement of wheat products, and the suggestion has been made by order in council as to how oats or barley may be handled. The minister himself points out in the same remarks just how unconstitutional the matter is.
If there ever was a measure brought into parliament for members of the government to flout at election time across this country, to play it both ways, then you certainly have it in this measure.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Who is having the election?


John George Diefenbaker: Saskatchewan.


James Arthur Ross: I said for election purposes when an election co-mes along. There is certainly one in Saskatchewan this year.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Which side are you on in the Saskatchewan election?

Canadian Wheat Board Act


James Arthur Ross: I do not know much about it. I have not been around there much.


Mr. MARTIN:: Everybody is for Tucker.


James Arthur Ross: I shall have more to say later on about this measure. However in view of the resolution as it is worded on the order paper, and more especially in the face of the remarks placed on record today by the Minister of Trade and Commerce, who is sponsoring the resolution, and in order that hon. members may have an opportunity to deal with the different and very important principles involved in the resolution to be embodied in a bill, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Calgary East (Mr. Harkness), the following amendment:
(a)	That the words "a bill to amend The Canadian Wheat Board Act" be struck out and that the words "three bills" be substituted therefor.
(b)	That the words "Canadian Wheat" be substituted immediately be fore the word "Board" in the third line of the resolution.
(e) That the following words be added to the resolution:
"and that the said three bills shall relate respectively to:
(a)	pensions;
(b)	increased minimum prices on wheat
deliveries;
(c)	control of interprovineial movements
of wheat products and extension of the
present system to oats or barley."
I have already spoken about the great loss in the marketing of wheat. We find that oats and barley now become a controversial matter in this resolution. I hold in my hand some figures taken from the Sanford Evans statistical bureau for the calendar year 1946. There may be some in the house who would dispute these figures, but I would point out that this bureau has a good reputation. Added to this is the great loss to the producer on the marketing of coarse grains and livestock. In the calendar year of 1946 the average difference as between the United States and Canada amounted on coarse grains to $88,447,000. On livestock in western Canada the amount was $169,125,000, and in eastern Canada $121,200,000, making a total of $378,772,000 in the one year of 1946. That has been going on ever since 1943.
On February 13, 1948, as reported at page 1198 of Hansard, the hon. member for Pro-vencher (Mr. Jutras) attempted to take the Searle grain index bureau apart.


Mr. SINNOTT:: And made a good job of it too.


James Arthur Ross: May I say before going further that I have known the head of that bureau, Major H. G. L. Strange, for a
good many years. He had a very fine war record, and the bureau has done yeoman service for western agriculture in Canada for many years. I have no brief for any particular firm, but I can say that the Searle Grain Co. operate farms in Manitoba, and have one of the finest shorthorn herds in the prairie provinces. They have done a fine job in the prairies, as I have known them, and I am prepared to accept their figures and statistics. And if the member wanted to be fair he could have shown that all their figures are taken from government statistics. The figures used by the Searle grain research department cannot be successfully and truthfully contradicted by any responsible member of this house or elsewhere. All the figures used in compilations by the Searle research department and the Sanford Evans statistical bureau are taken from the dominion bureau of statistics, the Canadian wheat board reports and other publications under the authority of the Canadian government and other governments.


Mr. JUTRAS:: Except the propaganda part.


James Arthur Ross: My hon. friend the young member for Provencher (Mr. Jutras), a school teacher by profession, and one who apparently is quite emphatic in denouncing the Searle research department for what he termed fictitious figures based upon an imaginative and unreal situation, put upon the record, to use his own words, a conglomeration of figures prepared by himself. I would refer hon. members to his speech of February 13 as it appears at pages 1198 to 1203.


René Jutras: Is that strange? Use my own words.


The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr. Golding):: Is the hon. member referring to a debate which took place this session?


James Arthur Ross: The debate in reply to the speech from the throne.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is out of order.


James Arthur Ross: I wish to say that many of the figures used by the hon. member had no relation whatever to the actual figures of the Canadian wheat board or the dominion bureau of statistics, or to figures used by the Minister of Trade and Commerce when he discussed wheat in the house. The hon. member said that to come out boldly and say that the United States farmer gets $2.18 is absolutely erroneous. Had he wished to be fair he would have quoted from the Searle Grain Company's index of January 21, 1948.


William Henry Golding: Order. I hope the hon. member will not con-

Canadian Wheat Board Act

tinue to refer to a speech made in the debate on the address, which is not before the committee at this time.


James Arthur Ross: I am just discussing wheat, Mr. Speaker, and I was going on to say if the hon. member had read further from that index he would have told you that the price paid to the farmer at North Portal, Saskatchewan, on January 20, 1948, was $1.20|, and that price was at the elevator. The price at the elevator at North Portal, North Dakota, was S2.87i. I used to travel in that district and I am prepared during the Easter recess to drive the hon. member for Provencher to North Portal at my own expense so that we can together check the records at the two elevators.
He was talking about prices on June 5. I have also the Searle Grain index he referred to, and I will read a line he did not read to the house:
American farmers just across the international line are today receiving the equivalent if $2.18 for their wheat.


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is answering a speech made in the debate on the address. He has a right to make this speech in that debate, which is still continuing, but he should not in this debate reply to a speech made in the debate on the address.


William Henry Golding: I would ask the hon. member for Souris not to refer to that speech in this debate.


James Arthur Ross: 
Clarence Decatur Howe: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is replying to a speech made on the address. Would it be reasonable to ask that he debate the resolution now before us?


William Henry Golding: I would ask the hon. member to refrain from referring to the debate on the address.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I would like to ask the hon. member for Souris a question.


William Henry Golding: Order. I must ask the hon. member for Springfield to take his seat. Let me point out again that a member who has the floor must not be interrupted or asked a question without his permission.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: Have I the hon. member's consent?


James Arthur Ross: You certainly have.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I heard the hon. member's statement as to his attitude toward the Winnipeg grain exchange. Now let us have it straight, yes or no. Are you in favour of it or are you not?


James Arthur Ross: If the hon. member heard what I said in the house or has read my speeches in Hansard he will know that my stand was plainly stated1 in the house.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I have read your statements lots of times and you have never made a clear statement on the subject yet.


James Arthur Ross: In the last session of parliament, in answer to a question by the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bracken), the then Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. McKinnon) said that the spread was 77 cents and a fraction, and I prefer to take the minister's figures given at that time.
Major Strange, the head of the research department of the Searle Grain Company, wired the hon. member for Provencher challenging him to a debate. The hon. member's reply was: Let Major Strange get elected to the house and we will have a debate here. I have on several occasions in the past expressed my disapproval of members taking advantage of their position in this house to abuse people outside or distort facts when the person concerned has no opportunity to reply. It is not very courageous to do that. The Searle grain

Canadian Wheat Board Act
bureau have rendered a great servioe to western agriculture, and they continue to do so; in my opinion the name of Major Strange is above reproach.


René Jutras: The hon. gentleman has constantly stated that I applied my remarks to the letter and to the index. I specifically stated', and you will find it in two or three places in Hansard, that I was referring to the propaganda part of the letter. Of course, I am not disputing the market quotations given by the index. I was referring to the first part of the letter.


James Arthur Ross: I would be glad to answer a question but the hon, member can make a speech some other time.


William Henry Golding: I would ask hon. members to refrain from interrupting or asking questions without the permission of the hon. member who has the floor. That is entirely out of order. I will also ask the hon. member for Souris not to refer again to a speech made in the debate on the address.


James Arthur Ross: I think, Mr. Speaker, this is a pretty fair place for me to leave off. I want to repeat what I have stated before on many occasions, that I am a supporter of the Canadian wheat board. I believe that all members of the House of Commons should exercise a degree of tolerance, whether or not they agree with opinions expressed by other people in the country. A member enjoys certain advantages in the House of Commons and he should not take advantage of his position to attack those outside with whom he disagrees. I shall have something to say on this particular measure at a later stage.


Mr. T. J. BENTLEY (Swift Current):: Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to this debate as well as I could in view of the noise on the other side of the house, and I was very glad when the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) turned around to his followers and, I have no doubt, asked them to keep quiet. I hope he spoke in the same terms to them that he used to the labour men who approached him at the golf club.
I have listened attentively to the hon. member for Souris (Mr. Ross) dealing with this matter from his point of view, and I have also read the motion on the order paper. After reading the motion on the order paper I shall have to agree that the hon. member for Souris (Mr. Ross) has analysed it very well. It is distinctly a political document. I do not know that the minister who is piloting it through the house is responsible for it, but it has all the earmarks of our fellow Saskatchewan citizen the right hon. Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner). It certainly is worded in such a way that there is no earthly excuse for it, Mr. Speaker.
The amendment of the Progressive Conservative party asked that it be split into three bills. There is absolutely no reason why that should not be done. The motion that we are asked to deal with now is either a railroad motion or a delaying action motion, one or the other. It can only have one of two purposes to serve, so far as I can see. If we want these payments made immediately, and we do, then we must accept everything in the motion, regardless. If we want this matter of coarse grains to be included in the operation of the wheat board carefully considered by a committee of the whole house, or by a special committee, or by a standing committee, then we must be prepared to delay the payment for wheat on the 1945, 1946 and 1947 crops. There is no sound reason for the motion having been put before the house in that way. It could just as well have come before us in three bills as moved in the amendment by the hon. member for Souris. We certainly have three things to consider in it: one is the matter of pensions to the employees of the wheat board. I do not think anybody in this house will oppose that particular thing. A motion to do that would have passed without very much consideration. Probably a few questions with regard to amounts and conditions of payment would have been asked. Certainly no violent controversy would have been generated because of a bill of that kind. Very few hon. members, if any, even though they may not wish to see a further payment made on the wheat delivered to the board since 1945, even though they may not wish it in their hearts, would have had the courage to rise in their places and say so. Therefore I am safe in saying that there would have been no opposition to a motion to bring in a bill to authorize the government, the wheat board or the appropriate body, to make that payment.
On the third question there will certainly be controversy. There will be large numbers in the Progressive Conservative ranks who will disagree with even the slight implication in the motion on the order paper to include oats or barley in the operations of the wheat board. Since 1935 we have known that the principle embodied in this motion will find many opponents among the Liberal ranks, because going back to 1935 when the bill was originally introduced in the house we find that the official opposition, which was then the Liberal party, was successful in having, through its
Canadian Wheat Board Act

debate in opposition, the compulsory features of this bill deleted, namely, sections 9, 10, 11, and 16, which provided the penalties if those compulsory features were disobeyed. Therefore we can expect to find a great deal of opposition there. The government is not concerned whether oats or barley or both are included in the operation of the wheat board. They would prefer that they were not included, but they put the resolution on the order paper in such a way as to indicate to the fellow farmers of the Minister of Agriculture in Saskatchewan that he and his godson are down here fighting the battle of the farmers of the west.


Mr. TUCKER:: Does the hon. member suggest that the minister is not sincere in that?


William Henry Golding: Order.


Thomas John Bentley: I want to remind the hon. member for Rosthem, who is also the leader of the Liberal party in Saskatchewan and the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Veterans Affairs, that this unholy trinity, along with the president of the Liberal association of Saskatchewan, flew down here for the express purpose, so they said,-


Walter Adam Tucker: Do you object to what they came for?


Thomas John Bentley: No; I object to what little you did when you got here. I would be very happy if you had been successful, but I am pointing out that even though they did try to give the appearance of having done a very fine act in the interests of the farmers of Saskatchewan, nothing since then has happened except this, and this does not make anything happen if the government and the Minister of Trade and Commerce do not want it to happen. Last year the Minister of Justice told us positively in the house that in his opinion it is not possible to bring coarse grains under the operations of the wheat board. Could one get a more muddled up affair to put on the order paper, Mr. Speaker, than to ask hon. members to give an honest opinion on this resolution, when I expect that our friends in the Tory party are honestly opposed to some parts of it? I know that those in this group are honestly in favour of a great deal of it, and we know that there is a division of opinion among those who I presume are equally honest people on the government side.


Mr. JOHNSTON:: That is going a long way.


Walter Adam Tucker: That is the first time the hon. member has admitted that in a long while.


Thomas John Bentley: I am going as far as courtesy in the circumstances will permit me to go.


Walter Adam Tucker: Why do you not talk that way in the country?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: That is quite a problem.


Thomas John Bentley: It is quite a problem. Therefore if the house wants the payments it must agree to recommendations with regard to coarse grains.


Walter Adam Tucker: Do you object to the coarse grain recommendation?


William Henry Golding: Order.


Thomas John Bentley: If the hon. member wishes to ask me a question and if he will frame it in such a way that I know what he wants, and if he will stand up in his place and ask it, I shall endeavour to answer it.


Walter Adam Tucker: Thank you.


William Henry Golding: Order. I would ask the hon. member from Rosthern to refrain from interrupting the hon. member who has the floor. If the hon. member wishes to make a speech he may do so after the hon. member who has the floor has finished.


Walter Adam Tucker: Mr. Speaker, the hon.
*member has said he is quite willing to answer the question if I ask it.


George Hugh Castleden: Intelligently.


Walter Adam Tucker: He said what he thinks hon. members on this side think and what he thinks hon. members in the opposition think. I should like to ask him whether he is against the extension of this to coarse grains.


Thomas John Bentley: No; positively and
absolutely no.


Walter Adam Tucker: Why did you not say so?


Thomas John Bentley: What I am opposed to in this resolution is the ambiguity, the uncertainty of whether coarse grains come under it or not.


Hazen Robert Argue: Liberal confusion.


Mr. GRANT:: That is Liberalism.


Thomas John Bentley: Probably the hon. member and others would like to know why. I could spend quite a little time telling them why. I believe absolutely in the work that has been done by the organized farmers of Saskat-

Canadian Wheat Board Act
chewan in the form of the Saskatchewan wheat pool. I helped to organize that body away back in 1922 and 1923 in the initial days, and I worked for that organization a good many years.


Walter Adam Tucker: So did a whole lot of other people, including myself.


Thomas John Bentley: Yes, a lot of other people helped too.


Gordon Graydon: This is a kind of testimony meeting.


Thomas John Bentley: If hon. gentlemen will wait until their turn comes they can have all the time they wish and I shall listen politely to them. I do not want to weary the house too much, but I will go back to 1932, which is quite a little while ago. I hold in my hand the eighth annual report of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Wheat Producers Limited, as they were at that time, commonly called the wheat pool, and I shall refer to them as the wheat pool from now on because the wheat has been taken out of the name and they are now the Saskatchewan Co-operative Producers Limited, but they are the organization from which these reports come. On page 20 of the eighth annual report they say:
Your board is of the opinion that, until some measure of economic stability has been attained, it will be in the best interests of western Canada if a national marketing organization is set up with complete authority to market the Canadian crop. In order to achieve this end it is probable that legislation will be required both from the provincial and federal parliaments.
That was in 1932, giving an account of the operations of the crop year 1931-32. The following year, 1933, the same organization, reporting on the year just under review, had this to say on page 29:
Following out the decision of the delegates at the last annual meeting, to submit a request for a national marketing agency with complete control over the marketing of the entire crop, every effort was made, in co-operation with the provincial wheat pools of Manitoba and Alberta, to secure action by the federal government.
I want those people who claim to have assisted in the organization of the wheat pool in the early days to remember these statements, because they are going to continue in similar vein right to the end. I take the tenth annual report, 1934, dealing with the period under review, and on page 44 they say:
Your board is more than ever convinced that international co-operation holds the key to better times, and we believe that the establishment of a national marketing agency, with complete control over the Canadian crop, will place Canada in a first-class position to work with the 5849-108
other nations of the world, both exporters and importers, in an effort to find a solution to the present impasse.
Coming to the following year, in the twelfth annual report, November, 1936, they say:
Pending the completion of the inquiry and the submission of a report to the government, it is obviously difficult for your board to submit definite recommendations to this meeting at this time. Hitherto it has been the opinion of your board of directors that there should be developed a national marketing policy, the objective of which would be to secure a price for grain sufficient to maintain a reasonable standard of living in the farm homes of western Canada. That this policy should aim to establish a measure of parity between the price of things which the farmer must buy and the commodities which he has to sell; that this can be most surely 'accomplished through the operations of a national marketing board, with control over the movement and marketing of all grain.
Consistent all the way through. The following year, 1937, we find that the Turgeon commission, which had been appointed some time before, had not yet made its submission and so the annual meeting was reluctant to take any particular action that year to deal with the matter until the Turgeon commission report had been brought in But they indicated, and I do not want to read two or three pages to show it, their belief that they still wanted the same things as they wanted in the previous ones I have read.


Arthur Leroy Smith: Were those compulsory marketing boards referred to there?


Thomas John Bentley: The wheat pool has always believed that speculation should be taken out of the marketing of all cereal crops and flax.


Arthur Leroy Smith: I did not gather from your reading that it was compulsory.


Thomas John Bentley: Yes; it has been all the way through. If it is not clearly indicated there, you can take it from me, that is what they asked for.


Arthur Leroy Smith: I accept your word.


Thomas John Bentley: representatives of the governments of the western prairie provinces and unanimously urged upon the Prime Minister of that day that the government of Canada should convene a conference of the governments and producers of the wheat exporting countries with a view to establishing such measures of international co-ordination as deemed advisable in the best interests of these countries.
Your board is definitely of the; opinion that international co-operation is vital to a permanent solution of this international problem, and that the situation calls for not only coordination between the principal wheat export; ing countries of the world, but also a greater degree of economic co-operation between exporting and importing countries.
Following an interprovincial meeting of the directors of the pool organizations held recently, an interprovincial committee has been set up to give consideration to a future agricultural policy for western Canada, which will include marketing problems.
In the meantime, the matter of future marketing policy has been under consideration by your board during the past year.
In view of world conditions already referred to, and in view of the action already taken or contemplated by the principal wheat exporting countries, your board believes that continued operation of the Canadian wheat board, with a guaranteed minimum price to the grower at the time of delivery, is essential.
You will see that all the way through the matter of grain is mentioned, except where they specifically refer to the Canadian wheat board by its official name.
It would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for Canada to give effect to any agreement which might be arrived at with other countries unless control of the marketing of grain is vested in the wheat board, or some other similar body. Your board is of the opinion that any plan calling for a reduction in seeded acreage will not be practical in western Canada in view of the wide variations in production.
I have quoted* that last sentence for the benefit of the Minister of Agriculture. Now we come to the fifteenth annual report, from which I will give a short quotation. That was the year when the federal government now in office decided that the wheat board would not accept deliveries in excess of 5,000 bushels for any particular farm unit. I quote:
During the year under review your board made every effort to have the wheat board continue to function to take delivery of the 1939 crop with an initial payment not less than that in force the previous year.
That was the year the Minister of Agriculture, or the right hon. Minister of Agriculture as he is now, stumped the country out there telling us that the 80 cents initial demand was entirely too high and that the initial price would have to be reduced to 60 cents a bushel. It took a petition of 155,000 and some hundred

names from Saskatchewan, together with nearly 5,000 odd from other provinces, to convince the government that they should reduce it only ten cents. The petition asked that it be not reduced at all but in spite of the petition the government did reduce it by ten cents per bushel to 70 cents. I am wondering where some of these gentlemen were, who are so keen for this now, who fly around the country saying that they are going to ask for such great things.
In the sixteenth annual report I find the following:
The position (at the beginning of the 1949-41 season, therefore, was briefly that day after day the Winnipeg market showed the value of *wheat as the pegged prices fixed at the request of the government, with little or no trading.
In that year agitation was going forward among the farmers to have the initial payment increased to at least one dollar a bushel, something considered at this time an extremely modest figure, and the government were adamant. It took a while to persuade them differently.
I could go on with these reports all through these years. I could take the seventeenth report and those of the war years. Do not think that I refrain from quoting from them because there is something in them worth quoting. I am trying to save the time of the house. The reports are here if anyone doubts the consistency of the Saskatchewan wheat pool in demanding the marketing of all grains through the wheat board.
During the early part of the war everything was done to embarrass the government or the country as little as possible through their requests. Even then, though, they had to bring a delegation down here and had to take strong action against the government to get some alleviation. Again in 1944, they started to consider what might happen at the end of the war, and so at page 70 of the twentieth annual report they say:
' In order to make international control effective, it is essential that there shall be adequate national control. In consequence your board strongly recommends that the Canadian wheat board should continue to function as the sole marketing agency for grain in Canada.
We come to the twenty-second annuat report, and we find at page 41:
Since national control is essential to a successful international agreement, the Canadian wheat board should continue to function as the sole marketing agency for all grain grown in Canada, including oats, barley and rye, as well as wheat and flax.

Canadian Wheat Board Act
In 1947 there is the same story. This is what is contained in the directors' report and passed by the annual general meeting of wheat pool delegates:	*
That the wheat board act should be amended to provide that the board should act as the sole marketing agency for all other grains in addition to wheat and flax.


Mr. COLD  WELL@: What was the date of that:


Thomas John Bentley: That was held in the early part of November.


Mr. COLDWELL:: In 1947?


Thomas John Bentley: Starting on November 4, 1947, and finishing about two weeks later. It is the twenty-third annual report of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Producers Limited as it is now, which is called the wheat pool.
I want to refer to another matter arising out of this. When I was dealing with this matter in another debate in the pre-Christmas part of the session, the hon. member for Rosthern (Mr. Tucker) asked me if I was aware that the Saskatchewan wheat pool had passedi a resolution asking the provincial governments for complementary legislation in order to make it possible for coarse grains to be included in the operation of the wheat board. He asked me further whether I had ever requested the Saskatchewan government to do that. My reply at that time was that as I met members of the Saskatchewan government individually I requested that. I should like now to inform the hon. member, the trinity from Rosthern, that I have asked them now officially in a meeting of themselves. I now want to ask the hon. member for Rosthern and the Minister of Agriculture if they have done their part equally well. In order that they may know what I mean, I shall read exactly what was passed by the Saskatchewan wheat pool last November at the annual general meeting of wheat pool delegates. I have just read from the resolution asking that all grains be marketed by the wheat board. They followed on with this:
That in order to avoid any possible legal controversy as to the power of the board to handle feed grains-
And note this, please.
-the dominion government should be asked to approach the provincial governments with a view to securing complementary provincial legislation so that the authority of the wheat board to act as the sole marketing agency for all grains may be placed beyond question.
I listened to the minister of Trade and Commerce. If I understood him correctly, he said that this government introduces this resolution on the order paper and then, if it 5849-1081	.	:i- WIMI
passes this house, they will have to wait until the provincial governments decide to do something about it to make it possible. The Minister of Agriculture and the leader of the Liberal party in Saskatchewan, the hon. member for Rosthern have been reported in the papers repeatedly as saying that they favour the inclusion of coarse grains in the operation of the wheat board.


James Garfield Gardiner: May I just ask a question there. I notice that the hon. member is leading up to one point, I suppose I could read it up, but it will save me a lot of time if he will just answer this question, and I am sure he can do so. Does the wheat pool now pool the oats and barley that it buys? Is there a pool in connection with the oats and barley? And if not, why?


Thomas John Bentley: No, Mr. Speaker; the wheat pool is not operating a pool for any other grain at the present time. The wheat pool, operating a line of elevators, operates as agent for the wheat board in the handling of wheat. During the years when there were, shall I say many different methods of marketing coarse grains, during the war and afterwards, which the minister knows all about, it would have been impracticable for them to operate a pool for coarse grains effectively. The minister knows that,


James Garfield Gardiner: Have they done so since 1932?


Thomas John Bentley: No, they have not; because as I pointed out, in all these reports they have pressed constantly for the inclusion of coarse grains in the operations of the wheat board. I would not mind the Minister of Agriculture opposing that, Mr. Speaker, if he feels like it. That is his God-given right in this country. What I was saying before he interrupted with a question was this. He and the hon. member for Rosthern are repeatedly reported in our Saskatchewan papers as saying that they favour the inclusion of coarse grains in the wheat board. I heard the Minister of Agriculture himself on October 10, I believe, of last year say that when he was dealing with matters of grain marketing he would rather be guided by the advice of the organized farmers than by the advice of the Winnipeg grain exchange.
Mr. GARDINER- Hear, hear.


Thomas John Bentley: If he means that., and if he means the other things he is reported to have said, then he should be right behind all these things. Now I am asking him and I am asking the hon. member for Rosthern if they
Canadian Wheat Board Act

asked this government, and if this government in turn have asked the provincial governments for the complementary legislation to permit them to operate coarse grains within the wheat board act.


James Garfield Gardiner: We are not able, Mr. Speaker, to do that until my hon. friends vote to put this through the house.


Thomas John Bentley: It could have been done in the speech from the throne.


Walter Adam Tucker: May I ask the hon. member a question, since he has asked me one? From what he said I take it that he is in the confidence of the Saskatchewan government. He says he asked for this complementary legislation. Will he let the house in on the information he has as to whether they are going to do it or not?


Thomas John Bentley: I will gladly answer that question. The Saskatchewan government will be glad to pass any necessary legislation within its power that will assist in any way to stabilize the prices of agricultural products at the proper levels.


Walter Adam Tucker: Will the hon. member indicate whether they ever made such an announcement publicly? He seems to be the only one who knows about it.


Thomas John Bentley: Shall I have to quote this again? The Saskatchewan wheat pool in its last annual general meeting recommended that the federal government should be asked to approach the provincial governments.


Mr. KNOWLES:: Have they done it?


Thomas John Bentley: Yes, have you done it? That is the question I am asking.


Walter Adam Tucker: As the Minister of Agriculture has said, once this bill is passed there will be something to approach them on. I am asking the hon. member whether the provincial government have said that they will pass this enabling legislation.


Thomas John Bentley: They will pass it when you ask them to. It is up to you to get busy and ask them.


Major James William Coldwell: How can complementary legislation be passed until it is known what it is to be complementary to?


Walter Adam Tucker: They can indicate they are willing to do so.


Major James William Coldwell: So could you.


William Henry Golding: Order.


Thomas John Bentley: I should like to finish my remarks.


William Henry Golding: I should like again to remind hon. members that the hon. member for Swift Current has the floor and should not be interrupted.


Walter Adam Tucker: He asked me a question.


Thomas John Bentley: I have answered the hon. member's question. I have given him a lot of information. He will have to get his understanding somewhere else.


Stanley Howard Knowles: He did not answer your question.


Thomas John Bentley: No.


Mr. BRYCE:: You did not expect that.


Thomas John Bentley: No, I did not expect that. I want to repeat what I said at the start. As was said by the hon. member for Souris this resolution before us has all the earmarks of a political resolution.


Walter Adam Tucker: Are you against it, then?
Mr. BENTLEY': It has all the earmarks of a political resolution.


Walter Adam Tucker: You are not political at all.


Thomas John Bentley: The hon. member still wants to ask tricky questions. I am not very tricky, but I will answer him. I want every one of the things mentioned in this resolution. I want more; but I recognize that first things should come first. The first thing should be the payment to the farmers of the west for their wheat of 1945, 1946 and 1947. Everyone in this house will support that whether they believe it or not. I support it because I do believe it. They want it now; they do not want to be held up awaiting the outcome of a protracted controversy over paragraph (c) of the amendment moved by the hon. member for Souris. That is the point. We are willing to see these pensions paid, and we say the government should accept this amendment and bring in the three separate bills. I guarantee the first two will not take long to go through. Then we can battle away on the others; and when we get to the one I mentioned I fully expect to be quite at variance with the hon. member who moved this amendment. To show that we are not alone in the belief that this is a political move let me say that we have some pretty wise men sitting behind and above you, Mr. Speaker. Some of them are wise; some think they are, but now and again they get things right.


Walter Adam Tucker: No different from members of parliament.

Canadian Wheat Board Act


Thomas John Bentley: I do not know what the hon. member is getting at this time so I will have to pass it up. I have in my hand a clipping from the Montreal Gazette of February 20, containing an article written by Mr. Arthur Blakely, Gazette staff correspondent. He seems to see the thing very much as I see it and as I believe a number of others see it.


Mr. MITCHELL:: A good Tory paper.


Thomas John Bentley: If the Minister of Labour (Mr. Mitchell) knew as much about wheat as I know about labour we would have a lovely time together. However, let us see what Mr. Blakely has to say. The whole article is interesting but I am going to quote only part of it:
But it is the government's intention that this power never shall be exercised.
It is remarkable how close some of the members of the press gallery get to what is the actual fact. They have the power to give publicity to those on the government benches, and so perhaps are able to claim something in the way of information that some of the rest of us cannot get. Often they seem to come very close to the facts, so possibly this gentleman was speaking with some authority. Then he goes on to say:
. . . Justice Minister J. L. Usley raised his hands in constitutional horror last February when the C.C.F. attempted to attach oats, barley, flax and rye to the government trading cartel.
The explanation of the new move is a masterpiece of political manoeuvring. To the western farmer, who is reputed to be consumed by a mortal hatred of everything concerned with the Winnipeg grain exchange, passage of the forthcoming bill will enable the government to point with pride to this first step toward total destruction of that institution.
At the same time the government will be able to reassure grain exchange proponents by hinting with more than its usual delicacy that the power to kill off the exchange, while available, will be allowed to lie dormant.
And again:
From the moment that the new bill is introduced, it will be supported by both Liberals and C.C.F. members. But there will be a difference. The C.C.F. will be hoping fervently that the principle of the bill will be put into practice. The Liberals will be determined that this never will happen.
That is the observation of a gentleman who sits in the press gallery, who undoubtedly hears conversations in the corridors and who has his own peculiar ways of picking up information.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I want to point out that the things I have mentioned, for which the wheat pools have asked, are the very things the C.C.F. here in this house have stood for right along. We believe they are
necessary; we believe they are important. We believe every single thing in the resolution in the name of the Minister of Trade and Commerce should be put into effect. But we do not believe anything that is necessary to be done at this time should be held up because one or two other matters cause a controversy. Therefore I believe the government should accept the amendment and proceed on that basis.


Mr. VICTOR QUELCH (Acadia):: Mr. Speaker, like the two hon. members who have preceded me, I also regret that the government has seen fit to bring down a resolution embodying four separate proposals: to provide pensions for members, officers and employees; to make provision for the increase of the fixed minimum price on wheat deliveries; to extend the control of interprovincial movements of wheat products, and to empower the governor in council to extend the present system to oats or barley. Obviously including four proposals in the resolution is bound to delay passage of the bill. Today the farmers are anxiously awaiting an announcement of government policy regarding the increase in the amount of the initial payment. I say they are anxiously awaiting the announcement, but they are even more anxiously awaiting payment. That is especially true in the drought areas, where many farmers have not had a good crop for over two years. They are in sore need of this money to finance their spring operations. I am afraid bringing the resolution down in this form is going to delay passage of the bill and thereby delay the making of these payments. Just on that point I would suggest to the minister that when the payments finally are made the policy of last year be followed again this year and the payments made first in the drought areas, where the farmers are in so much greater need of money than in other parts of the country.
For these reasons we are prepared to support the amendment of the Progressive Conservative party. As a matter of fact, we hope the government will be prepared to accept that amendment and bring down three separate bills, the first being the bill relating to the increase in the initial payment. Generally speaking I may say we favour the four proposals contained in the resolution. The criticism we have to offer will be with regard to the degree of the proposals rather than the proposals themselves. We support the continuation of the wheat board as the sole marketing agency for wheat. Furthermore we believe it is to the advantage of the farmer
Canadian Wheat Board Act

to have a long term stabilization program rather than to capitalize on short time high level prices; and I am satisfied that the overwhelming majority of the farmers of Canada are in favour of such a policy. I suggest to the minister that the reason there is such widespread criticism of the government's wheat policy today is that it is neither one thing nor the other. On the one hand it denies the farmer the present high prices; on the other hand it fails to guarantee prices in the future beyond 1949. It has forced the Canadian farmer to subsidize the British consumer and has allowed the prices of goods the farmer has to buy to rise substantially while at the same time placing ceilings on Canadian farm produce. So is it any wonder the farmers of the west are discontented with the government's wheat policy?
Let me review briefly some of the main causes for this discontent. In the first place the government's wheat policy is supposed to be a policy of stabilization. Thus far, however, that policy has failed to materialize. On September 19, 1945, the then minister of trade and commerce, announcing the government's post-war wheat policy, had this to say as reported at page 289 of Hansard for 1945:
It is in the interest of Canada and of Canadian wheat growers that the importing countries should continue to obtain Canadian wheat at prices not in excess of those prevailing at the *end of hostilities. Accordingly the government, By order in council, has instructed the Canadian wheat board to offer wheat for sale for export overseas at prices not higher than the current export price of $1.55 per bushel, basis No. 1 northern, in store Fort William/Port Arthur or Vancouver.
In asking Canadian producers to forgo such benefits as might be realized in the short run through higher export prices, the government recognizes the paramount need for relative stability of income to wheat producers. Toward this end, the government undertakes, that in the five-year period ending July 31, 1950, producers will receive not less than $1 per bushel, basis No. 1 northern, in store Fort William/Port Arthur or Vancouver on the authorized deliveries for each crop year. For the balance of the 1945-46 crop year at least, the Canadian wheat board initial advance will continue at $1.25, where it was set two years ago.
And farther on:
Any further increase in wheat prices now would aggravate the problems of economic and political readjustment of the liberated areas to Canada's detriment in future trade with those areas. There is a moral obligation not to take advantage of our recent allies in their time of compelling need.
I should like to quote the reply I made at that time to this new policy. Speaking on behalf of this group, and as reported at page 469 of Hansard, I said:
We insist that when Canada makes that sacrifice and that contribution it should be a

sacrifice of the Canadian people and not of any one class of society alone. Why should .agriculture be asked to stand the full cost of that sacrifice? Surely -the logical thing to do is to pay the farmers the price that can be obtained, sell the commodity to the people who need it, at the current price, and make up the difference betwreen the two figures out of the general revenue fund or any other source which the government sees fit to use. We may differ as to the way that should be done, but that is not the point in question now.
The minister has tried to excuse his proposals on the ground that the government policy will compensate the farmers by guaranteeing a floor price of $1 a bushel for the next five years. But the mere fact that the minister says that it will be compensating them implies that the price may fall below that figure. On the other hand, the government does not know for certain whether the price will fall below or whether it will be above that amount. It may not call for any sacrifice at all. But certainly the government are not in ia position to make a guarantee for the next five years, because they do not know whether they will be in power for the next five years; they might go out of power next year, in which event the farmers might be called upon to make the sacrifice for nothing.
But there is another reason why we are opposed to the farmers having to make that slacrifice. It is that we say that the farmers are being called upon to make a double sacrifice. For ten long years the farmers of the country produced at very low prices, and day by day, year by year, they were making considerable sacrifices. Therefore tod-ay the farmers should be guaranteed a fair price, a maximum price in order to compensate them for the losses they suffered in those ten years, without being -asked at the same time to make similar sacrifices in the future as well.
I believe the minister will recall that the policy at that time was bitterly criticized by farmers across the dominion. In 1946 the British wheat agreement was signed. Under that -agreement we agreed to sell Great Britain 600 million bushels over a period of four years. We were to deliver 160 million bushels in each of the first two years at $1.55 a bushel; 140 million bushels in the third year at a minimum price of $1.25 and 140 million bushels in the fourth year at a minimum price of $1 per bushel. In computing the price for the last two years consideration was to be given to the fact that wheat was sold at less than the world price in the first two years of the agreement. The Minister of Agriculture interpreted that -as meaning that we would have any losses in the first two years made up in the last.
Having that in mind it is hard to understand just how the $2 a bushel was figured out for the third crop year. The agreement stated that in setting the price for the third and fourth years the losses of the first two years would be taken into consideration. At the time the agreement was made for the third

Canadian Wheat Board Act
year the price in the world market was over $3 a bushel. Losses on the first year were 77 cents a bushel on 160 million bushels, which made a loss of $123 million. That works out at 88 cents a bushel on 140 million bushels. So that if you deduct the 88 cents from the $2 you have a balance of $1.12. This means that all we are getting for our wheat in the third year is $1.12.
The minister may argue that even yet that may be a good price. But everything indicates that $1.12 for the third year will be considerably below the world market price.
In February 1947 a bill to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act was placed before the house, and that amendment increased the initial payment to $1.35 a bushel. That was guaranteed until July 31, 1950. At this time the British wheat agreement was debated, and the government defended that agreement on the ground that it would prove beneficial to the farmers and that we were also under a moral obligation to allow Great Britain to have wheat at a reasonable price.
In view of the fact that it has been stated that the British wheat agreement was welcomed as being in the interests of the farmers of western Canada I should like to place on Hansard the stand this group took at that time. I quote from page 745 of Hansard for 1947, where I said:
In the early paTt of this agreement the farmer is making a considerable sacrifice. He is losing anywhere from fifty to seventy-five cents a bushel. In compensation for that loss, the government guarantees to take a minimum of fourteen bushels to the acre at $1.35 a bushel. The loss is being suffered on all wheat offered for sale, a loss of anywhere from fifty to seventy-five on every bushel offered for sale. Then surely the compensatory feature should also guarantee that that $1.35 a bushel would be paid on all wheat offered for sale. How can you balance a loss on total production against compensation on a part of production? It does not make sense or justice. Instead of $1.35 a bushel, w-e think the price should have been $1.55, which is the price at which we are selling to Britain.
And further on:
If in the next two or three years there is a wheat shortage, if crops are poor, the price of wheat will be maintained at probably a high level and will remain there. Then the guarantee becomes (absolutely useless. If that should be the situation over the next two or three years the farmers of this country, as a result of this agreement, are going to lose several hundred million dollars.
That seems to be the situation which has already developed. Then I went on to say:
I believe that the wheat agreement with Britain was fully justified, but it does entail in its early stages a considerable sacrifice on the
part of our farmers. We feel that the sacrifice should be borne by the people of Canada as a whole.
It will be noted that while this group supported the British wheat agreement, we supported it as a moral obligation and took the stand that the cost should be borne by the Canadian people as a whole, rather than by the farmers. On the other hand, if the farmers are to stand the cost they should be compensated by a long-term stabilization program under which they would be guaranteed a parity price for the future.
I know the government argues that there are compensations, and that the losses in the first two years of the agreement may very well be offset by gains in the latter part. The farmers are calling the government's bluff. If the government feel that the agreement is a good deal, then they should take it over. After all, it was the government that made the agreement. They did not consult the farmers before making it; therefore if there are any losses the government should stand them. We feel that the government should pay the farmers the difference between $1.55 and the average price received for No. 2 wheat and then credit that amount to the farmers in the five-year pool. If losses accrue as a result of the government's guarantee in the last part of the agreement, they could be charged against the credit in the five-year pool. The minister must agree that that would be absolutely fair and I believe that the majority of the people of Canada would support the government in such action.
It is well to remember that when we made our various contributions to Britain such as the billion dollar gift the industrial concerns in this country were not asked to accept prices below the regular price. The government paid them the current price and did not ask them to make similar sacrifices to those which the farmers are being asked to make under this agreement. In addition, the cost of subsidizing the home market during this whole period should be credited to the five-year pool; that is, the difference between $1.55 and the price at which wheat is being sold by the wheat board in the world market. While stressing this point, what we should really like to see done is for the government to bring down a longterm stabilization program under which the price of wheat will be guaranteed at parity in the future.
It is interesting to note what the government's policy has cost the farmers by compelling them to accept the price under the British agreement instead of the full market price they otherwise could have got. I have argued in my constituency that the losses in
Canadian Wheat Board Act

the first two years would be in the neighbourhood of $300 million, but apparently I was altogether too conservative, because the Searle Grain Company has set the loss at $296 million for the first seventeen months of the agreement, which has still seven months to go. They show, in addition, a loss to the farmers on wheat for domestic consumption of $152 million, making a total of $448 million which the farmers have lost as a result of the government's wheat policy in the first seventeen months of the agreement. Even if wheat prices should slump in the remaining years of the contract the farmers could never hope to make good those losses under the government guarantee.
I would ask this question:	Is there any
reason to expect that the price of wheat will slump heavily by the end of 1949? Mind you, for the farmers to make up their losses in the first two years of the agreement the world price would have to go far below $1 a bushel in the last year. But everything points to wheat remaining at a fairly high price for a number of years yet. I quote from the United States News World Report for February 13, 1948. on the back page of which I find this statement:
A price for wheat ranging between a 'ow of $1.20 and a high of $2 a bushel is being used by United States and other experts as reasonable over the next four years. Plans for dividing up the world's wheat are being discussed on this basis by thirty nations represented at the wheat conference now under way. Wheat still sells in the United States for around $2.60 a bushel.
That being the case, it does not look as though there was any great danger of there being a heavy slump before the end of the agreement.
If the government disputes the losses as computed, for instance, by the Searle Grain Company, I think it would be a good idea for the government to refer the bill to the committee on trade and commerce, before which representatives of the wheat board and the Searle Grain Company could be examined to ascertain exactly what the present situation is and what is likely to take place in the future.
Certain derogatory remarks have been made about Major Strange. I happen to know him. He used to farm just north of where I live, and I would say that he should have a very good understanding of grain farming. Incidentally while tie was farming in that area he won the world championship for wheat at the Chicago exhibition. He lived thirty to forty miles north of the town of Morrin where I live. The land is heavy gumbo which makes farm operating costs relatively high, but the yield is heavy and so the costs of production

are actually not as high as one might expect. Thirty miles east is the drought area, where operating costs are very low but yields very light, and so the cost of production there is higher than would be expected). In the district Major Strange used to farm the operating costs and the returns were average. He lived in that district for a number of years and from his experience there and his subsequent experience with the Searle Grain Company for a number of years he should have a firsthand knowledge of wheat farming and marketing. I want to make it clear however that I do not agree with his attitude on the grain exchange. On the other hand I believe that the figures presented by the Searle Grain Company have earned for themselves a reputation for accuracy.
Coming back to my contention that the government's wheat policy is neither one thing nor the other-it neither gives the farmer the world price nor guarantees the price for the future after 1949-we have this picture. During the nineteen thirties the farmers had to take a low world price. During the nineteen forties, from 1941 to 1946, the government asked the farmers to be satisfied with a lower price than they otherwise could have got. Those were the words of the present Minister of Agriculture, speaking in this house as reported at cage 806 of Hansard, and that still continued to be government policy during 1947 and 1948. So for ten years the farmers had to accept depressed prices; then for eight years, as the Minister of Agriculture stated, they accepted lower prices than they could have obtained; and the government has the nerve to call that stabilization policy, when for eighteen years the farmers had to accept either a low world price or a price lower than they could otherwise have received.
One might say that the government's policy has been one of subsidizing both British and Canadian consumers at the expense of Canadian producers. If the government are sincere, if they really believe in stabilization, let them bring down legislation this session to guarantee the farmers of this country a parity price as part of a long-term agricultural policy, or for at least the next ten years, and then we shall have this situation: ten years of depressed prices in the nineteen thirties, then ten years of prices below the world market, then ten years during the nineteen fifties of a parity price supported by a floor. I think a policy of that kind could well be called a stabilization policy, but by no stretch of the imagination can you call the government's present policy one of stabilization. If on the other hand the government are not prepared at this session to bring down a stabilization policy, then we

Canadian Wheat Board Act
should allow the farmers to have world market prices, and make the legislation retroactive so that they may get the benefit of world market prices within the British wheat agreement.
It is also well at this time to remember that there is no long-term program of stabilization over the prices of other farm products besides wheat, because the Agricultural Prices Stabilization Act is merely a transition measure to govern prices during the period from war to peace. If anybody has any doubt about that let him look up the Canada Year Book for this year, which makes it very clear. However, Mr. Speaker, we in this group believe that a sound long-term agricultural policy is not merely in the interests of the Canadian farmer or the people of Canada, but is of vital importance in helping to promote world peace. World peace requires a well fed people; it requires stockpiles of food1, and stockpiles of food can be maintained only so long as optimum production is encouraged within the country and proper provision is made for carrying the surplus of one year over to another. History records that when that is not done, famine invariably ensues, which provides a breeding ground for pestilence and war. Unfortunately agricultural policies in the past have not encouraged a building of stockpiles of food. On the contrary they have invariably discouraged them by forcing prices down below the cost of production whenever reserves of food were built up.
I listened to the speech-perhaps I might also call it the bedtime story-of the hon. member for Calgary West (Mr. Smith) last year. When he was discussing the grain exchange he chided a number of hon. members for referring to the exchange as-I forget the terms now-a gambling den, a den of iniquity and a few other things. I should like to say to him that these terms are very mild compared with some of the terms I heard farmers using during the thirties.


Arthur Leroy Smith: You are a bad boy if you use such terms.


Victor Quelch: Whether or not these are the right terms to use about the exchange, he himself went on and proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the grain exchange is a gambling institution, because he told us one day he found himself with a thousand dollars which apparently he did not know what to do with. He went down to the grain exchange and they told him that if the sun shone he would make money, and if it rained he would lose it. No doubt, residing in sunny Alberta, he thought the best chance to take would be that the sun would shine. He put up his money; it rained over the week-end and he
lost his money. In other words, what did that mean? It merely meant that when it rained there would be an increase in production, and if we were to have an increase in production the price of grain would fall. That is all it meant. Therefore I say the grain exchange operates to discourage maximum production, because every time you increase production, every time you increase the reserves on hand, down goes the price and it is bound to discourage production.
I thought the analysis given by Henry Morgenthau was a very good one,. I quote from the Manitoba Co-operator of February 12, 1948, which reads as follows:
The most effective argument presented against the speculative system was a statement by Henry Morgenthau, Jr., secretary of the United States treasury under the Roosevelt administration. Mr. Morgenthau said: "Of all the economic dilemmas which periodically confront us, the farmer's dilemma is one of the most terrible and, at the same time, one of the toughest to solve. When the farmer does not grow enough to satisfy the demand, prices rise, he makes a good living-and millions of people do not have enough to eat. When he raises too much, the bottom falls out of the market, he cannot keep up the payments on his mortgage, and his crops wither in the fields. The problem of the agricultural surplus is a tragic irony in the very centre of our economic system."
Therein lies the kernel of the case against the system of speculative marketing.
In other words the situation is this: in order to benefit under the operation of the grain exchange the farmer has to pray for a poor crop. Then if that happens the price of wheat will go up and he could get a high price for the wheat he does not raise, which does not help him very much.
There has been a suggestion that the grain exchange should be closed. The government have told us that they are not in a position to close the grain exchange. I am not going to suggest that the government should close the grain exchange. All I am suggesting is that they should take the grain away from the grain exchange and let them play with something else. If they want to gamble, give them a set of dice and let them shoot crap. They could have just as much fun in that way, and I suggest to the hon. member for Oalgary West that he would have had far more fun and would have got a greater run for his money if he had used his thousand dollars in a crap game and not on whether the sun would shine or it would rain.


Arthur Leroy Smith: They might be loaded, and I would have no chance.


Charles Edward Johnston: The hon. member talks as an expert.
Canadian Wheat Board Act


Victor Quelch: I hold in my hand an editorial from the Farm and Ranch Review which I think is a very good one on this question. I quote from the October, 1947 issue which says:
This whole defence dan be summarized in a single phrase from Mr. Jeffers' column- "through the ability of the trade to protect itself." Precisely.
The country elevator company favours the futures market because it enables the operator to protect himself against loss. The miller favours the futures market because it enables him to protect himself against loss. The same is true of the exporter, the shipper, the foreign importers and ultimate millers and bakers. In short, it protects everybody engaged in the wheat trade from loss, with but one minor and insignificant exception-the fellow who grows the stuff.
Thus it is no accident that royal commission reports quote with approval the opinions of all these people on the virtues of the futures market. All this reminds me of a fox hunt. The fox-hunters love it. The horses relish the hunt. The dogs have a wonderful time. But what does the fox think about it all?
That outlines very well the farmer's position in relation to the operation of the grain exchange. I believe some hon. members have advocated the two systems operating side by side, but it seems to me that that means if there is a guaranteed price all the wheat will go to the wheat board when the world price falls below the guaranteed price; and the wheat board will take the losses, and vice versa. When the price of wheat is above the guarantee, the wheat will go to the grain exchange.


Arthur Leroy Smith: That is the simple operation of the floor, is it not?


Victor Quelch: Yes, it is the operation of the floor, but where you have the two operating side by side, naturally when the price is below the floor the wheat will always go to the wheat board. The minute the price goes above it is apt to go to the grain exchange.


Arthur Leroy Smith: That is the only way I know of to operate a floor.


Victor Quelch: The people of Canada would feel that if the government is going to take all losses then it should have a chance to make a profit as well on the wheat handled by the wheat board.
We in this group also believe in long-term international agreements. If you are to have long term international agreements you must have a wheat board that handles all the wheat; otherwise how can any government fill the international agreement if it did not have the surety of being able to get the wheat needed to fill that agreement?

The grain trade have used the British wheat agreement as a basis upon which to attack the principle of long term international agreements. They forget that the British wheat agreement was not a straight business deal, but was in part to help our allies, as was indicated at the time the minister brought down his early wheat legislation; therefore all the Canadian people should have stood the cost of the sacrifice and the farmers should not be expected to bear the burden. The grain trade criticized the long term agreements between countries on the grounds that whilst a certain price might be fair today it might be out of line tomorrow due to a rise or fall in the price level. That is true, and that is why we have argued that when prices are agreed upon they should be tied to the price level of the country with which the agreement is made. Then, if the price level rises the price of wheat will rise and vice versa if the price level falls. The result of that would be of course that our wheat would always bring back the same amount of imports. It would help to insulate the Canadian economy against fluctuation in world prices.
If we are going to have a stabilized agriculture and play our part in building up food reserves, it would be wise for the government to adopt a policy of government-approved farm storage. Then farmers building new granaries could build them according to government specifications, and in the event of future congestion in the elevators, these bins could qualify for the storage of government-purchased grain. I believe this was done in a number of states during the war.
We favour the wheat board handling of coarse grains. We do not think it is as important as the question of wheat, because generally speaking the price of coarse grains has reacted to the rise or fall in the price of wheat; but we feel that, whatever policy is worked out, it should be worked out jointly with the provinces. Therefore I was glad to hear the minister say that an agreement would be drawn np between the provinces dealing with the question of coarse grains.
In closing may I say that we hear a great deal about the prosperity of the Canadian farmer today, but in order to get the true picture one must consider the number of years that many men have been labouring to build up their farmsteads, and then note how many farms are in a run-down state and how many of the older farmers today are having to apply for old age pension after farming for thirty or forty years. Keeping that in mind, one can hardly say that agriculture today is in a state of prosperity. A stabilized

Canadian Wheat Board Act
agriculture may not help the aged, but at least we should bring down a policy that will help to guarantee that the young veterans and other young people who have started farming today will not have to go through the same degree of grief and hardship that so many farmers went through in the nineteen-thirties.


Mr. D. S. HARKNESS (Calgary East):: I wish first of all to direct some remarks to the amendment offered by the member for Souris (Mr. Ross). I take the strongest objection to the bad principle and bad practice involved in the government's action in presenting a resolution of this kind to the house to provide for a single bill which is really three or four bills. This was done last year in what was commonly known as the fifty-seven varieties or the Heinz bill, and apparently the government will try to do the same thing this year.
As the member for Swift Current (Mr. Bentley) said, the only reason the government would oppose the amendment we have proposed would be that it wants us to swallow something we do not like in order to get something we do like. I would certainly ask the government to accept the amendment and separate these three or four bills.
As a matter of fact, this resolution reminds me a little of an excursion I take now and then into cookery. I am fond of scrambled eggs, and frequently I break three or four in a dish and scramble them. If you put one good egg in, one indifferent and one bad, the scramble is all bad. That is what you have here. You have a scramble and it is bad. We should get it unscrambled as quickly as possible.
The various principles or separate things involved in the bill are, first, the matter of providing pensions for employees of the wheat board; second, increasing the initial wheat price, in other words paying the farmer more of his own money; and, third, giving the control of the marketing of oats and barley to the wheat board.
I thought that this matter of control of the interprovincial movement of wheat products was tied up with that, but, from what the minister says referring to the marketing of flour, I take it that probably there is a fourth principle which should be separated out.
I cannot speak of this resolution as a whole, neither can anyone else, so I shall have to follow the example set by the minister and other speakers and deal separately with the things which it includes. The first of these is the provision of a pension plan for wheat board employees.
Not only am I unopposed to a provision for a pension plan in any organization, but I am strongly in favour of it. The provision of a pension plan by any type of organization is a great means of helping people to provide for their own old age, and we should all work towards that end. However, as far as this particular pension plan is concerned, I can really give no opinion on it until I see the bill and see what it provides for.
One thing I would say is this. In the agriculture committee last year, when the operations of the wheat board were being reviewed, there was a refusal to give to the members of that committee the salaries paid to the wheat board officials. I think we should certainly have that, and we should know what proportion of those salaries in the different brackets will be contributed to this pension fund before we give approval to it. That is one thing I would ask the minister to provide when the bill comes up for detailed discussion.
I would think the chief thing at issue in this provision of pensions, in addition to that, would be information as to whether the pension scheme is going to be one entirely separate and run by the wheat board itself only, together with the extent to which, as a result, it will be financed by the farmer's own money or whether it will be one that will be tied in to the general civil service superannuation scheme.
The second part of the resolution is to make provision for the increase of the fixed minimum price of wheat deliveries. This seems to me to be only a belated move on the part of ' the government to give the farmers a little more of their own money, money which the board should not have been holding back from them for the past two years.
This party, including myself, advocated last year that we should have a yearly pool participation with payment of pool receipts as soon as possible in place of the five-year pool now operating. That, I believe, was the proper position to take. It is what should have been done. There is no question whatever that any move to increase payments of their own money to the farmers has the support of every member of this house. I do not think anyone is going to argue for a minute that the farmer should not get a larger share of his own money that has been received for his wheat, and so far as that part of the resolution works towards that end, naturally everyone is going to approve of it. From the way in which it has been presented, however, this increase in the initial payment, from the way it has been put over by government releases in the newspapers and so forth, would appear
Canadian Wheat Board Act

'to be something in the nature of a gift to the farmers by the government, and I object to that. The general picture presented is that a benevolent government will increase the amount which the farmer will get for his wheat when he delivers it next fall. That picture is absolutely false, absolutely wrong.
Personally I would like to see as much as possible done to dispel any ideas along that line, that the government by this measure is handing out more money to farmers, to the wheat producers particularly. What is happening is this. The government is going to pay a higher price for next year's crop out of a great reserve of the farmers' money which it now holds. Why is the mistake of the past three years, of not paying out more of this, not admitted and the farmer given the money owing to him now, and given it in an open manner instead of in a semi-concealed manner?
This was what happened. At the end of the war the government gambled on wheat going down. The very fact that the figures in the British wheat agreement provide for a price drop to a dollar a bushel indicates that clearly. The government thought the price would go down. They gambled on that, but the gamble was wrong. The price went up instead. As a result of that, the board has what was previously an unknown number of millions of dollars of the wheat producers' money. This afternoon the minister indicated that amount was between $230 million and $240 million, I think. That figure has now been made public; and participation cheques should be issued on it instead of, as I said, concealing payment of some of this money only by the form of this resolution.
The third part of the resolution reads as follows:
... to extend the control of interprovdncial movements of wheat products and to empower the governor in council to extend the present system to oats and barley.
The control of the marketing of feed grains and also of wheat products used both for human consumption and for stock feeding, I take it from what the minister said this afternoon, is to be under the wheat board. Personally I would not object to the board having power to market coarse grains as long as they did not have the exclusive power to do so. However, the difficulty is that the wheat board has that exclusive power in the marketing of wheat. I take it from, this resolution and from what the minister said that if they put this into operation the intention is to give the board exclusive power to market oats and barley. As a matter of fact I took down one sentence the minister used

this afternoon. He said, "Price must be a matter for the government to decide". If oats and barley come under the wheat board for compulsory marketing, there is no doubt that is the case.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I did not make that statement, Mr. Speaker. Where did my hon. friend pick that from-out of the air? In. what regard did it apply?


Douglas Scott Harkness: I did not pick it out of the air. I wrote it down as you said it.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I did not say that.


Douglas Scott Harkness: The minister said,
"Price must be a matter for the government to decide". In that case he was talking about wheat, the operations of the wheat board he was carrying on and would carry on. I think if he will read Hansard he will find that- there.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I read Hansard.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Or even if he will re-read his speech I think he wifi find it. However, as I say, there is no question that if oats and barley are put under the wheat board, the government will set the price. I for one- and I know a large number of farmers who feel the same way-do not want to have the government set the price I am to get for oats and barley. There 'have been difficulties enough and there has been argument enough, I think, over the prices which have been set for wheat without getting the thing hopelessly complicated over oats and barley.
This afternoon the minister outlined something of the history of the wheat board. I should like to supplement this history by a few other details. The wheat board was set up in 1935 to market such wheat as the farmers wished to place in its hands. In other words, it was on a voluntary basis; there was no compulsion. Also a farmers' advisory board was provided for. As I remember it, this farmers' advisory board consisted of seven members, four of whom must be wheat producers. The act provided that that advisory board must be called together at least once a month. Furthermore, the advisory board had to be consulted on all matters of policy. That was done. However, when the Liberal government came to power in 1935 they disbanded this advisory board and put policy in the hands of a cabinet committee. As a result the farmers lost completely any control they may have had over the fixing of the price of their product, the marketing of it, and so forth. I must say that the government saw the error of this, and some time during the war reinstituted the advisory board. I do not think there has ever been any question,

Canadian Wheat Board Act
however, that the farmers have had really no control over the price of their wheat and the marketing of it.
It might be of interest at this point to read a piece from the Winnipeg Free Press of February 9. It says:
The wheat board is not and never has been a producers' board. It is a branch of the federal Department of Trade and Commerce. Under the wheat board act, it operates under the instructions of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, Right Hon. C. D. Howe. It is not responsible in any way to the western wheat growers or to any farmers. For all practical purposes the producers have nothing to do with it-except to obey its orders under penalty of fine or imprisonment.
That is the situation this board has come to under the present government. As I say, I for one do not want to see the grower or producer of oats and barley placed in the position of being completely at the mercy of the government with regard to price and so forth, through the power they can exercise through this board.
To carry on a little more with this history, when the operations of the wheat board started, the initial price to be paid to the grower was fixed by the board with the advice of this advisory body. The cabinet of course had to approve that. Later, of course, the thing was just set by this committee of the cabinet. In 1939 this practice was changed and the initial price was put in the act. At that time it was seventy cents. In 1943 that price was raised to ninety cents, was later raised to $1.25 and last year was raised to $1.35. From the remarks the minister made I take it that the government is now going to recognize the fact that it is better not to put in the act a fixed price. I think he said that they are now going to operate by putting in a provision giving the government power to increase payments from time to time. In earlier years no farmer was compelled to sell through the board.
To continue with this little history, when the war came on, the board, as the minister himself said a few minutes ago, took a monopoly position with regard to the marketing of wheat and all farmers were required to deliver their wheat to the board as and when they were required to do so. That war policy was continued by the act passed last year. Personally I do not think it should be continued. I do not think the farmers should be compelled, if they do not want to do so, to deliver their grain to a particular place, and so forth, and in a particular quantity. I have always found it hard to understand the desire on the part of a lot of people to force other people to do certain things. I do not
think anybody should be forced to do anything unless it is necessary or essential to the general welfare of the state and the people of the state. It has been well demonstrated that to compel farmers to deliver wheat at a certain place at a certain price is something which is not necessary to the welfare of the state.
So much for that. If oats and barley are placed under the control of the wheat board the government will set the price at which they will be sold or bought. That price will be set at the discretion of the government and to some extent is bound to be influenced by political considerations. There is no question about that; you cannot get away from it. A government such as we have in this country, which I hope to some extent at least is affected by general political currents, is bound to set such prices on political grounds. That is a situation I think we should avoid. The minister recognizes the difficulties of placing oats and barley under the board; he enumerated a number of them. I am glad he recognizes those difficulties. Perhaps, as has been suggested, this measure has been introduced with the idea of not carrying it into effect. Well, if it is not going to be carried into effect why have it there? Let us not bother with it; let us not have it at all; let us not have it in our minds to worry about; let us cut it out altogether.
As the minister pointed out, the marketing of coarse grains is a totally different matter from the marketing of wheat. The major part of our wheat crop is sold abroad, whereas the major part of our coarse grains is sold in Canada. In marketing our wheat abroad the wheat board has the world price to guide it in relation to the price it pays in Canada. In other words it is a marketing agency which does what might be called state trading on the markets of the world; but in fixing its prices it has to be guided to a great extent by the prices paid on the world markets. Of course in normal times, at least, its purpose has been to get the highest possible price for our wheat, because that operated to the good of the people of Canada as a whole and particularly the good of the producers. Therefore I think the wheat board has always looked upon itself as a sort of agent of the producers. The marketing of coarse grains is something entirely different. Immediately it raises an important domestic problem. Naturally the growers want as much as they can get for their grain, while the buyers want to get it as cheaply as possible.
If the marketing of this grain, which I say is a domestic matter, is put into the hands of
Canadian Wheat Board Act

the wheat board, then the board, which means really the government, is going to be subjected to terrific political pressure, on the one hand to put the price up and on the other hand to keep the price down. That being so the board would have to try to fix a price which would please both sides. That is an impossibility. The actual position in the country is that there are far more buyers than sellers of coarse grains. The sellers are chiefly in western Canada. The buyers are principally in eastern Canada, with some in British Columbia. If the setting of these prices is in the hands of the government I think anyone can see what is going to happen. The people who want to buy the grain are going to put all the pressure possible on the government to have the price kept low; and since there are three or four times more votes to be secured by setting a low price than by setting a high price it is pretty easy for anyone to see where the western Canadian grain grower is going to be. He will be right squarely behind the eight ball. I point that out to the members of the C.C.F., who apparently are eager to bring coarse grains under the control of the wheat board.
The western portion of my constituency is largely a coarse grain growing area, and I do not think the farmers there want this change; in fact I am quite sure they do not. I noticed a report in the Winnipeg Free Press that the Alberta wheat pool is opposed to this measure. The hon. member for Swift Current said the Saskatchewan wheat pool supported it, but apparently, from the account I have, the Alberta wheat pool is opposed to it, together with other Alberta farm organizations.
The general effect of the board taking control of coarse grains will be to promote conflict between the western growers of grain on the one hand and the buyers in eastern Canada and British Columbia on the other. I do not think the wheat board itself would want to be in the position of trying to satisfy both, or having to arbitrate between them and I do not think a bill of this kind, which will create such a situation, should be adopted. In the past the buyer of coarse grains always thought he should get them more cheaply, while the seller always thought he should get more for his grain. They both blamed the Winnipeg grain exchange, the railway companies, the grain merchants and so on for their troubles; but you did not have the farmers in various parts of the country at each other's throats, as you will have under this bill. Formerly the price was set by the free play of the law of supply and

demand, the natural economic law, and while everyone grumbled no one really got very sore.
In conclusion it seems to me that to have the wheat board market coarse grains will change the entire purpose for which the board was set up. It was designed to be an organization for the benefit of the wheat producer, to market his products to the best possible advantage. This change, to have it handle oats and barley, will turn the board into a consumers' price fixing board, and we will find the board to a large extent in the position of holding down the price to the producer to the minimum under which he will grow grain at all. So I say let us keep the board as a producers' agency instead of making it a substitute for the wartime prices and trade board.


Mr. JEAN FRANCOIS POULIOT (Temiseouata):: Mr. Speaker, this is a question of great interest to eastern farmers, and I am going to discuss it from their point of view. When I say eastern farmers I mean the farmers of Ontario, Quebec and the maritimes.
I listened' with great interest to the speech of the hon. member for Calgary East (Mr. Harkness), who expressed some views which I share, though I regret not being able to agree with everything he said. I listened carefully also to the hon. members of the C.C.F. and Social Credit groups who have spoken this afternoon. Their speeches were most interesting because they revealed the opinions of a certain group of farmers in the west who would favour this measure inasmuch as they would be able to obtain a refund to cover the difference between the world price of wheat and the price they have been paid. If I understand their position correctly, it is that they agree with this measure provided that the wheat growers of the west receive a certain form of compensation. I understand their point of view; it is their business to urge upon the government the acceptance of that plan.
But I come as a representative from eastern Canada. Very seldom does the house hear members from Quebec, Ontario or the maritime provinces speak about wheat. But wheat is a matter of great interest to us as well as to the farmers of British Columbia, because we may join hands across the prairies for mutual needs. When on occasions I express myself along lines which might not be considered strictly orthodox from the point of view of party, I do so because it is my duty. Indeed I am sure it is my duty in this House of Commons to speak on behalf of my fellow citizens in eastern Canada, not only those in my constituency, but all the farmers, all the

Canadian Wheat Board Act
merchants and all the users of grain in eastern Canada. Some of them admit that during the war some emergency measures had to be taken, but they urge that at the present time we must consider the matter from the point of view not only of the east but also of Canada at large. My hon. friends from the west, no matter to which party they belong, have specialized: in wheat. Therefore at times they are surprised when one who is not a farmer, and who comes from the east, expresses himself on behalf of constituents and of eastern Canada at large with respect to problems as technical as this one.
Speaking as a Liberal, I am for free enterprise and I am against controls. You know that, sir. I have repeated it often in the house. I shall not dwell upon the amendment moved by the hon. member for Souris (Mr. Ross), nor shall I discuss his point of view, because in my opinion the amendment is out of order. Sooner or later Your Honour will be called upon to give a ruling as to whether or not it is in order.
Speaking to the resolution I would ask the minister to consider striking out the last fourteen words-
-and to empower the governor in council to extend the present system to oats or barley.
In this country the east and west shall meet; the statement that never the twain shall meet is untrue. We shall meet together for common assistance and help.
Mixed farming has existed in the west for a certain number of years; but in the east it is followed to a much greater extent, and eastern farmers are dependent upon the west for help in the raising of their stock. There are difficulties of transportation and other difficulties which come from the incompetence of man. Those difficulties should not exist. I have already pointed out what has happened because of the incompetence of the feeds controller in the wartime prices and trade board. My views were published1 in every newspaper, but I have had no support from the House of Commons in having him removed from his office, despite the fact that he has nothing to do now and does not deserve a pension from the state for the chaotic condition for which he was responsible in connection with the delivery of feed grains to the east.
I am not particularly interested, however, in any individual. I shall be just as lenient as my colleagues have been regarding that fellow, whom I do not know. But I am interested in the welfare of eastern farmers, who also deserve their share. We have heard protestations from the west; whether they are
right or wrong I shall not now discuss. I know that the eastern farmers have a case too, and their case will be vindicated in the House of Commons. We want eastern farmers to have justice from the government. Justice will never come from bureaucrats, but justice they are entitled to have from the government of this country.


John Horne Blackmore: We will back you.


Jean-François Pouliot: Thank you, sir. And it is in that spirit and in that hope that I place before the house today the case of the farmer in respect of the distribution of feed grains.
As it is almost six o'clock I shall tell you, sir, that believing sincerely in free enterprise I have the deep conviction that this is not the time to impose controls on feed grains. Now the farmer is doing much better; he is making greater profit. This applies not only to those in the east who raise hogs and cattle but also to those in the west who raise them. The farmer is making more money now, since controls on feed grains have been abolished.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.



PRIVATE BILLS


[Stage Direction]
Mr. EDOUARD RINFRET (Outremont) moved the second reading of Bill No. 8, respecting the Bell Telephone Company of Canada.
Mr. GREEN:: Is the sponsor not speaking on the bill?


Mr. RINFRET:: Yes, Mr. Speaker. Telephone development in Canada dates from the year 1880, when the Bell Telephone Company was incorporated by act of parliament. Although at that time all patents and lines were owned by the Canadian Telephone Company it was dependent on the Bell company, to which it sold out in 1882. During the year 1883 the Bell company operated in Canada with 4,400 rental earning telephones, 44 exchanges and 40 agencies with 600 miles of long distance wire. It controlled development in all the provinces except British Columbia, where the greater part of the system has always been in the hands of the British Columbia Telephone Company Limited.
With the rapid growth of private companies in the maritime provinces, the lines of the Bell company were disposed of in 1888 to the
Bell Telephone Company

Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company in Nova Scotia and to the New Brunswick Telephone Company in New Brunswick, a minority interest in these corporations being now held by the Bell company.
A development of a different kind is seen in the three prairie provinces, where well-organized systems were sold to the governments of Manitoba and Alberta in 1908, and to Saskatchewan in 1909.
The lines in Ontario and Quebec are still largely owned by the Bell company. They represent a potential market of some 8,000,000 population. The 1947 edition of the Canada Year Book shows that in 1945 there were 3,151 telephone systems in Canada. Included therein are the three large provincial systems in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, smaller governmental systems in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, together with the system operated by the Dominion Department of Public Works, the National Parks of Canada, Department of Mines and Resources. They also include 24 municipal systems, the largest operated by the cities of Edmonton, Fort William and Port Arthur; 2,368 co-operative telephone companies, and some 527 stock companies. Of these systems 893 operate in the Ontario and Quebec area, in only 13 of which the Bell company has a controlling interest. Over 60 per cent of the total telephone investment in Canada belongs to the Bell company, and their telephones in Quebec and Ontario constitute 57 per cent of the total for Canada.
The Bell company was originally incorporated with an authorized capital of $500,000, which was increased from time to time. The company's present capital is $150,000,000 which was authorized and created by virtue of the provisions of chapter 93 of the 1929 statutes.


Mr. REID:: Has the hon. member the number of persons served by the Bell Telephone Company?


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: It has a potential market of eight million people. As of December 31, 1947, $126,420,900 of authorized capital had been issued and paid in full.
Mr. Ma'cNICOL: In what year?


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: the succeeding five years, that is, 1953 to 1957. Therefore the capital expenditures during the next decade will run into very substantial amounts.
It will be appreciated that it is a very difficult thing to estimate the construction program for a telephone industry for as much as ten years in advance. Such a program is necessarily predicated on views of industrial activity of business outlook for that period. One method of testing the company's views has been to look to the past experience of the company, particularly to the period following the first great war, with which the period we are now in has and will have factors in common, particularly in the field with which we are concerned-that is, plant expansion in industry and the development of new projects resulting from wartime research.
In 1920 the capital obligations of the company amounted to about $44,000,000. By the end of that decade of expansion the obligations amounted to about $160 million; it increased in excess of three and a half times. The company's capital stock increased in like proportion-that is from less than twenty-three millions to nearly seventy-seven million. The debt capital increased more than four times-that is, from less than seventeen million to slightly over seventy million. While *this measure is not put forward as being a true test of the company's requirements it is, however, indicative of the difficulty of envisioning the requirements during a period of expansion.
In 1920 the company's issued capital stock was $23,000,000. The company came to parliament, sought and obtained authority to more than treble the then existing issued capital of $23,000,000. That proved to be insufficient to carry the company through the full expansion period which ended in 1931 and the company again had to apply for a further increase in 1929. If in 1920 the company had sought an increase in capital of sufficient amount to carry it through this expansion period it would probably have been thought to be over-reaching.
Of course it is not intended that all of this vast amount of money which is required will be raised through the issue of capital stock. It is contemplated that something in the neighbourhood of half of it will be obtained through borrowings and other available resources of the company, such as depreciation credits, which will be used and invested in the plant to be constructed. As at December 31, 1947 the debt ratio was 33-24 per cent; with the last issue of bonds it has reached 41-6 per cent. Thus, according to the best forecasting and estimating, the company

thinks and expects that it will need the $350 million of additional capital authorized by this bill to carry the expansion and extension of its system.
The granting of the authority to increase the capital as prayed for does not leave it to the company to issue and dispose of the new capital as it sees fit. Subsection 2 of section 1 of the bill re-enacts the provision that was contained in chapter 93 of the statutes of 1929 and deprives the company of the power to make any issue, sale or other disposition of its capital stock without first obtaining the approval of the Board of Transport Commissioners for Canada of the amount, terms and conditions of such issue, sale or other disposition of such capital stock.
I respectfully submit that this subsection 2 fully and amply protects any and all public interests that might be involved.
By section 2 of chapter 41 of the statutes of 1902, parliament imposed upon the company the obligation of furnishing telephone service and telephones of the latest improved design to the public upon demand. It is therefore, I submit, in the public interest that the company be put in a position where it can fulfil this duty. To discharge this duty it is necessary that the company enlarge and extend its system and facilities to the point where it can meet the public need and furnish service on demand. As already mentioned, there are 94,000 waiting applications for service. By this bill, the Bell company is asking the authority to be permitted to go out, from time to time, after satisfying the Board of Transport Commissioners for Canada of the propriety of doing so, to raise the necessary capital to enable it to discharge its duty to the public.
I cannot think of a better way to express the sentiment of the Bell company as to section 3 of the bill than to cite to you the exact words of its president at the last meeting of shareholders:
During the discussion of our bill, the banking and commerce committee of the senate adopted an amendment to the bill reducing the par value of our stock from $100 per share to $25 per share. In other words, it proposed to provide for the subdivision of our shares in the ratio of four for one. In the sixty-eight years of the company's history, our stock has not been split or subdivided. The amount paid into the treasury of the company by the shareholders averages $119 for each $100 par value share issued and outstanding. With this record there is a natural reluctance to disturb a condition which has stood the test of time. However, it was suggested by the committee that the division of shares would encourage the small investor to become a shareholder of the company,

Bell Telephone Company
and, to the extent that this action will increase the number of shareholders, it should assist the future equity financing of the company.


Thomas John Bentley: Would the hon. member mind telling us what he is quoting from? Is it the company's prospectus?


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: I said this was an extract from the report of the president of the company at the last meeting of shareholders.


Charles Edward Johnston: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, is an hon. member allowed to read at such length? If so, we should know so that we may all do the same.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: Does the hon. member expect that I should know all these figures by heart?


Mr. SPEAKER:: Order. The hon. member who has the floor knows that it is against the rules to read a speech, but I took it for granted that, seeing that he has so many figures to quote, he would have to consult his notes.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: If the hon. member will agree to make a whole speech in French for forty minutes without notes, then I will leave my notes aside.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I do not think that the remarks of the hon. member were called for.


Charles Edward Johnston: Whether I speak in French or in English, I do not speak from written prepared speeches or documents handed me by somebody else. If this is to be allowed I shall take advantage of the privilege myself.


James Horace King: I would ask hon. members not to interrupt the member who has the floor. I would ask the hon. member himself not to read his speech, but of course he is allowed to consult his notes.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: As regards the last remarks of the hon. member, this is my own writing. It was not prepared by anybody else. I am quoting from the exact words of the president of the Bell Telephone Company at the last meeting of shareholders.


Thomas John Bentley: He is making the speech, not you.


James Horace King: Order. I would ask hon. members to abide by the rules. The member who has the floor should not be interrupted without his permission.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: To finish the quotation:
In the light of these considerations, the company did not oppose the amendment.
It is immaterial to the company whether this amendment carries or not; it does not change the situation of the shareholders as to their proportionate holdings or as to their participation of profits. The net profits of the company available for dividends must necessarily be the same net profits regardless of the par value of the stock. The same profits will have to be distributed over a greater number of shares having the same aggregate value. I leave this matter in the hands of hon. members.
Section 4 of the bill is identical with section 39 of the Dominion Companies Act, with the exception of the substitution of the word "the" underlined in the second line for the word "a" to conform to the context.
Section 39 applies to every dominion company incorporated by letters patent and enables such companies to act and rely upon letters probate or letters of administration or other testamentary document granted by any court in Canada, Great Britain, Northern Ireland or any other of His Majesty's dominions, colonies or dependencies or in any foreign country when called upon to enter a transmission of its shares upon its registers in consequence of the death of a shareholder.
The Ontario Companies Act contains a like provision in section 62 applicable to all Ontario letters-patent companies.
Neither section 39 of the Dominion Companies Act nor section 62 of the Ontario Companies Act applies to the Bell Telephone Company of Canada.
Under the general law of Ontario courts will not recognize letters probate or letters of administration or other documents testamentary which have issued out of the courts of the other provinces of Canada or of foreign countries unless they have been re-sealed or otherwise authenticated by the surrogate courts in Ontario. The result is that if the company were to allow a transmission of its shares to be entered on its Toronto register relying upon letters probate or administration of any province or of any foreign country which have not been authenticated by the surrogate courts in Ontario it would have no protection and could not justify its position if the transmission became involved in litigation.
In the case of a deceased shareholder who dies domiciled other than in Ontario or Quebec the company is therefore in the position of either having to insist that the estate go to the expense of having the testamentary documents authenticated in Ontario or that the transmission be entered in Montreal where article 1220 of the Quebec civil code would
Bell Telephone Company

afford it the desired protection. This sometimes causes delay and some irritation on the part of the executors and their solicitors.
It is this situation which would be remedied by this proposed section, and its enactment would undoubtedly be helpful to those acting for the estates of shareholders who died domiciled elsewhere than in Ontario and Quebec.
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. The company is already engaged in the furnishing of service to mobile stations in automobiles and trucks, which cannot be provided by any means other than radiotelephone. This can be extended to aircraft, railway trains and ships. The company is using radiotelephone facilities to connect its wire lines across the St. Lawrence river from Joliette to Sorel. It operates a radiotelephone service between Leamington and Pelee island where ice conditions frequently used to damage submarine cables and interrupt the service. It has furnished transatlantic telephone service by radio for a number of years in conjunction with the Canadian Marconi Company.
Wireless or radiotelephone systems can also be used to extend telephone service to localities which cannot be economically or physically served by wire lines, such as island communities-I have already referred to Pelee island-isolated communities in the northern parts of Ontario and Quebec and other inaccessible points, or where other means may be unreliable. The extending of telephone service in this manner will become of increasing importance as our country expands and develops.
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 where such use is indicated to be the proper procedure.
The radiotelephone is also very useful as stand-by equipment to substitute for wires in case of damage by storms.
Section 6 is intended to improve the French translation of the company's corporate name as it appears in the French version of the statutes. The French version of the company's act of incorporation passed) in 1880 and the French version of all subsequent amending acts give the company's name as "La Compagnie Canadienne de Telephone Bell" followed by the English name "The Bell Telephone Company of Canada" in brackets. The name "La Compagnie Canadienne de Telephone Bell" translates into English as "The Canadian Bell Telephone Company" or "The Bell Canadian Telephone Company" and not into "The Bell Telephone Company of Canada". The company has never used "La Compagnie Canadienne de Telephone Bell" in any of its publications in. the French language; it has always used "La Compagnie de Telephone Bell du Canada"; and the purpose of this proposed section is to regularize the use of the French version of the company's name which the company actually uses and which it prefers as the better translation. This proposed change has been submitted to the bureau for translations, which agrees that the name proposed is the better translation.
That is the bill that is before the house, Mr. Speaker. I therefore move that this bill be referred to the standing committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines, where members will have full opportunity to examine it completely.
I may say that it is the intention of the company to apply to the committee to have all the evidence submitted taken in shorthand, so that every hon. member will have a complete record before him when the bill comes back before the committee of the whole house.


Mr. J. R. MacNICOL (Davenport):: My first words, Mr. Speaker, must be complimentary ones expressing praise for the way in which the hon. member who has just taken his seat delivered1 his speech. I want to compliment him on speaking the English language so well that one could not tell whether he was an English Canadian or a French Canadian. It is a great credit to him that he is able to speak both languages as well as he does. I would give a great deal if

Bell Telephone Company
I could stand up here tonight and speak in French. Although I can read French very well, I would not undertake to speak in the house in that language because I could not do it in anything like the way in which the hon. member spoke English.
If the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church) were here I would not have to say a word tonight. He would1 be quite capable of talking until nine o'clock as he did on a former occasion when a similar bill was introduced in 1928, just twenty years ago. He has strong views with regard to this matter, but he found it necessary to return to Toronto yesterday on a matter of business, so I shall try to fill in for a little while anyway; and if I cannot fill in until nine o'clock there are several others who can do so.
The hon. member quoted some figures that I am not just sure about. Possibly they were the latest figures. But the latest figures I have been able to get are those from the 1946 Survey of Corporate Securities published by the Financial Post which I obtained from our own library here. I have forgotten just how many telephones the hon. member said are now in operation, but the latest report published is that for 1945; and this report says that there were in operation in 1945, 1,050,113, together with another 187,349-I presume that means country phones and subsidiaries. So evidently there has been considerable growth, for which the company deserves credit. We must give them credit for that.
Speaking of the Bell Telephone Company, I may say that on one of my last visits to Brantford I went out to where Alexander Graham Bell was born, a small farmhouse near the city of Brantford. I believe it is now a Bell telephone shrine. It is simply wonderful that a young Canadian boy out in the country produced and developed this marvellous organization we have today-because it is a marvellous organization and has done a great job.
There are, however, some things that I am not just satisfied with. Although it is giving a good service, and I am not complaining about it, I am sure that it could give much better service in some directions. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Last summer I was in the town of Mount Forest. It was a Saturday, and I had received a telegram about a member of the family having been seriously injured. I went to the telephone office in Mount Forest at five minutes after twelve and found a note on the door saying, "Office closed; go to the hotel." I went to the hotel on the main street in the town. The telephone booth was occupied by
a young man who was having an interesting conversation with somebody; it gave him a good deal of enjoyment. After standing there waiting on him for several minutes, I finally gained entrance to the telephone booth. I hope that the mover of this bill, in reporting to the telephone company, will suggest that they see to it that in all small towns where they have full and absolute control-a giant monopoly with no opposition whatever-they give full service to the people. I drove then from Mount Forest to a place called Mitchell, in the direction I had to go to see the person who had) been injured. Again in Mitchell I went to the telephone office and found on the door a sign reading, "Closed for the afternoon. Go to the hotel office." Again I went to the hotel, and I could get no attention there either.
That is not service. Generally they do give mighty good service, but I felt at the very first opportunity I should place before the Commons and the public the suggestion that it is not good service for a great public service organization to close down like that on Saturday afternoon. I realize that the employees are entitled to an afternoon off, but there should be other employees to take their places. The company should employ more help if that is necessary. The public demands service, and in my opinion that is not full service. I found the same thing in the far north, though according to what the hon. member said they are now going to rectify the situation in respect to radiotelephone service. The people in the Mackenzie river valley, at Yellowknife and all those areas up there should have received better service all these late years from this monopoly that has full control, that can do what it likes, that can give whatever sort of service it likes, which is not compelled to go out and seek business or to fight against other corporations for business. To my mind there is no excuse for not having given better servio* in those particulars.
I am taking this opportunity to speak in the hope that this discussion will attract the attention of the people so that when this bill comes back to the house a dozen members may want to take part in the debate; and it is a good debate in which to take part. Over in England I found that in every important part of the larger cities they had telephone booths on the street comers where one could telephone without having to go to a hotel or to a telephone office which might be closed in the afternoon. I think the time has come when this great company, which has almost a perfect monopoly in the two great provinces
Bell Telephone Company

of Ontario and Quebec, where most of its business is, should give a better service to the country and to the public.
The last time this company was permitted to increase its capital stock to $150,000,000, and now they are asking for another increase of $350,000,000. Today the par value is $100, but the hon. member said something about an amendment which would permit it to be split, four shares for one. That is a mighty big melon, one of the biggest ever split in this country. Imagine splitting $500,000,000 into stock which is now going to be reduced from $100 to $25 and sold. The hon. gentleman did not mention one thing stated in this report, that 21-7 per cent of the entire outstanding stock of the company belongs to the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: I said over eighty per cent of the amount of the capital was held in Canada. I did not make any reference to the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, but its holding is 14-8 per cent.


John Ritchie MacNicol: This report, which I presume is correct, states that in 1945 some 21-7 per cent of the outstanding stock was held by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: That is not true today. It is 14-8 per cent.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Well, I am glad to hear that more of it is being held in Canada. I must say I am not opposed to a monopoly of the right kind, but I believe that with such a monopoly as they possess they should be able to give an infinitely wider service than they could if they did not have it. The question is, are they giving the service we might expect of them, with the control they have here in Canada? As my hon. friend knows, I believe all their equipment-perhaps not all; I believe some comes from England-is made in Canada by the Mirthern Electric.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: Some of it is.


John Ritchie MacNicol: And the majority of the stock of that company is held by the Bell Telephone Company, so once again they are not up against any competition. Northern Electric sells to the Bell Telephone Company, so naturally you would expect the Bell Telephone Company to be better off than if they had to compete in the market. I am all in favour of competition, but where you have a great national monopoly like this, for service which we need so badly, I am one of those who believe it could be held by the government. I understood the hon. member to say

the Bell Telephone Company had been bought out in the three prairie provinces. When I heard that I agreed with it. Whether Ontario and Quebec could afford to buy the resources of the company in those two provinces, I do not know. If not, I hope the time is not too far distant when they may do so. I am not a socialist. I am opposed to socialism. But we own the post office; our cities own the waterworks; in Ontario we own the whole hydro electric system, as they now do in Quebec and Manitoba, I believe. To me that is not socialism. Where you have a great national utility, such as the Canadian National Railways, there is a strong argument in favour of the feeling that all these great public services should belong to the people. If the public bought out this company I believe it would give better service than now is being given to Norman Wells, Aklavik, and all those northern areas.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but I do not think the Mackenzie river district is within the territory of the Bell Telephone Company.


Mr. NICHOLSON:: It will be if your bill goes through.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: As I said a moment ago, there are 893 other telephone systems in Ontario and Quebec.


John Ritchie MacNicol: But the vast majority of those are small systems, little rural lines in villages like Clifford, Ontario, Malton, and elsewhere rural lines. Before I forget it, since my time is nearly up, I want to make one other point. If I call anyone in the town of Weston, which is a suburb of Toronto, I am charged ten cents. It is not very much, I agree, but Toronto and Weston are very close together; so it is with East York and West York and all the municipalities roundabout, and I presume the same thing applies in Montreal. With this gigantic company making so much money, long ago I think it should have given city rates to all the little places within five miles or more of the limits of the large cities.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: Which would mean that the rates would have to be increased.


John Ritchie MacNicol: No.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: Because they are usually much smaller in suburban districts.


John Ritchie MacNicol: I do not believe they would have to be increased where a company has full control over buying and selling, does not have to seek business, does not have to go out for business and does not have to compete with anyone. Everyone goes to that

Bell Telephone Company
company; it does not have to come to anyone for business. It should have been able to give a little better service.
I am not finding fault with the company's service in general; they deserve a good deal of credit. Perhaps these are little things that could! have been done before. I remember when I lived in Buffalo, New York, and went to a university there, there were two telephone companies in that city. There was the Frontier Telephone Company and the Bell Telephone Company

but whether they have the two today, I do not know. My memory is that the service was very good. If I could not get a call through on one phone all I had to do was to go to the other one.
It was just at that time that work was being done on developing the dial phone. I am not so sure that it was not in the constituency of the hon. member for Peterborough West (Mr. Fraser) that the dial phone was invented. I remember on many occasions going to see it in process of perfection in Peterborough. I believe I would not be far out if I were to sayi that the dial phone we use today was developed1 by Canadians. Canadians have had a good deal to do with the whole development of the telephone business.
I notice from information I have here that in 1945 the total fixed assets were $252,649,926. That is a very fine and substantial accumulation of assets. The company should have been in a position to do much of that about which the hon. member has spoken-and which he says they are going to do-without coming to parliament for this increase of capital. I quite realize that they have many new stations to build1, and that they are going to put their wires underground in the cities. I understand there are other very necessary improvements to be made, upon all of which they should be congratulated'. I can say further that their general offices in Montreal, Toronto and other cities are a credit to them. I have no doubt they can be greatly expanded so as to give better service, because many of the stations in the big cities are not located as they should be.
Perhaps these are some of the ways in which they would use this large sum of money. My hon. friend gave his statement so concisely, so neatly and so well that for a moment I thought no one was going to say a word. I rose at once so that hon. members would have time to think it over.
I see that in 1945 this company had a net profit of over $6,000,000. I should think that is a satisfactory profit. As I said at the outset I believe this company treats its employees well, and I have noticed that anyone working for it wishes to. stay with it. I do not know,
however, whether they are giving all to their employees that the government of Canada gives to employees in the civil service. If they have such a surplus I would say they should share: some of it with their employees.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: They do.


John Ritchie MacNicol: They could have a retirement allowance and a pension.


Édouard-Gabriel Rinfret: I did not mention those things, because they did not come within the provisions of the bill. I can say however that the company has employees' pensions, disability benefits, death benefits-all the benefits one could think of. They also have employees' shares.


James Horace King: The hon. member for Davenport has the floor.


John Ritchie MacNicol: I allowed the hon. member to interject that, Mr. Speaker; and it was very kind of you to permit him to proceed. It helps his story, and makes my story better.
I said the company treated its employees well. I do not know that there is much more for me to say. I shall close by offering further congratulations to the hon. member for speaking so eloquently, so clearly and so forcefully.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: Mr. Speaker, I should like to comment briefly upon the measure in the brief time at my disposal. I share the admiration expressed by the hon. member for Davenport (Mr. Mac-Nicol) for the facility with which the hon. member for Outremont (Mr. Rinfret) handled his speech. It was well read. I admired the way the hon. member spoke, but I thought he spoiled it to some extent by his remarks to the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Johnston). It will be recalled that not so long ago hon. members from the other side of the house objected to the reading of a speech by an hon. member on this side of the house. The suggestion was made that the speech may have been written by somebody else, We did not express ourselves that way today, although perhaps we might have. All one member did was to draw attention to the fact that the speech was being read. I think the remark that was fired back was not a fair one.
The principle of the bill, I should think, involves the question whether the Bell Telephone Company is to be authorized to increase its capital to the extent of $350 million. We must be careful in granting such authorization to any company which, as the hon. member for Davenport has said, is a huge monopoly in at least two provinces in this
Canadian Wheat Board Act

dominion'. Fortunately in -western Canada we have a variety of telephone systems, provincially, municipally and in co-operative associations. By and' large they are giving satisfaction.


James Horace King: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but the hour for private and public bills having expired, the house will revert to the business before six o'clock.



CANADIAN WHEAT BOARD ACT


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration of the motion of the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) that the house go into committee to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to present 'a bill to 'amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act, to authorize the board to provide pensions for members, officers and employees and to make provision for the increase of the fixed minimum price on wheat deliveries; to extend the control of interpro-vinciial movements of wheat products and to empower the governor in council to extend the present system to oats or barley.
Jean-François Pouliot: Mr. Speaker, I tell you honestly that I prefer to argue the case of the farmer to that of the Canadian wheat board. There have been many complaints to the effect that that institution is not working properly, and yet we are to give it more power. We know that many farmers manufacture their own feeds for use on their farms, and it is also known that any farmer, merchant or manufacturer of feeds will tell you that the handling of feed grains by the Canadian wheat board and the wartime prices and trade board has been most unsatisfactory.
Since the Winnipeg grain exchajige has been reorganized it is important to remember that any user of grain can now purchase any quantity of oats or barley, either bagged or in bulk, at prices which definitely give the user a larger margin of profit than was obtainable before ceiling prices on coarse grains were removed. If the farmer is of opinion that the margin of profit derived is sufficient he can hedge his purchase of grain, which guarantees him his profit until such time as his livestock is marketed. If the grain user is in the market for oats or barley for later delivery he can purchase his requirements at any time the price is suitable to him, or as already mentioned he can hedge his purchasing to establish his flat profit. The farmer is unable to hedge his purchases of feed grain as soon as feed comes under the Canadian wheat board. This is a composite picture of

the remarks that I have heard in my part of the country, and some of my western friends wrould be surprised to realize that these remarks are not parochial but apply as well to all the farmers engaged in mixed farming throughout the country from coast to coast.


Mr. WRIGHT:: Is that what the Canadian federation of agriculture says?


Jean-François Pouliot: 
Thomas John Bentley: You can come over here any time you like.


Jean-François Pouliot: My hon. friend was not here then. I was speaking of his illustrious predecessors in that party. It is no use being angry with each other. I try to bring the truth home to my hon. friends. I want them to realize that they are being deceived by the statements of some men who are supposed to represent the farmers but most of whose utterances are in flat contradiction of the views of the farmers and of those engaged in the raising of hogs and cattle in this country. This is how I got my education, by listening to practical farmers. I am always glad to listen to my hon. friends when they talk good sense.
The feed mills established all over the county during the last few years can now buy all their grain requirements in bulk at low prices. My hon. friends know that, as do all those who are engaged in farming.


Percy Ellis Wright: They could always buy coarse grains on the Winnipeg grain exchange.

Canadian Wheat Board Act


Jean-François Pouliot: Yes, but under grain trade regulations. I am coming to that in a minute, but one thing at a time. I think my hon. friend will see that there are strong reasons against'this kind of legislation.
I come now to the feed wheat situation, which was controlled by the boards. The situation there is entirely different. No bulk wheat has been offered for sale to the feeding trade in the east for at least three months. If feed wheat was available, it was only offered basis sacked1 at extremely high prices, and even at those high levels, eastern grain dealers were obliged to take combination deals of oats, barley and ground wheat at prices far above their normal value to get the odd car of sacked wheat. And the same with flour.
Good quality No. 1 whole bulk oats delivered to country points today costs the dealer approximately $2.50 per hundred pounds. Empty sacks in the country cost ten cents each, making the price for a bag of sacked oats approximately $2.60. Sacked wheat is sold at about $3 per bag to the country buyer, and when he is fortunate enough to get a car of sacked wheat he has to take additional feeds at much higher prices to get it.
It is still worse with flour. The wheat which the Canadian wheat board allocates to the flour mills has never been properly handled. No country farmer or feed dealer can forget that during the war he was obliged to take one bag of flour in order to get one or two bags of feeds.


George Hugh Castleden: Who made that regulation?


Jean-François Pouliot: The Canadian wheat board.


George Hugh Castleden: No.


Percy Ellis Wright: No.


William Scottie Bryce: The millers made it.


Jean-François Pouliot: My hon. friends know very well that the regulation existed.


William Scottie Bryce: But do not blame it on the wheat board.


Jean-François Pouliot: I do not know who made the regulation. Was it the wartime prices and trade board? The wartime prices and trade board or the wheat board-


James Angus MacKinnon: The dealer.


Jean-François Pouliot: The dealer, yes; and I will explain why he did it. It came from the miller who got more subsidies on flour.


William Scottie Bryce: That was the miller.


Jean-François Pouliot: But this was at the time when wheat and coarse grains and the balanced rations were under control. Now that the 5849-109
coarse grains are no longer under control the farmers may buy the quality they want. They can buy precisely what they want; they can buy balanced rations and they can buy the kind of grain they want without being obliged to accept substitutes at the same time.


George Hugh Castleden: Has the price gone up?


Jean-François Pouliot: The price has gone up a little, but on the other hand the farmer is still better off because he makes more money with his sales. He is better than he was at the time of the controls. I will give you the impression of many farmers that I have met from my constituency and from outside of my constituency. The flour, being useless to the farmer, had to be used to feed cattle and hogs. Who would think that flour, which is so fine, should be given to cattle and hogs? The farmers were taken advantage of at the time that the controls existed. My hon. friends will realize that I had something in my mind when I mentioned the Canadian wheat board; but the millers were responsible for it. At the time of the controls, the controls did not prevent the miller from exploiting the people and in not filling their orders as they were sent to them in spite of the controls. Let me explain my case, and when I am through my hon. friends will be in a position to give their judgment, but in the meantime I ask them to be good to me and to be just as kind as they naturally are when I am not wicked with them, and I try never to be.
On such a bag of flour the government, ultimately the taxpayer, had to pay a subsidy of two to three dollars. I estimate that the loss to the treasury on these transactions during the years 1943 to 1946 averaged roughly $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 a year, a complete loss. Since October 1947 the government subsidy on wheat for the manufacture of bread has been removed, but at the time of the controls it was precisely the subsidy that accompanied the control that was the incentive to the miller to exploit the farmer and everybody who was producing cattle or hogs or even poultry. Notwithstanding this removal, there is still so much flour in the country that the general stores and feed dealers are trying their utmost to dispose of their surplus stocks at $1 a bag less than the present mill price. The surplus of flour is still so great that even the inducement of $1 a bag less than its value has not enabled country merchants to reduce their stocks.
The flour administrator, who at the same time is the president of the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, works hand in hand with the Canadian wheat board, definitely to the advantage of his own invested interests. The
Canadian Wheat Board Act

Canadian wheat board lack an appreciation of the need of close co-operation with the eastern farmers and the dealers, and they have established an office in Toronto but none in Montreal, the metropolis of Canada. They do not pay much attention to the demands of the Quebec farmers. No careful and sound businessman would consider raising cattle or hogs under present conditions. What measure of protection can he look forward to, knowing that the government- at any moment may enter into the picture and upset the price structure on grain to such an extent that investments would be severely jeopardized1 and most probably wiped out? A large number of farmers intend going out of the business of raising hogs immediately on account of the difficulties that we had not long ago just before the ceilings were taken off.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: Was it not just after the ceilings were taken off?


Jean-François Pouliot: I will tell my hon. friend I was open-minded and I suggested here at the time that the ceiling should be taken off or that the grain should be under the Canadian wheat board, but I had so many protests from my constituents about coarse grains being put under the wheat board1 that in my office I took notes of what they said to me and I submit them to my colleagues in the House of Commons today just as my hon. colleagues of the west do after the complaints that are lodged with them from the farmers or any constituents of their ridings.
I know that Mr. Lamont sent a telegram to Mr. King on February 16, and I understand that point of view. He is the president of the Northwest Line Elevators Association. He said, if the embargo is lifted on coarse grains we will make more money. This is a feeling that I understand, but there is something else. In business there is the law of profit and loss. Anyone who is engaged' in any business may make money at a time and he may lose some, but when he ends the year with a sufficient surplus it is considered a reasonable year, a good year or a very good year.
In these matters I have no objection to the farmers of the west receiving the world price for their wheat, provided that they understand that it is essential to their brother farmers from the east or from British Columbia to have the opportunity to buy and to obtain delivery of the coarse grain that is necessary for the economy of this country; and the farmers of the west who are grain growers growing- wheat, barley or rye or all these grains may make more money with one kind of grain, with wheat, of which we have a

surplus. We have a surplus of wheat, and the surplus, the overproduction, should be exported. It should be sold oni the world markets at world prices. I know the western farmers are good enough sports to suffer their loss when the loss is due to the world prices, and they are entitled to their profit. But when it comes to another commodity which is not grown in such quantities and just enough for domestic purposes, the story is different, because we Canadians must look after ourselves. I mean that the farmers of this country must help themselves before thinking of exporting outside of Canada any commodity which their brother farmers need here.
That is why I object to the control of coarse grains. I object to it because the Canadian. wheat board will not be in a position to do any better job for the distribution of coarse grains than was the old Marketing Act which was passed in 1944 or 1945. That legislation was wrong. It was a parochial kind of legislation, legislation designed to erect a Chinese wall around each province of Canada. It was nonsensical and it did not work. No one in the west, no one in the east, no one in British Columbia needed that legislation which was imposed on the Canadian people by a government that was not familiar with their needs.
I am not speaking as a lawyer. I am just voicing the representations which have been made to me in my office, on the street, in my home by many people who are not opposed to the farmers of the west any more than they are opposed to the farmers of our own province or the farmers of Ontario. They have the same responsibility for they have the same needs.


Mr. BURTON:: They get their information from, wrong sources.


Jean-François Pouliot: It is their own experience and therefore they cannot be mistaken. I do not complain about the practices of the west. I said I had met enough people in my life to understand human feelings. On the other hand, we have to build up agriculture in this country, and my hon. friend who comes from Edmonton, the former minister of trade and commerce (Mr. MacKinnon) did a very good job until he accepted the transfer of the department to the new Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe), who is equally familiar with the .problems of the west. And because I trust the Minister of Trade and Commerce just as well as I trust the cabinet-


Stanley Howard Knowles: A doubtful compliment.


Jean-François Pouliot: No; those are people that we can talk to. If my hon. friend the member

Canadian Wheat Board Act
for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) ever became a minister he would think he was God himself and he would excommunicate everybody who did not think as he would. It is dangerous. I hope my hon. friend would not go as far as that, because he would lose his good smile for a perpetual frown.


Stanley Howard Knowles: We all realize we really should not interrupt the hon. member.


Jean-François Pouliot: My hon. friend knows I like him, and I want to bring conviction to the hearts of hon. members. I want it so much that if I do not succeed in this debate I will take it up again after the amendment is disposed of. I know they are not biased. Perhaps my hon. friends are wrongly informed, but they are open-minded and I want them to make a fine gesture and say, "We may lose a little on this but we shall have an opportunity to earn more on the whole business."
I quote from the resolution:
... to extend the control of interprovincia] movements of wheat products and to empower the governor in council to extend the present system to oats or barley.
The Minister of Agriculture, who is a practical farmer, knows the east well enough, he knows the west well enough, and he knows the needs of British Columbia, and I am sure that he will think again about it. I do not want a quick decision.


An hon. MEMBER:: You know more about it, do you?


Jean-François Pouliot: No, sir. I am not teaching; I am reporting. But if my hon. friend asks me too many questions I may start to teach and I do not know whether it would be with success. I will do my best anyway.
But, sir, what all the farmers of Canada have to do, the farmers without exception, is to unite together and not always believe in these self-appointed loud speakers of councils who do not represent the majority of the good farmers of the country.


Joseph William Burton: How do they get elected? ,


Jean-François Pouliot: It is easy to be elected to a board. It is the easiest thing in the world. It is just as easy as being elected an officer of a brotherhood. My hon. friend knows that, and by the way, my hon. friend is a great humorist. He has a dry humour and sometimes he does not smile when he says things that are very pleasant to listen to. There is his smile again; there is no more dry humour in him. It is humour with a smile.


Joseph William Burton: The hon. member mentioned a moment ago that he was opposed to the controls.


Jean-François Pouliot: Yes, sir.


Joseph William Burton: In that case we farmers should be able to market coarse grains where we can get the best market, if there were no controls.


Jean-François Pouliot: I will tell my hon. friend that there is a great difference between control of price and embargo. It is not the same thing at all, and my hon. friend is too well gifted to insist on that distinction being made in black nnd white for him. He knows that very well. I know quite well that if the gentleman who has a farm next to his were in trouble the hon. member would go to his help sooner than he would go to the help of somebody who lives two or three townships away. It is natural. But now we in Canada are all in the same boat and the question is-


William Henry Golding: The hon. member has exhausted his time.


Jean-François Pouliot: May I finish my sentence. Thank you, sir. The question is one of assuring the future of the livestock of this country and giving an opportunity to the farmers to continue their work for the benefit of Canada and for the benefit of mankind.
I thank you sir, and I thank the house for its kind attention. This is a serious problem, and as I said at the start, I am speaking on behalf of eastern people-


William Scottie Bryce: Don't let the western farmers hear you.


Jean-François Pouliot: They are easier to convince than my hon. friend. I am speaking on behalf' of the eastern people, but I am also speaking on behalf of all the farmers of Canada and on behalf of all those who want to see the-country make progress.
Mr. C. C. MILLER (Portage la Prairie) r There are several angles, Mr. Speaker, to be considered in connection with the matter now before the house. The resolution that was introduced this afternoon seeks to authorize a>
bill dealing with several different matters which we believe should be introduced in several separate bills. For instance, the question of pensions is mentioned in the original resolution. There is no question that in this modern day and age pensions are a commonplace thing. It is considered by governments at all levels and by business that pensions are good business, and they are now an accepted practice in this country. But at the moment we do not know just what sort of pension scheme is proposed1, and naturally we will not know until the legislation comes before the house.
Speaking to the resolution this afternoon the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) said, as I noted it, that the support for
Canadian Wheat Board Act

the pension fund would be by contributions, half by the employees and half by the board. That may be and probably is a sound principle with regard to ordinary corporations. But after all, the Canadian wheat board is to some extent a crown company-it could be called a crown company-and it is dealing with assets which are not its own but are those of the farmers of western Canada. If I understood correctly the import of the minister's remarks, they could1 only mean that the farmers of this country, out of the proceeds of the sale of their grain, will have to pay fifty per cent of the cost of pensions for the members of the wheat board, its officers and employees. That may be fair enough, and it may be sound enough, but the members of the board, its officers and many of its employees are earning at least respectable salaries. I think most of them are getting fairly well paid. Are we to believe that the government intends that the farmers of western Canada should assist in providing a fund to give these men pensions? If so, I shall have to have a great deal more information before I can bring myself to support any such pension scheme. I am not against a pension for these employees, but at the moment I am inclined to say that I w'ould be sternly against any pensions where any part of the fund out of which they are paid would come out of the proceeds of the sale of the farmers' grain. The only pension I know of that the western farmers themselves can ever get is the old age pension, when they are seventy years old-unless they pay for one through an insurance company. Members of the wheat board and its officers or employees are just as well able to provide pensions out of their own funds as are the farmers of western Canada to do so for them out of the proceeds of the sale of their grain. Unless the minister, in introducing the bill, or at least on second reading of the bill, can show some good reason why this system of establishing a pension fund should be followed1, as I said before I w'ould be forced- to oppose any such measure.
In any event, Mr. Speaker, I think it is only fair to say-and I think our attitude in this matter is the correct one-that it is not appropriate that provision for pensions should be combined with the other amendments to the Canadian Wheat Board Act. If a pension fund is to be established, it is of sufficient importance to be incorporated in a special bill, and that bill could be a more or less codified measure setting out the system of pensions, how it is to be regulated, and so on.
When the amendments to the Canadian Wheat Board Act were being considered at the last session of parliament, an effort was made by some hon. members, and I think perhaps

mainly from this party, to have the employees of the wheat board included in the civil service. At that time objection was taken by the then minister of trade and commerce (Mr. MacKinnon) and one of the grounds of his objection was that the employees of the board were to a large extent temporary or seasonal and it was not practical to have them under the operation of the civil service. If the objection to the inclusion of these employees in the civil service was valid then, I maintain that it is completely in order in respect to the suggestion that a pension fund should be set up for them by the board. How in the world can you pay pensions for seasonal employees? Of course that could be answered by saying it is a mere detail which can be worked out; but in any event the objection then raised is one that I would now take to the inclusion of these employees in the pension scheme. Certainly before I give any vote in favour of this pension scheme, from the knowledge we have of it now, I would say that unless full answers are given to many of the questions which the opposition have asked in the past for information and particulars with respect to employees of the Canadian wheat board, I do not see how we can intelligently discuss any proposed pension scheme.
I suggest to the Minister of Trade and Commerce that when he is discussing this measure, perhaps when he closes the debate, he be prepared to give information with regard to the number of employees and the salaries paid to them, because it seems to me that is information we should have before we consider this pension scheme. In any event we should not at this time make our final judgment as to how we are going to vote on this particular question. I would prefer to see pensions provided for these people; it is only the manner or the means of providing them that I might object to. Therefore on that question I would reserve judgment and deal with the whole question on its merits when the further particulars are given to us, as they should be when the bill is introduced.
The resolution moved by the minister states in part;
... to empower the governor in council to extend the present system to oats or barley.
When the minister was speaking this afternoon he stated, as I noted it, that they were taking or seeking to take the power to include oats or barley under the Canadian wheat board but they were not going to adopt any system of including them under the operations of the act until they had a system that was proved constitutional and workable. If that is so, Mr. Speaker, may I ask why in

Canadian Wheat Board Act
(he world the resolution contains these words: "to empower the governor in council to extend the present system"? In other words legislation is to be sought to extend the present system, not some other system the government thinks may be devised which will be constitutional and workable.
In any event apparently we are to have an alternative, if the legislation goes through; it is to be oats or barley. I wonder if that wording in the alternative was deliberate, or whether it was an oversight or a misprint. Does it mean that if the proposed legislation passes the house some time one or other might be brought under the operation of the wheat board act, or does it mean "oats and/or barley"? I want to bring that to the attention of the minister, because as it reads now I should say it would be interpreted to mean only one or other could be dealt with. I wonder if that is deliberate and if there was some reason for doing that, or if it is an oversight, or if it was intended that both oats and barley might ultimately be brought under the act.
The legislation which is asked for now is a little stronger than the present act. Hon. members will recall, of course, that the act in question deals with grain, and the definition is wide enough to include all types of grain. But subsection 2 of section 7 of the act as it is at present provides:
Except as directed' by the governor in council the board shall not buy grain, other than wheat.
As I said, that is a little weaker than the proposed legislation, but it seems to me this particular clause is none too clear. It does not say whether the government intend to actually bring oats or barley under the wheat board act, or whether they are just thinking about it, or whether they are taking the power to oblige the Canadian federation of agriculture, or whether they are really sincere in their desire to incorporate these grains under the board. It may be that they are taking the power-and I gather this is very probably the situation, from what the minister said today-hoping that time, the great cure for everything, will show them in some way in which they can please those who want coarse grains brought under the operations of the act, as well as those who are opposed to it.
Personally I have always felt that the wheat board owed its existence purely and solely to the fact that it was supposed to help the farmers of western Canada get good prices for their grain. The idea was that because of certain conditions in the west this wheat board should be created for the sole purpose
of seeing that the farmers got the best possible price for their grain. Now it seems to me that as we have gone along from year to year, from amendment to amendment, from operation to operation, the wheat board is in danger of becoming an instrument not designed to get the best possible price for the farmers' products but to make certain they do not get the best price. Today the farmers of western Canada want to get the very best price they possibly can for their coarse grains. It is equally true that the feeders of eastern Canada want to get feed as cheaply as possible. This is an apparent conflict which I submit the government itself can resolve without sacrificing the interests of either the feeder of the east or the farmer of the west. It may be that some scheme will have to Be worked out under which prices for the products of the feeders of the east will be increased; but I maintain, and have always maintained, that it is not good for the economy, not only of the west but of the whole of Canada, to depress the price of anything the farmers of the west have to sell. As the Minister of Agriculture knows, and as is known by all who come from western Canada, the farmers of the west are responsible for the prosperity of the rest of Canada. What the farmer gets for his products, he spends, and when the farmers of the west have little money to spend the wheels of industry in the east revolve very slowly indeed.
Another thing that bothers me about the powers which are sought here is that it seems to me there has always been in the minds of the members of the government some uncertainty as to what they are going to do or what they can do in connection with this wheat board act. This session we have a tremendous right about face from the position taken when certain amendments were before the house last session. For instance the Minister of Agriculture, speaking to the amendment moved last session by the hon. member for Yorkton (Mr. Castleden), said at page 858 of Hansard for February 27, 1947:
The amendment, as I understand it, is intended to make this act apply to oats and barley and other grains in exactly the same way as it is now made to apply to wheat. I am qu;te certain that neither the farm organizations nor the farmers generally would want the act to go quite that far, either those who agree with the government or those who disagree with the government . . . Oats and barley, on the other hand-although this is not so true of rye-are grains which are grown largely for the purpose of feeding them on the farms where they are grown or of selling them from one farmer to another, or from one feeder to another, within the area in which they are grown, which raises altogether different questions with regard to the marketing of the product.
Canadian Wheat Board Act

If it were the desire of the committee to pass a. provision- such ias the one suggested, that is if the committee decided that marketing of coarse grains could not be provided for by order in council, but that we must make this act apply in all ways to oats 'and barley, the same as it applies to wheat, you would be creating an undesirable situation.
I agree, of course, that the government is not definitely saying that oats or barley will be brought under the operations of the board or be made subject to the act. The answer of hon. members opposite may be that they have not yet come to that point. Nevertheless it must mean either that or that the government is fooling the people. Then on page 859 the Minister of Agriculture went on to deal with the same point and summed up in this way:
The whole position in relation to coarse grains is so different from that in relation to wheat that I do not think you can deal with it by an amendment such as the one suggested.
At page 864 the Minister of Agriculture was on his feet again, dealing with the same point, but iie went a little further and enlarged on the theory of ultra vires, that it was beyond the jurisdiction of this house to enact legislation along the lines suggested by the hon. member for Yorkton. The Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley) was more pronounced in his legal view, although he maintained that he was only giving the house the opinion of his law officers. At pages 862, 865, 866 and 867 he made no bones at all about it by stating that in his opinion the matter was ultra vires of this parliament.


George Hugh Castleden: He admitted he did not not have a very good argument.


Mr. MILLER:: So now, while members of the government may not actually have to swallow their own -words, certainly they will have to do a good deal of explaining if they maintain, and continue to maintain, that the legislation based upon- the resolution will have any substance. Because their arguments last session are just as true and as real now as they ever were. It may be that the government does not intend to bring in any legislation to implement the power it now seeks to have incorporated in the Canadian Wheat Board Act. It must be one or the other.
We can have very little quarrel with the provision for the increase in the fixed minimum price unless, indeed, it would be as to amount. The leader of the opposition (Mr. Bracken) has urged consistently that the fixed minimum price should be substantially increased. I think it is only right and just however that all hon. members should take strong, serious and insistent objection to the

suggestion made this afternoon by the Minister of Trade and) Commerce that the price would not be included in the bill we are about to consider. It seems difficult to realize that the time has again come when parliament is asked

this is just another instance of it- to pass basic legislation, with- the ministers, in their great and wonderful wisdom and judgment, empowered to do the rest. Then we are to go home and forget all about our troubles. It seems to me if we are interested in the welfare of the farmers we should insist upon knowing where those farmers are going to stand in respect of payments to be made to them. We should know what they are going to get. If we go back home at Easter or when the house prorogues and the farmers^ ask us what they are going to get, and we have to reply that we do not know, then surely they will- wonder, and perhaps quite rightly, what- in the world we were doing while sitting down here in the House of Commons where we are supposed1 to represent them.
It may be that the minute we get home, or possibly before we go home at Easter, if this legislation passes, the Minister of Trade and Commerce will make his announcement in, his own good time. That has happened before, not under the present minister particularly; but I can- well recall- the fight that was waged in this chamber by this party at a time when we tried to get higher payments for the farmers when we tried1 to have the 1945 participation certificates paid to the farmers, and I can recall that on that occasion the Minister of Agriculture told us that what we were asking was not feasible or possible. But within two months after we got home following prorogation the then minister of trade and commerce, who is now Minister of Fisheries, made a speech in which he said that as soon as the House of Commons could reassemble, legislation would be introduced which would permit the making of additional payments to the farmers. Yet we had fought here for weeks, not only co-operative and anxious to help the government to make payments to farmers, but urging the government, times without number, to do so.
It is likely that that will happen, again. I maintain we are entitled to have this information, and to continue to argue and fight for it until we get it. I suggest the Minister of Trade and Commerce should reconsider his attitude so far as fixed minimum prices are concerned, and should let us in on the secret. For the first term, anyway, let us know what the fixed minimum price will be.
At the moment the minister under the' existing act has some control over interpro-

Canadian Wheat Board Act
vincial movements of wheat products. This measure purports to enlarge that control. Until the legislation comes in it will be difficult to make any comment upon it, and I believe the sensible thing to do would be to wait and see what the extension is to be before we enter into any discussion of it.
I must repeat that I do not like the lumping of so many things in one resolution. It is not fair or sensible, it seems to me, and it does not help the progress of the legislation through the house when we find provision for pensions tied in the same sentence with a provision for the payment of an increased minimum price to the farmers. There is no relationship between the two things. It is bad enough to have them tied in one resolution, let alone having them in one sentence in that resolution. There seems almost a sinister threat in this sentence that we must either vote for the pensions willy-nilly, regardless of the arguments, that we advance, or we shall be accused of opposing increased payments to the farmers-which the minister knows very well we cannot possibly do in the light of our previous action and our desire on this particular question.
Speaking this afternoon on the motion, the Minister of Trade and Commerce paraphrased the legal opinion of the law officers of the crown, as given in the house by the Minister of Justice, by saying that one that would work was not constitutional and one that was constitutional would not work. I think that is a good phrase. The only trouble is that it puts other hon. members in a bit of a quandary, because we are now faced with a resolution which may or may not be constitutional. According to the Minister of Trade and Commerce, who has quoted with approval the opinion of the Minister of Justice, "if it is constitutional it will not work, and if it will work it is not constitutional. He says they are going to wait around and try to find something which will work and also be constitutional. And if he does he has to climb the almost insurmountable barrier which the Minister of Justice has already thrown across his track.
If the Minister of Trade and Commerce is correct when he states that that which is constitutional would not work, then I submit that only fortifies the argument I have made to the effect that the proposed powers in the resolution are nothing more than a mirage thrown up to entice the support of those throughout western and eastern Canada who desire to have a certain measure of control in coarse grains, and to have coarse grains incorporated in the operations of the Canadian wheat board.
So far as that particular question is concerned, I repeat that I am not at this stage endeavouring to offer an argument either for or against the inclusion of oats or barley- or oats and barley, whichever you wish to have it-within the operation of the wheat board. If and when the government makes up its mind actually to come before us and say it i3 going to do that, then hon. members like myself will make up their minds, based upon the legislation introduced, as to just to what extent we should support the government in any such effort. But at the present time, in view of the arguments we have had not only at this session but at the last, and in view of the nebulous nature of the powers sought under this resolution, it seems to me that we are tilting at a windmill. It is a mere shibboleth and a sham and will never in practice and effect be part of the law of this country. I trust therefore that the Minister of Trade and Commerce will accept the amendment and announce that it is his intention in dealing with this legislation to pursue the method proposed by the hon. member for Souris.


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, in rising to speak to the amendment to the resolution may I say I have listened with considerable interest to the addresses that have been given on behalf of all three opposition groups in the house in support of the amendment.
The resolution itself calls for three important amendments to the wheat board act: first, to make provision for pensions for members, officers and employees of the wheat board; second, to make provision for the increase of the fixed minimum price on wheat deliveries, and third, to make provision empowering the governor in council to give authority to the wheat board to handle oats and/or barley-for the legislation provides for both or either being handled.
The opposition, through the amendment of the hon. member for Souris (Mr. Ross), propose that instead of having just one bill amending the wheat board act we should have three. Since I have been in the house I have heard suggestions that we should have a second amending bill to an act that was already on the statute book or to one that had been put on the statute book at the same session, but on every occasion on which such a suggestion has been made the legitimate criticism was made by the opposition that the government could not have given sufficient consideration in the first place to the amendments they intended to bring in or they would have all been incorporated in the one bill.
Canadian Wheat Board Act

I shall not argue at the moment whether the amendment is in order, because that is under consideration by the Chair; but I am inclined to agree with the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot), who said he does not think the amendment is in order. Until the Speaker has given his ruling upon that point we must assume that the amendment is before the house, and of course it may be the question before the house after his ruling is given. But I think members will agree it is hardly reasonable to expect that the ruling given will be one which permits discussion of the very same subject on three different occasions in the same session. That is what would happen if the amendment should be ruled in order; because immediately the first bill proposed by the opposition was brought into the house every section of the wheat board act would be open for discussion; when we had disposed of that bill and the second bill was brought in, again every section of the wheat board act would be open for discussion, and when we had disposed of both those bills and the third bill was brought in, every section of the wheat board act would be open for discussion a third time. I cannot understand members who are urging that this matter be dealt with expeditiously taking the position , that that is the procedure we should follow. In the first place, on the legislation to provide for additional payments, we should have at least as long a discussion as on this resolution. Furthermore, I think each of the three bills the amendment proposes would require to be preceded by a resolution, so that instead of having three discussions on the wheat board act this session we should have six. So far as getting payments out to the farmers is concerned there is no doubt what the effect of that procedure would be. Some members may say that that particular bill could be dealt with first and disposed of so that payments could be made, but I venture to say that to many members of the house, the third bill would be of just as great importance, that is, the bill to bring under wheat board control the marketing of oats and barley.
All three of the western legislatures are now in session. One of them at least is halfway through its session, and the other two are approaching the half-way mark. If there is to be legislation supplementary to any legislation passed by this house this session it would require to be passed, if it is to affect this year's crop, at the sessions now under way in the provinces. As I have said, to adopt the amendment would mean six discussions in this house of the very same act in the weeks that lie ahead. During those weeks we

must get through two other important pieces of legislation if we are to continue to make effective the other marketing arrangements for farm products. That must be done before March 31, and anything which would involve delay in dealing with that matter would be just as serious as any delay with legislation having to do with paying out more money to the farmers. I suggest that the proposal made by the opposition might result in very serious hardship to a great many people in western Canada.
We talk a great deal these days about high prices, and high returns for farm products and for manufactured goods, and we are sometimes apt to forget that there are just as many people in western Canada suffering by way of drought as a result of the failure of the 1947 crop as suffered on the average in the actual years of drought that we speak about so much, and these people require payments at an early date. More than that they require soon to know what they ought to do in connection with the crops they are to sow this spring, and if we have to go back to western Canada at Easter and say that we have not yet got legislation through empowering the government to do the thing which many farmers think ought to be done, if we have to tell them we do not know whether it will go through or not-


Thomas John Bentley: Will the minister permit a question?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes.


Thomas John Bentley: Have not the wheat board or the government the power now to make an interim payment on wheat?


James Garfield Gardiner: No, they have not, and that is why this bill is being brought in. Not only that, Mr. Speaker, but they certainly have not the power, and have not had the power, to place oats and barley under the control of the wheat board in the same sense as wheat is under that board.


Percy Ellis Wright: They had a chance last year.


James Garfield Gardiner: Neither of these authorities is now in the hands of the wheat board or the government. Therefore I would suggest that if we are to be of assistance to the farmers this year it is important that these measures be passed as soon as possible. But apart altogether from these arguments-


John Horne Blackmore: May I ask the minister a question?


James Garfield Gardiner: Wait until I have completed the point; then if the hon. member has

Canadian Wheqt Board Act
a question I shall be pleased to answer it. Apart altogether from these arguments, it has been an unheard of thing for any government deliberately to bring down three bills in one session to amend the same act; and I venture to say that those who were making the suggestion had in mind the very thing that they were accusing the members of this government of when they were making their speeches.
The hon. member for Souris made a sort of general suggestion that probably we were preparing for an election. The hon. member for Swift Current made some suggestion that it looked as though it might have been the fine hand of the Minister of Agriculture. On previous occasions the hon. member and I have worked in close enough co-operation to know that any fine hand that I have ever exercised in connection with even political matters has been exercised with justice and with consideration for those against whom I fight.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


James Garfield Gardiner: As a matter of fact, we have worked in very close co-operation on more than one occasion.
Members of the C.C.F. rise in their places and say: yes, we are quite prepared to join with our Conservative friends to delay passage of this measure until we can discuss the principles involved on six different occasions before we get the measure through the house; and they are going to do this only because they think, in fairness to the men who are against the very thing that they themselves have been preaching and agreed with, they must give them the opportunity to vote against it. Well, if I have ever heard of anything in the nature of political trickery that would beat that I do not know where it came from.	,


John Horne Blackmore: A straw man.


James Garfield Gardiner: I understand my friends in the extreme end talking about straw. They know a little about straw, of course. I understand my friends who sit in the far end feel more than kindly toward our Conservative friends in this end of the house than do those who sit in the centre on the other side. They are co-operating to a large extent in any case out in the province from which they come, and there is no reason why they should not cooperate to a certain extent in this house. That being the case they do find it very easy to join up with our friends here to split up this measure into six different debates during the session, which would hold it up until the middle of June at least.
Having said these things with regard to the procedure which is suggested, may I for a few moments deal with what 1 consider to be two of the most important proposals to amend the wheat board act. In the first place it is suggested that we be permitted to pay more money to the farmers. The bill now provides for an initial payment of SI.35 a bushel, basis No. 1 northern, Fort William. I quite agree that the hon. member for Souris was correct when he said that last year the opposition moved an amendment to the effect that we then provide to pay more; but at that time we suggested that we desired to have more knowledge as to what was going to happen under the wheat agreement and under the legislation as then proposed in bringing returns to farmers before setting the payment higher. And we did not say that without giving reasons for it. We gave reasons which were referred to this afternoon by the hon. member for Swift Current, without drawing the conclusions which many of us have drawn on previous occasions.
I asked him whether there had been any pooling of oats and barley since 1932, and I might have asked whether there had been any pooling of wheat since 1932. The only reason why there has been no pooling of oats or barley since 1932 is that the wheat pools prior to 1932 made the mistake of paying too high an initial payment and were not able to pay any participation. They reduced the initial payment on wheat four times in a row and still were not able to pay the initial payment of fifty cents a bushel. Having gone through that experience once, Mr. Speaker, we are a little concerned about setting initial payments which, under certain marketing conditions, are apt to lead to difficulty. Therefore we said that we preferred to maintain the initial payment of SI .35 until such time as we had more information on hand.
During the year something has happened. During the year there has been a great deal of propaganda put on. I am surprised to hear hon. members who represent agricultural constituencies, and who should know the views of their own people, talking in the manner in which they have talked. I can understand people being in favour of the grain exchange method of marketing. In the past I have sometimes argued in favour of it myself under certain circumstances. I can understand people saying that under certain circumstances a farmer may get more for his product for a period of time under that system than he can get under some other system. But when hon. members begin to join with an organization which puts out a propagandist to make the best job he can of any figures that he can
Canadian Wheat Board Act

obtain in order to convince farmers that marketing their grain, or having the government market it for them, if you like, in their own way is not the best system, then I think men who represent agricultural constituencies should be very careful in repeating the information which is given by those who take that point of view.
For example, in the United States they eat eighty per cent of their wheat and they market the other twenty per cent outside the United States. In order to market that twenty per cent outside the United States at present the government goes on the grain exchange and buys the grain. Not so very long ago Mr. Truman accused the grain exchange of running the price up on the government by speculation. The grain exchange came back with the accusation that in buying 40,000,000 bushels of grain on the Chicago and other markets in the United States the government had pushed up the price of grain. To whom had they put it up? Not to the people of foreign speaking countries; they had put it up to their own government. I am informed that eighty per cent of all the wheat that the United States government purchased at these prices to export outside the United States was given away. In other words the people of the United States themselves are paying the price through taxation and otherwise into the treasury of their country in order to purchase wheat to give it away.
Some people on this side of the line, Mr. Speaker, take the position that by doing that particular thing they have helped the farmers of the United States and established a world price.
Let us take a look at what has happened in the United States. The member for Proven-cher (Mr. Jutras) made a speech the other night which caused me to go and get the statistics as they apply in the United States. He was perfectly right in saying that the farmers in 1946-47 in the United States got an average price of $1.91 a bushel for their wheat, and that is the highest price they have had in any of the years that have been under discussion recently. I will ask for the privilege of putting on the record a table* which will indicate that in 1931-32 the price of wheat realized by the farmers in Canada, on an average, no matter what grade and no matter what they produced, was 38 cents a bushel, while in the United States it was 39, both under open markets. For the 1932 crop it was 35 cents in Canada and 38-2 in the United States; the 1933 crop, 49 cents in Canada and
*For table referred to, see appendix, p. 1722. 
74-4 in the United States; the 1934 crop, 61 cents in Canada and 84 cents in the United States; the 1935 crop, 61 cents in Canada and 83 in the United States; the 1936 crop, 94 cents in Canada and $1.02 in the United States; the 1937 crop, $1.02 in Canada and 96 cents in the United States; in 1938, 59 cents in Canada and 56-2 in the United States; and for the 1939 crop, 54 cents in Canada and 69 T in the United States.
For those ten years the average price obtained in the United States by the farmers was 12 cents a bushel per year higher than the price obtained by the farmers in Canada, all those years being years down to the first year of the war.
Then coming into the war, the Canadian farmer for the 1940 crop received 57 cents a bushel and the American farmer 68'2; in 1941, it was 61 cents in Canada and 94-5 in the United States; in 1942, it was 77 in Canada and $1.09 in the United States.
Then we come to the period in which wheat was taken over by the wheat board and handled by the wheat board exclusively. For the 1943 crop the Canadian average price was $1.13 and the American 81.36. For the 1944 crop the Canadian farmers received $1.21 on an average and the American farmers $1.41. For the 1945 crop the Canadian farmers received an advance of $1.15 on an average and the American farmers an average price of $1.50, and for the 1946 crop the Canadian farmers received an advance of $1.14 and the American farmers an average price of $1.91.
With regard to those last two years that come under this agreement, in 1945, the Canadian farmers realized an advance of $1.15 a bushel at the rate of $1.35 basis No. 1 northern Fort William as provided for under the wheat board act, and this bill provides for paying more.
I can understand the member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Miller) suggesting that he would like to know just how much more, particularly when we are told, as we were this afternoon by the minister, that there is about $230,000,000 in the treasury no\y which belongs to the farmers. The government has never emphasized anything else. The government has never suggested that we are going to be kind and give the farmers something. The greatest claim the government has made is that we are going to obtain, for the farmers as much under this system as they could have got under any other, and we are going to try to give it to them, not by taking something out of somebody else's pocket and putting it into theirs. We are going to give it by marketing the wheat and marketing it to the

Canadian Wheat Board Act
people who will consume it, whether in Canada or outside, at a rate which is reasonable and which in the end will bring the farmers reasonable returns.
Let us look for a moment at this 81.15 a bushel which the farmer has received as an advance on his 1945 crop, on an average. We have said to the people-and this bill does not provide for any less-we have said over and over again, that- the amount paid this year will not be less than 20 cents a bushel. Well, if it is 20 cents a bushel only, the farmer will realize an advance of $1.35 a bushel, on an average, for all the wheat that he delivered during 1945, and the farmer in the United States received $1.50 a bushel. There is only 15 cents a bushel difference in that; and, with the $230,000,000 which is in the treasury now, and with the $2 a bushel for the 1948 crop, there is no doubt in the world that at least another 20 cents a bushel-I am not going to wait until election time to start to give this information out-not less than another 20 cents a bushel will be available to be paid out to farmers next year, not only for the year 1946 but for the. year 1945,-the year 1946, the year 1947, the year 1948 and the year 1949. In other words, that will be five cents a bushel more for every one of the five years than the American farmers got for their wheat, on an average, in the year 1945.
Of course the figures produced by the member for Provencher the other day are correct. The statement he made was absolutely based upon the Washington figures, and the Washington figures indicate that there will be more paid out for the 1945 crop in Canada than was paid to the American farmer for the American crop in the United States. Whatever that amount is, whether it stops at $1.75 a bushel or whether it goes up to $2 a bushel, every cent of it is one cent more, after you pass $1.50 a bushel, than was obtained by the farmers in the United States, and every cent of it that is paid will be one cent that can be charged against this great loss that we are supposed to have taken in 1946.
Let us look at the difference in 1946. The farmer has already had on his wheat for 1946 $1.14 a bushel on the average, no matter what grade or quality or where he lived, and we are paying out at least another 20 cents under this bill, which brings his advance to $1.34. And, as I said a moment ago, with what is ahead of us, and following the same course we followed last year of being careful with the moneys in the treasury, we can pay out another twenty cents next year on the basis of experience. This would bring the total to $1.54. But what would we have to do if we paid it out now? We would have to go to the bank and borrow 5849-110J
money and pay interest on, it, and the farmers of western Canada are not asking us at the present time to go to the bank and borrow money and charge the interest up to them and pay them another 20 cents over and above the possible 20 cents we may pay under this legislation. They are asking us to sell their wheat at the best returns we can get, to retain funds sufficient to carry on and make sure we shall be able to. carry this through to the final conclusion. Then they are asking us to amend the act so that as time goes on we shall be in a position to pay out any sums of money we may have to their credit.
What has that to do with the statement made by the member for Portage la Prairie a few moments ago? He says he wants to know, before he votes on this bill, exactly what we are going to pay out. Well, he is arguing directly against what he argued last year. Last year he was arguing against knowing exactly what we knew we should pay out when we said $1.35, and now he is saying that we ought to write into this bill another figure-let us say $1.60 or $1.70. We ought to write that into the bill instead of $1.35, and in the middle of the next season, after we have sold wheat under the $2 bargain we have made with Great Britain for some months, suppose we are able to pay another 20 cents on top of that. He says we should not have the authority in this bill, but that we should have a definite figure in the bill. Well, of course we should not have a definite figure in it. We should be in a position, Mr. Speaker, not only once a year but at any time throughout the year, if the operations up to date have given them sufficient cash with which to make payments to the farmers-whether it is in the summer, in the winter or any other time-to determine that they are in a position to make those payments.
I have lived in western Canada and the western United States most of my life and have gone through three difficult drought periods before this one. The year 1893 was the worst of the three; 1907 was bad; the thirties were worse than 1907. And if we were not now getting high prices the drought we are going through would be almost as bad as that of the thirties. But we are getting high prices. I have gone through those experiences in western Canada, and I know that we paid out a certain amount of prairie farm assistance two years ago; we paid out another amount a year ago; this year we are paying out more than we have paid out in any other year since 1939 -somewhere in the neighbourhood of $16.000,-000-to the farmers in the well-known drought area of western Canada. I have gone through enough droughts in the west to know that this
Canadian Wheat Board Act

year may not be the last drought year. Under the plan of five-year payments that was brought into effect in 1945 the farmer knows that if there is drought he will have more money coming to him at an increase of twenty cents in each year, no matter when that drought comes; particularly after two years of the period have gone, as they have now, he will have more money coming than he could have had under any other system. A system of that kind is the best system for our country in western Canada, however it is put into effect.
I now want to make the point that there is nothing which indicates that the farmers
have taken a loss as compared with farmers elsewhere in connection with the marketing of grain down to the present time. Everything would suggest that, instead of taking a loss, they are going to get more money than they have ever received under any other system in any five-year period. Having said that, may I come to the next claim that has been made.
In this debate, Mr. Speaker, on a number of occasions the claim has been made that the farmer should not be made to pay for feeding the people in Great Britain. We make heroes and great patriots of ourselves by standing up in this house and saying, "Oh yes, we are ready to feed Britain; we are prepared to give them all the food they want. But when you do that, let all the people of Canada pay for it."


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


James Garfield Gardiner: We all say, "hear, hear." What is happening under this measure? I indicated a few moments ago that in the United States eighty per cent of the wheat they are buying and sending overseas at present is a gift to the people to whom they are sending it. I might also indicate that a great part of the wheat which is going from Canada is going to countries which cannot pay for it, and that wheat is being paid for out of money that has been lent by the government of Canada. Everyone in this house knows that a considerable part is never going to be paid back.


Mr. FULTON:: That is news.


James Garfield Gardiner: There is no news about it; everybody knows it. It has never been discussed from any other point of view.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Oh, yes; it has.


James Garfield Gardiner: A very considerable part of it will never be paid back. And- to the extent to which it is not paid back, in so far as it relates to wheat, the money which was

paid to the farmer for the wheat is a charge on all the people of Canada. That money goes to the farmer, and' I think it ought to go to him. As we go along with this plan of marketing and make the payments which are provided for in the bill as it is now before the house, we shall be in a position to show in due course that the farmer will have obtained more money, on an average annually, than ever before through his payments based upon $2 for next year, the $1.55 he has obtained from Britain in the three years that have gone by, and based upon the w-heat which has been sold outside of Britain at higher prices running up as high as $3.40 a bushel, and out of a negotiated price from Britain in 1949. Out of all these the farmer will have obtained more money for his wheat than he could have obtained under any other system. The reason why I repeat that over and over again, Mr. Speaker, is that we have tried every other system. We have applied it under conditions that were just as favourable as they have been in the last three or four years or as they are likely to be in the next two years, and under none of those systems have we been able to get an average running up toward $2 a bushel, basis No. 1 northern at Fort William. So I say that this system is bringing to the farmers higher returns, spread over a longer period, and in a manner which suits the area in which the wheat is grown better than any other system [DOT] could suit it. For that reason I think we should get on with the job. vote this measure through, get the money paid out to these people who had no crop last year and make it possible for them to get their crop in as soon as the snow goes away in the western part of Canada.
There is one other thing about which I wish to say a few words, and it is in connection with this matter of coarse grains. I said something -about the procedure in connection with it at the beginning. Hon. members know that the coarse grains, with the possible exception of some twenty per cent, are fed on the farms where they are grown. Part of the twenty per cent ds marketed somewhere else. In the years when we have a big crop, more *of it goes outside Canada than in the years when we have a poor crop. This is one of our poor-crop years. We have little if any coarse grains to go out. There -has been considerable criticism with regard to what has happened since October 21 last, but hon. members are not guessing so much now at wh-at is going to happen in connection with the grain that was delivered before October 21 last. Three of the line companies are

Canadian Wheat Board Act
already paying out in connection with that grain. The pools have already announced their intention of doing so. And they all understand that the government is prepared to give consideration to additional payments which may require to be made in connection with the marketing of these grains. In other words, the same principle is being applied to the handling of these grains as has been applied in connection with every change that has been made in the controls since the beginning of the putting on of controls. We did not ask the farmer who delivered grain between August 1, 1946 and March 17, 1947, to carry the load. Arrangements were made to have these differences in payment met, and they were met. The farmer had a right to expect that some adjustments would be made when these grains were delivered. That is being arranged; and I am quite certain that when the arrangements are completed we will hear no more about it than we heard about some of the other problems that were discussed and later forgotten.
Then there is another phase of the question which has to be considered; that is the matter of enabling legislation. This afternoon hon. members of the C.C.F. group declared we should have asked the provincial governments whether or not they would supplement our legislation. I might just as well say that after we had said, some months ago, that we would have to wait until the session opened before we could determine what legislation could be brought down, the provincial governments should have approached us and said they were prepared to pass enabling legislation. I have not said that, and I am not going to say it. These provincial houses are in session now, all three of them. Immediately we pass our legislation they can indicate their intentions, and can quite easily put those intentions into effect by passing enabling legislation, if they desire to do so, and clear away any doubts there may be in our minds or in their minds as to whether the legislation can operate successfully from their point of view.


Percy Ellis Wright: Will it not be necessary to have some consultation to determine just what should be the enabling legislation? Has this government been in consultation with the justice departments of the provincial governments to determine that matter?


James Garfield Gardiner: I believe the question can be discussed to much better advantage when the legislation before us is passed and before them. Then my hon. friend will see that the legislation gives the government of Canada absolute authority, to the extent that
we possess authority, to deal with the question. There is nothing in which consultation could assist. The legislation proposed gives the government authority to deal with the question, and as soon as that authority is confirmed by law the provinces can put through legislation supplementing it and adding any authority they have to give in order that it may be carried out. I presume they may want to come and talk to us about it, but the legislation will be there and will speak for itself.


Percy Ellis Wright: I asked if that were decided some years ago, and you stated you did not think it was.


James Garfield Gardiner: No, that is not what I stated. I am not a constitutional lawyer or any other kind of lawyer, but I said that in my opinion this government could not do this thing by itself. I still hold that point of view, as I think many others who have been discussing the matter have come to that point of view. There is one question still in doubt in the minds of those who are considering this matter. That is the question as to whether or not the operation could be successfully carried on unless you had legislation not only in the provinces where the grain originates but also in the provinces to which you are going to send the grain. There are people who contend that grain put on a car to be shipped internationally or interprovincially, as we ship our wheat, is still the property of the person shipping it, and it can be moved over our railways to wherever it is going. But another question develops when you unload it from the car and sell it to somebody in Ontario. It is no longer the property of anyone in western Canada. It is no longer the property of the pool. It has become the property of someone who is going to distribute feed grain in eastern Canada. So a constitutional question is involved there, and I doubt very much if the farmer of western Canada would: agree to have this government buy his grain under a ceiling price and ship it to eastern Canada, only to find that no one had provided controls there which required the grain to be sold under a ceiling price.
This matter is not so simple as some may think. If we are going to get this legislation in operation in time to deal with the crop now coming up, or even to deal with the next crop, we may have to rely upon many discussions which will' take place when we have the legislation before us. But there is no point in going to a government and starting to talk about the possibilities under the act when we have not on our own statute books the legislation that empowers us to carry on the opera-
Canadian Wheat Board Act

tion. Certainly if we did not get that before the provincial houses finish their sessions this year there would be no sense wasting our time in this house discussing the matter to any great extent. I would therefore suggest-


William Henry Golding: Order. The hon. gentleman's time has expired.


James Garfield Gardiner: I am just finishing, Mr. Speaker. I would suggest that the quickest way to get on with this matter would be to put through the resolution and have the bill brought down so hon. members may have a look at it. Then any hon. gentleman who wants to vote down any of the proposals can do so in committee or elsewhere as the legislation goes through the house. It is not necessary to have a motion of this kind in order to give hon. gentlemen an opportunity to vote down any part of the legislation. That can be done in committee, as has always been possible.


Calvert Charlton Miller: I did not interrupt the
minister when he was speaking, but I wonder if he would permit a question now. This payment that is intended to be made is called an increase in the fixed minimum. Is there .any difference in effect between that and an interim payment on participation certificates? Will the participation certificates have to be sent in?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, the participation
certificates will have to be sent in, but in effect there is really no difference between this and an interim payment.


Calvert Charlton Miller: Then might I ask the minister whether he, like myself, has not changed his mind since last year, when he advocated tying their own hands so they could not make any interim payments on participation certificates until 1950? Has he not changed his mind?
(>Sec page 1718.)


James Garfield Gardiner: No, I did not say that. The statement made last session was that we had not as yet sufficient information upon which to decide whether we could pay more than $1.35. I therefore opposed putting $1.55 in the bill. But I thought we considered that point; and I definitely made the statement that no government in Canada would ever be permitted to hold one or two hundred million dollars in the treasury and not pay it out to the farmers until 1950. The only thing I did not take care to see to last session, and no hon. member helped me do so, was to have an amendment put in which would enable us to make the payment when the money accumulated. We are asking that now.


René Jutras: Mr. Speaker, I should like to deal with this resolution at some length, so I wonder if the house would consider calling it eleven o'clock.
On motion of Mr. Jutras the debate was adjourned.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

[Stage Direction]
Mr. HOWE moved the adjournment of the house.
He said: On Monday the house will resume the debate on the address in reply to the speech from the throne. I am told the whips of the various parties have been consulted and it has been agreed that the desirable procedure would be to continue the debate on Monday and carry on with it until the debate is finished, so that the estimates may be brought down and thereafter we may take up these other measures without interruption and press them through to a conclusion.
Motion agreed to and the house adjourned at 10.50 p.m.
Estimated Average Price Per Bushel of Wheat Received by Farmers
[Stage Direction]
Canada
[Stage Direction]
United States
[Stage Direction]
Canada
[Stage Direction]
United States
[Stage Direction]
(Year beginning
[Stage Direction]
(Year beginning
[Stage Direction]
(Year beginning
[Stage Direction]
(Year beginning
[Stage Direction]
Aug. 1)
[Stage Direction]
July 1
[Stage Direction]
Aug. 1)
[Stage Direction]
July 1
[Stage Direction]
(cents per bu.)
[Stage Direction]
(cents per bu.)
[Stage Direction]
(cents per bu.)
[Stage Direction]
(cents per bu.)
[Stage Direction]
1931
[Stage Direction]
38
[Stage Direction]
39-0-
[Stage Direction]
1939 . . .
[Stage Direction]
.. . 54
[Stage Direction]
69-1
[Stage Direction]
1932
[Stage Direction]
35
[Stage Direction]
38-2
[Stage Direction]
1940 ...
[Stage Direction]
.. . 57
[Stage Direction]
68-2
[Stage Direction]
1933
[Stage Direction]
49
[Stage Direction]
74-4
[Stage Direction]
1934
[Stage Direction]
61
[Stage Direction]
84-8
[Stage Direction]
1941 . . .
[Stage Direction]
... 61
[Stage Direction]
94-5
[Stage Direction]
1935
[Stage Direction]
61
[Stage Direction]
83-2
[Stage Direction]
1942 . ..
[Stage Direction]
.. . 77
[Stage Direction]
109-8
[Stage Direction]
1943 ...
[Stage Direction]
... 113
[Stage Direction]
136-0
[Stage Direction]
1936
[Stage Direction]
94
[Stage Direction]
102-5
[Stage Direction]
1944 ...
[Stage Direction]
... 121
[Stage Direction]
141-0
[Stage Direction]
1937
[Stage Direction]
102
[Stage Direction]
96-2
[Stage Direction]
1945 . ..
[Stage Direction]
... 115*
[Stage Direction]
150-Of
[Stage Direction]
1938
[Stage Direction]
59
[Stage Direction]
56-2
[Stage Direction]
1946 ...
[Stage Direction]
... 114*
[Stage Direction]
191-0+
[Stage Direction]
*Advanee only. fPrice.
[Stage Direction]
Possible further payments in Canada: 1948, 20 cents; 1949, 20 cents; and 1950, final payment. This would place 1945 at '$1.55 plus; 1946 at $1.54 plus.
[Stage Direction]
Monday, March 1, 1948