[Stage Direction]
Mr. JEAN-FRANQOIS POULIOT (Temis-couata): Mr. Speaker, I rise to a double question of privilege, the first one in English and the other in French. In the Ottawa Citizen of July 17 the daily columnist wrote thus:
The development of the day indicated that the terrible-tempered Jean-Fran?ois Pouliot is on the rampage.
I do not object to this, sir; it is a matter of opinion. Then he goes on, making three factual errors in two lines:
Mr. Pouliot opposed the government candidate in Saguenay last winter. . . .
The first factual error is that I opposed no one of the candidates who ran in that county last fall. I opposed no one; I supported one. Then he states that I opposed the government candidate. There was no government candidate there; the government did not give its support to any one of the four candidates in that election. Finally, he mentions Saguenay as the name of the county, when the name is Charlevoix-Saguenay. Then he goes on and says that I aided Mr. Dorion, who was elected as an independent. That is true, and he proved to be one. Then he goes on:
Now, it seems, he is out with a new candidate from Stanstead.
Here is the point I object to, a little further on:
This Stanstead election will be very much of a group affair. There is a racial aspect to it as well.
Well, Mr. Speaker, if the independent candidate who has been chosen by the people of Stanstead were running on a racial issue I would surely not support him, and my record in the house proves very well that I have never indulged in any religious or racial controversies of any kind-either in the house or outside of the house.
Now I turn to French. In Le Devoir of Monday last, July 19, I see a report of what has been said by someone.
(Translation):	Mr. Speaker, the Monday
issue of Le Devoir contains a summary of a speech delivered by one Philippe Girard, whom I neither know nor wish to know. The summary of that part of his speech which refers to me is as follows:
Mr. Pouliot has done very good work in Ottawa;-

That is not what prompts me to rise to a question of privilege.
-now, he has been ordered by his leader-
No order has ever been given to me by any one. I have been glad to oblige my colleagues whenever the opportunity to do so arose. Whoever claims that I have received an order from any one in connection with the Stanstead election is uttering a falsehood.
In the second place:
-to go to Stanstead in order to divide the Canadians-
That is another falsehood. I have never sought to divide the Canadians. I have always advocated harmony between French and English speaking Canadians, between the Canadians who are Protestant and those who are Catholic and even those of the Jewish faith.
A third falsehood is this:
-and he has selected as independent candidate Mr. Martin, who, four days previously, had told Mr. Choquette that on no account was anything to be done to divide the French Canadians.
It is odious for a man to utter such falsehoods in public. It is not true at all that I have selected Mr. Martin. I have never selected any one. I have no more selected Mr. Martin as independent candidate in Stanstead than I have selected Mr. Dorion as independent candidate in Charlevoix-Saguenay, but. for one thing, I am sure that Mr. Martin, like Mr. Dorion, will be elected in Stanstead against any opponent.


[Stage Direction]
Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Minister of Justice) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 137, to repeal the Japanese Treaty Act, 1913.
Mr. GRAYDON:: Will the minister explain?
Mr. ST. LAURENT:	A treaty of commerce and navigation was signed between the United Kingdom and Japan on April 3, 1911, and it was adhered to by Canada. The Japanese Treaty Act, 1913, was adopted in that year, declaring the treaty to have the force of law in Canada. A notice, in accordance with the terms of the treaty, to put an end to it was given on July 26, 1941, and according to the terms of the treaty this notice would have become effective on July 26, 1942. In the meantime war was declared between Japan and Canada, and according to the principles of international law the effect of the treaty came to an end with the declaration of war. But the statute is still .on the books, and this is a one-line bill to repeal the statute which gave force of law to that treaty in Canada in 1913.

Japanese Treaty Act


Mr. CHURCH:: Have similar trade treaties with Italy, Germany and other axis powers been repealed?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: It is not to my knowledge that there is any legislation giving the effect of law to treaties with Germany and Italy.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.


Mr. SPEAKER:: When shall the bill be read a second time?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: Later this day.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Now.


Gordon Graydon: No one has had a copy of the bill. I would think it a most unusual request to ask hon. members to deal with any legislar tion where a copy has not been provided for them, and I object to it.


Mr. MACKENZIE KING:: It is only one line.


Gordon Graydon: The principle is the same, surely, whether it is one line or a hundred lines.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: Later this day. QUESTIONS
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)



FOURTH VICTORY LOAN

Mr. HAZEN:: 1.	Were any subscriptions to the fourth victory loan made by "individuals" or "nonindividuals" residing or having their head offices outside of Canada?
2.	If so, how much was subscribed, (a) by these "individuals"; (b) by these "nonindividuals"?
3.	In what countries did they live or have their head offices?


Mr. ABBOTT:: I spoke to the hon. member who asked this question and explained that to give a complete answer would involve an examination of 2,669,000 application forms in respect, of the last victory loan. I understand that under the circumstances he is willing to drop the question.


Mr. HAZEN:: The parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Finance spoke to me about the difficulty of answering this question. If you will permit me, Mr. Speaker, I think the minister will agree with me when I say that we do not want our war loans to be made outside of Canada to any greater extent than necessity compels, and that some method should be devised of keeping track of these loans and knowing where they are being made. If the question results in some system by
which a record can be made so that we shall know who are taking up these loans, I think it will have furthered its purpose.
Question dropped.



ARMY TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT BOARD

Mr. ADAMSON:: 1.	Who are the director-general and deputy director-general of the army technical development board?
2.	What are the technical qualifications of each?


Mr. MACDONALD (Halifax):: 1.	Director-General, Mr. J. E. Hahn; Deputy Director-General, Mr. J. H. Crang.
2.	Of Mr. J. E. Hahn are: Educated, university of Toronto and Osgoode Hall; served in France as brigade major, 11th Canadian Infantry brigade in great war; successful manufacturer of electrical instruments, foundry products, machine guns and rifles.
Of Mr. J. H. Crang are: two years at Technical School, Toronto; two years at Upper Canada college, Toronto; artillery officer in Canadian militia for many years; assistant director of artillery, Ottawa, June to November, 1942; intimate knowledge of firearms acquired over the last thirty years; for considerable time closely associated with manufacturing concerns producing steel products.



CANADIAN ARMY-ORDNANCE

Mr. ADAMSON:: 1.	Who is the C. O. and second-in-command of the ordnance training centre?
2.	What are the technical qualifications of each?


Mr. MACDONALD (Halifax):: 1.	The C.O. is Colonel A. E. Duncanson, D.S.O., Y.D., A.D.C. The second-in-command is Major (acting Lieutenant-Colonel) R. G. Peat.
2.	Technical qualifications of Colonel Duncanson are: Served overseas in Great War as brigade major. Served in present war as A.Q.M.G. of one of the operational divisions of the army in Canada; studied civil engineering in University of Toronto.
Of Major (acting Lieutenant-Colonel) Peat, are: Enlisted in great war as private and rose to rank of captain in the British army. Saw service in France with a Highland infantry unit. In present war served 1940-41 as an officer in the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry. Edinburgh University (graduated 1923) CS.E. degree; member, Royal Assn. Engrs. (Scotland); member, Royal San. Assn. London (Eng.).


Mr. ADAMSON:: 1.	How many of the district ordnance officers are qualified engineers?
Questions

2.	How many ordnance officers on the stores side of the R.C.O.C. have obtained the rank of,
(a)	colonel; (b) brigadier?
3.	How many ordnance officers on the engineering and mechanical side have obtained the rank of, (a) colonel; (b) brigadier?
4.	How many officers of the R.C.O.C., (a) engineering side; (b) stores side, have been given the Canadian war staff course?


Mr. MACDONALD (Halifax):: 1.	Nil.
2.	In Canada and overseas on the stores
side (including administration, provisioning, salvage, storekeeping and accounting);	(a)
17; (b) 5.
3.	In Canada and overseas on the engineering and mechanical side (including mechanical maintenance and mechanization); (a)	9;
(b)	1.
4.	From Canada and overseas, on the engineering and mechanical side, (including mechanical maintenance and mechanization): (a) 2.
On the stores side (including administration, provisioning, salvage, storekeeping and accounting): (b) 8.



CHRISTIE STREET HOSPITAL-PROPOSED ADDITIONAL BUILDINGS

Mr. BRUCE:: 1.	What are the names of the four medical officers representing the defence services and the Department of Pensions and National Health, respectively, -who made a special investigation as to the suitability of Christie Street hospital site for further additional hospital buildings?
2.	What position does each of these officers hold in their respective departments?
3.	What qualifications has each of these officers to make a comprehensive report upon the whole situation?
4.	Did they, in writing or orally, give their reasons for the decision arrived at?
5.	If so, what were these reasons?
6.	How many sites did they investigate?
7.	What were these sites?
8.	Did they investigate the Trinity college property on Queen street, Toronto, as a possible suitable site?
9.	If so, did they consult' the authorities of the city of Toronto as to the possibility of securing it?
10.	Did these officers investigate these sites as a group or individually?
11.	Did they make a recommendation to the minister in writing to which each appended his signature?
12.	Did they all make a verbal recommendation?
13.	Did one make a recommendation for the others and, if so, which one?


Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver Centre):: Stand.


Mr. BRUCE:: When may I expect an
answer to this question?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I asked that the question stand.


Herbert Alexander Bruce: I may say that yesterday I was promised answers to the other questions. I received only one.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Mr. Speaker, all the questions asked by the hon. gentleman have been answered by orders for returns, so far as I know.


Herbert Alexander Bruce: No; there is one affecting
the minister's department, and another affecting the Department of National Defence, asked on July 14, which have not been answered.
Question stands.



PROSPECTING FOR OIL IN NORTHERN ALBERTA

Mr. HANSELL:: 1.	Was any prospecting for oil carried on in northern Alberta or northern British Columbia at government expense during the fiscal year ending March 31, 1943?
2.	If so, what was the extent of the prospecting ?
3.	Was any other work carried on in the same area in respect of search for oil development or production during the fiscal year ending March 31, 1943?
4.	If so, who were the parties, engineers or others taking part in, (a) prospecting; (b) any other work in respect of search, development or production?
5.	What was the total cost of such prospecting or development for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1943?


Mr. CRERAR:: I,	2 and 3. See answer to question No. 4. 4. (a) None, (b) (i) Geological surveys of
potential oil areas in northern British Columbia were made as given below:
Heads of Parties-Nature of Work:
J.	S. Stewart-Examination of structures at Commotion Creek and supervision of geological work on oil structures in Peace River area of British Columbia.
H. H. Beach and J. Spivak-Study of stratigraphy and structure of rocks on both sides of Peace River, west of Hudson Hope in search of favourable oil structures.
H. H. Beach-Investigation of reported oil seepages in British Columbia and Yukon, near Watson Lake.
R. T. D. Wickenden and G. Shaw-Study of stratigraphy and structure of the rocks near Commotion creek in search of favourable oil structures.
F. H. McLearn and J. F. Henderson-Study of stratigraphy and structure of rocks in Monkman Pass area in search of favourable oil structures.

Questions as Orders jor Returns
(ii)	Topographical surveys as basis for later geological work were made by the following heads of parties in the areas shown:
Heads of Parties-Areas:	J. W. Spence,
Commotion creek; M. E. Nidd, Mount Hul-cross; J. V. Butterworth, Bullhead mountain; W. B. Dingle, Chinaman lake; R. J. Parlee, Dunlevy creek.
(iii)	Drilling of portions of the bituminous sand deposits of northern Alberta was carried out by Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada, Limited to provide information on the tonnage available and on the quality of the material. Eleven holes with a total footage of 1,682-8 feet were drilled by the company in the Wheeler Island-Susan Lake area and twelve holes with a total footage of 1,445 feet were drilled in the Steepbank river area. Two of the latter holes were drilled through gravel overburden only and three were abandoned due to broken augers. An interim summary report by the company on its work to January 31, 1943, was tabled in the House of Commons on April 14, 1943.
Mr. S. C. Ells, engineer of the Department of Mines and Resources, was on the ground as an observer.
5.	$47,534.45. In addition, there has been disbursed since March 31, 1943, on account of the bituminous sand operations an amount of $76,831.14 and accounts for approximately $9,000 have still to be adjusted.



REDISTRIBUTION-REPRESENTATIONS OF PROVINCES WITH RESPECT TO POSTPONEMENT

William Lyon Mackenzie King: Before we leave questions, Mr. Speaker, yesterday I was asked by the hon. member for Richelieu-Vercheres (Mr. Cardin):
Have any representations been made to the federal government by any provincial authority, outside of the province of Quebec, with regard to the deferment of the redistribution to be based upon the last decennial census? If such representations have been made will they be tabled before the session is brought to a close?
I would make the following reply to the hon. member. I am informed by the Secretary of State's department, which has communicated with other departments of the government, that the only representations received from any provincial government other than Quebec are contained in a letter from the premier of Saskatchewan, which letter is dated June 22 and which I table herewith. Representations similar to those of the premier of Saskatchewan in the correspondence tabled herewith were made to me personally by the premier of Manitoba, Hon. Stuart Garson, on the occasion of one of his visits to Ottawa.



QUESTIONS PASSED AS ORDERS FOR RETURNS


Mr. FRASER (Peterborough West):: 1.	What department of the government issues the cheques in payment of travel warrants or other warrants for the Canadian army, navy and air force in Canada and in Great Britain?
2.	When the warrants are presented by taxi, bus or railway companies is payment made at once?
3.	If not, what is the reason for the delay?


SELECTIVE SERVICE-PLACEMENT SPECIALISTS- TRAVELLING SUPERVISORS
Mr. FRASER (Peterborough West):: 1.	In local offices of national selective service, how many specialists in placement and job analysis work are presently employed?
2.	What is the name of each of such persons?
3.	What experience has each of such persons had and where was each previously employed?
4.	In what office is each presently employed?
5.	How many local offices of national selective service are assisted and guided by travelling supervisors and advisers on staff training?
6.	Is each of such persons presently attached to such local offices?
7.	What is the name and what is the previous experience of each of such persons?
8.	To what local offices is each of such persons presently attached?
9.	What is the name of the committee which prepared the list of. occupations covered by the compulsory transfer' order of national selective service of May 4, 1943?
10.	Who comprises said committee?


CANADIAN ARMY-PROPORTION OF HIGH RANKING OFFICERS
Mr. ROSS (Souris):: 1.	What was the total number of officers, noncommissioned officers and men on active service in Canada's army as of June 1, 1918?
2.	Of the said, number, how- many were generals, lieutenant-generals, major-generals and brigadiers?
3.	What pay and allowances were those mentioned in No. 2 entitled to receive?
4.	WTiat is the total strength of Canada's army on active service, (a) overseas; (b) in Canada?
5.	Of the above number, how many are generals, lieutenant-generals, major-generals and brigadiers?
6.	What pay and allowances are each of those mentioned in No. 5 entitled to receive?
7.	How- many of those mentioned in No. 5 are in Canada and how many are not in Canada?
8.	How many of those mentioned in No. 5 belonged to the permanent force prior to this war?


Mr. MACDONALD (Halifax):: Order for return, with the reservation that is always made that the exact strength of Canada's army is not to be disclosed.
Ferguson Shipbuilding Yard



MUNITIONS AND SUPPLY


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. CLARENCE GILLIS (Cape Breton South):: I should) like to direct a question to the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Munitions and Supply. On July 12 I sent notice to the minister that I intended to ask a question with reference to the Ferguson shipbuilding yard in Nova Scotia, where work had ceased on two tugs which were partly completed, though ninety-three per cent of the material necessary for the completion of those tugs was in the yard. My information now is that some eighty skilled men at that plant are not working and that the yard is not being used. The minister stated that these partly completed tugs were to be shipped to Montreal, together with the material for their completion, but that has not been done. The minister's statement to the effect that the total expenditure there would be some $60,000 for each tug was incorrect; the target price set for each of these tugs was some $275,000.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Clarence Gillis: I have waited since July 12, thinking the minister might be back any day, but now I would ask the parliamentary assistant to check up on this matter, which is serious and important, and to make a statement on the situation there some time before the house rises.


Mr. LIONEL CHEVRIER (Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Munitions and Supply):: I shall be glad to look into the matter to which the hon. member refers and to see that he gets a reply before the house rises.


DOMINION ELECTIONS
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. N. A. McLARTY (Secretary of State):: I should like to make a statement in connection with the matter raised yesterday by the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Cold-well), and which was discussed in this house.
There has not been time thus far to make a sufficiently lengthy inquiry to determine the accuracy of the various affidavits referred to by the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar, and into the material he adduced to support his statement relating to the enumeration carried on in the constituency of Cartier-Montreal. The government has felt, however, that it has a duty to take immediately such 
steps as should serve to remove all doubt and allay all suspicion as to the fair and honest conduct of the election to be held on August 9. It is essential that such steps be taken without delay.
The present returning officer of the constituency was appointed on September 29, 1938. He consequently acted in the election of that year in which the late Mr. Bercovitch was returned as a member of this house. It is true that Mr. Bercovitch ultimately received an acclamation but of course that could not be safely anticipated, and the result was that the returning officer was required to perform practically all the duties requisite to the holding of an election, just as much as if an election had actually been held. The same returning officer acted in the election in 1940, and also in connection with the vote taken on the plebiscite. The chief electoral officer advises me that no complaint whatever was received as to the manner in which he carried on his duties on any of the three occasions.
However, the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar indicates that in this election the present Liberal candidate is the uncle of the returning officer. To avoid any suspicion, however unwarranted, that this might give rise to, the chief electoral officer suggested that the assistant chief electoral officer, Mr. Donald Stewart, be appointed at once as supervisory officer and perform the necessary supervisory duties in the constituency until after the election has taken place. The government immediately accepted the suggestion, and Mr. Stewart will assume, in the name of the chief electoral officer the administrative control of the by-election.
The chief electoral officer has also recommended that it would be inadvisable to have a completely new enumeration. There are two principal reasons for this: In the first place it would inevitably delay the election beyond the time fixed for the return to the writ. But a much more serious objection is that enumerators' cards are delivered to each voter at the time the enumeration is made. These cards in most instances are taken by the elector to the polling booth for presentation to the deputy returning officer. It would consequently, in order to avoid confusion, be necessary in the event of a new enumeration to endeavour to collect in all the cards which are presently issued. This would be a very lengthy and in many cases an impossible task; but, unless it were done, it would result in a wide measure of confusion.
The material tabled by the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar refers to only a limited number of subdivisions-approximately ten out of a total of 169 in the riding. He stated

Dominion Elections
that this was the result of a very limited check. The government has felt, however, that in view of the conditions disclosed and the allegations made a thorough and complete examination of the whole riding should be made immediately.
In order to effect this and allay any possible suspicion, the chief electoral officer has recommended the appointment of supervising enumerators who will make a thorough house to house check up of the enumeration in each polling division. These supervision enumerators would consist of two for each division.
All members are aware that under the provisions of the Elections Act the returning officer shall give notice to the candidate who at the last preceding election in the electoral district received the highest number of votes and also to the candidate representing at that election a different and opposed political interest who received the next highest number of votes. Unfortunately that rule cannot be applied in this riding as the candidate receiving the second largest number of votes is now serving in the forces overseas and he did not represent any cohesive body of political opinion. The action which it is proposed to take in the emergent condition that now exists should not be deemed to be any precedent that could be cited as in any way abrogating the general rule hereafter unless, of course, where the circumstances are identical with the emergent situation presented in this instance.
The fairest and most advantageous method would, however, under the existing circumstances, appear to be that one of the enumerators should be nominated by the government candidate, and those representing the opposed political interests should nominate one and, as there are two opposition candidates, each should nominate one-half of the opposition enumerators.
Each supervising enumerator will be sworn to the faithful performance of his or her duties on the special form prescribed by the chief electoral officer. They will commence their duties on Thursday morning, July 22, and complete them by Saturday night, the 24th instant.
Whenever such supervising enumerators discover that unqualified or fictitious persons have been included on the enumerators' preliminary list which has been printed and distributed, it will be their duty to prepare an affidavit in form 13 of the Dominion Elections Act and swear such affidavit before the appropriate revising officer. The affidavit attacking the qualifications of the elector in question shall be dealt with by such revising officer during his regular sittings for revision which are scheduled to be held on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next at places
already advertised by the returning officer Whenever in the case of the house to house check-up it is discovered by the supervising enumerators that a name of a duly qualified elector has been omitted from the list, it shall be their duty to prepare and subscribe to a sworn application in the form No. 15 of the Dominion Elections Act on behalf of such elector and deliver the same to the assistant chief electoral officer who in turn will present it to the appropriate revising officer.
In the event of any disagreement between the supervising enumerators with regard to inclusion of a name on the list of electors, it is to be reported to the assistant chief electoral officer who shall decide the matter.
Arrangements have already been made for the appointment of additional revising officers for each revisal district by the ex officio revising officer and such additional revising officers will sit in the revisal offices already set up by the returning officer.
The chief electoral officer advises that if the above mentioned steps are taken forthwith, in his opinion any and all inaccuracies on the enumerators' preliminary list can be dealt with by the revising officers as prescribed in the elections act and the finally revised list for each polling division, when reprinted, should accurately set out the names of the electors who are duly qualified to vote at the pending by-election.
Time has not allowed the necessary investigation into the culpability of the enumerators who prepared the lists which were referred to by the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar. It is, of course, possible that in some instances the fact that they receive seven cents for each name enumerated proved too much of a temptation to be resisted. But while this may afford an explanation it does not in the least provide any justification.
The 'house can be assured that the investigation will be thorough and complete .and that the penalty clauses in the elections act will be applied. Four enumerators have been discharged and payment of their remuneration withheld. Pitiably small, you will say-and .it is. But in fairness to the returning officer it must be stated that under the act this is t'he limit of his jurisdiction.
However by subsection 18 of section 17 of the elections act it is provided that.
. . . "any enumerator who, wilfully and without reasonable excuse, includes in any list of electors prepared by him the name of any person whose name he has not good reason to believe should be included, or omits to include in such list the name of any person whom he has good reason to believe has the right to have his name included, shall be guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction as in this act provided."
Dominion Elections

This section must be and will be applied by the appropriate officers of the law against any whom investigation reveals are guilty of its breach.
Confidence in the honest and correct functioning of electoral machinery is fundamental in a democracy both in peace and war.
The steps which I have just outlined should remove any doubt and allay any suspicion from the minds of those who wish to see the elections in this country conducted fairly and honourably. Every step is being taken by the government to ensure that this result is attained.


Gordon Graydon: I should like to ask the Secretary of State two questions, with a view to clarification of the statement he has made. First, are the new arrangements for the supervision of enumerators, which he has given in some detail to-day, possible under the provisions of the Dominion Elections Act?


Norman Alexander McLarty: I am advised by the chief electoral officer that provision is made that in the case of emergency the chief electoral officer may take such steps as may be necessary to remedy the situation.


Gordon Graydon: The minister has spoken about representation in respect of enumerators, by parties other than those which would normally have representation. He speaks of those who are in the field. I presume until the actual final nomination has taken place, no one is officially in the field so far as the election is concerned.


Norman Alexander McLarty: That of course is quite true, and a fact which presents an additional difficulty. But under the circumstances _ we are trying to make the best of what might be regarded as an unfortunate situation, and we thought t/hat this was the only fair way in which we could do it and see that representation was given to the opposing parties. If they were appointed by the same individual it would certainly be open to the suspicion that perhaps this is not as fair as it should be. This was the only solution we could find which seemed to present the possibility of being fair. If it were otherwise, of course, we could not have the enumerators because until August 2, we would not know definitely who would be candidates.


Mr. MacINNIS:: May I be permitted to thank the government for the quick and' what would appear to be the adequate action taken by it in this matter. I should like to ask only one question: Has the minister or the government given any consideration to a matter referred to yesterday, namely that of having

voters produce their registration cards before voting?


Norman Alexander McLarty: Some thought was given to that, but it was felt that it might produce a great deal of difficulty. I recall, as no doubt my hon. friend does, the debate we had in connection with the plebiscite, when the necessity of producing registration cards was discussed. I believe at that time his leader took a definite and final stand against the necessity of doing so. It seems to me that while we are taking all these steps to meet an emergent condition, we should not try to make any new law. If a provision such as that is to be inserted in the Dominion Elections Act, then it should be nation-wide, and not limited to one particular constituency.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The hon.
member will recall that yesterday the hon. member for York West (Mr. Adamson) took strong exception to having registration cards produced. He gave reasons which, while they did not appeal to the house, would I am sure help to nullify the value of the suggestion made to the effect that registration cards should be produced.


Gordon Graydon: May I say to the Prime Minister that that is an unusual basis for his observations, because the hon. member for York West actually pointed out that registration cards could be purchased in certain areas in Canada. I should hope the Prime Minister's position would not be interpreted:-I know he does not wish that view to go out, and that is the only reason I raise the point-as recognizing a condition of the kind which would make it impossible to carry out the proposal of the hon. member for Vancouver East in connection with voting arrangements.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I have just said I did not think the statement by the hon. member for York West had appealed to the house. It certainly did not appeal to me. The hon. member being a member of a political party in the house, and having raised that point, I fear had the government gone ahead and required the production of registration cards, there are some persons who would immediately have placed a wrong interpretation upon the government's action in so doing.


CANADIAN ARMY
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. J. G. DIEFENBAKER (Lake Centre):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday I gave notice to the

Canadian Army
Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of National Defence that I intended to ask a question to-day in connection with the indicated shortage of farm man-power for harvest purposes. Having regard to the many thousands, of men whose services could be utilized for farm purposes during the harvest season, these men being in the home defence army, what changes, if any, are contemplated in connection w'ith the procedure whereby service men may secure leave? To-day the procedure is so involved as to render very difficult the possibility of men, who could render a real service on the farm during the harvest season, securing leave. I believe agriculture generally would like to have a statement so that the position may be clarified.


Hon. J. L. RALSTON (Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, I had notice of what my hon. friend asked yesterday, and I am going to give the house a brief outline of what has been done. I want to correct the expression which has been used so frequently in this house and elsewhere. My hon. friend speaks of the men in the home defence army. There is no such thing in Canada as a home defence army. There is the active army in Canada which has in it a certain number of personnel who have been called up for service in Canada and the territorial waters thereof, but there is no such body of men which could be taken and posted to home agricultural work. The active army includes general service men as well as the home defence men, so called. They are all intermingled in the different units. These home defence personnel are part of the active army in Canada and are to-day serving on the coast defences, on the searchlights, on the anti-aircraft guns all over this country. I indicated in my speech to the house that there were in numbers about a division on anti-aircraft work alone. So-called home defence personnel are in the establishments in Newfoundland, in the Bahamas, in the West Indies, in South America-that is to say in British Guiana-in Alaska and in Labrador. My hon. friend talks about a home defence army which might be turned over to agricultural avocations. As I have said, there is no army made up of these, so-called home defence personnel. They are all mixed up together in the different units. To pull these men out would mean completely breaking down of units which are now engaged on duties which the chiefs of staffs, in collaboration with the chiefs of staffs in the United States, have indicated are necessary in order that we may be prepared for what eventualities may arise.
The question of the size of the army is always a matter for consideration and is always under review, but let no one think that somewhere there are men who are just simply walking around doing nothing. The home defence personnel are either on operational duties in Canada, both on the east and west coast-there is one group of men located at vulnerable points in central Canada -or are part of the home war establishment which is servicing the army in Canada and also servicing those men who are training in the training centres as reinforcements for overseas. That is a little different picture from what is perhaps in the public mind. I expressly pointed out the other day that in the training centres, not as home defence establishment but for reinforcements overseas, there are something like fifty or sixty thousand general service personnel. The members of this home defence personnel are needed to replace general service men in the various operational units in order that these general service men may either be retrained for some particular arm of the service for which overseas reinforcements will be required so that they may be sent directly overseas if they are already trained in a suitable arm.
When I spoke on the war appropriation I indicated that the army programme requires that the general service men who are here be made available for overseas. As I told the house when speaking on the defence estimates, one of the purposes of calling men up at the present time is so that they may release the general service men from their duties in Canada. I want to make that clear; I want to emphasize it if I can, because there does seem to be an impression throughout the country that somehow or other there are home defence men who are just standing around not serving any useful purpose. I say that they are serving one of the purposes for which they are particularly required. They are taking the place of men who are going overseas and they are necessary so long as the defence requirements of Canada are to be maintained, as at present advised.
I sympathize with my hon. friend when he says that there are a number of regulations with regard to leave for compassionate purposes. There is the compassionate leave provision whereby a man may get leave provided undue hardship exists on the particular farm in connection with his own family. That provision has been in force and has been invoked by national defence headquarters which have had to deal with many applications. The other agricultural leave was the subject of a circular letter dated July 5, 1943, which I shall table The hon. member for Fraser Valley (Mr
Canadian Army

Cruickshank) asked me about this some time ago and I sent him a copy of this circular. It provides for agricultural leave for harvesting somewhat along the same lines as the leave which was provided for seeding.


John George Diefenbaker: Does it provide the procedure?


James Layton Ralston: It provides the procedure as well. I will table a copy for the information of my hon. friend. Hon. members may hardly credit this, but for at least four days, or perhaps longer, we have been having discussions and conferences with the Department of Labour and national selective service in an endeavour to meet this situation from the army, either by way of further leave or by way of detachments. Proposition after proposition and suggestion after suggestion have been made and gone over and found to be impracticable from one point of view or another. Only this morning I gave my approval to a plan which I think will work and which is just now being vested with the Department of Labour. I think it will assist the situation materially. I am not going to state its terms because there have been so many conferences and discussions with regard to it that I prefer to see it definitely settled before anything is said.


Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):: Would the minister put that letter with regard to agricultural leave on the record?


James Layton Ralston: It is a page and a half of single typing and I did not want to take the time. I will supply every hon. member with a copy if desired.


Mr. DOUGLAS (Weyburn):: The minister could give it to Hansard.


James Layton Ralston: If the house is agreeable, I will place it on Hansard.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Agreed.


James Layton Ralston: The letter reads:
G.O.C.-in-C., Atlantic Command,
G.O.C.-in-C., Pacific Command,
All D.Os.C.,
Commander, Petawawa Military Camp, Commander, Camp Borden Military Camp.
Agricultural leave-harvest, 1943.
It has been decided that harvest leave may be granted to such personnel of the army as can be spared, subject to the following conditions:
2.	Harvest leave may be granted under the conditions outlined below to personnel of the Canadian army (including members H.D.) serving in the following formations and units:
(i)	Personnel on the strength of H.W.E. district depots. The number granted leave to be at the discretion of the D.O.C. concerned.
(ii)	Other personnel on the strength of district depots less those awaiting dispatch to basic

training centres and those awaiting allocation after completing advanced or trades training.
(iii)	Personnel of veterans guard of Canada *who have completed individual training and who can be spared from the duties on which their units or detachments are employed.
(iv)	Personnel of units employed on operational duties less those earmarked for overseas service. Number granted leave to be at discretion of the G.O.C.-in-C. and D.O.C. concerned, but not to exceed 5 per cent of the strength of the unit concerned. Such personnel must have completed individual training before being granted leave.
3.	The general conditions under which leave for harvesting may be granted to such personnel are as follows:
(a)	Leave will not exceed six weeks duration and may be cancelled at any time.
(b)	Pay, subsistence, travelling allowance, or other allowances of any kind will not be issuable during this special leave.
(c)	Soldiers will not be entitled to medical or dental attention, hospitalization or compensation due to illness, injury or death while on leave.
(d)	Only soldiers who have experience in farm work are eligible.
(e)	Harvest leave will be limited strictly for the purpose its name implies.
4.	(a) The provisions of R.O. 1935, para. 7 (a) are not to be applied for the grant of harvest leave to personnel in operational units who are ineligible for harvest leave under the provisions of this order.
(b) The provisions of R.O. 699 (2) and (3) will not be prejudiced by the granting of this leave.
5.	The period during which personnel will require such leave will vary considerably in different parts of the country, depending on the advance of the season and weather conditions. However, all personnel must be returned to their units not later than 31 Oct., 43.
6.	The number of men granted leave at any given time will be at the discretion of general or district officers commanding concerned, who will ensure that the number who may be granted leave is limited so that the strength of units will not be unduly depleted.
7.	(a) Application will be made by the soldier concerned to his commanding officer, who, if he approves, will forward same for decision to the general or district officer commanding concerned.
(b) The conditions governing such leave are to be issued in writing to the soldier before proceeding on leave, and the address where he is to be employed is to be entered on his furlough form.
H. F. G. Letson,
Major-General,
Adjutant-General.
As I say, I prefer not to make an announcement about this further plan, which my officers have been working on, until it has been definitely settled. I have mentioned compassionate leave, and I have mentioned agricultural leave, and I have mentioned the further consideration which has been given to the matter in an endeavour to meet the situation as far as possible by providing such

Ontario Election
men as we can spare for the purposes of harvest activities. Demands have been made on the army such as have been made on no other organization in the country. There has been no such demand made upon industry, comparatively speaking. The army seems to have been considered an inexhaustible pool from which men may be obtained. Those men who are not located on the east and west coasts are in the training centres where they are necessary in order that we may have reinforcements to send overseas. Therefore it would be difficult to supply detachments of men in the central part of Canada.
I think I should mention further that we have cooperated with the Department of Labour in connection with supplying prisoners of war for special agricultural work. The house should not be surprised if it hears of the odd escape of a prisoner of war. I hope that questions will not be asked in the house about it and that it will not be regarded as a major international incident. That has almost been the attitude in connection with some prisoners of war who have temporarily escaped in the past. We feel that the situation is such that we have to do the best we can with the facilities which we have for guarding. Men are now being provided at places where it is not so easy to guard them. Where you must have one man for one prisoner you will not be saving anything in man-power. So that we have to do the best we can. In some cases the Department of Labour is assuming responsibility, and in some cases we are assuming it.
The house will be interested to know that as of June 3 there were 5,450 men on leave from Canadian active army for agricultural assistance, either by way of compassionate leave or agricultural leave. That is not counting all the men who have been granted leave in the districts without reference to headquarters, or the men granted leave under the 5th of July circular.


Mr. ADAMSON:: With reference to the statement made by the Minister of National Defence regarding prisoners of war, I appreciate the difficulty he is going to run into. May I suggest that he give some comparison with the number of prisoners of war that we have been able to get out of Germany. Only one prisoner of war has actually escaped from Canada, and that is a very creditable record.


James Layton Ralston: That prisoner of war did not escape from camp-


Agar Rodney Adamson: No; he did not escape from camp.


James Layton Ralston: -but from the train.


Agar Rodney Adamson: The minister might give a statement as to the number of Canadian prisoners who have escaped from occupied Europe.


ONTARIO ELECTION
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Thomas Langton Church: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the Minister of National Defence for the Army a question. It relates to the disfranchisement of two thousand men of the reserve army in military district No. 3, Kingston, although many men of the reserve army belong to No. 1 or No. 2 district, and in other parts of Ontario. The minister made a statement yesterday about this matter. These men and others are sure to be disfranchised on the 4th of August unless the minister takes action to postpone their departure to camp beyond next Sunday, July 25. Nomination day is only two days afterwards, and I suggest that there should be a postponement of the camp for a week and then the soldiers can vote by proxy or at an advance poll. I should like to know what the minister has done. I do not want to move the adjournment of the house to discuss the matter, but two thousand soldier civilians in the reserve army are surely going to be disfranchised unless the camps are postponed for a week.


James Layton Ralston: Mr. Speaker, this matter was
brought up yesterday by the leader of the opposition (Mr. Graydon) and I intimated then that I would have an examination made of the act to ascertain whether or not these men came within the provisions of the act in regard to soldiers voting. The advice that I have received is that the act does not cover them. Therefore it is simply a matter of the men losing their votes or having the Department of National Defence make some adjustment in the absence of any provision in the act.
We have gone into the matter very carefully. You cannot simply postpone a camp of 2,700 men for a week after they have made all their arrangements with their employers and their domestic arrangements. It is not that the department has any hesitation about postponing the camp. We would gladly postpone it on twenty-four hours' notice, but we have to think of the business men- and there are a great many business men in the reserve army-who have made arrangements to leave at a particular time. We have not had one request from any business man
Ontario Election

or from any man in the ranks of the reserve army with regard to postponing their departure for the camp. Nevertheless there have been requests on both sides, and I do not want to be a party to anything, if I can possibly avoid it, which will make it more difficult for the men to exercise their franchise at an election, dominion or provincial. We have gone into the matter fully. In regard to the suggestion that we postpone the camp, we cannot postpone it so as to make it extend beyond the original termination date which is I think August 18, for the reason I have mentioned, namely, that the men have made their arrangements with their employers and their domestic and personal arrangements with regard to leave, and we therefore have to have the camp within the dates fixed because everybody has made his arrangements accordingly. If we delayed the opening of the camp until after the time for voting at the advance polls-it is not a vote by proxy but an advance poll vote- we would have to wait until after July 31, because we are advised that the advance polls will not be ready until after July 31, and that would leave one bare week before the termination date for the men to get to camp, do their training and leave to go back home. Instead of that we have decided to open the camp on the day fixed and to readjust the syllabus of training, taking into account a week-end and doing intensive training on Saturday and Sunday, which was not anticipated, in order to put in nine days' training and complete the adjusted syllabus of training on August 3, when the men can leave the camp and be back home in time to vote.
Hon. members will understand that every man who is going to a reserve camp does not have a vote. There are many boys of from seventeen to twenty-one years of age who go to the camp. In addition therefore we are giving consideration to seeing if we cannot have a special syllabus for the remainder of the days which were to be spent in the camp, for the benefit of them and any others who may want to take advantage of it. In the result this adjustment means that the men can carry out the business and domestic arrangements which they have made with respect to leave; they will still be able to vote and they will be able to complete the adjusted camp training which will be prescribed.


Gordon Graydon: The changes that have to be made with respect to the national defence department apparently arise from the fact that the Ontario Elections Act does not provide any means by which a vote can be taken in camp.
'Mr. Ralston.]


James Layton Ralston: There is no provision in the Ontario Elections Act for voting by the reserve army. It is only for men who are on active service, and the Ontario election authorities have ruled that the reserve army is not included.


DISTRIBUTION OP PROXIES
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Gordon Graydon: Mr. Speaker, I have another question, not exactly on the same subject but on one similar to it, with respect to the distribution of proxies to the men in the army camps outside the province of Ontario. Has the Department of National Defence made any arrangements with the commanding officers of the different units to see that the proxies are distributed and put into the hands of the Ontario voters in the various camps across Canada?


James Layton Ralston: Instructions went out to all commanding officers to cooperate fully with the election officers in this matter. The election officers have been in touch with the adjutant-general, who has charge of these matters at national defence headquarters. I cannot say what instructions have gone out to the individual commanding officers but I do know that instructions went out to all the districts along the lines I have mentioned, that they cooperate fully and give any assistance they can in respect to the holding of the vote in the camps for men who are entitled to vote in the Ontario elections.


Gordon Graydon: The department does not undertake to see that the proxies are placed in the hands of the men? Is that left entirely to the Ontario election officers?


James Layton Ralston: I would not say that. I cannot tell my hon. friend what arrangements are made. Perhaps we are talking at crosspurposes. I do not think there are proxies for soldiers in Canada.


Gordon Graydon: Yes, for voters who are outside the province of Ontario.


James Layton Ralston: Yes, that is right. I think the arrangement was that the proxies should be placed in the hands of the commanding officers of the different units and the men are notified that the proxies are there. I do not want to be bound by that, because I have not gone into it in detail, but I can assure the house that the adjutant-general has issued the fullest instructions possible to see that the army cooperates in order to enable the men to exercise their franchise in the Ontario election.

Japanese Treaty Act


Thomas Langton Church: Noth withstanding what the minister says, some of the soldiers will not be able to vote at an advanced poll or by proxy unless they get leave to do so, and the fares are prohibitive.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


James Layton Ralston: My hon. friend is making some charge, I think, and I should like to hear what he is saying. I do not want any mistake about this. The army is cooperating fully with the election officers in this Ontario election, but the army is not taking the responsibility of seeing that the votes are polled or that the proxies are used. If the men do not want to use them the army does not propose to press the men to use the proxies. But the army does provide whatever facilities are asked for in order that the men may exercise their vote.


Gordon Graydon: The army at least should see that the proxies are placed in the hands of the Ontario voters whether they use them or not.


James Layton Ralston: They may do it, but I take issue with my hon. friend. It seems to me that if the Ontario voter is advised where the proxy is, and there is a convenient place from which the proxy may be obtained, the proxy should not necessarily be placed in the man's hands by the army officers.


Gordon Graydon: I disagree on that. If there is real cooperation in getting these votes polled I think the proxies should be placed in the hands of the Ontario men.


James Layton Ralston: Then there would be a charge that the army used particular care to see that the proxies got into the hands of certain men and not into the hands of others. If the proxies are placed in a convenient place and all the men are notified that they are there, every man has a right to go and get his proxy just as a man goes to a poll and asks for an opportunity to vote.


ROYAL CANADIAN AIR FORCE
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day.
Mr. G. A. CRUICKSHANK (Fraser Valley):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Minister of National Defence for Air, and there is no controversy about this. Has he seen the report that the first squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force has landed in Sicily, the city of Windsor squadron? I am very proud that my roommate, James Sinclair, is adjutant of that squadron.


Hon. C. G. POWER (Minister of National Defence for Air):: I saw it in the press.


JAPANESE TREATY ACT REPEAL OF STATUTE OF 1913
[Stage Direction]
Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Minister of Justice) moved the second reading of bill No. 137, to repeal the Japanese Treaty Act, 1913.
Mr. E. G. HANSELL (Macleod):: Before the bill gets second reading, may I say that I am in favour of it. So far as I can see, it is a matter of routine, the purpose being to repeal this act in consequence of the contingencies of war and the fact that Japan and Canada are now at war wdth each other. While this treaty on commercial and navigation agreements between Canada and Japan is to be repealed, I am a bit concerned that there is no evidence of any action whatsoever along this line between Russia and Japan. Of course, I know that we cannot altogether expect that, because Russia and Japan are not at war with each other. This fact is not fully realized. We think too often of the united nations, the allies, as being the British empire, the United States, China and Russia, the big four, the united nations fighting against Hitler and Mussolini. It is true that the united nations are at war with Germany and Italy, but it is not true that the united nations are at war with Japan, because Russia is one of those united nations. I do not wish to minimize the fact that the united nations are united in their efforts, but it is not true to say that they are united in their war against the axis powers. They are united against Hitler and Mussolini.
I bring this up at the moment because not so long ago Russia and Japan renewed their previous fishing treaties giving to Japan certain rights to occupy certain islands. I did not know that this bill was coming up this morning and therefore I have not my clippings before me, but I read recently that these islands are being used by Japan as weather stations which would assist her in waging war against the United States in the Pacific.	I am very much concerned
about that, because most members of parliament have received numerous requests from organizations and individuals, sometimes letters written personally and at other times circular letters, urging for instance that a second front be started against Germany in order to relieve the pressure that Germany was putting on Russia. We have received petitions signed by hundreds of people to open up a second front, to do this, that and the other, but never once have I received
Japanese Treaty Act

any communication from anyone asking that we urge that pressure be brought to bear upon Russia to assist us in respect of her relations with Japan.
The fact of the matter is that we do not know what is going to happen in the future in connection with Japan. Before the war is won I am quite certain that Japan will be our greatest enemy. I simply make these observations. I am not altogether satisfied about the alignment of nations in waging war in	the	Pacific. I say	this now becausethere will	be	no other	opportunity thissession	for	us	to express	our views in thisregard.	So	far	as the bill	itself is concerned
I am in full agreement with it.


Thomas Vien: It is not unusual,
although not very often practised, to pass a bill of one clause, such as this, without reference to the committee of the whole. I quote from Bourinot at page 529:
It has not been uncommon in the Canadian houses to pass bills without reference to a committee of the whole. This has been almost invariably done in the case of the appropriation or supply bill and not unfrequently in the case of other bills, also founded on resolutions passed in the committee of the whole. Instances are also found in the Canadian journals of Commons bills, not based on resolutions, as well as of Senate bills, having been passed without reference to a committee of the whole. . . .
Is it the sense of the house that, after the second reading, I should put the motion for the third reading of the bill?


Gordon Graydon: It occurred to me that if it was necessary to bring in this bill at this particular session, having in mind the fact that we declared war on Japan some time in December, 1941, there must be some reason why such a bill was not introduced at the last session of the house. I was wondering what the reason might be. Perhaps the minister can explain.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I believe I can very readily satisfy the hon. gentleman. First, I should say that the treaty provided that the subjects of the high contracting parties would have rights equal to those of their respective citizens in the two countries concerned, and that the treaty would not apply to the dominions unless they adhered to it. This dominion did adhere to it. That became then a contractual situation between Canada and Japan. That contractual situation ceased to exist when war was declared, but the form in which the statute was passed in 1913 declared that the treaty would have force of law in Canada, so that even after it ceased to have contractual effect it had statutory effect, and it was dealt with under the War
Mr. Hanstll.]
Measures Act by the defence of Canada regulations. But the War Measures Act provides that whatever is done under it will come to an end with the cessation of hostilities, so that this is necessary to repeal the statute, to prevent it from operating after the cessation of hostilities.


Mr. NEILL:: If it is necessary and advisable-I suppose it is from the minister's remarks-to pass this bill, would it not be equally appropriate and applicable to dissolve or repudiate the terms of the gentleman's agreement?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: The treaty itself provided that it would come to an end twelve months after notice of repudiation given, and that notice was given in January, 1941.


Alan Webster Neill: The hon. gentleman does not get my meaning. I understand about the treaty all right. I say, why does he not take similar action as regards the gentleman's agreement with Japan-another subject altogether-by which 150 of them are allowed in every year, and which, I suppose, is still the law?
Mr. ST. LAURENT:	That came to an
end, by virtue of the principles of international law, with the declaration of war. The only reason for this bill is that in 1913 they did not merely ratify the adhesion to the treaty; the statute of 1913 said in terms that the treaty would have force of law in Canada. So that even after the treaty disappears there is a statute saying that these provisions have force of law, and that is what we want to do away with by this bill. We did do away with it for the duration of the war by the defence of Canada regulations, but the defence of Canada regulations will expire with the cessation of hostilities, and we do not want a statute to be in existence saying that the Japanese have rights equal to those of Canadians in this country as soon as hostilities cease.


Alan Webster Neill: Will not the gentleman's
agreement be revived after the conclusion of the war

Mr. ST. LAURENT: I hope not.


Alan Webster Neill: -by virtue of its not having been repealed?
Mr. ST. LAUF-ENT:	Oh, no; it would
require another arrangement, and I hope that, if any arrangement is made, it will be the kind of arrangement which even hon. gentlemen representing the Pacific coast will be satisfied with.


Alan Webster Neill: I too hope so, but I doubt it.

Japanese Treaty Act


Mr. GREEN:: There seems to be a certain amount of confusion with regard to this very simple bill. Hon. members will recall that when we were discussing the Department of External Affairs-


Thomas Vien: Order. I rather think that the house should go into committee, because all these speeches are out of order.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time, and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Bradette in the chair.
On section 1-Act repealed.
Howard Charles Green: As I was saying, there seems to be a certain amount of confusion developing with regard to this very simple bill. I hope that there will be no misunderstanding about it in the house, because it is of considerable importance in the province of British Columbia.
The other day, when the Prime Minister's estimates were under consideration, I raised the question of this Japanese Treaty Act, and pointed out to the Prime Minister that, because that act still stood on the statute books, certain legislation of the province of British Columbia which dealt with the Japanese was ultra vires. There was a case some years ago which went to the privy council concerning this British Columbia legislation, and the decision then made was that the provincial legislation was ultra vires because it conflicted with this Japanese Treaty Act. Now the war has come along, and the treaty as a treaty became of no effect upon the war breaking out, yet the act still stands, and so long as it stands on the statute book the provincial legislation is ultra vires and no similar provincial legislation can be enacted. For that reason there is considerable anxiety about getting the act repealed, and I am very glad that the government has brought in this repealing bill.
The Minister of Justice has just said one thing which I should like him to explain a bit further, and that was that this bill, when it is passed, will have no effect until after the war. I do not quite understand how he arrives at that conclusion. My understanding would be that if the bill is passed, if it becomes law, the Japanese Treaty Act is repealed at once, wiped off the statute book, and the provincial legislature is free to take whatever course it sees fit. I wish the minister would clear up that point.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: The hon. member is perfectly right. The repeal will take effect immediately. What I attempted to say was that the repeal during war was not necessary
to deprive Japanese subjects of the rights the statute provided, because they were already deprived of them by the defence of Canada regulations. But the repeal will take effect at once and it will not be necessary to refer to the defence of Canada regulations for this purpose. I merely wished to explain that since the outbreak of war this statute had not been effective with respect to Japanese subjects because they were specially dealt with under the defence of Canada regulations.


Howard Charles Green: The hon. member for Comox-Alberni mentioned the gentleman's agreement, which is commonly known as the Lemieux agreement. I think the Prime Minister has explained to the house on at least two occasions that the Lemieux agreement has been abrogated by reason of the fact that there is war between Canada and Japan. I should like the Minister of Justice to make clear whether or not that is the case. Incidentally, within the last week the Prime Minister has tabled the correspondence and exchange of notes which took place between Canada and Japan constituting this Lemieux agreement and the subsequent agreement of 1929, so that it is all now on the record and open to the public.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: Yes: it is my understanding that all treaties or contractual relations between Canada and Japan came to an end with the declaration of war after Pearl Harbor, and that there will be no contractual relations or treaty relations unless and until new commitments are entered into by this country.


Thomas Langton Church: I only wish to say a few words on the preamble and the enactment of the bill.


The CHAIRMAN:: Order. There is no preamble to this bill.


Thomas Langton Church: In the first place, in
clause 1, the policy of the government illustrates the general trend and policy of the government in dealing with these empire matters. This treaty is known as the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation. It was signed by the United Kingdom and Japan, as the explanatory note states, on April 3, 1911. That treaty was binding on Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the whole empire. What happened? Two years later Canada passed a separate statute, as stated in the explanatory note, declaring that the Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation signed by the United Kingdom had the force of law in Canada, and it was assented to on April 10, 1913. While I have no
Japanese Treaty Act

objection to this bill, I wish to say that war is war, and a declaration of war by Great Biitain is binding upon Canada. I do not think the minister has considered this part of the argument. China is not at war with Japan. Japan is not at war with Russia. These matters will be regulated by international law and agreement, and for us in Canada to take a separate stand from Great Britain in connection with this treaty is something I cannot understand. I do not think it is the right action to take. No doubt when war was declared upon Japan by Great Britain and then Canada, the question arose as to whether this treaty was binding any longer on the other parties to it, New Zealand, Australia and the other members of the commonwealth. I should like to ask the minister whether Australia and New Zealand, who were parties to the original treaty of commerce and navigation signed by the United Kingdom, have taken similar separate action, as in this bill, to declare that the treaty is repealed as far as those dominions are concerned. Why was it necessary to take this separate action, in view of the fact that a declaration of war by Great Britain against Japan binds Canada and all the other dominions, in connection with all treaties of navigation and commerce and all the rest of it?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I shall not reply to all that the hon. member has said, but I should like to make the reservation that the fact of my not replying does not mean that I agree with his views of the international relations of this country. I wish to point out to him that the plenipotentiary who signed this treaty for the United Kingdom was Sir Edward Grey, and Sir Edward Grey put his signature to a document which said in terms that it would not apply to the dominions unless on their own behalf they chose to adhere to it. Canada did choose to adhere to it, and Canada afterwards passed a statute making it law in this country. When war was declared by Canada on Japan, the treaty to which Canada had adhered and which would have had no effect upon Canada if this country had not adhered to it, was thereby abrogated and came to an end, but the Canadian statute remained on the statute book. The purpose of the bill is to remove that statute and to remove the effect thereof as to the people of Canada. As to whether anything like this has been done in Australia or New Zealand, I am not informed.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Tuesday, July 20, consideration in committee of bill No. 132, to facilitate compromises and arrangements between insolvent farmers and their creditors -Mr. Ilsley-Mr. Bradette in the chair.
Sections 24 to 27 inclusive agreed to.
On section 28-One proposal only.
Charles Edward Johnston: I think some consideration should be given this section, because I do not believe it is fair to the farmers to have them limited to only one proposal. I can see the possibility of circumstances recurring from year to year that may make it desirable to have these proposals revised. When the representatives of the west presented their proposals to the government they strongly recommended that provision should be made in the bill for revisions from year to year. They suggested this provision:
After the expiration of one year from the filing of a plan of settlement and prior to the expiration of five years from the date of such filing, a debtor may apply to the board to revise the plan of settlement and upon satisfying the board that the plan of settlement is unreasonable, inequitable or unworkable, or that conditions exist which justify the board in so doing, the board may thereupon revise the plan of settlement upon such terms and conditions as the board may deem advisable.
I think that recommendation was gone into very thoroughly by the three western provinces, who have had a great deal to do with the administration of legislation of this kind for the last eight or nine years, and we should not pass it by lightly without further consideration. I trust that the minister will see the reasonableness of the argument, and permit further revisions to be made.


John George Diefenbaker: If there is to be equality as between the rights of the debtor and those of the creditor, there is much to be said in favour of the proposition that within a period of five years a further opportunity may be given for application under the act by a farmer in respect of whom an order has been made. Under section 33 provision is made that where any debt secured on the land owned by a farmer or under an agreement for sale has been reduced under any composition, extension of time or scheme of arrangement, and within five years the farmer sells at an increase in price over and above the price determined at the time the order is made, then a judge may allow the sale to be made, but subject to the provision that the creditor may be reimbursed

Farmers' Creditors Act
by some additional amount dependent upon the increase in the value of the property. So that we have this position: not only is the present and prospective capability of the farmer to meet his debts as they become due to be taken into consideration under section 16, but the creditor gets a second chance within a period of five years.


Mr. ILSLEY:: Only in the event of a sale.


John George Diefenbaker: That is perfectly true.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Would the hon. gentleman wish to limit the debtor's second chance to the case of a sale?


John George Diefenbaker: No, naturally I do not argue that. It is suggested that the purpose of this legislation is that of assuring a solution of the debt problem. Land may go down in value, drought may come and within a period of five years any number of difficulties may develop. Under those circumstances, if on the one hand the creditor is to receive benefit through an increase in price, evidenced by the price he may receive on the sale, then I suggest the minister should answer the argument of and the recommendation by the hon. member for Bow River, that the farmer have the privilege of making a second application.
The three western provinces have given serious consideration to this matter. The at-torneys-general of those provinces have for a considerable period of time studied the subject of debt legislation. Farm bodies have done the same. They must have considered all the points considered by the minister and the government when bringing this matter before the house. Those groups have felt it most important that a provision should be made whereby within five years of the date of the coming into force of the act a proposal might be revised, upon application of the debtor. Would the minister state why that suggestion in the draft act was not accepted, and whether the government is adamant in its opposition to any suggestion to the effect that some provision should be made for a further application within a five-year period.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I do not think there is any virtue in the five-year provision. If there are to be repeated applications by the farmer to write down the debt, on the theory that from time to time the debt should be adjusted to the value of the land, or adjusted to meet other circumstances, we should have an entirely different kind of act. If that were done it would be only fair for the creditor to take advantage of such increase, and be placed in
the position of coming in again himself. If, for instance, the value of the farm land increased from $30 to $60 an acre, owing to inflation or for some other reason, he should have that privilege.


John George Diefenbaker: I thought we had guarded against that.


James Lorimer Ilsley: We have done everything possible to guard against it, and I should hope that nothing of that kind would occur. But if it did occur, I do think the hon. member would say that creditors should have the right to come in and change the arrangement after it had once been adjusted downward. It has never been suggested. There is no finality so far as the farmer is concerned under those circumstances.


Charles Edward Johnston: The measure should operate fairly. If a creditor has a right, then I think it should be acknowledged. I do not think we should bar him from the advantage of an increase, any more than we should bar the farmer from a fair adjustment.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I would not be prepared to accept that right, on behalf of either the debtor or the creditor-because I am sure we would have to accept it on behalf of both. Farmers would not like that provision-the ones who availed themselves of the act. They would like to know that their obligation is fixed. I admit that in section 33, in the event of a sale only, we are making an exception to that rule. That would be where there is no doubt about the value, because it is checked by the sale. I shall speak about section 33 when. I come to it, and shall propose some amendments, setting out my reasons for doing so. I propose also to give some instances of what has happened, which I believe will be interesting to hon. members. But as to the proposal that there should be repeated adjustments, I must express my dissent. I dealt with that point yesterday. The principle of the act is to keep the farmers entitled to the benefit on the land, as efficient producers. When a farmer sells the land, that principle of course is abrogated; it no longer applies. That is a different question entirely from the question whether or not a farmer who does stay on the land for a great many years should from time to time-once, or more than once; I do not see any particular virtue in the suggestion that it should be once-make application. That deprives the act of any fidelity, and it would have to apply both to the creditor and to the debtor. I do not think we could do that. It verges a little on the partnership argument, namely that the lender is a partner. He is not a partner at. all. The land goes up in value,
Farviers' Creditors Act

and he can get only so much back in dollars. If the land goes down in value, in the absence of extraordinary legislation of this kind, he is entitled to get back the number of dollars he lent.
Last night my parliamentary assistant pointed out that the principle underlying the lending is that the lender assumes a fixed monetary obligation that is wholly inconsistent with the principle of partnership. The principle of partnership works sometimes to the advantage of the lender, and sometimes to his disadvantage. The bondholder has certain disadvantages and certain advantages. The shareholder has certain disadvantages, and certain advantages. But the bondholder is not a shareholder, nor is the lender of money on security a partner.


Mr. CASTLEDEN:: The basis of adjustment will be the judgment of the court. The court will decide the ability to pay. He may spread his proposal over a number of years. In that period of years there might be a drastic change in ability to pay.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes.


George Hugh Castleden: On that basis I think this section should be amended.


Mr. QUELCH:: I would be opposed to the idea that the creditor should be allowed to make a proposal, and for this reason. The farmer is allowed to make a proposal because owing to conditions in the past-not in the future-he has been unable to make his payments; therefore a new adjustment is allowed to compensate him for his loss in the past. If conditions improve he will then probably be glad to make his payments in the future, under a new agreement, and no new proposal is necessary on the part of the creditor. It is wholly a matter of ability to pay. In addition he would be compensated for any loss incurred in the past as the result of low prices and drouth. So long as the farmer can pay, and has no difficulty in paying, there is no need of a proposal being made. The same applies to creditors. So long as the farmer can make his payment there is no need for a creditor to make a proposal.


James Lorimer Ilsley: His ability to pay in the future may increase as well as decrease.


Victor Quelch: One thing is certain: if prices increase in the future, they will go down again in a short time, and, judging from past history, the downward trend is more likely than the upward trend. If we say that the right level is parity price, we can go back through history and find that the price goes below parity more than above it.
[Mr. Ilsley.l


Thomas Langton Church: Mr. Chairman, I wish to say a few words with respect to section 28. We have just considered section 27 which states that a decision of the appeal court shall be final. Section 28 says:
No farmer shall be entitled to make more than one proposal under this act.
There has been a Ipng discussion on this bill. Away back in 1924 and 1925, when the prairie provinces were urging free trade, and all that kind of thing. I proposed to aid them all along the line by protection and The Safeguarding of Industries Act, for the benefit of the prairie farmers. It affected not only their property, but the marketing and production of their crops. During the past fifteen or sixteen years many advanced protectionist measures have been passed, some of them dealing with farm debt, others with the farms themselves, the appliances used on the farm, production, distribution and marketing of the crop and so on. When the prairies veered around to protection, after seeing the great injury which had been done by the opposite policy, I pointed out that there should be a national policy to apply protection to all Canada's ills. I am not opposing adequate measures to take care of this problem of farm debt on the prairies and the hardship caused thereby; my point is that any measure should have a greater scope and be reciprocal and apply aid to all Canada to protect equities. A measure such as this should not be brought in during the dying days of parliament when it cannot receive the consideration it deserves. It has to go to another place and we do not know how it will fare there. In my opinion it might be well to let it stand over for a year. This measure is onesided; it is not reciprocal.
A proper national policy of protection would benefit not only the market gardener and the farmer, but the artisan and the industrial worker. Then it would be worthy of the name of protection. A measure such as this ought to be applied to all. On April 17, 1925, I said that protection is a great economic question of principle and of patriotism, and of life and death to Canadians. The big interests, who seek to grab all the benefits of protection for themselves, are its worst friends, and do the great movement little good. It should not be a manufacturers' question, or a banking question, or a grain growers' question, or a combine question, or a monopoly question at all. Protection should be brought up to date to meet changed conditions, and extended. Protection will make for a better Canada, and a happier and more contented people, with work plentiful; it will make

Farmers' Creditors Act
Canada a country fit for heroes who have fought for Canada to live and die in, instead of being driven to join the exodus.
Instead of a measure of protection to cover our fishermen, our industrial workers in the central provinces, and our farmers or. the prairies, and the Pacific toilers and the equity in their homes, we have a one-sided protection measure. I say that this will only cause untold hardship for those who will have to help pay for it. This bill is only half-baked to begin with. They talk about fifty per cent of the farmers on the prairies having no debt on their farms, and we must not forget that there are many widows and others who have invested their money in farm mortgages on the prairies while others have taken out insurance policies or have bought loan or trust company bonds. Their security in these companies may be wiped out. If this principle is to be adopted it will cause wide differences of opinion and disunity in Canada.
I have no objection to attempting to relieve this very serious state of affairs to which my hon. friends to my left referred yesterday, but I plead for equality of treatment to other native industries and the industrial population. This is a form of state socialism-for some, and not for others. If you are going to adopt it you might just as well say that there will be no proper protection for the policyholders in these insurance companies, whose assets will go down and may be seriously affected. In the dying days of parliament we should not pass this measure. During the last few days of the session we cannot give a matter like this proper consideration. If they are going to ask for more than is in the bill, or for more than is proper, it will only cause trouble. I doubt whether some of the clauses of these measures are constitutional in view of the decision of the privy council, on provincial farm debt matters. It will cause wide differences of opinion in the other provinces of the confederation.
You, Mr. Chairman, were once the head in Ontario of a fine municipality in an agricultural community, and you know that people in Ontario consider that province the forgotten province. We have not received the same treatment that others have. I think the government should consider widening this bill, or possibly let it stand over for a year and then provide a wider measure of relief for those who are not covered at all and for those who should be covered, so as to have real national protection to the real estate of all our people and the holding or the equities in their homes.


Mr. SHAW:: What provision is being made to prevent a recurrence of what occurred during the early days of the first act? When the first settlements were made the reductions were quite low and the argument, was advanced that as this was a new thing, the boards of review [DOT] would have to proceed with great caution. Later, after some experience had been gained by the boards of review, the reductions were approximately doubled. No provision was made for a second appearance before the board and a great deal of bitterness developed among the farmers. I recognize that under certain conditions many of those farmers are going to have an opportunity of having their debts considered, but if these courts proceed with caution at first and then, after gaining some experience, become more generous we are going to have a repetition of what happened before. Many of the farmers felt that they were unfairly discriminated against.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I would expect that there would be some consultation between the appeal judge and the district court judges before the act came into operation to try to decide upon some of the principles which should be applied. That is not usual in judicial procedure, but I do not see why it could not be done. From the experience of the past nine years in the administration of the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act the judges realize the importance of consistency in decisions, which was not the case under the boards of review. The hon. gentleman knows that it is because there was not consistency that we are permitting a second proposal. Only one proposal is provided for under this bill, but there is really a second proposal for those who had their' cases adjusted up to the end of 1928.


Victor Quelch: The minister knows that the mortgage companies were opposed to the boards and wanted the substitution of the courts. They evidently felt that they would get a better deal with the courts. Does the minister think that the farmers will get the same type of sympathetic consideration from the courts as they have been getting from the boards?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I do not know whether it will be the same type, but I think there will be sympathetic consideration of their claims, for the reasons stated the other day by the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Sissons). I do not see any reason to expect otherwise, but I would expect more consistency than there has been under the boards of review. I do not want to attack the boards of review, and I am not doing so, but it is well known
Farmers' Creditors Act

that the principles applied in the early part of the nine-year period were different from those applied in the latter part. There has also been some difference in the treatment of these cases by different boards; some boards have acted differently from others. I do not think this has been because of a lack of sympathy as between the boards. I think that the care and thoroughness with which they dealt with the cases has varied somewhat from board to board, and that leads to a bad result. If a farmer has gone before one board and has been able to get a big write-off, knowing well that he would get a small write-off from another board, and another farmer goes to another board and gets a less favourable decision, you get a situation which gives rise to charges of discrimination. That is not a particularly good system. I do not know what the facts are about all these cases, but I do know that there has been quite a volume of complaints about particular decisions.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The minister says that there will be less inconsistency when the courts deal with these cases, that there has been inconsistency in the decisions of the boards. There may be more consistency by the courts in dealing with technical and legal aspects, but the trouble with this legislation, and the reason I am so much opposed to the courts handling it, is that the courts will have to be more than legal interpreters; they will have to be experts on farm management to decide on the ability of the farmer to pay and on the productive capacity of his farm. Most men on the bench are no more competent to decide these two questions than are men you might pick off the streets. One of the reasons why the boards of review were so inconsistent in the early stages was that they had had no experience in that work, but years of experience in handling these cases gave them more information and a better insight into farm management. That is why in later years their decisions were much better. The minister has not advanced any reason why the courts will be any more consistent in their decisions. It is true that in dealing with technical and legal aspects they may be, bu* when it comes to deciding on a farmers ability to pay and on the productive capacity of his land, I think the courts will have to do what the boards of review did-just feel their way by an experimental process of trial and error. They will be just as cautious as the boards of review were at first, but as they get more experience in farm management they will be able to make more equitable adjustments. In view of that fact I think 
the minister would have been well advised to provide, as proposed in the draft bill, a probationary period of five years, not that there should be adjustments from time to time and no finality but that in this probationary period of five years of experimentation the farmer and creditor would be able to see how the arrangement was working out, and if it was not working out satisfactorily the matter could be reviewed'.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I do not think that would
have a good effect at all. I think if the judges approached the question with the idea that they were instituting a probationary settlement, then to begin with the settlement would not be as good or as careful. I think the fact that there is to be finality about the settlement imposes on the judge an obligation to take care which would not exist if the settlement were to be a mere preliminary or probationary one. The creation of an appeal court is a factor making for consistency which does not exist in the present system. I do not want to be misunderstood as criticizing the present boards of review, because they have done a lot of very fine work, but there is something in what the hon. member for Lake Centre says, that when administrative boards have the final say, they are likely to be a little more dogmatic-I was going to say arbitrary-than when there is an appeal from their decisions. It is a criticism of a lot of our war-time controls, and there is something in it. It is probably a human quality to be decisive and at times dogmatic and, with some persons, arbitrary, if there is no appeal from their decisions. The fact that a minister of the crown has over him the government, that he cannot just say yes or no and tell everybody to take the consequences, but that there is a government which in the final analysis can overrule him, has a beneficial effect on the minister. Sometimes it slows him up and in time of war one sometimes wishes that his voice was the only voice. But I think consistency in his decisions is probably assured to a certain extent by the fact that there is a superior body over him.


Frederick Davis Shaw: Is there any time limit on
this appeal? Suppose the farmer has had an adjustment and must make an appeal say within a period of one year-I do not know what the limit may be-the chances are that during that one year the amount of experience gleaned by the court would not be considerable. But there is not only that consideration. Would the appeal be made on the basis of conditions which prevailed when the first adjustment was made, or on the basis of con-

Farmers' Creditors Act
ditions at the time of the appeal? I could understand that if say at the end of three years the appeal court has to take into consideration the conditions that exist at the end of the three-year period, the appeal might be beneficial, but I cannot see how an appeal under this act will offset any of the difficulties that may develop as a result of the court's probably not having sufficient experience to decide on the productive capacity of a particular parcel of land. I think it is in that respect that the real difficulty is going to develop.


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is the main question always-what is the productive capacity of the land? That is the reason why there are sections later in the bill which provide for the appointment of appraisers to assist the judge.


Charles Edward Johnston: Will they
be from the soldier settlement board?


James Lorimer Ilsley: We do not know. We may
select them from there.


Frederick Davis Shaw: Is there any time limit for
the appeal?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No. The time in which the appeal must be asserted will have to be fixed by the rules.


Victor Quelch: When the appeal is finally made, will conditions at that time be the governing feature, or conditions when the proposal was made?


James Lorimer Ilsley: It will be the conditions at the time the proposal was made.


Victor Quelch: Could not that be changed so that the conditions at the time of the appeal should govern?


James Lorimer Ilsley: The court has the evidence before it that was taken below, and that is the evidence on which the appeal will be made.


Charles Edward Johnston: And no other evidence will be taken?


James Lorimer Ilsley: They have power to take new evidence, yes. I do not think the appeals will be long delayed.


Victor Quelch: After a proposal is made, if we had four or five bad years, would it be possible for the farmer to make an appeal and have his case judged on conditions existing at the end of that bad period?


James Lorimer Ilsley: The probability is that he will be obliged to appeal. The creditor would be obliged to appeal within about sixty days or something like that. A longer period would be unreasonable.


Frederick Davis Shaw: Then in effect the bill really does not take care of the situation that develops under the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act.


James Lorimer Ilsley: No; it is not designed for that.


Mr. FAIR:: Has the minister considered the advisability of having a representative of the debtor and a representative of the creditor sit with the judge in cases where an appeal has been taken from the first court?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes. That has been considered, but it is not consistent with the theory of a court; and that is, I think, one thing wrong with the present system. If you had sitting what one might call a court of three persons, one of whom considered it his duty to fight for the debtor and another his duty to fight for the creditor, you would not have a judicial body. I do not know that they did that. They probably acquired a judicial outlook on these boards, but there have been instances where a pretty forceful person got on, representing one side or another. The theory of the act is that that is a bad court. Judges do not represent either plaintiff or defendant, nor do they have anyone sitting with them in judgment representing either party. The persons who represent plaintiff and defendant are advocates who appear before the court, and that is the place where such persons ought to be.


Mr. STIRLING:: It is one o'clock and past, Mr. Chairman.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Will the judge have any expert on farm management to advise him?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No.
At one o'clock the committee took recess.
The committee resumed at three o'clock.


Joseph-Arthur Bradette: Shall section 28 carry?


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 29-If farmer defaults.
Robert Fair: Could we have an explanation of this section?


James Lorimer Ilsley: These provisions were in the old act. If the farmer defaults, and if the default is not due to causes beyond his control, the court may on the application of a creditor annul the composition, extension of time or scheme of arrangement, and the farmer may be put into bankruptcy. That has been in the law all along. If the default was due to causes

Farmers' Creditors Act
beyond the farmer's control, the section does not apply. He cannot be put into bankruptcy. The explanatory note covers it pretty well. The last subsection relates to the province of Quebec, stating what court shall have jurisdiction there.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: This section is important, by virtue of the fact that it will influence the whole proceedings and conduct of the case in the years following the filing of the proposal. What kind of regulations are passed under this legislation covering that period of time will largely determine to what extent the legislation will be a success. As I understand it, after the proposal is drawn up and filed by the court and accepted by both parties, if the farmer finds that because of conditions beyond his control-because of crop failure or depressed prices-he cannot meet the obligations, the creditor may make application to have the composition annulled, but if the court feels that it is not the farmer's fault the composition will not be annulled. I should like the minister, however, to let us know what will happen. Will the court merely extend for one year the terms of settlement, or will he virtually make a new proposal to extend further the terms of payment? What has the minister in mind in this section? It gives tremendous powers to the court, and they are not very clearly defined. In the draft act which was recommended, part II, section 24, some sort of crop failure clause was suggested. Again, of course, the minister will not agree with me, because he takes the position that there is a fixed money charge and that the capital invested entitles the investor to a fixed return, and, failing that fixed return, the right to take over the property which is the security for his loan. We do not take that position at all; we feel that in a year in which the farmer had a crop failure through no fault of his own he has already taken a loss-the money he has put into seed and all the work he has done. The investor ought to be prepared to accept some of that loss, and if not that, ought at least to be prepared to postpone the payment for that year, and the terms of the contract should be extended one year further. If the government had accepted the proposal in section 24 of the draft bill there would be some provision of that sort, and it may be that the minister has in mind putting it in the regulations.


James Lorimer Ilsley: No.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Will the minister elaborate on the powers a judge will have? Will the judge have power to extend the settlement another year? Will he have power to

waive the interest for that year, or will the interest and principal be piled up for that year and two payments be required instead of one in the year following?


James Lorimer Ilsley: The rights of the parties are these, that if the farmer defaults, the creditor may enforce the confirmed proposal. Of course he cannot take foreclosure proceedings under the order in council for the reduced amounts, or he cannot proceed without the leave of the court. At least the court has power to postpone or stay these proceedings under the order in council passed -under the War Measures Act, and the rights of the creditor are determined by the proposal. In that event, I suppose, what would happen in practice would be about what the hon. gentleman says, that the amount would not be paid that year but would accumulate againht the property for subsequent payment.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: At the top of
page 10 it says:
... no such composition, extension of time or scheme of arrangement shall be annulled by reason of the default of the farmer in carrying out the terms thereof except as provided in this section.
That is, except where it is not beyond his control, or it is his fault. In a case where the judge is convinced that it is not the farmer's fault, will he have power under this section to extend the terms of the settlement or make some adjustment at that time?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No; the judge would have no power of that kind, because the rights of the parties are already determined by the confirmed proposal. Those could not be altered by the judge without a new proposal, which cannot take place. The creditor has the right to enforce the proposal even though the farmer makes default.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Even though it is not his fault?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Even though it is not his fault, yes.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Will the
minister explain these words? It seems to me it says very clearly that he can. If so:
... no such composition, extension of time, or scheme of arrangement shall be annulled by reason of the default of the farmer. . . .


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes-except as provided in this section.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Yes, except where it is the farmer's fault. Now where it is not the farmer's fault I take it this section means that the court would have the right to extend the terms of settlement.

Farmers' Creditors Act


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, it does not mean that. Under the Bankruptcy Act, if a farmer makes a composition with his creditors and defaults, then he may be put in bankruptcy for any default. That would be the law all over Canada with the exception of the western provinces; that is, the composition would be annulled as a result of the default of the farmer; but under this section it cannot be annulled unless the default oame about as the result of the fault of the farmer-as a result of forces within the control of the farmer. If it comes about as a result of causes within the control of the farmer it can be annulled here. In that respect it is more favourable to the farmer in the three western provinces than it is in other provinces.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: But the
minister says it cannot be annulled. It merely means that t'he proposal cannot be annulled; the terms of the proposal still must be enforced.


James Lorimer Ilsley: They can be enforced;, yes.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: But under the order in council which is good only for the duration of the war, the court would have power to postpone payment?


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is right.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: But not under this legislation?


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is right.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Sections 30, 31 and 32 agreed to.
On section 33-Farmer may not sell in case of reduction of debt, except with leave of the court.
James Lorimer Ilsley: I wish to move an amendment to this section. The three main features of the amendment are: first, that the provisions of the section shall not apply to compositions, extensions of time, or schemes of arrangement which have been approved by the court or confirmed by the board of review under the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act, 1934. The section as it stands would unsettle certain settlements on which the farmer probably has the right to rely. It will apply only for the future; it will apply only to compositions, extensions of time or schemes of arrangement approved by the court under the act now before the house. That is the first change that is proposed in the section. The second is that the period of five years be reduced to three years. The third is that such additional amount as the court thinks should be paid for the benefit of 72537-327
the creditors is to be paid into court instead of directly to the creditors. There is a fourth; that is, that the amount is not to be payable to one holder of the security on the said land, or to the vendor or assignee of the vendor under the agreement for sale, but is to be applied by the court for any holder of security on the said land, or the vendor or assignee of the vendor under the agreement for sale.
The need for this section is indicated by experience. I have before me a list of cases in which the dominion government was the secured creditor; I suppose there are hundreds of cases like this in which private mortgagees or vendors were the secured creditors. I have not gone over those at all but have had selected, I think at random-I am not just sure on what basis they were selected- eighteen cases in which the crown was the creditor, through the soldier settlement board. This is what happened in those cases; I shall take perhaps the most outstanding one, though it may not be. The original debt was $6,586.59. The date of reduction of the debt was May 9, 1938. The reduced debt was S3,500.	On October 20, 1939, less than
eighteen months later, the debtor sold the property for $6,850. Hon. gentlemen will take note of what happened there, and I would ask them to put themselves in the position of trustees for the taxpayers of Canada. As holder of the security on that property the soldier settlement board were compelled to reduce the amount of their debt against that farmer by $3,000, from $6,586.59 to $3,500; they were compelled to do so under the provisions of an act the object of which, as stated in the preamble, was to retain the farmer on the land as an efficient producer. Within eighteen months that farmer who was thus enabled to remain on the land as an efficient producer sold the property for $6,850. Of course the crown took that loss of $3,000 and the farmer got the benefit of the difference.	.
The theory of this section, the principle underlying it, is that if something definite of that kind takes place, showing clearly that the court erred, that the purposes of the act were frustrated and that there should not have been any such reduction at all, the farmer should make some of that money available for the satisfaction of the persons who had security on the land. The section therefore provides that the farmer cannot, within three years after this settlement- which, it must be borne in mind, is made for the purpose of keeping him on the land as an efficient producer-sell the land without getting leave of the court. The court may

Farmers' Creditors Act

impose conditions, one of which may be that such sum as the court thinks fit will be paid into court for the benefit of those who have security on the land.
That is one case. There is another case on this list in which apparently the farmer sold the land within six months. The original debt was $4,236.27. The date of reduction was May 5, 1939. The reduced debt was $2,000. On November 7, 1939, he sold the land for $3,040. Under the proposed section it would be necessary if he changed his mind about staying on the land, which was what happened in this case, to come to the court and say, "I am going to sell this land, for which I am going to get $3,040. Your $4,000 was cut down to $2,000. I want to know on what terms I can sell the land," and the terms may include the condition that some part of the money be paid into court for the benefit of those holding security on the land.	Those holders of
security might include municipalities who had taxes owing, or anyone else who had an interest in the land.
The proposed legislation is based to a large extent on a section of the New Zealand act which is very much like this. I have no information as to subsequent legislation in New Zealand, but in 1936 they passed an act which had an emergency application, just like the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act. It enabled farmers and others to apply within a limited period, within a year or two, for a reduction of their debts, and it provided that if anyone sold the land before January 1, 1941, which was about four years after the expiration of the act, they must do this very thing. I have the provisions of the New Zealand act before me. I do not say that we are doing this because New Zealand did it; we are doing this because one of the features of the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act that has always shocked a good many people is that debtors could go to a board of review, sometimes with a sale in view, and avail themselves of the provisions of an act designed to keep efficient producers on the land, in order to get a substantial write-down of their mortgages. Then, shortly afterwards, they could sell the land for an amount very considerably in excess of the sum to which the debt was reduced.


George Hugh Castleden: Has that been a common thing?


James Lorimer Ilsley: It has happened a number of times; one hears about it here and there. As I say, I have just gathered up some of our own. I have eighteen cases where land was sold within three years.


Victor Quelch: Have they reference to
soldier settlers?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes.


Victor Quelch: I do not think it is fair to compare soldier settlers with civilians, because in many cases the soldier settlement board have voluntarily made concessions. Very often the soldier settlement board have made a proposal for a reduction. They treat the soldier differently from the way they would treat a civilian, and rightly so. I should like the minister to give the facts in connection with some civilian cases. Probably that would give a different picture.


James Lorimer Ilsley: These were all proceedings under the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act.


Victor Quelch: Yes; nevertheless the soldier settlement board may make a proposal. I know of many cases where the soldier settlement board itself has voluntarily made a proposal granting a soldier a very large reduction.


Mr. DONNELLY:: The minister referred to two sales, one where the farmer sold the land for $6,850 and the other where it was sold for $3,040. Were they sold for cash, or on time? If they were sold on time, is there any possibility that the man who bought the farm would himself be back to the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act administrators in another five years looking for an adjustment?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I do not know whether these were sold on time or not. But if they were sold on time, of course that is a matter the court would take into consideration.


James J. Donnelly: It is not the same at all, if it is on time.


Robert Fair: We are told there is a sucker born every minute. Some of the people who purchased this land were possibly among them. I do not care how poor an article one may have for sale, if he is a good enough salesman he can always sell it for more than it is worth. I believe many of the parcels of land which were bought by soldier settlers might be put in that class. The arguments which have been made by the minister, or which he has attempted to make, cannot be seriously considered in this instance. If under this section a creditor is to be given the benefit in the actual or apparent value of a property in which he has an interest, will that same creditor in respect of a property which deteriorates in value stand a similar share of the deficiency?


James Lorimer Ilsley: The creditors are not given the benefit of the increase if the man stays on

Farmers' Creditors Act
the land. If he does not stay on the land and sells the propery, it might be argued that there should be a provision that if he sells for less than the secured value, the reduced security, he should have the right of having the land revalued downward. That might be argued, of course; but I would point out that that would be entirely unworkable. To begin with, I do not think it would ever occur, because I do not know why he would be selling it then. He would not be getting anything out of it.


Robert Fair: In order to get some share of the money he put into it he may be compelled, before his equity is still further reduced, to dispose of it. I know of case after case where a man has had to get rid of his holdings.


James Lorimer Ilsley: But if he sells it for less than there is against it, he does not get a dollar out of it. I should think that would never occur. Moreover a provision like that could be easily evaded. He would just need to make a sale to a friend, at less than- the amount, and automatically have it written down. That would make it entirely impossible from the point of view of administration. I do not, however, rest my contention on that point, but rather on the point that it would never occur. If we had a provision in here that in the event of the secuj^ty being reduced from $6,000 to $3,500, and it were sold for $3,000, he could have the security written down to $3,000, what good would it do? He would never apply, because he would not get a dollar out of it anyway.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I think this is a most vicious section. The minister's whole argument is based on the supposition that these debts ought not to be written down below a hundred per cent of the value of the farm.


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, that is not so at all.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The minister cites the case of a man who has $4,000 against the farm, and sells it for $3,000, and he seems to think that that is a scandalous thing.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I did not say it was scandalous at all.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: When he sells it for $3,000, what is happening is that there is a $2,000 debt, and a $1,000 equity. This section provides that with respect to the other thousand dollars the creditor shall come in and get the whole or part of it. If they can convince the court that they have a claim, that may be done. But what about the farmer's equity in that land?
72537-327J


James Lorimer Ilsley: Does the hon. member want me to asnwer?


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: He is the man who originally puts the money up to buy the farm. In all probability he put down a cash payment. Then he worked the land, cultivated it and placed the buildings on it. But the whole assumption under this section is that an arrangement must be made to make sure that the farmer never gets more for the land than is actually against it in debt.


James Lorimer Ilsley: No.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: And if he does get more, the creditor will have recourse in the courts.


James Lorimer Ilsley: No; let me put my hon. friend straight on that. In the case where the debt was reduced from $4,000 to $2,000 and the land was sold for $3,000, it may be that the court had in mind that the $3,000 was the value that it was putting on the land, and that $1,000 was being allowed as an equity. If it W'ere sold for $3,000 the court would proceed on the basis of the valuation of the land on which the court had proceeded originally. But suppose it was cut down to $2,000, on the basis of the land being worth $2,500, and it was sold for $3,000, also taking into consideration any improvements made-all those things must be considered by the court. It enables the court to compel the payment of part of the amount into court; it is not necessarily the whole thing. The section does not impose any obligation on the court at all to do anything, except what it feels in its discretion it should do. In respect of the first case I cited, namely a sale for $6,850 within eighteen months, of land on which the mortgage was reduced to $3,500, certainly the court could not have had in mind a valuation of $6,850 or anything like it.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: It might have had.


James Lorimer Ilsley: That has not anything to do with the value of the land, necessarily.


Mr. ROSS (Calgary East):: The land may have been improved in value. The improvements may have been by way of clearing the land. For instance, it may have been brush land, and the cost of clearing would be about $15 an acre. It may be that there was a growing crop sold with the land.


James Lorimer Ilsley: All those things must be considered, and they are so treated in the section. Let me read the proposed section.


George Henry Ross: The value may have been fair enough when it was made.
Farmers' Creditors Act


James Lorimer Ilsley: All those things are to be considered by the court, and it is so stated. This is the proposed section:
33. (1) Where any debt secured on the land owned by a farmer or owing or payable by a farmer under an agreement for sale of any land has been reduced under any composition, extension of time or scheme of arrangement approved or confirmed by the court under this act, the farmer shall not, except with the leave of the court granted upon such terms and conditions as the court thinks fit, sell or otherwise dispose of such land or any part thereof or his interest therein within a period of three years after the date on which the composition, extension of time or scheme of arrangement was approved or confirmed.
(2) The conditions imposed by the court upon granting leave to any farmer to make any such sale or other disposition may include a condition that such portion of the selling price or other consideration, as the court deems equitable, having regard to all the circumstances and in particular to any improvements made to the land since the date of such approval or confirmation, shall become payable into the court in such manner and within such time as the court directs, and shall be applied by the court for the benefit of any holder of security on the said land or the vendor or assignee of the vendor under the agreement for sale.


Mr. SISSONS:: I desire to commend the minister for the amendment suggested to section 33. I still think that the bill would be a better bill if section 33 were wiped out, but it is a good bill even with section 33 as amended in it.	.


An hon. MEMBER:: Good for whom?


John Howard Sissons: Good for the farmer. I would much rather have this bill with section 33 as amended in it than have no bill. I would commend that attitude to my hon. friends in the Social Credit and Cooperative Commonwealth Federation groups. Already there has been raised in this house the suggestion that the minister should drop this bill, and in view of the attitude taken by hon. members opposite I have been fearful that the minister might be persuaded to withdraw it. My hon. friends say that they are serving the interests of the farmers of western Canada, but I would point out that there is an even greater danger than the minister dropping the bill; I do not think that will happen, but shots have been fired in this house against the bill and it may result in the bill being killed in another place. I want to tell the Social Credit and Cooperative Commonwealth Federation members right now that they will not be able to evade their share of the responsibility if eventually this bill is killed by parliament.


Mr. DOUGLAS (Weybum):: We have no representative in the other place.


John Howard Sissons: If this bill is killed before it passes both houses, my hon. friends will have something to answer for to the farmers of western Canada.


James Lester Douglas: The other place will have to answer for that.


John Howard Sissons: My hon. friends will have to answer. The farmers of western Canada have prayed for release from their debts; they have prayed to be forgiven their financial obligations, and in future they might very well pray to be saved from such champions as the hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. Douglas), the hon. member for Yorkton (Mr. Castleden) and the members of the Social Credit group.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The hon.
member for Peace River is very much concerned that the representations made by members in this corner of the house may result in the withdrawal or defeat of this legislation. I may tell him in the first place that the only member of the house so far who has asked for the withdrawal of this legislation is the hon. member for Calgary West (Mr. Edwards).


Mr. EDWARDS:: I asked for no such thing.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The hon.
member must have changed considerably.


Manley Justin Edwards: I asked for no such thing. I ask the hon. member to quote anything I said. I note that some of the observations of the hon. member who now has the floor are not in Hansard.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: If any observations that I have made are not in Hansard, it is because the reporter did not get it. I did not check Hansard. I am not in the habit of doctoring Hansard.


Manley Justin Edwards: I merely stated a fact.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: What is the fact, may I ask?


Manley Justin Edwards: I stated that an observation that my hon. friend made yesterday afternoon when I had the floor does not appear in Hansard to-day. It was the occasion for my including in my general observations in regard to integrity and honesty, the preachers' profession.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: May I say that if that very profound observation to a none too profound1 individual is not in Hansard, it certainly was not because I took it out.


Joseph-Arthur Bradette: I should like if possible at this stage to have the discussion kept within the limits of the bill.

Farmers' Creditors Act


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I shall be glad to do that. The lion., member for Peace River is much alarmed lest any opposition to this legislation may result in its defeat. I want to tell him that he can be absolutely certain that legislation that is as favourable to the creditor class as this is will go through.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The hon. gentleman surely does not say that the creditor class is helped by this legislation. Suppose we had no legislation and a creditor in the western provinces had the same rights as a creditor in the other provinces, would he not have much wider rights than he will have as a result of this legislation? This legislation gives nothing to the creditor class; it takes away from them.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: This legislation takes the power away from the boards of review and gives it to the courts. Apparently these boards of review have been much too sympathetic and much too generous to the debtor class, according to what has been said by many in this house and outside the house. I think the strongest objection that has been taken by various members is that the boards of review have been so generous, or as the minister says, so inconsistent.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The hon. gentleman continues to say that this legislation was brought in because the boards of review were too favourable to the debtors. That is not the reason for the legislation, and the hon. gentleman should accept the reasons I have repeatedly given. That is not one of them.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I am stating
that the effect of this legislation is to take power away from the boards of review and give it to the courts. If this legislation were not here, the boards of review would continue to function. The minister has been arguing all along for finality. There is to be no revision once a proposal has been filed, as far as the farmer is concerned. If the farmer is not able to meet the terms of the composition, there is to be no revision; there is to be no adjustment; he goes into bankruptcy unless he gets a postponement. The only group that can get a revision'-that is what this amounts to-is to be the creditor group, in the event of the debtor selling his farm for more than the total amount of the debt against it. In other words, the only place where the principle of finality is to be dispensed with is the place where the legislation might work out in the interests of the farmer debtor. The principle for which the minister has been contending for two days is being violated by this section.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I want finality where the
parties concerned abide by the intent and spirit of the bill. This bill provides for finality where the man stays on the land for three years after the settlement. The object of the legislation is to enable him to stay on the land as an efficient producer. If he does so, there is every finality so far as he is concerned and so far as the creditor is concerned. But if he does not, if he gets a write-down so that he can stay on the land and then, as many have done, sells his land for a very considerable increase in value and gets off the land, he should come back to the court and say, "That was not the basis; I have changed my mind, I want to sell the land." The court may then impose a condition having regard to all the circumstances. That is the spirit and intent of the legislation, and I argue for that.
I point out another consideration, perhaps not strictly on this point, and that is that there is a considerable class who will take advantage of this, and the largest class, I take it. There is a second chance for the debtors who had their proposals confirmed before January 1, 1939-not all of them but those who come within the other conditions of the legislation. But the creditor does not have a second chance.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: There may be circumstances under which the land is being sold not because of the choice of the debtor at all. The debtor may die and his widow be unable to carry on the farm; having no grown-up son, she is compelled by economic circumstances to dispose of the land. In that case she will take the case to the court and have to give the creditor whatever opportunity he can avail himself of to get part of the proceeds when she is disposing of her farm.


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is correct, and I do not see anything wrong with that at all. I have a different point of view from my hon. friend. It may be my background, my environment or something like that, but I have seen people who take their savings and invest them in a mortgage on a neighbouring farm, say a mortgage of $2,000. Sometimes they had worked hard to accumulate those savings over a period of years. It would seem to me that if the farm were sold for three or four or five thousand dollars the person who lent his savings on the security of a mortgage should get back his $2,000 if the farm is sold. I do not see any reason why he should not. To propound these new partnership theories, this theory of heads I win and tails you lose, seems to me to take away the
Farmers' Creditors Act

whole foundation of our present contractual system. Some hon. gentlemen opposite would like to write out of contracts the contractual feature. I cannot as Minister of Finance agree with that. The dominion government has to live up to its contracts; each one of us individually has to live up to his contract, and apart from recognizing the emergency feature here and going as far as is necessary to meet it, I cannot agree to go any farther.
If a man comes in under this legislation, which is designed to keep him on the land as an efficient producer, and has his mortgage written down from $5,000 to $3,000 and his estate is able to get $5,000 for the land, my hon. friend thinks it is a terrible thing that the creditor should be paid off the full amount of his mortgage. What is there wrong about that? The money was advanced on the land. There was a contract to pay back the amount of the mortgage. What social value is impaired there? What harm will it do to the nation? The mortgage, we will say, had to be written down to keep the farmer on the land, and the farmer stayed on the land until he died, perhaps a year or two afterwards. Then it turns out that the land is worth a whole lot more than the mortgage. Why should there be anything wrong about the present owner of the land being obliged to go back to the court and get permission to sell on terms that will preserve so far as possible the contractual feature in the contract?


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The minister asks what is wrong with the illustration he gave, and I notice that he got support from the hon. member for Rosedale. Their outlook is identical, and the minister will, I am sure, be relieved on that score. The minister states the case of a man whose debts are $5,000. The man has probably paid back in principal and interest thousands of dollars already. Then he has his debt written down to $3,000 by the court, which recognizes in that adjustment the value of the farm and that the farmer has already paid back large sums of money and has worked on the farm to break it and clear it and has some equity in it. Now, says the minister, if that land is sold by the estate for $5,000, why should the farmer's widow or his heirs get $2,000? That is what it amounts to. Why should the creditor have to put up with $3,000, he asks, when there are $5,000 of proceeds? Why should not the wages of money come first? Why should not the wages of labour simply be written off? That is what the minister is saying. The minister is saying that the wages of capital are the only wages that are to be sacrosanct, that the only contract is a 
property contract, and that the money that has already been paid out by the farmer and his famity and all the work they have put in on the farm are not to be regarded at all. That is his whole assumption. If the proceeds from the farm amount to $5,000 the creditor should take it all, and the man's family who have already paid in so much and have done so much work on the farm go without anything. What is wrong with that, the minister asks? There is a great deal wrong with it. There is a complete failure to recognize the farmer's equity and the	hard work	that	has been done	byhundreds of farming people all across this country. If the minister is going to argue along that line there is no common ground upon which we can argue, because in his eyes the only sacred thing is the obligation to the people who have invested their money. We are trying to get the minister to recognize that when there is a loss, as there has	been a loss in	western Canada	ofmillions of dollars because of the depression and drought, that loss must be shared equally by both sides, and the labour that the farmer has	put in and	the	payments that have
already been made by him warrant him in having some return from the proceeds of that farm. He has as much right to it as the creditor.


Mr. MITCHELL:: I just want to say to my	hon. friend,	who	comes from the	old
country like myself, that one thing that has made the British people great is sanctity of contracts. My hon. friend has the thing in reverse. He is trying to tell the house that the man who lends his money is a scoundrel and that the chap who will not pay back what he owes is a hero.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Not at ali.


Humphrey Mitchell: I was always taught, as I am sure my hon. friend was, that if you borrow money and spend it foolishly you must pay it back just the same. I think that is fundamental.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: And you
would apply it to the farmer in this case?


Humphrey Mitchell: I certainly would. If he gets a mortgage for S6,000 written down to $3,000 and then sells his farm for $6,000, a part of those proceeds belong to the person who lent him the money. To destroy thrift is to destroy civilization. I know hundreds of working people in communities all over this country who have saved a few hundred dollars by - hard work and thrift and are lending it out, and we must have regard for these people and their savings. I am not

Farmers' Creditors Act
talking of the big loan companies but of the hundreds of working people one meets in every community. In fairness you must have some regard for the other fellow. Of course we all know that through hard circumstances a person may at times be unable to meet his obligations.


James Lester Douglas: In the cases handled under the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act by the boards of review, what percentage of the mortgages are held by individuals?


James Lorimer Ilsley: We have no record.


Robert Fair: There is something we are losing track of and have continued intentionally, I believe, to lose track of, and that is that there is no guaranteed cost of production in our economic system.


Joseph-Arthur Bradette: I have already given a ruling on discussion of that kind. There was a long debate on the motion for the second reading of the bill, and that point has been brought up at least a hundred times. I do not say that to depreciate the importance of the point the hon. gentleman is raising, but I think the committee should now confine itself strictly to each section as it comes up for consideration.


Robert Fair: The minister has brought forward several arguments to substantiate the case he is trying to make, and I have an equal right-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Joseph-Arthur Bradette: I must insist upon my ruling. The time has come when hon. members should observe the rule and confine themselves to the section before the committee.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Section as amended agreed to.
On section 34-Powers of director of soldier settlement preserved.
Robert Fair: Will the minister explain this clause?


James Lorimer Ilsley: It is self-explanatory. It does not interfere with the rights which the director of soldier settlement has under the legislation governing his operations. He has certain powers of rescission which I believe were carefully framed and debated in the house, and he is not subject to the limitations of this act.


Mr. PERLEY:: I do not think we can
object to this section, but I submit that it should be cut out altogether. Certainly the
soldier settlers are not getting a square deal. Within the last week or ten days there has been evidence of one or two of them having been closed out, and a number of agreements have been cancelled in the last year or since the war broke out. In my opinion this should be cut out altogether and the soldier settlers should be allowed to come in in some other way, so far as this is concerned.


James J. Donnelly: Under the Soldier Settlement Act the soldier settler is allowed, to take advantage of this act to have his debts adjusted, is he not?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes; he can do so. Debts due the crown are subject to adjustment under the act, and that would include debts due the soldier settlement board. This section means that if he makes default the director of soldier settlement does not have to put him into bankruptcy and go to the courts. Under the proper legislation he can exercise his power of rescission with respect to any rights or remedies he has in relation to the soldier settler.


James J. Donnelly: The soldier can have his debts adjusted?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Oh, yes.


George Hugh Castleden: I understand that if there has been any arrangement by the soldier settler under the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act, any act done or adjustment made is hereby rescinded, and that the director can now carry out arrangements under his own power.


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is not what the section says.


George Hugh Castleden: It says:
Nothing in this act or in any composition, extension of time or scheme of arrangements approved by the court or confirmed by the board of review under the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act, 1934, or approved or confirmed by the court under this act, relating to the debts or affairs of a purchaser of land, or of an assignee of a purchaser of land, under agreement for sale from the director of soldier settlement, shall be deemed to limit or restrict the powers of the said director. . . .
The interpretation of that would be that if there has been some adjustment under the old Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act this section at once does away with that and allows the director to carry on.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The hon, gentleman has
left out of account the last two and a half lines:
... if the purchaser or assignee defaults in carrying out the terms of the composition, extension of time or scheme of arrangement.
Farmers' Creditors Act


George Hugh Castleden: If he defaults or has defaulted in the past?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Default would be a continuing thing. If he has defaulted in the past and the default continues, the continuing default will be covered by the words of the section.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 35 agreed to.
On section 36-Certain provisions of B.S., c. 11 not to apply.
George Hugh Castleden: Is there any particular reason why these gazettings should not take place?


James Lorimer Ilsley: To save expense.


George Hugh Castleden: What does it cost for the gazetting?


James Lorimer Ilsley: There is another reason,
and that is to speed up the work. I do not know what the expense would be.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 37 agreed to.
On section 38-Personal representative of person appointed may apply.
James Lorimer Ilsley: To make this section comply with the amendment we made last night, the words "may, ex parte," in line 29, should be struck out and the word "shall" substituted therefor.


Mr. MULOCK:: I so move.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Section as amended agreed to.
Sections 39 and 40 agreed to.
On section 41-Governor in council may make rules and regulations and establish tariff of fees.
Robert Fair: May I ask the minister whether, in the formulation of the rules and regulations governing the administration of the act, organized agriculture will be given the right to have some say?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I cannot give any undertaking to that effect.


Robert Fair: Would the minister suggest to those making the rules and regulations that such a right be granted?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I should not like to give
any undertaking that organized agriculture will be consulted. If consultation is to take place, there are many interests that ought to be consulted, to be fair, and the governor in (Mr. Ilsley.]
council will have to take the responsibility for the rules and regulations, just as they do with any other acts, responsibility for the performance of which is vested in the governor in council.


James Lester Douglas: These rules,
I imagine, will provide the machinery under which the land appraisers will operate. Will they be responsible to the various district courts, or will they be responsible directly to the minister here and the administration set up in Ottawa?


James Lorimer Ilsley: They will be responsible to the minister.


James Lester Douglas: In other words, then, if the district court judge wants some information regarding the value of certain land, its productive capacity and so on, he will communicate with the administration here; is that the idea?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Oh, I do not think so. Some arrangement will be made so that he can call in these appraisers. Facilities will be available; persons will be appointed by the governor in council and will be available for assistance to the judges.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 42 agreed to.
On section 43-Rate of interest.
Ernest Edward Perley: Will the minister give consideration to making the rate of interest four per cent instead of five?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I do not know that there should be such a great reduction as that. It is only in the cases where the rate of interest exceeds seven per cent that this section applies. This is taken from the old act; it is to apply to those high rates of interest where the interest rate collectible is more than seven per cent; then, by tendering the money, the mortgagor can get it down to five per cent.	*


Ernest Edward Perley: I want the minister to consider reducing it to four per cent.


Charles Edward Johnston: Does that mean that all interest rates will be cut down to five per cent?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, it does not mean that at all.


James Lester Douglas: I think the minister ought to give some consideration to a provision, either this section or another, dealing with the question of interest rates. This deals only with the case where the farmer has been paying more than seven per

Farmers' Creditors Act
cent; he is now given a new proposal under which the interest rate will be five per cent, but if he has been paying six or seven he may continue to pay six or seven. The minister will agree that a study made of western conditions by the Sirois commission showed that agriculture in the west cannot pay a return of six or seven per cent. One of the things which has ruined western Canada, as has been said repeatedly by those who have examined conditions there, is high rates of interest. Over a period of years one of the reasons that farmers have been under such a burden of debt is the high rate of interest, compounded year after year. The minister would be well advised to consider fixing a maximum rate. If he is not prepared to cut it all to five per cent, he could set a maximum of, say, six, but as it is now it really means that if a man pays seven he will keep on paying seven, and if he pays six he will keep on paying six. I do not think that on back debts the average farm to-day will support six or seven per cent interest. What a number of hon. members who keep acting as though we were trying to deprive somebody of his just due do not realize is that you cannot get blood out of stone, that if the farm does not produce a crop you cannot get a return from it, and in a country where, at least in some parts, the average of crops is only two or three good crops out of five, a farm will not support a family, meet running costs, and pay a high rate of interest on debt, particularly on a back debt which has piled up in addition to more recent debt. The minister would be well advised to consider a provision that in these compositions there will be a maximum rate of interest, and that that maximum should be not more than five per cent. I would go even lower, but I think five per cent is the very most that the average farmer's farm will support on back debt.


Charles Edward Johnston: Why does the minister consider that some should pay 7 per cent and others have their rate reduced to 5 per cent? Why have two rates of interest? I know that some have paid it over the years, but we are now making an adjustment, and surely when the minister is permitting some to come down to 5 per cent, all should be brought down to 5. I agree with the hon. member for Qu'Appelle that probably the rate should be down lower than five in order to make it possible for the farmer to pay, but since the minister has the rate here at 5 per cent I suggest that all should be cut to 5 per cent, because, as has been pointed out 72537-328
by the hon. member for Weybum, it is just impossible for the farmer to meet contractual obligations if they are too onerous. It is useless to put an impossible proposition before a farmer and expect him to live up to it. You may sell his land and put him off the farm, but you will not make him pay, because payment is utterly impossible. In all fairness the minister should cut the rate of interest to 5 per cent; that should be the highest rate.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The rate of interest charged by the Canadian farm loan board on first mortgages is 5 per cent, and on second mortgages, I believe, 6 per cent. Something depends on risk when one is trying to ascertain what is the appropriate rate of interest. This section merely provides that a person can get his interest on an existing mortgage down to 5 per cent if he is in a position to tender the mortgagee the value of the mortgage.


Charles Edward Johnston: He would have to tender him everything?


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is right.


Charles Edward Johnston: Back payments of principal and interest?


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is right. I do not know of any use to which the section has ever been put. I do not know that we would be justified in putting the rate any lower. We might, perhaps, put the penal rate in there; that is what the 4 per cent would be, because it would just be punishing the mortgage company for not releasing a mortgagor when he is tendering the principal and interest.


Charles Edward Johnston: You could bring it down to 5 per cent without any penal provision.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Well, 5 per cent is the rate in the section. It is the rate of interest charged by the government itself-the Canadian farm loan board. Answering the hon. member for Qu'Appelle, I do not think there is any necessity of changing the terms of the section. The hon. members for Weyburn and Bow River have raised another point, as to whether we should give a statutory direction here to judges that they would have to reduce the rate of interest to 5 per cent on mortgages in all cases before them. As a matter of fact, in practice the boards of review in Alberta and Saskatchewan, I believe, have been pretty generally reducing the rate of interest to 5 per cent in the case of applications to them. I think that is the case in Saskatchewan, and it was the case in Alberta; perhaps it is now.

Farmers' Creditors Act


Charles Edward Johnston: Why should not this conform with that practice?


James Lorimer Ilsley: This does not give them any direction one way or the other; neither did the other legislation give them any direction one way or the other. The theory of the legislation is that they will do what is appropriate to the individual case. However, the boards in Saskatchewan did take the view that in no case should anyone who could qualify for an adjustment pay more than five per cent. In many cases they did not think they could qualify for an adjustment, they were not entitled to any relief, they could carry their existing obligations without much trouble; in those cases I do not think they granted any relief. But where a case was made for not being able to meet their obligations and a board did make an adjustment of interest, they adjusted it down to five per cent. I think it is a matter for the tribunal, rather than for a statutory direction. I am afraid that a statutory direction would be too rigid. Maybe the proposal went farther; maybe it was that all interest on farm mortgages should be reduced to five per cent. That is a matter of amendment to the Interest Act, and very large considerations are involved. I do not think we should take that up now; I do not believe it really belongs in this measure.


Charles Edward Johnston: But the
dominion government is the proper authority to state what the rate of interest should be.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes, we have jurisdiction over interest.


Charles Edward Johnston: And it would relieve the judges of that responsibility
if we definitely stated in the act that the rate of interest on mortgages should be five per cent.


James Lorimer Ilsley: What about the rate of interest on second mortgages; should it be higher?


Charles Edward Johnston: That would depend on the circumstances. I hardly thnk it should be higher, but we are speaking of first mortgages in regard to this legislation, and there is no question that it is the responsibility of the dominion government to state what the rate of interest shall be. I believe in this case we should accept that responsibility and relieve the courts of the necessity of deciding on that fact.


Mr. LECLERC:: Can the minister tell us how much money the farm loan board has made or lost in the prairie provinces?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I am sorry I have not the records of the Canadian farm loan board here, but in any case we are not dealing with the farm loan board in this legislation. I can tell the hon. gentleman, and I want to place this on record, the amounts by which secured debts have been reduced, and the amounts by which unsecured debts have been reduced, in each of the years of operation of the act. It is quite a table. This was asked for last night by the hon. member for Lake Centre, and with the consent of the committee I will place it on Hansard.


Joseph-Arthur Bradette: By leave of the
committee.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Agreed.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The table is as follows:
The Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act, 1934
Original debt dealt with
Secured Unsecured
From inception of act to
March 31/36	 $44,509,542 $6,617,933
April 1/36 to March 31/37.. 36,568,458	4,938,921
April 1/37 to March 31/38.. 58,068,458	7,608,053
April	1/38	to	March	31/39. .	33,699,344	3,964,374April	1/39	to	March	31/40..	35,779,325	3,152,027April	1/40	to	March	31/41..	27,817,947	2,166,658April	1/41	to	March	31/42..	15,426,894	1,233,221April	1/42	to	March	31/43. .	11,638,048	880,260Reduction effected Secured	Unsecured
$12,516,572 (28-12%) 10,816,057 (29-58%) 18,318,796 (31-55%) 14,788,662 (43-88%) 15,515,048 (43-36%) 13,188,100 (47-41%) 7,170,917 (46-48%) 5,634,597 (48-42%)
$2,824,758 (42-68%) 2,276,560 (46-09%) 3,436,768 (45-17%) 2,888,218 (72-85%) 1,947,520 (61-79%) 1,408,661 (65-01%) 871,563 (70-67%) 602,361 (68-43%)


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Will the
minister say just what objection he would have to doing away with this long involved statement in section 43 and simply saying, "in all compositions filed there shall be no I Mr. Ilsley.]
interest rate charged higher than five per cent"?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I think that is a matter
that should be left to the courts. A big cut in the principal might mean the rate of

Farmers' Creditors Act
interest should be higher than five per cent. If the courts wished to evade that provision they could do so; they could leave the principal high and make the interest low, or they could make the interest high and the principal low. It would not accomplish a great deal, and this is a case in which the court should do what is appropriate to the individual case. I think that as a general rule in cases that qualify they do make it five per cent. People feel better about five per cent, no matter what is done about the principal. The security differs; some are first mortgages and others are second mortgages and I do not think it would be quite appropriate to say that the rate of interest should be the same on anything regardless of the risk assumed by the creditor.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I was not
suggesting that the rate should be the same in all cases; I was suggesting that we should say the rate should not exceed five per cent, and there would be no objection if the rate were made four per cent in some cases. There should be some limit, because undoubtedly the difficulty will not be merely the matter of adjusting these debts. In the years that lie ahead, when the farmers are trying to meet the terms and obligations set out in these compositions, if the rate of interest is too high it will not be possible for them to do so, and as a result this parliament will be required to pass another act of this kind perhaps five years hence, or a great many of these farmers will be in bankruptcy.


James Lorimer Ilsley: It does not mean very
much to lay down a rule about one feature of the settlement. I think we have either to leave it all to the courts or not deal with it at all, and the scheme of the act is to leave it to the courts and let them do what is appropriate in the individual cases.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The minister has already stated one principle, when he dealt with the seven per cent provision.


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, that does not apply to anything in the operation of the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act. I do not know why it is in here, except that it was in the old act and it has been carried into this act. This provides that if anyone, in any part of Canada, whether or not he has availed himself of the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act, tenders to the holder of the mortgage the full amount due the mortgagee, if the rate of interest on the mortgage exceeds seven per cent, after the tender of that amount the mortgagee cannot charge more than five per cent. That is all the
section says. It is to enable mortgagors who are unfortunate enough to have mortgages on property with a very high rate of interest to get out of paying the high rate of interest if they can raise the money somewhere else.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Does this
apply to persons others than those coming under the act?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes. There is a confusion of thought or language here. This is in the act, but it applies to others than those coming under the other provisions of the act.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Sections 44 and 45 agreed to.
Schedule agreed to.
On section 2-Interpretation.
James Lorimer Ilsley: Last night it was proposed that the provisions of paragraph (h) be broadened to include ranchers. I now propose that paragraph (h) of section 2 be deleted and the following substituted therefor:
(h) "farmer" means a person whose principal occupation consists in farming, which term includes stockraising, dairying and the tillage of the soil.
I think probably that is all right.


William Pate Mulock: I move accordingly.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Section as amended agreed to.
James Lorimer Ilsley: The old Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act of 1934 contained a preamble, and I think this bill should contain a preamble also. Therefore I propose that the following preamble be added to Bill No. 132, and I would invite the careful attention of hon. members of the committee to this because I think it exactly describes the intentions and purposes of the bill. If anyone has any other views I should like to have them:
Whereas in view of the depressed state of agriculture in the three prairie provinces during the period immediately following 1929 the present indebtedness of certain farmers in that area is beyond their capacity to pay: and
Whereas it is in the national interest to retain such farmers on the land as efficient producers and for such purpose it is necessary to provide means whereby compromises or rearrangements may be effected of debts of such farmers, and also to simplify the operation of the Bankruptcy Act with respect to farmers generally.


William Pate Mulock: I move accordingly.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I think that expresses the purpose and intent of the act, and I believe it should be in there if for nothing more than the guidance of the courts, to a certain
5186
Farmers' Creditors Act

extent. I find that the New Zealand act has a long section indicating the general purposes of the act and I think it is a mistake to leave this out.


Frederick Davis Shaw: Is the preamble included when these bills become statutes? Is not the preamble dropped when they are bound? What is the value of a preamble; does it have any value to the bill itself?


James Lorimer Ilsley: It is some guide to interpretation. It is published' in the statutes.


Charles Edward Johnston: I understand that when the court is interpreting an act it does not consider the preamble.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes, it does consider the preamble.	i


George Hugh Castleden: Does the New Zealand act deal only with insolvent farmers?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No.


George Hugh Castleden: It takes in others as -well?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes.


George Hugh Castleden: That is a very basic difference, I would point out.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Bill reported.
Mr. ILSLEY moved the third reading of the bill.
Victor Quelch: Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to delay the house, but I feel there are one or two things which should be said before the bill is given third reading. In its present form we do not feel this measure will be sufficient to deal effectively with the problems of western Canada. We have spoken at some length on the debate on second reading, and there has been considerable discussion in committee of the whole, on which occasions we have pointed *out what we considered to be the main deficiencies. Very briefly I enumerate them:
1.	We object to the section which states that two-thirds of the debt of the farmer must have been incurred prior to 1935 in order that the farmer may be in a position to make a proposal. We say that that date should be put forward at least to 1939.
2.	We object to the sections which fail to provide legal counsel for farmers when they [DOT]come before the courts, or when they make appeals.
3.	We object to the bill on the ground that it fails to treat farm debts as a recurring problem.

The western debt conference represented not only the three provincial governments in western Canada, but represented also the majority of farm organizations in the west. By no stretch of the imagination can it be said that the western debt conference dealt with this subject as a political football. I would ask the hon. member for Calgary West (Mr. Edwards) if he would suggest that the premier of Saskatchewan, or the Liberal government in that province, dealt with this matter as a political football. I would ask him whether the premier of Manitoba dealt with it as a political football. And if neither of those two did, then I think we must agree that the premier of Alberta did not deal with it in that way.
As a result of the deliberations of that conference a bill was submitted to the federal government on March 15 of this year. It is our submission that that bill deals far more effectively with western debt problems than does the one before the house. It has been suggested that if this bill were brought in line with the one suggested by the conference there might be some opposition in another place. I would ask this: Why should we allow any archaic body to set aside the will of the representatives of the people of Canada?
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, seconded by the hon. member for Battle River (Mr. Fair) I move in amendment:
That the said bill be not now read a third time, but that it be referred back to the committee of the whole, with instructions that they have power to amend it in such respects as will make it conform with the terms of the proposed "Act to Provide for the Adjustment and Settlement of the Debts of Farmers" submitted by the western debt conference to the dominion government on March 15, 1943.


Robert Fair: Mr. Speaker, I do not think it necessary for me to debate at length the details set out in the amendment. The objections stated by the hon. member for Acadia (Mr. Quelch) cover my objections also, and therefore I am pleased to second the amendment.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Mr. Speaker, I should like to point out the following features of the amendment, which 1 have not seen until this moment. The hon. member for Acadia (Mr. Quelch) takes three objections to the bill. The first is that it should not be confined to those, two-thirds of whose debts were incurred before May 1, 1935. The second objection is that the date should be January 1, 1939. That is really one point, namely that the date should be moved from May 1, 1935 to January 1, 1939.

Farmers' Creditors Act
As I said in the debate, I believe the present provisions of the bill will provide for the overwhelming bulk of the cases. I believe experience will show that in that respect I am right. I do not anticipate that there will be any rush to the courts by the farmers of western Canada, under present conditions, to avail themselves of the provisions of the bill.
I believe that those cases in respect of which relief is really required will be embraced within the provisions of the bill, which confines such relief to those, two-thirds of whose debts were incurred before May 1, 1935.
I would point out, however, that even if some person who should have relief cannot come under that provision, he has the protection of the order in council. I believe the situation is such that we can see what the experience is under the bill as at present drafted. That really is one objection, that the date should be moved from May, 1935, to January 1, 1939. I have nothing further to say as to the reasons why I prefer to retain the date of May 1, 1935.
The second point, which was described as the third point by the hon. member, is that the bill fails to recognize the problem of debt as a recurring problem. That is inconsistent with the hon. member's first point, because it really means that there should not be any date at all, and that debts, whenever they are incurred, should be taken into account in qualifying an applicant for eligibility for relief. There is an inconsistency in those two positions. I suggest the hon. member should have put his case in this form: "I urge point No. 2; but if that cannot be done, then in the alternative I urge point No. 1." That is the only way in which the hon. member could make his contention consistent.
In regard to point No. 2, namely, that the debt problem should be regarded as a recurring one, several times in the course of the debate I have stated the reasons why I do not think this parliament should adopt the principle that debts, past, present and future, should be reducible by tribunals without applicants being under any obligation to divest themselves of their assets. I have pointed out that that is not the case with regard to the other provinces. It is not so with respect to any other class of Canadians, nor does it apply in any other country, so far as I have been able to ascertain.
That was not the principle of the debt adjustment act of the western provinces and it was not the principle of the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act. It would be a very serious principle to adopt. If we were to adopt that principle for western Canada, we certainly should adopt it for eastern Canada. There is
no reason in the world for making that a sectional feature of our legislation. There is reason for making the present legislation sectional because it recognizes a prairie farm emergency which has passed, but the results of which have not been obviated.
If we are to lay down the principle that when the farmers of Canada borrow money they are not obliged to pay it back, even though they have security out of which to pay it back-if some court or tribunal says that they do not have to pay it back-if we are to lay down that principle, it must be a universal principle applicable all over Canada. If it is applicable to farmers, I think there are other occupations to which it should be applicable. It would be a serious step for this parliament to take.
Summing up the hon. gentleman's argument for his amendment, the only consistent way in which he could put it is that we should treat debt as a recurring problem. I have stated the objections to that, and I think they are serious. He could even have gone on and said, "I think your date is wrong, it should! have been January 1, 1939, instead of May 1, 1935." That is a matter of judgment, but I think experience will show that the legislation as drafted reasonably meets the situation.


Thomas Vien: The minister has made no reference to the fact that the amendment may increase the expenditure. If any hon. member wishes to speak to the question of the relevancy of the amendment, I should like to>
have his opinion before I rule.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: 
Thomas Vien: I agree with the Minister of Pensions and National Health. It will be found in the third edition of Beauchesne's-Parliamentary Rules and Forms, page 506, that I gave a ruling on August 3, 1940, to a similar-amendment to a bill of a like nature. I quote:
The Bill No. 118, an act to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act, 1935, was again considered in committee of the whole and reported1 with amendments.
Mr. MacKinnon (Edmonton West) then moved,-That the said bill be now read the-third time.
Farmers' Creditors Act

Mr. Douglas (Weyburn), seconded by Mr. Coldvvell, moved in amendment,-That the said bill be not now read a third time but that it be referred back to the committee of the whole with instructions that they have power to amend it by adding a provision that the wheat board shall make an advance payment to the farmer in respect to that portion of his wheat crop which he is required to store on his farm.
Mr. Speaker ruled the amendment out of order as its effect would be to change the principle adopted on the second reading of the bill and it requires a payment by the government which an honourable member has no right to propose.
In this case the amendment does change the principle adopted on the second reading, and it may require additional revenue to be provided by the government. Citation 551 of the second edition of Beauchesne provides:
It is a fundamental principle that no resolution or amendment to increase a charge upon the people can be moved with the Speaker in the Chair; it must be initiated in committee by a minister acting on behalf of the crown.
First, the amendment changes the basic principle of the bill as it passed this house on the second reading and, second, it implies that it may cause an increase in expenditures by the government which must be moved by a minister of the crown on the recommendation of the governor general. Therefore I rule the amendment out of order.
Motion (Mr. Ilsley) agreed to, and bill read the third time and passed.



NATIONAL PHYSICAL FITNESS ACT


[Stage Direction]
Hon. IAN A. MACKENZIE (Minister of Pensions and National Health) moved that the house go into committee to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to introduce a bill to provide for the promotion of the physical fitness of the people of Canada, the constitution of a national council on physical fitness to carry out such purpose, the establishment of a special account in the consolidated revenue fund out of moneys appropriated by parliament and the disbursement from such account of moneys required for the purposes of the act, including grants to the provinces under agreements that may be entered into.
Gordon Graydon: I think perhaps that this is as appropriate a time as any for the minister to make a detailed statement with respect to the provisions and objects of the legislation to be founded upon this resolution,


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I shall be pleased to make a brief introduction by way of explaining this resolution, which is

antecedent to a bill which has been on the Votes and Proceedings in the possession of hon. gentlemen for several days. The bill is printed and ready for distribution, This legislation is based upon a recommendation by the select committee on social security which was submitted to the house a few days ago. It is the result of careful consideration by that committee. Excellent evidence was given before the committee by gentlemen from the universities of McGill, Toronto and McMaster, and also by one gentleman who is interested in this work in a practical way in British Columbia.
Hon. gentlemen will recall that before the war there w*as a pronounced movement on the European continent in favour of such measures. Czechoslovakia and the Scandinavian countries had national fitness programmes. This matter was brought forward by the League of Nations in 1936, and in 1937 the British government sent an official commission to Europe to investigate the various systems in effect. In 1937 the health committee of the League of Nations sent representations to the various members of the league asking that they set up national bodies to deal with physical fitness. Those representations were duly conveyed at that time to the government of Canada, but no action was taken before the war. Schemes such as this are in effect in Australia, and to a certain extent in Great Britain and the United States of America.
The proposal in the bill, which follows the resolution, is to establish a national council of physical fitness. The grant proposed to the provinces is $225,000 on a fifty-fifty basis, and $25,000 for national administration. It is proposed that each province shall have a member on the council of physical fitness, and the national director will be the only paid official. The others will be entitled to their expenses when attending meetings dealing with the programme. The programme is not one of compulsion or coercion in the slightest degree ; it is one of cooperation. In the first place there will be cooperation with other departments of government. The Department of Labour is now carrying on vocational training and has a recreational scheme under its selective service wdng. There will also be cooperation with the provincial governments and with voluntary agencies and individuals who are carrying out work along these lines.
It is apparent to everyone that in the last two or three years in particular we have had brought home to us the fact that the standard of physical fitness among our people has not been as high as we should have liked it to be. The figures with regard to enlistments have

Physical Fitness Act
brought that fact strongly home to us. Voluntary organizations have been doing wonderful work in Canada in recent years along these lines. Some of the provinces have been doing work on their own, especially the two farthest west provinces, Alberta and British Columbia. As I say, these provinces have been giving consideration to this problem.
It is not a very comprehensive measure but at least it is a beginning; perhaps tall oaks may from little acorns grow. The legislation is non-contentious and non-controversial and has had wonderful support in the committee on social security. I hope that it will receive the same support from hon. members in the house.


Thomas Langton Church: Mr. Speaker, the scope of the motion of the Minister of Pensions and National Health (Mr. Mackenzie) is a most commendable one. But to carry it out efficiently is another matter. In Canada we are naturally a hardy people, but the war has brought to light great defects in our physical education and our educational system generally. The resolution means that Canada at last will now have to embark on a system of national education concurrently with the provinces. National education goes back to the days of Thomas Arnold in 1840, when a great campaign for a revival of learning was conducted by this authority on education. He believed that book learning came last and that what came first was love of country, service and sacrifice to one's fellows, patriotism and the protection of one's country, and that Christian principles and physical fitness were second. He, as I said, placed religious and moral principles first, gentlemanly conduct and patriotism second, and intellectual ability last.
There has been a great change in thought of the people of the British empire as a result of the war. The war brought to light that a large number of our young people were not physically fit; it showed the need of a national movement to promote physical fitness among men, women and children, and our whole system of education from elementary schools to the universities seemed to have been lacking and deficient.
I think this resolution would be better if it provided that grants should be made to the municipalities instead of to the provinces. The money in turn could be distributed among boards of education, public and separate schools, primary and secondary schools and the universities. Some provinces have a different system of distribution from others, so that I think it would be better to make the grants directly to the municipalities. But certainly the

physical fitness movement should be national in scope. Everybody is familiar with the sight of several hundreds of spectators watching a small group of players in some particular sport, but the universities have changed all that and established an extra-mural curriculum under which every student will have to take some compulsory training in physical exercises and sport. The result is that at McGill and Toronto universities ninety-nine per cent of the students will now be taking compulsory physical exercises and taking part in extra-mural sports, the only exceptions being those who are excused on a doctor's certificate.
I think this department should also promote, foster and encourage all kinds of sport. We have had no national policy on sports since the war began, no well thought-out plan in relation to the war. We are now entering the fifth year of the war, and the government should, before parliament adjourns, issue a considered statement in relation to the function of sport in view of the new rules and regulations of national selective service and the further reduction in railway travel for non-essential purposes. Such a statement should cover amateur sport, to which we owe so much in this war, as shown by the great numbers of amateur sportsmen who have enlisted and gone overseas, some of whom have been killed. It should also cover professional sport; the joint military forces schedules of sport contests, and their military leagues, and the wide travelling of some from coast to coast that is involved; also national civilian and military contests of all kinds. Will anything be done in war time to reduce the cost of tickets to some of these contests and scheduled games? I believe in the promotion of sport and should like to see it made a part of this important resolution. Canada has excelled in this war, as it did in the last, largely through sportsmanship of all kinds and branches. Our young people rushed to the colours, and the first to go were those who had had cadet training and the best of those who had engaged in all sport. It was a retrograde step to abolish cadet training. Then there were those who enlisted early in the war who had taken part in sports and all kinds of games. I have been a warm supporter of sports, but now that we are in the fifth year of the war there should be a national statement from the government to clear the air as to what shall be done to finish the war and then what shall be done afterwards.
True it is that the secondary schools have promoted physical fitness by physical exercises and sports and games. They have coaches in every branch of sport who give their time free and their money and lend their cars
Physical Fitness Act

for this purpose, teaching the young people how to play up and play the game, how to play for the love of the game and develop the team spirit. What has been done in the primary and secondary schools of this country and universities and by sports clubs in the last ten or fifteen years has been most commendable, and I hope the minister will not be unmindful of the very important work that has been done along these lines by the secondary schools, by the public and separate schools and private schools and universities. I am a warm supporter of amateur sport, which should be continued throughout the war. As to professional sport, professional baseball is played mostly by Americans, but the Toronto team has given splendid leadership in the Toronto district. The work of the Toronto baseball club haS been most commendable. They admit soldiers free to all the games. Our football, hockey and other teams have also done excellent service at home and overseas in the war, and should be continued in the usual way. Some small abuses have crept in; for instance, those in some of the forces are transported from Vancouver to Halifax to play in possibly only one game. The government promised a statement on this matter of national sport in relation to the war long ago, and I hope they will look into the whole question. I believe the people of Canada will support the government in continuing sport for sport's sake during the war.
Some people say we are fighting this war for two purposes: One is to defend Christianity, and they do not tell the youth of the country what Christianity is; and the second is to protect the British empire, without telling you what the British empire is and what it has meant down the ages. The teachers in our schools are excellent, but rules and regulations hamper them.
We have always been fond of games, and I hope there will be a united effort from coast to coast to make this national physical fitness campaign a success. The medical profession has urged it for years. Physical fitness has always on a large scale been an important part of the work of secondary schools and universities, and of our community clubs. A school should not be judged by examinations only in studies, but by patriotism and service for others.
As I said before, I think the funds, instead of being distributed to the provinces, should go to the municipalities and boards of education, urban and suburban. It is well known that there has been a heavy burden on the taxpayers for education. The tax rate in the city I come from is high. We have a tax burden of $12,000,000 a year now, and in this work the municipalities should receive some

federal assistance. After all is said and done, one of the mistakes of the fathers of confederation was not to give the dominion and the provinces concurrent jurisdiction in the matter of education. The result has been that medicine, science and all these other things that are so essential to physical fitness have had little or no support from the federal government, with the awful cost to our man-power in the war.
I commend the minister generally and I hope that before this part of the session is over, there will be some statement regarding national sport, along the lines I have suggested, to clear the air for the remainder of the war and after it.


Gordon Graydon: I have no desire to take up much of the time of the house at this stage of the resolution, but I believe that the people of Canada generally will agree with the objects that lie behind it. As to the means by which they are to be achieved, that may be another matter. In any event, that will be made apparent at a later stage when we are discussing the bill.
The minister referred to physical fitness as disclosed by the examinations that took place as men and women entered the various armed services of the country. That was a revealing bit of statistics and one which no doubt had a considerable bearing and influence upon the committee that dealt with this particular subject. The fact that the social security committee largely agreed with, and perhaps were unanimous in bringing in, such a bill indicates I believe the necessity for parliament keeping abreast of public sentiment on health matters generally.
Most of us who have observed public movements in this field know that the people are conscious of health measures, and we know that this movement has been considerably accelerated in recent years. One only needs to note that there are large numbers of people in Canada to-day who are reading those columns that discuss the health of the individual. In addition to that the insurance companies, who are of course interested in rates of mortality, have taken it upon themselves, in their several private capacities, to acquaint the public with certain important features of public health. All these matters have received the conscious consideration of the public and what we have before us is a logical move in the direction of certain definite ends which the public has in mind.
One of the things which of course this government as well as the country will have to take into earnest consideration is that part and parcel of any physical fitness scheme is

Physical Fitness Act
the question, of nutrition, in which both the minister and his department are interested, and that involves the question of the means by which our citizens of all classes shall have the right in the years to come to a sufficient income with which to purchase the proper kinds of food in order that their health may be preserved. I do not think that this resolution should pass without some reference being made to that particular point, because I am convinced that some at least of our difficulties come to us from those days when the country was not as affluent as it is at the present time. In my part of the country I had a good deal of experience with men and women who found it necessary to go on relief. Those are days which none of us want to see again.
I would emphasize that hand in hand with any solution that is proposed for the whole problem of physical fitness is the corollary of full employment and a full pay envelope. Without that, it seems to me that all our physical fitness programmes will fail of their effect. If that is not seen to, I am afraid for the success of any programme the government contemplates. We as a nation must find a way to succeed so that we shall never see again a condition in which our citizens are deprived of the means with which to obtain proper food and all the other factors that enter into what constitutes physical fitness.
I bring that to the attention of the minister because I appreciate that no programme, no matter how good it may be on paper, no matter how much the government may wish for its success, can succeed in the future unless the people are able to get the necessary food and to pay for it. They must be able to maintain that standard of living which all of us would like to see them have. But there is another reason why a measure such as this should be introduced. The question of physical fitness suggests the question of relief or the dole, and we all know that the mental very often controls the physical; because men and women who find themselves in conditions that make for despair cannot be physically fit. I therefore make this plea to the government in the hope that in the days ahead of us we shall not only plan for a programme such as that which the minister now envisages in this resolution, but shall make it possible to provide the means whereby such a programme can be properly carried out. Without those means I do not think that success can be attained.


Mr. J. K. BLAIR (Wellington North):: I must congratulate the committee upon the work they have done and the minister upon the services he has rendered the country. In my opinion a -great deal can be done
by way of radio and the opera. A great deal can be done by following the guide which the insurance companies give in the requirements they lay down for their policyholders. There is very little that can be done through the administration of drugs. We shall never revolutionize the world by administering drugs, and I may say that one thing I have always tried to avoid if possible is giving people medicine. The great thing is to give them the proper foods. We should think of drugs as a specialized kind of food which the patient needs at a particular time. Do not draw a line of demarcation between foods and drugs, but give the patient what is necessary for his health, of whatever type it may be, call it drug or food. It can easily be worked out by the doctor in charge.
I like what the leader of the opposition (Mr. Graydon) said in regard to finance, but I would point out that the people in this country who have sturdy constitutions are not those who were raised on high finance. There is a saying, blessed is the man who has tasted poverty in his youth. I think that is very true, and I would be sorry to see our young people getting any more money than they have. Instead of raising standards of living, if that means simply giving them more money, we should lower the standards. Think of the people who have died in various towns. The great majority of them have not passed on as a result of Marasmus. Many of them are fellows who could hardly get into their seats; they are the ones who sacrificed themselves on the altars of Bacchus or Vulcan. They are the ones who have disappeared.
The work of the committee should be guided largely by the method of living instead of placing too much emphasis upon giving drugs. If methods of living are guided the nation's health will be greatly benefited.
I appreciate very much the work which the minister is carrying on. We expect great things from this social legislation programme.


George Hugh Castleden: For years this group has pointed out the need for some such measure as is introduced by this resolution, and it is greatly to be regretted that a few years ago the nation's health was not deemed worthy of action of this kind. It is disgraceful that there had to be a war to bring out the records of the standards of Canada's health. That health standards were low was generally known, but something prevented action. The excuse that it was a provincial matter and that there were provincial departments of health to look after it is now proved to be an empty one. We cannot but think how much good would
Physical Fitness Act

have been done if in 1930 an expenditure had been undertaken to help Canada in those years of stress.
I am sure the minister will receive with regard to this measure the cooperation which he has asked of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation group. What he is proposing is very much in line with the policy we have advocated since the inception of our party. It is to be hoped that this programme will be enlarged, that it is but the beginning of something greater and better. I am sure the minister will find that people throughout the dominion will gladly cooperate with him for the estimable ends at which the resolution aims.
Mr. W. F. IvUHL (Jasper-Edson): Anyone who wishes to see Canada a great nation cannot help but support the principle and the ideas involved in the legislation contemplated by this resolution. It is a self-evident fact that a great nation must be a healthy nation, and I agree entirely with all those who have expressed the sentiment that legislation of this kind is long overdue. But I also agree with, those who have suggested that the question of health is not merely a matter of dealing with the physical deficiencies which exist, but as is the case with all problems which are considered in this house or elsewhere, it resolves itself down in its final essence to where we always arrive at- the question, what are -we to use for money? That is the point I wish to leave with the house in the consideration of this question.
I do not think governments need to point out to individuals the necessity of raising their standard of living and improving their standard of health; these things occur naturally to individuals; and if circumstances are such that they can avail themselves of what is needed to raise their standard of living to what it ought to be, the people will do so. A question which has always arisen before the war is, what are we to use for money? I wish to point out to the house that until every party represented here tackles the question of money, it is idle to talk about solving any problems. When the war is over we shall have a tremendous debt to take care of. The interest on the war debt alone will probably amount to a sum equivalent to what the government was spending for all national services; and if the people are to be expected to pay interest on a debt which I consider is unreal and fictitious and take care of all the other debts which have arisen and endeavour to solve all their problems by means of the monetary policy which was
[Mr. Castleden.l
in vogue prior to the outbreak of war, these problems will be absolutely impossible of solution.
Therefore, on behalf of the Social Credit party, I wish to say that we are not only in sympathy with and have always advocated the highest possible standard of living that was physically possible in this country, but have invariably accompanied our policies with concrete proposals as to how to bring this about. I am not going to enter at the present time into a discussion of monetary policy, but I wish simply to suggest that, unless that problem is tackled, we may as well forget about trying to raise the standard of living and promote health. Solve the money problem, and all other problems will automatically take care of themselves.


Douglas King Hazen: I suggest that if we wish to promote the physical fitness of the Canadian people, members of parliament might in the first place set the example. I know it is easier to teach twenty persons what is good to foe done than to be one of the twenty to follow our own instructions. But my first suggestion is this, that we install in this house a proper air-conditioning system, and, in the next place, install a proper ventilating system.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: That is for the Department of Public Works.


Douglas King Hazen: If we get along that far, we shall have made some progress in the physical fitness of the people of this country, and then, with that example before us, we may proceed somewhat farther. We might, in fact, take steps to have the ventilating system in our various committee rooms greatly improved.
I might make other suggestions, but I do not wish to take up the time of the house now, and I think, with these brief observations, I shall let the matter stand as it is.


Gordon Graydon: The hon. member has made a good contribution, at that.
Motion (Mr. Mackenzie, Vancouver Centre) agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Bradette in the chair.
Resolution reported, read the second time and concurred in. Mr. Mackenzie (Vancouver Centre) thereupon moved for leave to introduce bill No. 138, to establish a national council on physical fitness.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.
Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver Centre) moved that, the bill be read the second time.

Physical Fitness Act


Angus MacInnis: Before the bill is read the second time, I should like to ask the minister if it has been distributed.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: In the first place it was in Votes and Proceedings, No. 110, as a result of the report of the committee. Then it was printed two or three days ago, and should have been distributed by now.


Angus MacInnis: It is not on our files.


Gordon Graydon: I was also going to raise an objection to giving second reading to a bill which has not been distributed, but I must confess that I thought there was a little distinction in this case, because the bill did appear in Votes and Proceedings, and I thought perhaps that was sufficient notice to most hon. members.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Bradette in the chair.
Section 1 agreed to.
On section 2-Definitions.
Gordon Graydon: Has the government given consideration as yet to the appointment of a national director and, if so, has it come to any decision?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: No; as yet not the slightest consideration has been given any particular appointment.


Gordon Graydon: Has the government any special factors in mind in connection with an appointment of this kind?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: The most pressing desire would be to get the best qualified man we can find in the Dominion of Canada. There are some very fine specialists in this field, some attached to universities and others in other capacities, who have devoted most of their lives to the study of physical training and physical fitness in all its aspects.


Clarence Gillis: What will be the qualifications necessary; will he have to be a medical man?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: No, not at all.


Clarence Gillis: A specialist in physical
culture?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Yes.


Grote Stirling: Would the minister explain where the provinces come into this scheme, if they do come into it?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: The basis of the bill is cooperation with the provinces, and a contribution by the provinces of fifty per cent of the total. The federal government makes available $225,000 for distribution to the provinces and $25,000 for the central direction of the scheme; that is, for the expenses of the director and his staff. This money will be allotted to the provinces on the basis of population, with the idea that they will contribute fifty per cent of the total cost. The administration will be left largely with the provinces, in some of which there are now excellent schemes under way. This is intended rather by way of guidance and assistance to the provinces in carrying out these schemes.


Grote Stirling: Have the nine provinces indicated their willingness to work in with the scheme as it is laid out here?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: About nine months ago, I think, we had a conference with the various provincial ministers of health, and none of them said his province would not come in. My recollection is that six or seven of them indicated their definite willingness to participate. At that time the scheme was in a fairly rough state; the bill was not in its final state as it is now.


Grote Stirling: None of the provinces has taken legislative action as yet?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Not so far.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 3-Constitution of council.
Gordon Graydon: With respect to this council of not less than three and not more than ten members, which is to be appointed by the governor in council, will these appointments be made for geographical reasons, or on the straight basis of qualification, or how will this number be made up?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: On a geographical basis, one from each province, nominated by the province. The advisory council will be nominated by the provinces and the director will be named by us.


Gordon Graydon: Is it fair to suggest to the minister, even in these non-partisan days, that the matter of political parties should not be specially considered when appointments are being made?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I do not think any of the provinces would make recommendations on that basis.


Gordon Graydon: This legislation calls for anywhere from three to ten members of the council, which would indicate that perhaps all
Physical Fitness Act

the provinces may not have representation. How will the minister create the necessary machinery?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: It would be quite possible that not all the provinces would come in at the start; we might have six or seven of them come in. I cannot say as yet, until they are approached in regard to the actual bill. However, my hon. friend may rest assured that the representation will be as fair as possible, and that if all the provinces come in they will all be represented on the council.


Gordon Graydon: Will the maximum number of ten include the national director, or will it be exclusive of him?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Inclusive, I understand.


Thomas Langton Church: Would it not be far better to have the bill lay down a standard form under which provinces or municipalities could get aid from this fund, instead of setting up a cumbersome department here in Ottawa to duplicate the work done by the provinces, the municipalities, the boards of education, the universities and so on? Would it not be far better for the government to lay down a standard rule under which these grants would be made available, with a federal council administering the regulations and meeting once in a while? I think it would be far better if the funds were handled in that way.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: If the hon. member looks at section 7, he will see that it provides:
Where a province establishes an organization for the purpose of cooperating with the council in carrying out the provisions of this act. . . .
While standards will be set up, it will not be done by way of compulsion but by way of coordination and cooperation, and the provinces themselves will establish these organizations. We have had offers of cooperation from hundreds of organizations all across Canada, of which I might mention a few: the Canadian physical education society, Montreal; the Quebec physical education society; the New Brunswick physical education society; the Manitoba physical education society; the British Columbia physical education society; the Canadian youth hostel association; the national council, Y.M.C.A., Toronto; the national council, Y.W.C.A., Toronto; the Canadian camping association; the Greater Winnipeg association of physical education, and very many others in Toronto, Hamilton, and many other districts across Canada.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
TMr. Gray don.]
On section 4-Duties and powers of council.
Angus MacInnis: I am just wondering in what ways, other than the granting of money, the council can assist in promoting the physical fitness of the people of Canada, as outlined in this bill. Possibly this is not the section on which I should refer to financial assistance, itself. But I would point out that $225,000, if divided equally among nine provinces, would give only $25,000 to each one. If it is divided on a per capita basis, the province with the smaller population would receive very little indeed. I am just wondering what the council will be able to do in the promotion of physical fitness in, say, a province like British Columbia, with the small amount of money which would be available for that province. Has the minister any note as to the amount to which British Columbia would be entitled?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: 
Mr. MacNICOL:: I note that section 4 (a) refers to assisting in the extension of physical education in primary and secondary schools. Would the provinces have to give their consent?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Yes.


John Ritchie MacNicol: That is taken for granted.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Yes.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Then, paragraph (d) refers to the organizing of activities designed to promote physical fitness. Would there be a special school established somewhere, for the special purpose of training teachers?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Yes.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Under whose direction, would the school be?

Physical Fitness Act


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Under the provincial authority. Any organization carrying out this work in the province would be under the direction of provincial authorities. Our function is to coordinate and cooperate as much as we can.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Each province would
establish its own schools?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Yes.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Then, under paragraph <e) there is a provision for cooperation in the amelioration of physical defects. I like that paragraph very much. There are many young people throughout Canada who are handicapped on account of physical unfitness. Some suffer from crippling defects and deformities. Would they receive the benefits of this section?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: As far as they could be benefited by physical exercise. There are two distinguishing features, the first of which is medical care, and the second, physical exercise. These were pointed out to the committee on social security. It was stated that there were two remedial measures, and those were the two I have indicated. The feature to be applied would have to be decided.


Thomas Langton Church: I notice that in section 4 we find the word "assist". It states:
It shall be the duty of the council, and it shall have power to promote the physical fitness of the people of Canada and in the performance of such duty and the exercise of such power may
(a) assist in the extension of physical education in primary and secondary schools. . . .
All that is already done by the schools and clubs. A direct vote would help them more. In addition, any modem parks departs ment has playgrounds, trainers, coaches and all that sort of thing. So have the various aquatic clubs of Canada. I suggest that the council should lay down standard rules by which these various local, provincial and municipal bodies, both public and private, might get grants from this fund to promote physical education of men, women and children on a national standard plan.
In addition to that, this procedure should be correlated and coordinated in industry, with various groups throughout the country which do work along this physical education line. We do not want any more duplication than is necessary, because, after all is said and done, the functions conferred by section 4 are largely provincial, municipal and educational. As I see it, instead of a large organization in Ottawa here with a staff, standard
rules should be laid down by which direct aid should be given the provinces, and I hope before we finish this part of the session we shall go into a scheme of physical fitness for the training of the taxpayer, with our heavy federal taxes, for his visit very shortly to the poorhouse and the house of industry.


Gordon Graydon: With respect to section 4 (a), which refers to assistance in the extension of physical education, may I ask if this would apply to the ordinary primary and secondary schools, and, if so, whether the school rate would be increased by virtue of any assistance of this kind?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I do not think so. It is purely provincial. The councils or organizations set up by the province may extend certain facilities in existence, or provide new facilities as the needs demand, in order to promote their general physical fitness programme.


Gordon Graydon: So that whatever additional cost there might be in connection with a school section would be borne by the province, rather than by the ratepayers in the school section.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: It would depend upon the extent of improvements, or the extensions necessary for the purposes of this bill. That would1 be borne by the province and the dominion.


Gordon Graydon: There might conceivably be physical educational facilities which would raise the school rates.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: That is possible.


Gordon Graydon: That being so, I would suggest to the minister that the sooner Ontario adopts the suggestion of the Progressive Conservative party to halve the school costs, the sooner will help be given not only to the federal government but also to that province generally.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I would remind the hon. member that this is a non-political bill. Therefore I shall not reply to his suggestion.


Mr. SLAGHT:: Having regard to the provisions of section 11, stating that the council shall on or about April 30 in each year, furnish the minister with a report on any activities in council during the last preceding fiscal year, is it not desirable that we should add to that section, or insert an additional section under which the minister would, possibly within fifteen days of the opening of any session of parliament, bring down a report made to him, and perhaps also a
Physical Fitness Act

report of his own? We find that section frequently in legislation, where administrative matters run over extended periods.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I had foreseen the difficulty mentioned by the hon. member, and with that in mind I have drafted a new section 13, which will be moved at the proper time.
Mr. MaeINNIS: I believe the minister did not answer my question respecting the allocation of the $225,000. Has that been worked out? And before he answers, might I visualize briefly the work of this committee. I believe there is a tremendous amount of work to be done, and I do not think that directly it will cost the municipal ratepayers in any school district any additional taxation. The moneys allocated by the dominion and the provinces will have to be raised in some way. But even at that, taxpayers generally, through improved health and the better physique of the rising generation, will be getting something for their money. This work has been done on a small scale in Vancouver for a number of years. Anyone who is at all familiar with the work done there will know that it began as an ameliorative programme during the depression, and carried on with very few facilities and very little money, but under capable instructors. The results were really good. I am satisfied that the taxpayers will possibly be getting a more adequate return for their money than they get in respect of many government expenditures.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: In a rough way-and these are not official- the division would be something like this:
Nova Scotia	 $11,000
New Brunswick	 9,000
Quebec	 65,000
Ontario	 74,000
Manitoba	 14.000
Saskatchewan	 18.000
Alberta	 16,000
British Columbia	 16.000
Prince Edward Island	 2,000
Mr. MaeINNIS: That is, more or less, a division according to population.


Mrs. CASSELMAN:: Could the normal
schools not be included in the provisions of this bill? The normal school is where the teacher is trained who will actually be doing this work.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I am informed that that would be possible without having it specifically mentioned in the bill.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 5 agreed to.
[Mr. Slaght.l
On section 6-'Powers respecting contracts generally.
Agar Rodney Adamson: One of the things that
has impressed me unfavourably about our educational system is that no provision is made in most of our public schools for physical education. Some education along these lines is' given in the larger schools; but there are many public schools, and especially schools in our rural areas, without this type of education. Would it be possible under this clause to provide such things as gymnasiums and playing fields? There is a definite lack of space to provide play facilities for the average boy and girl. Even in the rich city of Toronto many children go along without any organized games.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I agree entirely with my hon. friend. It is proposed to have most of those things covered by this legislation.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 7 agreed1 to.
On section 8-"The national fitness fund."
Agar Rodney Adamson: Canada possesses some
of the finest national parks in the world-I refer particularly to Banff, Jasper and other parks-but it is practically impossible for the average citizen of small means to visit any of these parks. Is it contemplated that this national fitness fund will make these parks and the great outdoors of Canada more accessible to the average man and woman who cannot afford to pay the prices charged at the Banff Springs hotel or the Jasper park hotel?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: There would be no objection to the province taking children to the different parks, as is done in Europe.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 9 agreed to.
On section 10-Power of minister to refer matters to council for investigation and report.
Gordon Graydon: Has the minister any
maximum or minimum amount in mind in connection with the salary to be paid to the national director?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: We have not given any consideration to that matter, but I shall be glad to have suggestions from my hon. friend.


Gordon Graydon: I suppose it will depend
upon the man who is obtained?

Wor Appropriation-Justice


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Yes.


Angus MacInnis: That salary would not
come out of the $225,000?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: An amount of $25,000 is provided for administration.


John Ritchie MacNicol: He will be paid by the
federal government.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Yes.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Sections 11 and 12 agreed to.
Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I have a new section to suggest as No. 13.


William Pate Mulock: I move:
That the following be inserted as section 13 of the bill, and that the subsequent sections be renumbered:
"13. The minister shall, as soon as possible, but not later than three months after the termination of each year ending the thirty-first day of March, submit an annual report to parliament covering the business and affairs of the minister under this act for the twelve months ending on the said thirty-first day of March; and such report shall contain a report of all amounts paid into or credited to the fund and all disbursements therefrom and include the regulations made pursuant to this act."


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
On section 14-Regulations.
Douglas King Hazen: What kind of regulations will be passed under this bill?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I am sorry to say I have none definitely in mind, but questions will be discussed with the director and there will probably be some developments after consultation with the various provincial councils.


Douglas King Hazen: If we are to have regulations having the force of law that impose penalties, I do not think they should be passed-


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: They would be purely administrative regulations.


Douglas King Hazen: They should be passed by the members of this house.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: They would only be regulations setting certain standards and plans; there would be no regulations imposing penalties, just administrative.


Gordon Graydon: There is nothing in the bill with respect to the payment of the men and women who may be engaged in connection with the administration of the measure. I
assume that in the absence of anything to the contrary they will be appointed by the civil service commission.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: The director is to be appointed by the governor in council, and any other staff would be appointed by the civil service commission.


Grote Stirling: They are to be appointed or employed in the manner authorized by law, according to subsection 10 of section 3.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: That is the civil service.


Clarence Gillis: As I understand this bill, it merely sets up a national framework into which can be fitted the many organizations working in this field across Canada.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: That is right.


Clarence Gillis: We are just appropriating the money to set up an administrative machine and these regulations will fit existing organizations into the picture.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: That is largely the intention.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 15 agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Friday July 16, consideration in committee of a resolution to grant to his majesty certain sums of money for the carrying out of measures consequent upon the existence of a state of war-Mr. Usley-Mr. Bradette in the chair.

[Stage Direction]
Justice-
Expenses in connection w'ith the administration of the defence of Canada regulations, $35,000.
Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Minister of Justice):	Mr. Chairman, the hon. member
for Lake Centre had asked me for some information concerning Mrs. Mullins, who had been arrested in St. Joseph de Beauce charged with distributing pamphlets which came under regulation 15A of the defence of Canada regulations because they did not bear the printer's name as required by that regulation, I had promised the hon. member that I would have inquiries made, and I have ascertained that Mrs. Mullins and one Mrs. Boucher were distributing pamphlets and that a member of
War Appropriation-Justice
[Stage Direction]
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at that place reported the matter to the attorney general of Quebec and was instructed by the attorney general of Quebec to procure a search warrant, and having done so, he seized quite a large quantity of these pamphlets bearing no indication of the printer. He thereupon was instructed by the attorney general of Quebec to lay a complaint under regulation 15A, and this was done. The proceedings are under the control of the attorney general of Quebec, as is usual in the administration of justice. These defence of Canada regulations having the force of law are like the provisions of the criminal code in that complaints can be made by any individual. Here the complaint was made on the declaration of the representative of the attorney general of Quebec that this would be handled as an ordinary matter of violation of law. I have not had any subsequent information as to what has been the result of these proceedings. I assume that they are still before the court.
Gordon Graydon: May I ask whether both parties mentioned by the minister are still in custody?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I do not know. The information I had was that both had been taken into custody, and when the report was made to me they had not yet been released on bail. I do not know what has taken place since this report.


Grote Stirling: How long ago were they taken into custody?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: The investigation commenced1 on the 2nd of July and the report was sent in on the 9th of July, reporting that a search warrant had been obtained and executed and a charge laid against these two ladies and that they had been apprehended on that charge. The first report was probably made immediately afterwards, but I should not like to be positive as to that. That is the usual procedure. The report bears the date of July 9, 1943.


John George Diefenbaker: I cannot allow this item to be passed without some further explanation. This is a serious matter, that a woman under the circumstances disclosed here should have been taken into custody and not given bail on the charges laid against her, of distributing literature not bearing the name and address of the printer according to the provisions of regulation 15A of the defence of Canada regulations, and, second, for being a member of an illegal organization, namely, Jehovah's Witnesses. When people are arrested at a time when we are at war for the

preservation of democratic principles, on the charge of distributing literature that consists of Bible quotations, I feel that something should be done about the matter. If this literature were subversive, I could understand the action taken. But there is no denial of the fact that all that this literature discloses is quotations from the Holy Bible, and the offence charged against these women, for which they may be still in custody and unable to get bail, is that they distributed excerpts from the Bible without having the printer's name endorsed on the pamphlet.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: Is that not a matter for the local magistrate? I am only asking. The hon. member may know that it is not. But I think the time of the house should not be occupied with matters of bail if they are within the discretion of the local magistrate.


John George Diefenbaker: It is fundamental that the granting of bail rests with the local magistrate. But the administration of the defence of Canada regulations, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are used, rests on parliament and the members of this house.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: May I suggest to the hon. member that that is not quite correct. The members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are police constables. The administration of justice throughout Canada is the responsibility of the provincial authorities in the various districts in the provinces, and the sworn police constables have duties which are prescribed by statute. Any individual can lay a charge and the hon. member perhaps knows -I am told from the experience of the department that this is so-that when these persons who call themselves Jehovah's Witnesses are prosecuted, they choose to make martyrs of themselves and go to gaol; they will not ask to be released. They prefer to make their cause notorious by the manner in which they submit to the measures adopted against them. They will not apply for the relief that might be accorded them on appeal.


John George Diefenbaker: On the particular facts of this case, does the minister not think a summons would have been the proper course to adopt instead of arresting this person and allowing her to remain in gaol on a charge like this?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: That was a matter for the decision of those who were instituting the proceedings. It might be convenient and suit the ideas of a great many people, and it would suit the ideas of a great many who have written to me in connection with this very case, protesting most vigorously, if the ad-

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ministration of justice were something that was controlled from the Department of Justice and no one else had anything to do with it. But that does not happen to be the British North America Act; and while the British North America Act remains as it is, the Department of Justice cannot have responsibility for the decision of a provincial attorney general or his representative that he will proceed by way of warrant instead of by way of summons.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: You would soon get complaints if you tried it.


Thomas Langton Church: I want to point out one difficulty in the method of dealing with this item. When the war broke out it was found necessary under the regulations of the War Measures Act to have a committee consider the defence of Canada regulations. Those regulations, after an elaborate study by the present minister's predecessor and his able officials, were considered by a committee of the house. The committee met in the dying days of the first session of the war and agreed upon a long schedule of rules and regulations. Every session the committee has been reconstituted. Last year it met, heard some witnesses and made certain recommendations which have never seen the light of day. Those recommendations of the committee were very important, affecting the liberty of the subject in relation not only to the war but to other matters. For some reason or another they were brought in on the day the house closed, on Friday if I remember rightly, and they have never seen the light of day.
I know a good many Jehovah's Witnesses, not personally, but through letters they have written to me, and I consider that they are perfectly harmless. They believe in religion. I say that when an important committee makes a recommendation the House of Commons has a right to consider it. I hope the Minister of Justice will look into this situation from this point of view. As regards the other regulations, there is a great difference of opinion on the part of the public as to whether they are enforced from a judicial point of view along the lines suggested by the hon. member for Lake Centre the other day. In some cases these tribunals meet. They meet all over the country, star-chamber tribunals; they report to the minister and announcements are made. I trust that in the recess the minister will review some of these cases and see if some decision cannot be arrived at, so that the public will be informed as to what is going on.


Angus MacInnis: I did not know that this question was coming up or I would have provided myself with the material I intended to use. I wish to say with all the earnestness I possess that the prosecution and persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses under the defence of Canada regulations is a standing disgrace to this country, to the Department of Justice and to the Canadian people. I have on my files a letter reporting an incident that happened in Montreal at a religious meeting where these people gathered for the purpose of performing the rite of holy communion. The place was raided by ten members of the mounted police. The police were asked to wait until after the service, but they would not. They demanded to see the registration cards of those present. There were three women who did not have their registration cards.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Where did this occur?


Angus MacInnis: In the city of Montreal. As I say, three women did not have their registration cards and they were taken to the police station. Suppose the police were to go into any gathering or any church in the evening and ask the congregation to show their registration cards; how many would be found in any congregation of, say, one hundred who would have their cards? Suppose such a thing had happened when the Roman Catholic church was holding a celebration on the streets of Ottawa not so long ago. How we would make the welkin, ring with protests! Any right that is granted to any one religious organization in the country must be granted to all; otherwise we have no religious freedom in Canada. I do not know; I cannot understand, why there should be this continual persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses, because that is what I call it. They may be a nuisance in certain respects, and if they are a nuisance I imagine there is a law to deal with a public nuisance; but it is certainly not the thing to do to declare these people an illegal organization and to use methods such as are being used against them at the present time. I mentioned the other day that the brief presented to the special committee on the defence of Canada regulations last year by the Department of Justice was the weakest thing I had ever seen, seen.
Mr. MaoNICOL:	Pertaining to this
organization?


Angus MacInnis: Yes. There was not enough material in it on which you could shut up a dog, let alone a human being. I would ask the Minister of Justice to present to the house the reasons why this organization is still declared illegal and why it is persecuted by

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the mounted police. I said at one time that the attitude of the police of any country was a fair indication of the government of that country. For instance, the metropolitan police of London is quite a different body of men from the gestapo of Germany, and the reason is that (the government over the metropolitan police is different from the government in nazi Germany. So that we shall get from the police exactly what the government intends that we should get from them.


Mr. DUPUIS:: Can the hon. gentleman say after the dinner recess how many Jehovah's Witnesses there are in the country and how many young men of military age have been exempted on account of their conscientious objection?


Angus MacInnis: I have no intention of saying anything of the kind. It has nothing to do with the discussion. It is not germane to it.
At six o'clock the committee took recess.
After Recess
The committee resumed at eight o'clock.


John Ritchie MacNicol: I should like to ask the minister a question with reference to what was said this afternoon. I do not know anything about the sect called Jehovah's Witnesses, but I was greatly interested in and amazed at what the hon. member for Lake Centre told the committee, and I would ask the minister if it is the fact that anyone distributing religious pamphlets anywhere in any province can be arrested if the name of the printer is not on the pamphlet. I know nothing about the law as to whether the name of the printer should be on a pamphlet, except that it must be on political pamphlets distributed during an election. I was very much amazed also at what the hon. member for Vancouver East said, when he told about some meeting of these people, at which a religious service was going on, being interrupted by members of the mounted police, who apparently went rather rudely through the meeting taking names and asking those present if they had registration cards with them. I did not know that things like that went on in Canada. I know some folks in my part of Toronto who belong to this sect, and, while I know nothing of the sect itself, I have always recognized them as decent, law-abiding people. I have not heard of any of them committing any offence, and I would be much surprised if they did. So that I feel that in this day, with the sun shining
l Mr. Maclnnis.]
above, and a clear blue sky and stars at night, we have got to a line pass if people cannot worship as they see fit.
I remember that the last time I was in Scotland I went to the Greyfriars church in Edinburgh to see the spot where my ancestors cut their veins, with others who attended there, and either put a quill or a pen into their veins and signed the Solemn League and Covenant. They, too, were being persecuted in Scotland in those days-I have forgotten by whom, and it does not matter- but they would not stand for it. Nor would I stand for any persecution. I have no fault to find with anyone's religious belief or how he worships. That is none of my business. People can stand on their heads or stand in a corner if they wish; I do not care what they do. I had hoped the time had arrived when people could worship as they liked without any interference. I did not know that anywhere in Canada such things were going on as were reported here this afternoon.
I ask the minister if it is true, as the hon. member for Lake Centre says, that people can be arrested for distributing any kind of religious tract because it does not bear the name of the printer. I should also like to know whether, as the hon. member for Vancouver East has said, a religious service in Montreal was interfered with, and rather rudely so, by the mounted police.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I think the hon. member was not here when these matters were being considered on a previous occasion. I gave then some of the information which had been given to me with reference to this sect of Jehovah's Witnesses; it is recorded in Hansard and I do not think I need repeat it.
With respect to the questions the hon. member has put. First of all, as to the application of defence of Canada regulation 15A, it provides that:
Every printed newspaper, pamphlet, circular, handbill, dodger, or other like document having reference to or containing any comment on a political, social or religious question, shall bear upon it printed in a conspicuous place and in legible characters the name of an existing natural person. . . .
Now, as to whether that would apply to the kind of material that was being distributed in St. George de Beauce, of course I am not in a position to express any opinion. I believe the hon. member for Lake Centre said that he had a copy of some of the material which was distributed. I am quite sure that this regulation, in the manner in which it is drawn, -would not apply to a sheet which would

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contain nothing more than extracts from the bible; that would not be something which would be within the definition of this article. I thank the hon. member for Lake Centre for having sent over this document. I will not take time to examine it now, and even if I didi I would not venture to express here an opinion upon a matter which is at present before the courts. But the regulation as it is exposes anyone who violates it to be proceeded against.
With respect to the second question, there was some report in the newspapers at the time and the matter was carefully investigated. It was found that a meeting was being held, but what kind of meeting was not known to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They went there and requested the persons in attendance to exhibit their registration cards. That is something which is provided for by the national registration regulations.


Gordon Graydon: May I ask at how many meetings in that city a similar request was made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I do not know.


Gordon Graydon: Does the minister know
of any other case?
Mr. ST. LAURENT:	Where requests
were made to people attending a gathering?


Gordon Graydon: Yes.
Mr. ST. LAURENT:	Oh, yes. I cannot
speak of Montreal, but I know that in my own city of Quebec there have been such cases. At a meeting some time ago the police attended and asked to check the registration cards. At that time, some months ago, the contention was being made that quite a number of people had not registered. That arose out of the fact that call-ups were being made; apparently quite a number of people in the age groups subject to the proclamation were going about their ordinary occupations without having received any call-up, and an effort was made to see whether the registration regulations had been carried out.
With respect to this meeting, I was informed that at the time the police did not know what kind of meeting it was. As regards the defence of Canada regulations which were passed at the outbreak of war, and particularly in respect of this banning of a certain number of organizations which was made in 1940, there was an amendment passed in February, 1943, in which it was declared that it would not be an offence to attend any meeting the purpose
of which was religious worship or instruction. Perhaps I had better give the exact language which was inserted in the regulations:
No person shall be guilty of an offence against this regulation by reason only of his attending a meeting the sole purpose of which is religious worship or instruction.
As the regulation was previously drawn, it could very well be argued that, with respect to Technocrats, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Incorporated, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, the International Bible Students' Society, and Jehovah's Witnesses, the very fact of attending one of their gatherings where they worship in the form which they think is the proper form would be an offence. So that I recommended and had an amendment made that it would not be an offence for members of these banned organizations to attend the meetings for purposes of religious worship or instruction.
The information I got was that this request for registration cards was made by the police in an orderly fashion and that nothing was done there which would not have been done at any other meeting where an attempt was made to see if those attending it were provided with their national registration certificates.
Mr. MacNI'COL: Were those at that meeting who did not happen to have their registration cards with them arrested and taken away?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I do not know what was done, in fact, but they would be liable to be dealt with in that way, just as any member of this house would.


John Ritchie MacNicol: I carry mine with me.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I have mine, too. That is the.provision; whether or not it be a wise provision-


Gordon Graydon: This is quite a testimonial meeting in itself.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: -it is provided by the regulations that one can be stopped by a peace officer at any time, anywhere, and asked to show his registration card.


John Ritchie MacNicol: I believe in regulations being adhered to.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: That is the regulation. At the time it was made it was necessary. Whether or not it is still necessary may be a matter upon which opinions may vary, but it is still the regulation. With respect to the activities of these Jehovah's Witnesses, the other day I stated that tens of millions of their tracts and pamphlets have been put out from their Watch Tower head office in New
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York. Their teaching is that all these organized religions are agencies of the devil. They do not call their sect a religion, but they believe the organized religions are agencies to maintain the devil's embrace on the human race. They understand from the bible that it is wrong to go to war, and they are conscientious objectors.


John Ritchie MacNicol: They do not vote, either, dio they?
Mr. ST. LAURENT:	I do not know
whether they vote, but they will not salute the flag; that, according to them, is an act of idolatry. At the present time-and the same situation is still continuing-they are detrimental to the war morale of this nation. Only this morning the commissioner received a report of a complaint made by Mr. Justice Embury in Regina about the activities of the Jehovah's Witnesses there, who are persuading the young men to go before the boards and claim exemption on the ground that they should not fight because it is wrong and contrary to the teachings of the bible. A declaration at this time which would be construed by them and by the public as a recognition of their legality by this parliament would, in my opinion, be detrimental to the morale of this country.
The administration of the regulations, as I said this afternoon, like the administration of the criminal law can be set in motion by the attorneys-general of the several provinces of Canada, and the Department of Justice cannot hold itself responsible for the form of procedure adopted in the respective provinces. What this parliament could do; what the government of Canada could do, would be to repeal these provisions, and then the provincial authorities could not proceed upon them. But while the provisions are there, we cannot be held responsible for the manner in which the provincial authorities proceed upon them.
After the committee rose for the dinner recess I had the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police communicate with the authorities who had directed the institution of these proceedings against Mrs. Mullins. The information now given me is that she was arrested on the 8th of July; was offered bail on the 9th and refused; was released on her personal recognizance without bail on the 19th, because there was a further adjournment to the 26th for the hearing of her case. The further information was given the commissioner that, as he understood it, the attorney-general was going to file a nolle prosequi on the 26th. That I do not know, but it might very well result from the fact, if it is a fact,

that this pamphlet contains nothing but extracts from the 'Crampon version of the Bible, which is one of the reputed French versions authorized by the Roman Catholic church. It is the one upon which I took my oath of office before his excellency and upon which I took my oath of office before the Clerk of this house, which volumes were fittingly inscribed and which I intend to hand down as precious documents to the members of my family. It may very well be that when the attorney-general saw that there was nothing but extracts from the Crampon version of the Bible he came to the conclusion that his representations had been too hasty. That I cannot affirm; I have not verified that with the authorities themselves, but this is the information the commissioner obtained over the long-distance telephone during the dinner recess.
I understand there was also a charge laid against Mrs. Mullins of being a member of the sect of Jehovah's Witnesses. That is no longer an offence; the sect is banned. At the same time that this other amendment was made I caused this regulation to be amended, because I pointed out that these organizations having been declared illegal, they could not do anything that would have any legal effect; and if before the banning one was a member thereof, there was no way in which he could have legal effect given to his desire to withdraw and cease to be a member. So that the regulation was amended to provide that instead of its being an offence to belong to one of these banned organizations, it would be an offence to act as an officer or member thereof.


Alan Webster Neill: What is the number of that order in council?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: P,C. 1266, of February 15, 1943.


Grote Stirling: Would the minister be good enough to read it?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: Previously the regulation read:
Every person who is an officer or member of an illegal organization, or professes to be such, or who advocates or defends the acts, principles or policies of such illegal organization shall be guilty of an offence against this regulation.
The amendment changed that to read:
Every person who acts as an officer or member of an illegal organization or who advocates or defends the acts, principles or policies of such illegal organization shall be guilty of an offence against this regulation.
The hon. member for Comox-Alberni will note that we were amending in line with his argument of the other day that intentions should not make one a criminal, that there ought to be acts manifesting participation.

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Alan Webster Neill: Would the minister also give the order in council in regard to having the name printed on documents?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I am sorry I cannot give at this moment the original order in council, because it was included in the consolidation of 1942 and is now in existence by virtue of P.C. 8862 of October 13, 1942, but it had been enacted prior to that. I shall get it for the hon. member.


Mrs. NIELSEN:: Mr. Chairman, the last
time the minister's estimates were before the committee I pointed out that under the defence of Canada regulations he had the power to defend the people of this country . from the machinations of the enemy, but that so far as I could see he had in some instances failed to perform his duty. I refer to section 39A of the defence of Canada regulations which states:
No person shall print, make, publish, issue, have knowingly in his possession in quantity, circulate or distribute any book, newspaper, periodical, pamphlet, picture, paper, circular, card, letter, writing, print, publication or document of any kind containing any material, report or statement,
(a) intended or likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty or to interfere with the success of His Majesty's forces or of the forces of any allied or associated powers, or to prejudice His Majesty's relations with foreign powers.
And this is the part I wish to emphasize: ... or to prejudice His Majesty's relations with foreign powers.
A while ago, in one of his great speeches the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, said:
Whoever by word of mouth or by written statement attempt to destroy the unity of the united nations, it were better for him that a millstone were hung about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.
From time to time we have had in Canada publications, newspapers, which have published material, articles and statements which,
I submit, to the minister, would contravene paragraph (a) of section 39A of the regulations in that they prejudice his majesty's relations with foreign powers.
I would refer the minister particularly to several of the editorials which have appeared from time to time in the Evening Telegram of Toronto. I refer specifically to an item published on July 17, a reprint from the Reader's Digest, and headed, "To collaborate successfully we must face the facts about Russia." It is an article by a writer named Max Eastman, and contains the type of material which, in my opinion, will be most difficult for Mr. Wilgress to explain in Moscow.
I feel that the relationships between our two
nations at present will not stand discriminatory articles of this type, and if the minister were doing his duty he would, under the defence of Canada regulations, prosecute those who fill the minds of the people with trash such as this article undoubtedly is. It contains under one caption a statement which is known to be a direct forgery made by a fascist, and put into the mouth of Mr. Stalin.
I have mentioned the fact that this article is a reprint taken from the Readers' Digest, and printed in the Evening Telegram. There are, no doubt, many people who have a very good opinion of the Reader's Digest. But perhaps it would be just as well to state one or two facts concerning this publication, facts which might not be known to everybody. In the United States right after Pearl Harbor one of the first magazines which was stopped by the United States government from further publication was Scribners' Commentator. This was a magazine which was not allowed to be published any more, on the ground that it was one of the leading fascist publications. It favoured Franco, Hitler and Japan. Its editor was George Egglestone. George Egglestone to-day is a writer for the Reader's Digest. He had an associate editor whose name was Ralph Townsend, who is now in the penitentiary, because he was found to be a Japanese propaganda agent.
Another man named Paul Palmer, who was once editor of the American Mercury magazine, also known before Pearl Harbor to be another pro-fascist magazine, is now senior editor of the Reader's Digest. Yet we have material prepared by editors who are known to be pro-fascist, and that material is republished in Canadian papers. Under the defence of Canada regulations we have the right to prosecute those who deliberately do anything to prejudice his majesty's relations with foreign powers. Nearly all the win-the-war press in the United States have commented on this article by Max Eastman. Even the New York Herald Tribune, a very conservative Republican paper, has taken the Reader's Digest to task for printing this most obnoxious article
On July 1, PM magazine, commenting on the Eastman article, said this:
Eastman tricks the reader and says that the facts are exactly opposite to what is really the case.
I really cannot understand why the minister has not been made aware of these things, and has not done anything up to this time. As I said before in the house, I was present at that huge rally on June 22 at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto. The Prime Minister was there, along with Mr. Fedor Gusev, and many
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other notable people. The chief speaker of the evening was Mr. Davies, who was recently sent on a second mission to Moscow by President Roosevelt. Just before that great Maple Leaf Gardens meeting Mr. Davies was sent two or three of the anti-soviet editorials which from time to time had' been published in the Toronto Telegram. Speaking that evening, he said:
It is important that we should remember this when we hear German propaganda, which is working artfully in your country and in mine, and all over the world, whispering lies, in their effort to split Russia away from the Englishspeaking world, and the united nations, and to divorce and destroy the confidence of the English-speaking world in the integrity and good faith of our great Russian ally. And it doesn't excuse anyone, if they circulate these lies and then say they were misinformed. It does the world no good. It's not intelligent. It is not Christian or wise. They should know better and they should not be serving our enemies by circulating these lies.
And he continues:
Mutual trust, confidence and respect, as between the Soviet Union, Canada and the United States, is of particularly vital consequence to us. That is the simple fact and something we should remember and something some of our responsible citizens should think over.
I would recommend that the Minister of Justice should think over those words, and also that he take cognizance of the article reprinted from the Reader's Digest, which I shall send across the floor of the house to him, for his perusal. I suggest that he should give some statement to the committee regarding whether or not he intends to prosecute.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: It seems to me that the Minister of Justice has not made a very good case in reply to the questions which have been asked respecting the particular incident mentioned by the hon. member for Vancouver East. I had thought the minister would have had something more tangible to offer with respect to this unfortunate happening. The minister says, first of all, that the meeting was held in Montreal, and that the authorities knew nothing about the fact that it was going to be held.
In the first place, I should hardly imagine it is incumbent upon people holding a meeting, particularly one of this kind, to inform the authorities of their intention to hold it.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I think the hon. member must have misunderstood me. I said the information I got was that the police did not know for what purpose this meeting was being held. I did not complain that there had been no notice given to them that a meeting was going to be held.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The fact that the police did not know the purpose for which it was going to be held does not begin to excuse the interruption of the meeting.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: Mr. Chairman, I do not attempt to excuse, nor do I think the police need to be excused for going to any meeting, anywhere, for the purpose of making a check-up on registration cards.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I will ask the minister this question: If the mounted police want to check up on whether persons have their registration cards - and I agree they should do so from time to time - does the [DOT] minister think a religious service, at which people are joining in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is a suitable place and time to find out whether they have their registration cards?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: No, I do not think so; but this meeting was not being held in any building that was recognized as a place of assembly for religious meetings. I would think it would be quite improper for the police to go to any of our churches here in Ottawa that are recognized as churches, that are known to be churches, and attempt to check up during a religious service the possession or otherwise of certificates of registration. But this meeting was not taking place in a hall or church or any building that could be recognized from any exterior sign as being a place of religious worship.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: But the fact does remain that various sects and churches have held religious services in places other than religious buildings. As a matter of fact, there are some sects which hold the sacrament in private homes.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: We used to hold them on the hillsides.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Those of us who are descendants of the covenanters will remember that. If my information is correct, when the mounted police entered the building they were informed that the sacrament was in progress. If they desired to find out who had their registration cards, which was quite a proper procedure, there seems to me to be no reason why they could not have waited until the service was over and checked each person as he came out. That should not have been a difficult thing to do. Instead of that, the service was interrupted. Despite the fact that they were asked to wait until the sacrament had been completed, they refused to do so and

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insisted upon proceeding with their investigation. I think some two or three women who did not have their cards with them were taken to the police station. That seems to me to be a totally unnecessary thing in a country like ours.
The second thing in the minister's argument which impressed me is the fact that he has not yet, in spite of repeated requests, placed before the house, nor did anyone place before the committee last year which investigated the defence of Canada regulations, any sound reasons why this organization should be banned or declared illegal. The minister said that these people believe that all organized religion is the instrument of the devil. If they believe that-I do not-that does not make them subversive; if they choose to hold that particular theological view, it seems to me that that is their privilege.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: That was not why they were banned.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I am dealing with what the minister said. Then the minister said that they were conscientious objectors. That is not a crime under the law. There are in this country many sects the members of which are conscientious objectors.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Even the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation are not conscientious objectors as the hon. member well knows.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: They oppose the sending of single men overseas to. defend Britain.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The hon. member for Parry Sound may have his word when I have finished, if he wants to say anything about something that has nothing to do with the matter under discussion.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: We shall see if it has
anything to do with it.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I suggest that the hon. member save his oratory because he is going to need it in the very near future.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: I am not a mind reader.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Another reason given was that some of the military service boards have contended that members of this organization have been enticing young men not to join the army, not to render their proper service to the country. If that is true, those people should be dealt with. There is sufficient power under the defence of Canada regulations to deal with any person, irrespective of what organization he may belong to, for causing dissension in His Majesty's forces or for trying to dissuade anyone from joining His Majesty's forces. It is one thing to deal with an individual who is carrying on subversive acts and another thing to ban an entire organization without giving any reason for the ban.
We have asked the minister repeatedly to give the grounds upon which this organization was banned. We have had nothing except statements along the lines of the one given to-night by the minister. I wish to remind the committee that the whole question of the defence of Canada regulations has become an affront to this parliament. Last year a committee was set up to discuss the matter of the defence of Canada regulations. While there was some dissenting opinion with reference to taking the ban off the Communist party, the majority voted in favour of it; but the suggestion that the ban be taken off the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Hutterites was unanimous, or almost unanimous on the part of that committee. That committee represented every political party in this house, with the majority of the membership coming from the government benches. Its report was tabled in this parliament in the dying days of last session, but the minister has chosen to ignore it completely.
Mr. ST. LAURENT:	And will continue
to ignore it unless some one takes the responsibility of getting from this house an affirmative vote approving its conclusions.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I am sure
there would be plenty of votes in favour of concurrence in that report if the minister would present an opportunity immediately. But even if the house did move concurrence in the report, the minister knows that that would be only a recommendation of the committee.
Mr. ST. LAURENT:	If there were a
recommendation approved by a majority of this house, I do not think there is any minister of any government who would not feel himself obliged by that expression of opinion to make a recommendation in conformity therewith to his excellency.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: May I ask
the minister if before the close of this part of the session he will give us an opportunity to vote upon a motion for concurrence? If he will, I shall be glad to make the motion.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: The minister has no jurisdiction over the order of business of this house. The hon. member has been here much longer than the Minister of Justice, and he
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probably knows how he should proceed if he wishes to test the opinion of this house, if he really wishes to test the opinion of this house.


James Lester Douglas: The minister knows very well that the government has complete control over the procedure of this house. If the government want to give this house an opportunity to discuss a motion of concurrence, they can certainly arrange to do so. If they will provide an opportunity, I can assure the minister we will provide a motion. It is a sad reflection at a time when the united nations have been using as their battle-cry the four freedoms of the Atlantic charter, that two of those freedoms, freedom of speech and freedom of worship, should be in jeopardy in this country. Here is a religious sect which has been allowed to carry on its activities in the United' States, to carry on its activities in Great Britain, to carry on its activities in the sister dominion of Australia; here is a sect in connection with which a parliamentary committee of this house has recommended that a ban should be lifted from it; yet these people are still having their homes raided, and on April 19 a service which they were conducting was broken up because they could not produce their registration cards. I am sure the minister would not stand for a minute and I would not stand for a minute having the police or anyone else come into the church to which I belong and ask for registration cards while a religious service was in progress. The minister has the responsibility to see to it that any Canadian citizen can attend divine service and worship his God in whatever way he chooses without interference by the authorities on one pretext or another.


Dorise Winifred Nielsen: With regard to the question whether this house would support by a vote the report of the committee on the defence of Canada regulations, I fail to see how the members of the house could make a decision and vote, for the information which was at the disposal of members of the committee is not at the disposal of members of the house. A great number, I think I am correct in saying, would vote according to the prejudices which for many years they have held. Before any intelligent vote could be taken in this house on the committee's recommendations, I submit that the evidence which was taken in the committee should be available to the members of the house. I sat and listened to the submissions made before the committee and in my opinion there was not a single word taken down in evidence which could not be published before the 
members of this house and the people of this country. It should be published, and then perhaps we would have a better understanding and be able to vote with a little more knowledge than we have at the present time.


Ernest George Hansell: In speaking to this item I wish to refer to some of the remarks that were made by the Minister of Justice the other day. He said he did not think this house would have voted for the recommendations of the committee. All I want to say on that point is that while the committee made recommendations on the defence of Canada regulations, concurrence in its report was never moved in this house, so that the minister cannot say that he would not have had the confidence of this house had he accepted the committee's recommendations. The feelings of the house were never tested on the committee's recommendations.
The special committee on the defence of Canada regulations formed pretty well a crosssection of opinion in this house, and those members voted for the recommendations and the lifting of the ban on these organizations.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: Will the hon. member permit me to ask what he means by "those members voted for"? He knows better than that.


Ernest George Hansell: I do not know better than that at all. I do not know what my hon. friend means. The committee moved its report and it was brought in here. The recommendations that were made in the report were carried by that committee; that is what I am saying-


James J. Donnelly: Why did you not move the adoption of the report in the house?


Ernest George Hansell: -so that I say to the hon. member for Parry Sound that I do not know any better than that at all. I am stating the facts.
I want to read what the Minister of Justice said the other day in reference to the question of lifting the ban on Jehovah's Witnesses. At page 4861 of Hansard the minister is reported as saying:
As to why the ban was originally imposed upon Jehovah's Witnesses, among other organizations, I have only hearsay information about that.
The special committee had expert witnesses from Jehovah's Witnesses. They appeared before the committee and made their submission. They were questioned, and questioned by, shall I say, some champions of the same school of thought as the Minister of Justice himself, and the minister, in deciding whether or not the ban should be lifted, should certainly take into account the evidence which

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was submitted to the committee and the fact that the members of the committee had an opportunity to question and did question the witnesses. Further on, on the same page, the minister said:
I have ascertained, however, that this is a very large international organization and the amount of literature that is put out from the Watch Tower on behalf of this organization is something fabulous.
Because an organization is large and international, does that mean for a moment that it is subversive? There are a good many organizations that are international and whose literature is issued in large quantity and has a large circulation, but surely that is no evidence that the institution is subversive.
The minister also said:
It is also well known that thousands of phonographs with recorded speeches of their great leader, the so-called Judge Rutherford are being used to further enlighten the people.
Just because they have gramaphone records is no reason why the organization should be considered subversive. By the way, the minister made a slip of the tongue when he said they were being used "to further enlighten the people". I think the people need a little more enlightenment, but if the minister had said "to further confuse the people", it would have made his argument a little stronger. Further on, he said:
There are also, or there were, very lar^e numbers of motor trucks fitted out with these phonographs and loud speakers to blare to the population at large the merits of that particular doctrine and the demerits of all religions.
Supposing they did, is that any evidence that the organization is against the war effort or that it is subversive? I have a right to say that my church is the only true church and that all other churches are wrong. I have that right because it is embodied in the freedom of religion?


Joseph-Hermas Leclerc: What is the name of your church?


Mr.   JIANSELL@: 
Arthur Graeme Slaght: They do not fight.


Ernest George Hansell: There are other people who do not believe in fighting. There are the Doukhobors, and how many people in this house believed in not fighting only a few short 72537-329
years ago? Just because they may believe that all religions that are opposed to theirs are satanic does not make them a subversive organization. I challenge the Minister of Justice to rise in his place and say that that is not the attitude of his own church.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I will certainly accept that challenge and deny absolutely the assertion of the hon. member.


Ernest George Hansell: I am pleased that the minister does accept that challenge and that he denies it. I fancy, Mr. Chairman, that his denial will not be the last word that is said upon the subject. I am suggesting-


Mr.   S@: It is difficult to get the last word in this house.


Ernest George Hansell: I am saying that if any religious organization assumes that its own church is the right and proper church, the only right organization, it does not follow that that organization is subversive as far as this country's war effort is concerned. That is the position.
Now, to answer my hon. friend over here who asked me what church I belong to, I am not afraid to tell him; I am proudi of my church. The church that I belong to, I may tell him, considers itself neither Protestant nor Catholic. Let the hon. member remember that. That may sound strange in his ears. I am not a Protestant, neither am I a Catholic. The church I belong to is the Christian church, the Church of Christ, the church exemplified in the Holy Scriptures. That is all.
I can rise and say that I believe my church is the only church, the proper church, the only right church, the only church that holds the right interpretation of the scriptures, but does that mean that I am subversive, or that the church to which I belong is subversive of our war effort? Not at all. The basis of the minister s decision seems to be, according to what he says here, for he did not pursue his argument further-
Mr. ST. LAURENT: Let the hon. member continue and he will find that I added, that I did not suppose it was for those reasons that-they had been placed under the ban of the defence of Canada regulations.


Ernest George Hansell: I will read further. I wish to be perfectly fair in this whole matter. Someone suggests I am taking up time. I am not concerned about how much time I take up.
I can take a lot longer on it if my hon. friend wants me to.


Mr. LEGER:: We are used to hearing you talk anyway.
ISV1BSD rDITION
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Ernest George Hansell: The minister says: "This doctrine is certainly subversive of organized society".
Mr. ST. LAURENT: That is quite unfair of the hon. member.


Ernest George Hansell: I will read further.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: If he makes that statement he should say what "this" stands for in the sentence he is citing.


Ernest George Hansell: "This doctrine" is what the minister had just said.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: If the hon. member cannot be fairer than that in reading something which is on Hansard, I will refrain from saying anything more about it.


Ernest George Hansell: Can I do anything more than read the minister's words on Hansard?


Antoine Joseph Léger: You are twisting the
sentence.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Read the whole thing.


Antoine Joseph Léger: Stop twisting.


Ernest George Hansell: An hon. member says I am taking too much time and now another hon. member wants me to read the whole thing. I quote:
I do not imagine that was the reason why the regulation was originally enacted but rather because their doctrine is, of course, against war.
That is all right. A religious organization can be against war. I am against war; so is everybody in this house.


Mr. LEDUC:: Against this war?


Ernest George Hansell: I continue quoting:
There is no war, according to their theory, that is anything but the machinations of the devil himself-
Well, I will say that.
-and not only that, but their view is that human-made laws have no binding force upon the individual if they happen to contravene what these gentlemen regard as being proper human behaviour.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: Will you say that?


Ernest George Hansell: I will say that and I will say, besides, that according to the scriptures-and I think these people say the same thing-we are taught to be subject to the powers, the ruling powers, that be. I must be a law-abiding citizen. But I can be a law-abiding citizen and yet put what I believe to be the laws of God above such laws. If I am not law-abiding you have the opportunity of putting me in gaol. Furthermore, as I said the other day, if any individual among Jehovah's Witnesses rises and makes

statements that are subversive, he can be dealt with in the same way, and I have nothing against that. He should be dealt with in the same way. But to outlaw the whole organization and to say that they cannot gather together as an organization and worship God freely is something that is absolutely contrary to British democracy. Let me read further:
Mr. Hanson (York-Sunbury):	Does it go
quite that far?
Mr. St. Laurent: I am informed that it does.
Mr. Hanson (York-Sunbury): I did not think it did.
Mr. Diefenbaker: The United States supreme court did not find that.
Mr. St. Laurent:	Not on the evidence
submitted.
Then he goes on. Does the minister want me to read more? These are the words of the minister, and I am saying that it appears to me that the decision not to lift the ban on this organization known as Jehovah's Witnesses, an organization of Christian people who want to worship God in their own way, even though they hold some peculiar doctrines, does not seem to be based upon any factual evidence that they are subversive of the war effort. That is my contention, and I urge the minister that he lift the ban on that organization. That is what I am urging to-night. I do not believe the minister's arguments hold water in the least.


Clarence Gillis: I do not rise at this time to quarrel with the Minister of Justice or to enter into a religious controversy. It has. been my experience for a good many years that whenever you want to divide the people,, to separate and disunite them on any subject or for any purpose, the quickest way to do so is to introduce this question of religion. It has been used for a good many years for that purpose. I say I do not rise to quarrel with the Minister of Justice, because I d*o not consider that the present minister is responsible for the regulations which he has had to defend since coming into this house, and my opinion is that the defence of Canada regulations committee, which was appointed by the house and sat during the last session to consider the regulations and their amendments, fell down on the job. I am not accusing any member of the committee or relieving anyone of his share of the responsibility, because if that committee sat in camera, and deliberated upon this matter for months, bringing their deliberations to a finality in a report, then it was the responsibility of the committee to bring that report to the house and to see that the members of the house were given an opportunity to vote on it. That was not

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done. I agree with the minister when he says that, as far as the making of the laws is concerned, that is the job of the House of Commons, and to ask him to lift the ban on anything or to change the regulations is to give him a power to which he is not entitled. That is the job of the House of Commons. The regulations were passed by order in council. I do not agree with them, and I am not asking the minister now to take power with which I do not agree. I am laying the responsibility for the ban not being lifted at the doors of the defence of Canada regulations committee.
I believe the time has come for a reexamination of the regulations on this particular question. In 1939, when the regulations were brought out, we had an entirely different situation. The country was going to war. The country was wholly disorganized from the viewpoint of preparation for war. Nobody knew who anybody was; the regulations were laid down as an emergency act, and everyone who might come under suspicion was included in them. That went on until last year, and I think the committee then, with a cooling of the hysteria which existed at the time the regulations were passed, was in a position to survey the whole matter calmly and make specific recommendations to the house. That was not done; the committee shirked its responsibility. I suggest that adoption of the committee's report, which was tabled at the last session, should be moved before this house rises, because when a House of Commons committee comes to a decision based on the views of the majority it should be brought before this house, hon. members given an opportunity of voting on it, and the recommendations implemented.
I am concerned in this matter about one thing, the loss of liberty of any section of our people, because if you follow the growth of nazism; if you examine the history of the rise of Hitler and Mussolini to power, you will find that they did not try to take the people's liberties away all at once; they manoeuvred around; they banned the "tin-hats" and youth clubs in Germany; they limited the powers and gradually destroyed the functions of Rotary clubs and similar organizations, until finally they could set up the full machinery of dictatorship. Having watched the growth of nazism in Europe, I am convinced that unless the people in any country fully understand that they must not allow the liberties of any section of the population to be taken from them, it will be only a matter of time until our turn comes. It is the thin end of the wedge. I do not say that anyone on the 72537-3291
defence of Canada regulations committee or in the Department of Justice has any intention of travelling that road, but I am not so sure that there are not other people in this country who would1 travel it were they given the opportunity.
On this matter of Jehovah's Witnesses, I know many of these people in my own end of the country. I have some as friends and neighbours, and I know they are the best citizens in the community. They practise the brotherhood of man; their creed is " Love thy neighbour as thyself"; they accept their full share of responsibilities; they pay their bills. The only accusation I ever heard against them' was that they make a nuisance of themselves;: they pass around a lot of literature; they want to sell you a book every afternoon, and that kind of stuff. But we have freedom in this country to do that sort of thing; I am free to tell that fellow to get away from the door if I do not want to talk to him. I believe that to ban them as a subversive element, or an element causing dissatisfaction in his majesty's forces, or as in any way interfering with the war effort, is ridiculous, and it was an absolute mistake to include them under the defence of Canada regulations. Many of the people in question who are convinced that this is the kind of religion they should practise have sons and daughters in the armed forces. I know some of them personally; they are making their contribution. If the father or mother thinks this is the way in which they should worship God1, I believe they should be given the opportunity. According to the Ottawa Citizen of recent date, if General Eisenhower's-mother were living in this country she would' be under this ban; she is a member of this group. In the United States they have not gone to the extent that we have in Canada in measures against this sect. I believe something was done in a restrictive way, but the courts of the United States gave them considerably more freedom than they have in Canada. The same applies to Australia, where the issue was exactly the same as we have it, and to-day they are as free there to earry on as is any other religious group.
I am not quarrelling with the Minister of Justice. He inherited the defence of Canada regulations. When they were drafted the situation was entirely different. Naturally there was a general weeding-out process gone through, but I think that on the basis of conditions to-day the minister would be well advised to review the whole matter, and if he-has any supervision or jurisdiction over the defence of Canada regulations committee, he
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should instruct them to complete the work they started last session by moving the report in the house, which would eliminate this issue now and in the future.


John George Diefenbaker: 
John George Diefenbaker: That is a very proper question. I think the proceedings might be commenced, where an offence is believed to have been committed, by the police authorities or by the agencies for the prosecution of offences in the various provinces, but the continuation of these prosecutions should be determined by the Attorney General of Canada. I think that is the only way in which it will be ensured that injustice such as occurred to Mrs. Mullins shall not be permitted. It is a serious matter to place a person in the position in which she was placed, having committed no offence but being held in custody. There is no way in which she can be recompensed; there is no provision for that. For all time there will be a suggestion that she did something contrary to the safety of the state in time of war, which is a serious matter. As far as possible that sort of thing should be guarded against.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: Perhaps the real point at issue in this discussion is becoming obscured. I do not imagine that any hon. member would desire to suggest that under the regulations, either by action of the minister or of the mounted police, anyone in this country should be prosecuted, much less arrested, for entertaining a religious belief. We are all past that stage. Such things were done two hundred years ago in the name of religion by enthusiasts who failed to appreciate the Sermon on the Mount, who thought the proper punishment for those who disagreed with their particular religious belief was to burn them at the stake as heretics. I imagine no one would suggest that we in Canada would tolerate any prosecution or persecution, as it has been called, on such grounds. But I wish to point out to the committee and particularly to those hon. members who perhaps feel strongly and who have spoken during this discussion this evening, that nothing in the defence of Canada regulations tolerates the arrest or persecution of any man or woman for a religious belief. I must

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quarrel with the hon. member who is leading the Social Credit party for the moment, the hon. member for Macleod, who says he endorses the theory that we object to, as put forward by Jehovah's Witnesses, when they declared in Canada in 1941 and 1942 that human laws are not binding upon them if, in their opinion, those human laws, which are the laws of Canada, conflict with their view of divine law.


Ernest George Hansell: Is that not so in peace time as well?


Arthur Graeme Slaght: Certainly ; but I think when my hon. friend reflects upon his assent to that proposition he will desire to inform the house some day soon that he did not mean it. What is he preaching, or what doctrine is he endorsing? He is a British subject, a Canadian; and under the British practice parliament decides the laws that shall govern British subjects. The doctrine of these people which he has just endorsed-and I hope he will soon repent, for I suspect that at times he preaches repentance-is that in their view the law which the parliament of Canada has put upon the statute books to govern the conduct of our citizens, either within or without the criminal law, means nothing to them; that they will defy it, disregard it and break it if it does not conform to their conception of divine law. Well, Mr. Chairman, that is awfully close, let me warn the hon. member, to preaching subversive doctrines either in peace time or in war.
What is his remedy? When these people put that doctrine into effect; when they break the criminal law of Canada and defy the laws that, parliament has enacted, he blandly says to our overworked Minister of Justice, Well, just arrest them, because beyond arresting them the state is not concerned with the preaching of that kind of subversive doctrine, particularly in war time. In the committee on the defence of Canada regulations, of which I had the honour to be a member, hon. gentlemen will recall that it was shown that these people held meetings under the guise of propagating and preaching their particular religious doctrine. The amendment which, I am sure in his wisdom, has been made by the minister lessening the severity of their having been banned, takes care of that sort of thing and permits them to hold their religious meetings. As long as they confine themselves to their doctrine or religion, there can be no interference, because they are protected.
I think some hon. members who have spoken to-night have failed to appreciate that the preaching of a religious doctrine is one
thing and advising young men in Canada to refuse to serve their country in this time of war is another thing. We met here for five days in September, 1939. We had no chance to consult our constituents; we did not need to. With two or three exceptions the members of this parliament declared that Canada would stand by the side of the mother country in this war. We did so, not from any compulsion because when Great Britain is at war Canada is at war. That old theory was exploded. We came here and said, on behalf of the people of Canada, "When the mother country is at war we seek and propose to stand by her side, and to send our men to help her." It was said-and I think it has been shown to have been correctly said-that the British channel is probably the last line of defence for Canada. And we sent, and are proud to have sent, our young men overseas to the extent of hundreds of thousands, in the three armed forces.
There has been a good deal of heat put on in this debate. An attack has been made upon the Boyal Canadian Mounted Police, than which thene is no finer force in all the world. There has also been an attack upon our Minister of Justice, who I believe is endeavouring to do the best possible job. I pay tribute to the hon. member for Cape Breton South, with whom I seldom agree, for his ready acquiescence in a refusal- although some of his colleagues did not see the light-to pour condemnation on our Minister of Justice for performing a very difficult task in war time.
But let me just point this out, that the subversive teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses to the youth of Canada were in direct opposition to the request of the government of Canada to the young men of this country to carry out the declared war policy of Canada, and to enlist in the three services for service anywhere in the world. They were invited so to do. The Jehovah's Witnesses said, "No; you should not do it"; and they preached their religious doctrine in support of a subversive policy, in direct conflict with the lavv of this country laid down by a unanimous parliament.
But they are not the only people in this country who laid down a doctrine, as they had a right to do, a policy which was in direct contradiction of the policy this government enacted. The Cooperative Commonwealth party, among whom I hope I have some personal friends, placed upon Hansard on the 9th day of September, 1939, a solemn declaration of their attitude toward military participation in this war, and they did not
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do so lightly. The hon. member for Rose to wn-Biggar made this clear, and for the benefit of hon. members I may say it is to be found at page 55 of Hansard of that famous wartime session:	.
May I say that this is the policy, not only of the majority of our parliamentary group, but of our national council which met for two days this week and which represents the consensus of the leaders of our movement from coast to coast. I propose to place this policy upon the records of the house so that parliament and the country may have a clear idea of what it means. Our statement of policy reads . . .
I shall not trouble the committee with those paragraphs which do not deal directly with the topic under discussion at this time. However, item No. 3 says:
No military participation overseas.
That is the declared1 policy of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation at a session when Great Britain's back was against the wall, in September, 1939!
IMr. HANSELL: May I ask the minister-
Borne hon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


Ernest George Hansell: -or the hon. member- perhaps he will aspire to being a minister some day-whether or not he would recommend the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation being declared a subversive institution, and therefore banned?


Arthur Graeme Slaght: Certainly not, and my hon. friend well knows why. Let me say to him, in parenthesis, that his party, through my good friend, the hon. member for Lethbridge, made a sound and magnificent patriotic declaration that they would have no part of a weakling policy of no participation overseas, and he made it clear. I refer to this matter this evening, not to chide my hon. friends in any improper way, but to point out that if they were to be entrusted with the government of this country, I would ask the people of Canada first to consider whether, with the empire in a crisis, their declared policy, properly placed upon the records of parliament, was a policy that they are not now fully ashamed of.
They are loyal people in this way; they believe in parliamentary institutions and in declaring their policy before parliament. They did not come out after that declaration of their policy was outvoted and re-declare the policy . of not standing by the side of the mother country and participating in the fighting overseas. If they had thereafter gone out and preached this kind of doctrine, I am not at all sure, may I say to my hon. friends, that they would not have been in the class that declares that parliament does not matter, if the law of

God does not carry their mind to carry out the law of Canada. They did not do any such thing, and I do not accuse them of any such thing.
Just another word with regard to the hon. member for Cape Breton South, with whom to-night I was in practically full accord. I think he took a stand which did his party credit, and I am sorry the other hon. member I am looking at did not take a similar stand, when he wanted to pick and hack at the Minister of Justice. But I do have a little quarrel with the hon. member for Cape Breton South, because it may be recalled that in Hamilton, in March of this year, under the auspices of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, at a Sunday afternoon meeting in a theatre he addressed a group of labour men, and made a statement-and I think it was a pity, because we were still recruiting, and we are recruiting to-day. This statement was not made under the protection of parliament. It was made, I am afraid as a rabble-rousing effort at a Sunday afternoon labour meeting, under the auspices of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. This is what he said, as it was reported in the Hamilton Spectator, and I put it on Hansard and ask him to deny it. I will read his language. This is what he said on that Sunday afternoon:
The people will have to get rid of the Churchills to attain their ideals.
March, 1943! Great Britain still in dire need! A God-given leader in Winston Churchill, whom a gentleman had no right to criticize! And he says to his Cooperative Commonwealth Federation comrades in Hamilton, "The people will have to get rid of the Churchills to attain their ideals"! Well, that may be the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation ideal, but I do not think you can get any other member, including the hon. member for North Battleford, to abuse Winston Churchill. That hon. member is British, I think. She is proud of Winston Churchill, as we are, all of us, proud of him. And when I charged him with that statement, and challenged him to deny it-and I hoped he might have said he was misreported-what did he say? On April 6, as it appears at page 1914 of Hansard, he said:
I have no intention of denying it, and under the proper item I shall reiterate and explain it to the satisfaction of the hon. member.
Well, as far as I can recall, that "proper item" has not come along. He has not dared to reiterate it, nor has he attempted to explain it.
Where does that leave him and his party? He did not go to Hamilton by accident. He

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went to Hamilton on the invitation of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Ontario. And I have not heard any of the leaders of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Ontario repudiate that statement. I want to leave in the judgment of this committee whether that condemnation is a slur, a besmirching of Winston Churchill, the hon. member's daring to say to the people of Canada-let me get it exactly right 

"the people will have to get rid of the Churchills to attain their ideals." What are the ideals that the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation entertain which necessitate ridding the empire of Winston Churchill? The hon. member has a full chance to reiterate and I should like to hear him explain it. He is advertised somewhere in Ontario, I believe in a campaign that is said to be going on there; I believe there is said to be a campaign in Ontario-


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: You can tell that when you are speaking to-night.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: -as being a man of great boldness in the House of Commons. If that is boldness, God forbid that we teach young Canadians to be bold.
Mr. MaeINNIS: You do not need to cast any slurs upon the hon. member for Cape Breton South for lack of boldness.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: I am quoting an advertisement which was paid for by the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in the province of Ontario. It is not my language; I would not call him bold.
Mr. MaeINNIS: What is wrong with that?


Arthur Graeme Slaght: Nothing wrong with it.
Mr. MaeINNIS: Why are you taking up time with it?


Arthur Graeme Slaght: Do you not like it?
Mr. MaeINNIS:	Oh, yes.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: My hon. friend for whom
I have a high regard has challenged me and said that I am taking up time with this. I will ask him a simple question and I will sit down while he answers it. Will he dare to say to this committee that the people will have to get rid of the Churchills to attain their ideals?
Mr. MaeINNIS: That is not the question.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: All right, I will go on. I
rose to point out that we have been under a misapprehension, and my hon. friends across the floor have been under a genuine misapprehension. They are perfectly right to come
forward and champion the cause of religion and the right of every man to engage in the religion he likes. But this country is at war, and when you are at war and you use religion as a cloak to urge the youth of Canada to disobey and defy the laws of Canada, then I say that your divine law should not spare you.
Mr. MaeINNIS: Mr. Chairman we have heard a typical lawyer's speech. Not having anything to advance against the arguments which were made from this side of the house urging that the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses be stopped, the hon. member talked about something else. Any good lawyer can do that; every good lawyer always does it when he has not a case. That is the way in which he makes his living. He said that these people were using their religion as a cloak to do things that were detrimental to the war. The hon. member no doubt knows there are sections in the defence of Canada regulations which take care of actions of that kind without having to put a whole religious organization under a ban of illegality, without having to invade churches where people are partaking [DOT] of holy communion, without having to interrupt their service to ask for registration cards, without having to take people off to the police station because they have not their card. Let me tell my hon. friend that he does not need to look over here for either obstruction or objection to Canada's war effort. If my hon. friend will only look behind, he will see plenty of it.
On every possible occasion reference is made to the attitude of this party. We did take that attitude, but we were compelled to take it on account of the attitude that my hon. friend and his friends took in the years preceding the war. You supplied the enemy with the means of war; you assisted Hitler and Mussolini during the years between 1936 and 1939 to destroy democracy in every part of Europe. How did we know that you were not going to do the same thing again? The people of Britain had to do the same thing; they had to get rid of certain leaders before they could get on with the war As the hon. member for York-Sunbury (Mr. Hanson) said the other day, it was considered a phoney war until the fall of France. When we arrived here in May, 1940, the Minister of Munitions and Supply (Mr. Howe) said that they, the government, could not get on with production because they could not get the requisite plans and processes from Great Britain. British industrialists had decided to make it a capitalist war, as is being done here.
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But that has nothing to do with the question at issue, the question of Jehovah's Witnesses being declared an illegal organization. Why have they been declared an illegal organization in the first place? I submit that the Minister of Justice has not yet put on record a clear statement that would 'be satisfactory to this committee as to why that was done. My hon. friend has not done that. The special committee on the defence of Canada regulations which met last year heard all the evidence that the Department of Justice brought before it; it heard all the witnesses for the defence of Canada regulations, and as far as my memory goes the committee was unanimous in recommending that the ban on the Jehovah's Witnesses should be raised. My hon. friend was a member of that committee. Why did he not rise in the committee and face those Jehovah's Witnesses? He could not face them with the argument he made here to-night, because that argument was not applicable in the committee. He had to meet them with the facts, but he did not meet them with the facts. But this fact still remains; that is, that no evidence has been placed before this committee that would justify the declaring of the Jehovah's Witnesses an illegal organization. In my opinion it is clear, pure religious prejudice that is maintaining the ban.


Mr. McGEER:: I do not want to continue this discussion, but I -have been anxious to have something to say about the old age pension system that we have. I must confess that I think that the Communists and Jehovah's Witnesses are getting altogether too much attention as -compared with what attention we are giving to our old age- pensioners. I just want to say this to the committee-


The ACTING CHAIRMAN (Mr. Golding):: Old age pensions have nothing to do with this matter.


Gerald Grattan McGeer: I am not talking about old age pensions. I got past that before you decided it was out of order. I am speaking about this particular matter. I wish to say to the Minister of Justice that surely the time has come when we should have a set of rules and regulations in this house under which the things that should be debated can be debated and useless debate of the kind we have had to-night not be permitted to take up the time of parliament as has been done.
So far as I am concerned, and I hold just as strong convictions as anyone in -this committee, I think it is a mistake to have a ban on communism, and I think it is a mistake to have a ban on Jehovah's Witnesses. I believe the best security against these kinds of isms
[Mr. Maclnnis.3
is to let them come out and expose themselves. I believe we can depend upon the patriotism and common sense of the people of Canada to take care of themselves. But when parliament has made a decision that is an expression of the overwhelming majority of this house, it does seem to me to be an obvious waste of time to repeat over and over again arguments that the overwhelming majority of this house have repudiated, and repudiated with, I believe, the overwhelming support of the people of the Dominion of Canada. Surely the day has come when we can transact the business of Candda along something like the same lines of orderly procedure that is followed in the British House of Commons, and surely this debate to-night is clear evidence of the need of bringing up to date the rules governing debate in this house.


Ernest George Hansell: I am not rising now to answer the hon, member for Parry Sound. As far as what he has said about me is concerned, I am quite willing to let my record stand not only as a patriotic citizen of Canada but also as a law-abiding citizen. I think that when his speech is analysed to-morrow it will not appear so sound as it sounded to-night.
I rise just to ask one question of the minister. It is a simple question. These people known as Jehovah's Witnesses are frightened to assemble themselves together. I wish they could be relieved of that fear and that, some publicity could be given to the regulation which permits them to gather together in worship.
There is one other matter. I have said that they were frightened. I have had, over the past year and in the past few days particularly, no end of letters which have been sent unsigned, anonymous letters from these people, and the reason why they are sent anonymously is that these people are frightened to sign their names. Some of them say so. I am not bringing this up because it is an important matter but on account of the principle involved. Why should people be frightened by any regulations? I wish to ask the minister, will he just assure these people that they can write to members of parliament and to their friends on these matters, and sign their names without any fear of coming under the defence of Canada regulations. That is a simple request, and I believe that the minister should assure these people of at least some protection in that respect.
I should like an answer from the minister.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I can give no other assurance than that which is provided by the text of the regulations which were published at the time in the Canada Gazette. If that is

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not enough for them, I do not know that there is anything more that I can accord to them.


Ernest George Hansell: The minister will not even say that they can write a letter and sign their name?


Victor Quelch: I should like to make a few comments on certain things the hon. member for Parry Sound said to-night. If the arguments he put forward are logical, I think we might well ask this question: Why is it that the government has not long since placed the ban upon the Doukhobors? I was in British Columbia two years ago, and while I was there the Doukhobors burned down a packing plant because they wanted to force the fruit growers in that community to sell their fruit through their organization. The growers got together and built another building. Before it was completed, it, too, was burned down. While there was not absolute proof that the Doukhobors burned it down, that was the general belief throughout the district, and the provincial police with whom I spoke at the time admitted that the Doukhobors had burned down the building.
I was also told that forest fires which were continually occurring around the district were set by the Doukhobors in order that they would be able to get a job fighting the fire. That kind of action was subversive. I think the Doukhobors have not been prominent in their support of the war effort. Sometimes I become convinced of the fact that this action regarding Jehovah's Witnesses is largely a religious question. Some three years ago a couple of men called at my house on the prairie one morning. I did not know who they were. They asked me whether they could play a couple of records. I thought at first they were salesmen for a certain make of phonograph. We gave them permission to put on the records and they played them. They were two recordings of the man by the name of Judge Rutherford. I want to give the committee the assurance that in those two speeches by Judge Rutherford there was not one word of a subversive nature. The whole of the two speeches was a bitter attack on the Roman Catholics. I do not suppose that is considered subversive. It is intolerable, I will admit. I do not approve that type of attack. But it does make one wonder whether the action against Jehovah's Witnesses is largely on account of their attitude toward the Roman Catholics, instead of their attitude of a subversive nature.
Mr. LaFLECHE: That is a shame.


Victor Quelch: You may say that it is a shame, but that question is being asked all over this country. I am asked it from one end of Canada to the other, and I am just repeating the question.


Thomas Alexander Crerar: I was not aware that my hon. friend had travelled all over Canada from one end to the other.


Victor Quelch: I have travelled over many parts of Canada.


Thomas Alexander Crerar: I can say this and I have some knowledge whereof I speak. There is not a single particle of evidence to support the allegation which the hon. member made in his concluding remarks.


Victor Quelch: I did not make any allegation. I asked a question that is being asked all over the country.


Thomas Alexander Crerar: It was close to an allegation, if it was not an allegation. I think all members will agree on reflection that it is a most unwise sort of statement to make. He raised the question whether the policy of the government so far as Jehovah's Witnesses was concerned was inspired by their attack on the Roman Catholic church. That is the only inference that could be drawn from his statement. I wish to say that that inference has no foundation whatsoever, and I want that to go across this country. The raising of issues of this kind, the planting of seeds of doubt and suspicion is the greatest disservice that can be rendered to Canada at the present time.


Victor Quelch: The suspicion is there. I am not planting it.
Mr. CPlERAR: I repudiate absolutely the implication in the remarks of the hon. member.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Justice-
Expenses in connection with the prize courts,
Thomas Langton Church: How many cases have been tried by the prize courts since the beginning of the war?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: There was no expenditure last year, and no expenditure the year before, but it is felt prudent to keep the vote there, because it is quite possible that at any moment the prize courts might have to be organized to condemn prizes.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
[Stage Direction]
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[Stage Direction]
Justice-
Sundry services, $5,700.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: This is for the salaries and cost of living bonus of three temporary employees added to the department to cope with the extra war work.
Item agreed to.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police-[DOT]
Increased activities of the force due to the war, $6,091,320.
Agar Rodney Adamson: In mentioning the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, I do so merely because I have had some slight connection with them during the present war. Prior to the war the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were a small but efficient technical force. They had come down from the old Royal Northwest Mounted Police who wore the red coat and rode the horse, the days when the red coat and the horse were symbols of British justice in the great territories of the northwest. Through science they became an efficient and almost international police force whose name was known from one corner of the world to the other. In the beginning of the war there was no force that received such small recognition as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the matter of pay. Their pay at that time was even less than the pay of the private soldier in the Canadian army. They were subject to various restrictions with regard to marriage and freedom in one way or another, and a protest was raised in this house.
The first thing that happened was that they did receive an increase in pay, and first of all, let me say that I consider that increase inadequate, having regard to the work which the force has done. It is a small, highly-trained, extremely efficient force, and the money we expend on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is one of the best investments we have ever made in this house.
It is not luck that we have had no sabotage in Canada. It is not luck that we have not had mysterious fires. It is not luck that we have not had a number of enemy agents loose. Further, it is not luck that there has been so little sabotage in the United States. I merely mention that we were at war for a long period before the United States became a belligerent; and when the history of this war is written, as I hope it will be written some day, and the place of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is properly evaluated, we shall have, I believe, cause to appreciate what this force has done for Canada.
I make these observations now because there are two objections I have to the present set-up of the force. The first objection is

that the force, with the present pay and allowances, is a far lower basic rate than the federal bureau of investigation. I think they are doing equally important work as that done by the F.B.I., and the first point I want to bring out is that this force should be paid on the same basic rates as the F.B.I. Equal pay for equal work is an axiom of democracy. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are doing equally important work with the federal bureau of investigation, technical work that requires the highest possible efficiency and training, work that cannot be learned or understood until men have had years of training. They are doing that work and in my opinion are not receiving adequate recompense for it.
The second point on which I disagree with the policy is this. The functions of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have altered. In the old days in the northwest territories, when the red coat meant his majesty's justice, that red coat was a symbol, and it was an efficient symbol that justice would be done throughout the length and breadth of this great land. The red coats of the mounted police have, however, been used to an extent which I think is questionable as a show or a parade ground force. These men are too valuable to be used merely as guards and as a show force. They have received training, sometimes going into many areas, and I think their use as guards is undesirable. I am not speaking of the temporary constables with the armband who serve as guards in our public buildings, but I object to -the use of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as guards of dominion public buildings. Their job is far higher and more important than merely that of custodians of public property. I wish I could say what their job has been during the war, but it has been so important that I should like to see the use of the words "Royal Canadian Mounted Police" divorced from the mere guarding of buildings, from the man who stands in the corridor and takes your pass. In my opinion he is not a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
These are the objections I have to the vote. The vote has been increased and is now $6,091,000. In my opinion that vote should go to the trained men of this force and should not be used to pay the guards of public buildings. I believe such guards should be taken on by the public works department, who have the responsibility of erecting the buildings, or that the guarding of these buildings should be the obligation of the departments concerned. The national defence department -takes the responsibility

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of guarding its own property. I believe that the other public buildings of the government should be guarded by the departments concerned, thus freeing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to do the work which they have done, without question, with the highest possible regard for the security of the state. With respect to their activities concerned with the apprehension of suspected enemy agents, no suspect receives the benefit of the doubt more freely given than by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. No force takes the trouble, the painstaking trouble, to establish beyond any peradventure of doubt the guilt of the individual who is apprehended. I have very little sympathy with anybody who will say, certainly in the part of the country which I know best, that a man who has been apprehended by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has not received a fair chance.
There is one thing more I want to say about the police. The recent case relative to the registrar in military district No. 2, Toronto, indicates that the force acted with absolute fearlessness, without any suggestion of political pressure, when three of the highest officials in a department of government were apprehended and charged.
I ask the Minister of Justice to promote three objectives in this connection: first, that the force shall continue to be the highly skilled and highly technical body that it has been; second, that the pay of the force should be placed on a level comparable with that of the federal bureau of investigation; third, that the job of being custodians of real estate should be taken away from this great force.


John George Diefenbaker: I join with the hon. member who has just spoken in commendation of the activities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I have had some experience of the work they have done in my own city of Prince Albert, where one of the oldest detachments in western Canada is located. To-day the mounted police need no defender anywhere in this dominion for the magnificent work they have done, particularly during the period of the war. In that connection I wish to mention the work done in the sphere of scientific investigation. In Saskatchewan we have located a scientific laboratory under Doctor Powers. The work which has been done by that department is of so remarkable a nature that it has won the approval not only of the people of my province, but of people outside Canada.
I rise, however, to ask a question of the minister. In view of the fact that to-day the Royal Canadian Mounted Police operates 72537-330}	I
generally throughout the dominion, and that in order to operate successfully, it must cooperate with provincial police forces and also with city and municipal police forces, I suggest, in the interests of a better administration of justice, that some body be set up in this country to operate as a coordinating unit between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the other police bodies. What I have in mind is a body similar in nature to Scotland Yard in Great Britain and the federal bureau of investigation in the United States of America. If such a coordinating corps were set up, the work that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the various police forces throughout the dominion could do would be immeasurably improved. The question I wish to ask the minister is whether consideration is being given to the setting up of such a coordinating body.
Mr. ROSS (Souris); I endorse all the remarks made by the hon. member for York West about this splendid force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. There are a couple of questions I wish to ask the minister before he makes his statement. One is with regard to the cost of living bonus. It is granted to many dominion civil servants, and in view of the work which the members of this great force are doing, and the effect of the increased cost of living especially as regards married members of this force, I hope the government will see its way clear to grant the mounted police a cost of living bonus.
Another question: Is a member of this force who has given splendid service over a period of twenty years or more not entitled either to promotion or to some form of special recognition? It seems to me that when a member has had at least twenty years of service and has a clear record, the department should recognize that service, either by promotion or by some recognition whereby his pay would be improved with corresponding benefit upon his retirement. I trust the minister will make a statement regarding these two points.


Thomas Langton Church: Only a member of parliament who has had some connection with the police commission of a municipality can understand these estimates or the functions which this particular department has carried on for so many years so ably and faithfully.
The details of the estimates for the last fiscal year as compared with those for the year 1943-44 indicate careless methods in preparing the war appropriation bill. For example, for the last fiscal year the Minister of Finance in
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his budget speech gave the estimates for the mounted police for the fiscal year just closed as $4,147,000, but in the details of that I find that the expenditure was only $3,869,507. I would suggest to the head of the department that there should be some other system-
Mr. ST. LAURENT: If the hon, member will allow me, the estimate made by the Minister of Finance was quite correct, but it covered all the expenses estimated to March 31. On the mimeographed sheet that I have distributed appear only the accounts that were actually paid before March 31, and the difference will appear in the supplementary estimates that will be tabled within the next few days. The amount mentioned by the Minister of Finance became due but was not paid before March 31. We had the appropriation to pay it, but we had not received the accounts, and the payments were not actually made. So that the amounts unexpended lapsed, and had to be included in the supplementary * estimates for 1943-44, though the amounts are .attributable to accounts which would have been paid in 1942-43 if they had been available.


Thomas Langton Church: If the minister had waited until I had completed my statement, I would have said nearly all that he has said. Here are the draft estimates for the last fiscal year, and not one of the items corresponds with the amount actually spent. I am not blaming the head of the department for it; he is one of the most competent men in the public service. My point is that we have had the war appropriation bill before us almost since the beginning of this session. If you go through the various items, you will see that the amounts are sometimes varied on account of the transfer of some items, on account of work not done, on account of a smaller number of people employed, and for various other reasons. They are not really estimates at all. You were prominent in municipal work, Mr. Chairman; I am sure you will agree that in a municipality the estimates almost always check with the actual expenditures.
I realize that the work of the mounted police has gone up by leaps and bounds during the war. Before the war the conditions of work were not very satisfactory to the rank and file of the men, or even to the heads of the department. The commissioner, the bead-quarters staff and all the others worked for very small salaries for many years. The men in the department suffered as a result of the small pay and poor working conditions, and the work done between the two wars was somewhat hampered by the lack of funds. As

I look over the details of these estimates, I find that there were only three small deficits, while on the other hand there were several large unexpended balances, which it is said were caused by the force not being recruited up to establishment, and by the anticipated general organization of the security service being found not necessary. Then I see this statement:
A realignment of allotments, in order to better control expenditures, was made in the fiscal vear 1943-1944 from that submitted for 1942-43. This consisted in 1943-44 in transferring allowances (in lieu of quarters, rations, fuel and light) from "pay and allowances 'to allowances including billeting, messing and provisions .
If we take all the items together, the expenditure for the coming fiscal year is estimated at $6,091,319.40, the exact figures given by the Minister of Finance last March.
There is one other, thing I wish to point out in connection with the mounted police. The war has placed tremendous responsibilities and burdens on the civilian police, the mounted police, the home guard and others right across Canada from coast to coast. For the last six or seven years I have urged that the municipalities should be given some recompense for the federal work that is done by the police departments of the cities' of Toronto, Hamilton and other places throughout the country. There has been the utmost cooperation between the civilian police and the mounted police. I heard the late Colonel Denison, who helped found this great institution, pay tribute on many occasions to the cooperation that has been given by the mounted police to the civilian services of police throughout all these years. I believe the time has come when the federal authority should recognize the work these municipal police departments are doing in connection with the administration of federal laws. It is the function and duty of the provincial attorneys-general to enforce all federal law. As you know, Mr. Chairman, the provincial Rttorneys-general have not the proper staff to do all this and enforce all federal laws, so that they just pass the responsibility over to the municipal police. With the tremendous number of acts, regulations and orders in council being passed by this government, I believe the police of the larger cities are entitled to some recognition of the services they are rendering in this regard. In Australia for many years the federal authorities gave subventions to the cities in connection with the enforcement of the federal laws and aided financially this important work. That was done also in New Zealand, and in many of the states of the United States cities and

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towns were paid subventions for police services in connection with the enforcement of the federal laws of that country.
When you compare the number of men on the civilian police forces with the number they had a few years ago, and take into consideration the tremendous responsibility that is placed upon the civilian police by the federal powers in war to-day, you can understand that in many cases the local police have not sufficient time to attend to their own most important functions and duties and protect the lives and property of the citizens who pay them, with the result that the burden on the taxpayer has become almost intolerable. I do not see why this government could not compensate the police departments of the municipalities for the war-time federal work they are doing. The mounted police come to the city police and want somebody arrested, or want to take out a warrant or lay an information. The local police have to cooperate with them; a court session is held; witnesses are called; police officers are taken off their beats to give evidence, and the municipality is charged with the entire cost, and the upkeep of those convicted. The whole system is wrong. They do not have that system in the old country, and we should not have it here. The government that passes all these orders and regulations should pay for the work required to enforce them. Other cities such as Hamilton, London, Winnipeg and Vancouver have done this federal work free and have had this matter under consideration; the police chiefs' association have urged that some measure of justice should be given the municipalities along the lines I have indicated.
I believe the mounted police now are getting a very fine type of recruit, and I hope that in future the men will have better working conditions and better pay, after carrying on for many years with very small incomes. Better schedules of pay are urgent. I have been acquainted with the work of the mounted police since shortly after the South African war; I have followed their work in Toronto, not only as a police commissioner but as one who has taken a great interest in the mounted police system, and I can tell you that with their small salaries very few of them have been able to make any provision for their old age. The present minister is to be commended for some improvements he has made in the lot of the men of the department, and I hope he may continue to improve in the future the condition of these men and of all ranks in this fine system of the public service. I urge upon him that this
matter should be taken up with the Minister of Finance, and with the municipalities, which are bearing the brunt of this work. I see the hon. member for Parry Sound in his seat to-night, and realize that he knows a great deal about the administration of justice in the courts, and the work done by the civilian police in aid of federal power. I believe the time has come when the federal power should pay for the services rendered, and the out-ofpocket expenses, along the lines I have indicated.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: I desire to join with hon. members who have indicated to the Minister of Justice the worthiness of this course and the fact that the mounted police are underpaid. I know a good deal about their requirements. Before one can join the mounted police force he must have a high type of education. The courses they must undertake are severe. They have to study criminal law; they have to learn how to handle horses; they have to be expert drivers of motor cars; they have to understand ballistics; they have to do laboratory work, and be able to analyse blood stains. This is a course requiring men of a high grade of intelligence.
I believe it was two years ago that hon. members, appreciating the underpayment of the force, expressed themselves strongly, and I believe as a result of their efforts there was a slight increase in pay. If the practice has not been changed-and the minister will know; I am not quite sure-a man who enlists as a, constable must serve for seven long years before he can have a raise in pay of a single dollar or a single ten-cent piece. That ought to be changed.
To my mind, the force is terrifically underpaid. That is not the fault of our Minister of Justice, because he has no authority over their payment. It is a matter which must be dealt with by parliament, or on the minister's recommendation. I know he and his predecessor have had to fight the treasury board. They have been loath to make increases.


Mr. REID:: Who are "they"?


Arthur Graeme Slaght: Well, they are a mysterious entity, of very worthy gentlemen. When we advocate a worthy cause, a worthy application for an increase, one concerning which practically all members of the house are unanimous, and we find we get no results, then in my limited experience I sometimes cast a suspicious eye on the treasury board. I make an appeal here and now to that board, through the minister. It would be but common justice to increase that portion of his estimate which.
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comes under the heading "pay" by 25 per cent. Even then it could be suggested that the mounted police are underpaid.
They carry out a terrific number of tasks in peace time and also in war time. They have to see about the enforcement of the Customs Act, the Opium and Narcotic Drugs Act, the alcohol legislation, in which they run down stills, and illegal manufacturing of alcohol. They must check the white slave traffic. Those are items which come under their jurisdiction in peace time. But when we add to that the fact that part of the force is the secret service of Canada, corresponding to that magnificent force known as Scotland Yard in the mother country and the federal bureau of investigation under J. Edgar Hoover in Washington, then we realize that in war time their task becomes stupendous.
They have to search every outgoing and incoming vessel in every harbour on both the Pacific, and the Atlantic coasts. When we remember the millions of tons of shipping we have sent successfully across the Atlantic ocean, and the fact that these men, in all kinds of weather, have to make sure that no damage will come to those vessels, and with that in mind have to enter the holds and perioral the most difficult tasks to see that no sabotage is being committed, we realize that they carry on a wonderful piece of work.
There is a condemnation, as I see it, in the very memorandum furnished to us. It is a condemnation, not of the minister, but of us, as a parliament; because under item 3' we find this:
The large unexpended balances under allotments of "pay" and "security service" were caused by (a) not being recruited up to establishment.
The reason why they are not recruited up to establishment is that we cannot get the type of young men in Canada who are required for this work to enter the force, on account of the pittance we pay them. And in war time, and at all times, it is incumbent upon this country to see that the force is properly paid.
I would just remind the committee of one factor. Many of these men are married. There is a restriction about marriage without the consent of the authorities. I should like to pay great tribute to General Stuart Wood, the efficient head of this force. The committee will remember that he was selected by us to escort their majesties, and he took charge of their welfare on the trip they made across Canada and into the United States just before the war. He is a magnificent officer, and the same might be said of his inspectors,

the higher command, and right down through the line to the last constable. They are a splendid force.
When the married mounted police officer leaves home in the morning, bidding his wife and perhaps his children good-bye, those people at home do not know whether or not he will come back at night. He must perform services in contact with and in suppression of the most dangerous type of criminal any country can produce. He takes his life in his hands every day he dons his uniform and goes on duty.
Therefore I appeal to the minister, and to the treasury board behind him, to add twenty-five per cent to the pay of these men, adjusting it with reason, throughout the entire payroll of this magnificent force.


Mr. BLACKMORE:: I should like to associate myself in a most emphatic manner with the remarks of the hon. member for Parry Sound. All he has said is entirely correct. I
believe we could go even further than twenty-five per cent, and still leave a most magnificent and deserving force very much underpaid.


Mr. ROSS (St. Paul's):: I should like to
speak from the experience I have had with the mounted police in Toronto. I believe I could not voice sufficient appreciation of the work they have done, and the efficency of the lorce in that city. They have great difficulties to contend with, one of which is that they must deal with other police forces, and in those dealings must be at all times diplomatic. Then, they must not go outside the bounds of provincial rights.
I would express my appreciation of the force, from the commissioner down to the constables, and would make special mention of those men who are engaged in secret investigations of one kind or another. They are doing a magnificent job for Canada, although it has very little glory connected with it. Many of these men do not wear uniforms. I believe the only way in which their services can be properly appreciated is by increasing their pay. I agree with the hon. member for Parry Sound, the hon. member for Souris and others who have spoken, that the cost-of-living bonus certainly should be given to the men on this force. Their pay is very small, when one considers the work they do.
Another point is that in Canada this force is the symbol of law and order. The sight of our red-coated mounted police around the government buildings in various Canadian cities is an incentive to law and order. Seeing

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these men. and having a knowledge of the history of the force helps to make law-abiding citizens. Their duties call them all over the country, as far north almost to the north pole; sometimes they have to go out of the country, to Australia or some place like that. As the hon. member for Parry Sound said, those men who are engaged on secret investigations do not know whether they are going to come back. They are always in danger. While the force has a certain attraction for young men, I think the pay and allowances are not sufficient to make young men want to make this their life work. I agree with the hon. member for Parry Sound when he says that a considerable increase in pay should be given these men. The cost of living has gone up some seventeen per cent, and it would not be out of the way to have the mounted police receive a substantial increase. I wish to congratulate the commissioner and the assistant commissioner-I know of some of the work he has done-for having kept up the high standards of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.


Gordon Graydon: I wish to identify the Progressive Conservative party with the suggestions which have been made for better financial treatment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I am not going into this matter to-night at any length, because earlier in the session I raised this question. I should like to suggest to the minister that the pay and allowances of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police should be reviewed at once with the object of bringing them up to the standard of service they are rendering Canada in this wartime period.
Mr. GILLI'S: There is some information I should like to get in connection with this item. At the latter part of last session the minister brought down a special appropriation to set up what I understood was a security police force. I assume that that would be included in these war appropriations now before us. Before I go into that matter, I should like to take a moment or two to reply to some of the things the hon. member for Parry Sound had to say about me a few moments ago.


Mr. ROSS (Souris):: That does not come under the police force item.


Clarence Gillis: Nor did the remarks he made a few minutes ago. It has never been my custom to delay the committee, because I generally try to be as relevant as possible to the item under consideration. On two occasions during this session the hon. member for Parry Sound has deliberately gone out of his
way to make a personal attack upon myself without having any evidence to support it. As a noted criminal lawyer he seems to have little respect for the laws of debate in this house. I have deliberately avoided getting into the discussion, because I try to observe the rules of this house.
As I said a moment ago, on two occasions the hon. member for Parry Sound has been permitted to rise in his place in this house and make an attack upon me without any evidence to support it except about four lines that were taken out of the context of a forty-minute speech of mine by the hon. member for York-Sunbury (Mr. Hanson) and placed on the record. That is the evidence upon which the hon. member for Parry Sound based his remarks to-night and on a previous occasion. At that time I told him that when the opportunity presented itself under an appropriate item I intended to reply to the hon. member for York-Sunbury. Neither of the hon. members is in the chamber at the moment.
We know why the hon. member for Parry Sound made the remarks he did this evening. It is obvious that he did so for political reasons. If he were as patriotic as he would have us believe, he would not have started a discussion and taken up the time of the committee in order to make the remarks he did. His attempt to-night to discredit the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and myself in particular was based upon four lines from a speech of mine which were placed on the record by the hon. member for York-Sunbury on March 18, 1943, when he quoted the Hamilton Spectator. I did not reply at that time because I would not have been in order, nor did I reply to the hon. member for Parry Sound when he interjected a similar tirade against me. I did not want to take up the time of the house. But when the same matter is raised three times during the same session I think it is up to me to defend myself.
The basis of the statement by the hon. member for York-Sunbury, which in turn was the basis of the statement by the hon. member for Parry Sound-he had no knowledge of it; he had no idea of what had been said; yet he stood up and tried to mislead the people of this country into believing that a certain thing had happened at a certain time-was a report of a meeting which I had attended in Hamilton. I was invited to this meeting by members of a reputable organization who are just as interested in and perhaps making a greater contribution to the war effort than the hon. member for Parry Sound. I discussed the subject they gave me to discuss, and I made a forty-minute speech,
War Appropriation-Justice

During that speech I was asked whether I thought the full aims and objects for which the people of Britain were fighting the war would be attained under the present British government. I have my own opinion as to the aims and objectives for which the British people are fighting that war and, exercising that opinion and the right to express it, regardless of what the Hamilton Spectator had to say, I said that in my opinion when the British army was brought back from Dunkirk, battered, practically disarmed, having been caught in a trap which, in my view, had been prepared by the ruling classes of France not only for the British but for the French army, it was the ordinary, common citizen who had rescued his army. That is a statement of fact. I said that I thought the British people were waging a war against the leadership which had placed their army in that position at Dunkirk, and that when this war is over, leadership from the classes in Britain who were making the major portion of the sacrifices would be selected to bring about those changes which I visualize the British people as fighting for and a system which will preclude the possibility of a repetition of a world war in the next generation.
With respect to Churchill, I said that I in no way detracted from his ability as a war leader, but that in my opinion the British people were not fighting for British imperialism in the aftermath of this war, and that when the war was off their hands they would in their own way decide who should write the peace and in what kind of society they would live. Fighting the war and rearranging a country's economy are two entirely different jobs and require men of different calibre. That was my answer. I detracted in no way from Churchill's ability as a great leader in the crisis of war, but I do not now nor did I in the past visualize the restoration of the status quo.
Many hon. members have attended meetings, but they do not assume any responsibility for what some pin-headed reporter may write in his paper. As to this reporter for the Hamilton Spectator, I never saw him, and did not know he was there, and yet the hon. member for York-Sunbury takes as his authority what was written in some obscure paper by somebody over whom I had no control and no responsibility for whatever, and puts that on the records of this house as gospel.


Mr. FULFORD:: If the hon. member's remarks were not correctly reported, why did he not write to the paper and correct them? Why wait until now to do so?


Clarence Gillis: My answer to that is this. There are 625 newspapers circulating in this province and I do not know how many there are altogether in Canada. If you have time to read all the newspapers in Canada and answer all the stuff you see in them about your party, you are not going to do much work in this house. I had never seen the article in the Hamilton Spectator; I have not seen it yet; I never knew anything about it until the hon. member for York-Sunbury put it on the records of this house, and then I went to the library and looked for it, but someone had it and I have not seen it yet.
The hon. member for Parry Sound has endeavoured on two occasions to belittle the members of this group so far as the war effort is concerned. I am not holding any other member of his party responsible for his utterances, but speaking for myself I say that I will put my record at any time on this Hansard or in any journal in this country alongside the record of the hon. member for Parry Sound as a citizen of this country. When it comes to serving this country on the basis of patriotism and being willing to do something for our institutions and their maintenance I will put my record at any time alongside that of the hon. member for Parry Sound.


Mr. FRASER (Northumberland, Ont.):: You should have heard your friends in that group before you joined them.


Clarence Gillis: I am not talking about that. I am talking of the attack that was made on me personally in the house, and it has been done three times.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: You are judged by the company you keep.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The company can take care of itself.


Clarence Gillis: I think I have the floor, Mr. Chairman. I am answering the hon. member for Parry Sound. I hold him responsible for his utterances. I have already demonstrated my desire and willingness to do something for this country in any way that I can and I still have the same feeling I had when I was serving as a young man in the last war. It is all right when you are a grandfather and cannot go yourself to sit back and belittle other .people. It is easy to be brave then and urge somebody else to go. I spent my seventeenth birthday in the front line in France fighting for this country, and if I had not been elected as a member of parliament in 1940 I would have been there to-day.


James Arthur Ross: They probably would not take you.

War Appropriation-Justice


Clarence Gillis: Yes, they would. I would have got over there in some way. I say that such talk ill-becomes a man of the standing of the hon. member for Parry Sound, and if he has not anything more to contribute to this house than that kind of cheap political trickery which has nothing at all to do with the matter under discussion-


Joseph-Arthur Bradette: Order. The word
"trickery" is unparliamentary, and I would ask the hon. member to withdraw it.


Clarence Gillis: If it is unparliamentary, I will withdraw it, Mr. Chairman, but I still think it is rather cheap to rise in the house and precipitate a discussion and bring out that kind of stuff when everyone in the house is trying to conclude its business. I have sat here three times and taken this talk that was entirely uncalled for, and I rise to-night to correct the impression which the hon. member for Parry Sound persists in trying to create. He tries to play up something that has absolutely no basis in fact; does it for nothing but political advantage, and takes the hon. member for York-Sunbury for his authority. I can take any speech made in this house, and if I wanted to pull a sentence out of its context I could read it into the record and make it appear that the hon. member had said exactly the reverse of what he did. It ill-behooves any member of this house in this time of war to go back fifteen years in the history of Canada and discuss matters on the basis of militarism. I could take the record of all three parties; I could take the Prime Minister's statements in 1937 and just prior to the outbreak of war in 1939 and put on the records the opinions that were held at that time. But conditions change, and it is a wise man who changes his mind once in a while. The fool goes on forever in the one direction. I do not find fault with people for changing their minds on the basis of changed conditions. A country that is flexible enough to change its attitude to suit the growth of new conditions is a healthy country. The only bind of people you find fixed and immovable are those like those you find in Europe who are regimented and have a gun held at their heads to make them toe the line.
I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, that I had to take up this amount of time, but I am not responsible. I intended to let the whole thing go. But it has been done before, and I felt that the time had arrived for me to aay something about it.
The question I rose to ask was this. Toward the end of the last session there was a large appropriation before the house for the purpose
of setting up in Canada a body of security police, and the Minister of Justice stated at that time that their pay and allowances would be in conformity with the pay and allowances of the armed forces. This police force was not to be uniformed, and someone was to be brought from the old country to organize it. I should like to know what amount of this appropriation is allocated to that branch of the service.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: The security service that was then contemplated was not organized on the original scale. The matter was reconsidered, and it is for that reason that there was allocated out of the war appropriation of last year $1,154,800, of which only $132,682.62 was expended, and for the service on the scale that has been organized and performed in a satisfactory way the amount required this year is $200,000.
There were four or five other questions asked by some hon. members to which I should like to reply, but before doing so I wish to express my own gratification, as the minister responsible for the services of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, to all hon. members who have spoken and who have paid such a high and well-deserved tribute to the faithful and efficient performance of their duties by the members of this force.


Mr. ROWE:: Pass that on to the treasury board.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: The treasury board, of which I am a member and whose meetings I attended when the matter was considered, did to some degree acquiesce in or consent to the requests I submitted, and since the voting of the supplementary estimates at the beginning of this session an increase has been made in the allowances to those veteran guards who are paid out of this war appropriation. There has been some confusion here. These are not estimates required for pay and allowances of regular members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. With respect to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police there has been since 1941 an increase in pay and allowances of 30 per cent for the ordinary constables. They were receiving $3.85 a day and are receiving $5 a day. I am not saying that is a sufficient compensation for the valuable services they perform, but one difficulty that has had to be contended with is the ceiling that has been placed on all wages and allowances, and that has been stated as an insuperable difficulty in making any more substantial increases in these allowances. That takes care of the suggestion made by two hon. members, that these
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members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police should receive a cost of living bonus. Instead of receiving a cost of living bonus, there was an increase in the allowances of from $1.60 to $2.25 for the ordinary constables. No increase was made in the allowances of the members of the force who were already receiving as much as $2.25 a day. The superior officers of the force agreed to stay at the rates of their own allowances, provided the ordinary constables were brought to $2.25 a day.
The member for York West has suggested that they are performing work equal to that performed in the United States by the federal bureau of investigation. I fully agree. I believe that all Canadians are proud of the fact that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is quite as efficient as any similar organization in any other country. However, it must be admitted that throughout the whole of our public service in Canada, for work being performed just as efficiently by Canadians as similar work is performed elsewhere by citizens of other countries, the compensation is not as large.


Agar Rodney Adamson: 
Agar Rodney Adamson: Has the question been
considered whether the departments concerned should perform this task of guarding their buildings? The railways guard their own property and so do the defence departments. Has any consideration been given to that question?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: Not recently. Prior to 1920 there was a dominion police force that performed the service of guarding public buildings. At that time it was thought desirable to amalgamate the two services and place them under the control of the commissioner, and the matter has not been reconsidered since. That is the historical explanation of the fact that members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are now performing duties that do not appear to us to be of the importance of the duties with which they are usually connected in the public mind.
The hon. member pointed to a recent prosecution which has been instituted in Toronto as evidence that no political pressure has any effect on these servants of the public, and I am glad to have that recognition. I hope it will be possible always to have the same recognition. There should never be any political pressure affecting in any way the performance of the duties which devolve upon this force.


Gordon Graydon: Or any governmental
department.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: Or any governmental department; but when it comes to the administration of justice that is a matter with which I am especially concerned and with respect

Questions
to which I am particularly cautious that there shall not be even a ground for any suspicion of political intervention.


Gordon Graydon: I suggest that the minister spread his caution over the whole governmental field.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: The administration of justice takes in a pretty broad field. I hope it will be possible for hon. members to give the same tribute to the other branches connected with the administration of justice. That is something which, like Caesar's wife, must be above all suspicion.
The question was raised by the hon. member for Lake Centre as to the desirability of there being some agency to coordinate the work of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the provincial police and the municipal police. The commissioner, whose experience is quite extensive, informs me that in fact there is more coordination between the various police services in Canada than there is in the United States, and that he is satisfied that the coordination here compares not unfavourably with that between the police forces of the United Kingdom. There is always room for improvement, and the hon. member may be sure that this is a matter which is very close to the heart of the commissioner and receives attentive consideration from him.
The statement of the hon. member for Parry Sound that it is seven years before a man joining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police can obtain any promotion or increase of compensation is not quite accurate. There is an increase in compensation with each year of service, but it requires seven years from the time of enlistment before one becomes a full constable with the maximum pay of the full constable.


William Earl Rowe: What is the maximum pay of a full constable?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: The maximum pay and allowances of a full constable is $5 a day.


John George Diefenbaker: There is one question with respect to coordination that I should like to ask the minister. I was reading the other day that the assistant commissioner, speaking before the Police Chiefs' Association of Canada, pointed out that there was a need of some coordinating body such as I suggested.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: Yes; but there is improvement and, I think, from the ground up. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has established a school which is open to all officers of police forces, whether municipal, provincial or federal, and there are members
of municipal and provincial forces attending that school.
There will be other opportunities for discussion, when the civil estimates of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are under consideration, and I feel that perhaps it would not be the temper of the committee to delay this further. If there are matters which I have unintentionally overlooked in my haste to give as many answers as possible, I would be glad to supply them when the civil estimates are under consideration, at some other sitting.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Progress reported.
It being ten minutes after eleven o'clock, the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Thursday, July 22, 1943