Mr. TAYLOR.

The hon. Minister of Railways and Canals and his colleagues have just had one policy since they came into possession of the treasury benches ; and that is to attempt to make the people believe that they are doing something, when they are not doing it.

You had better not have risen on this question.

Mr. TAYLOR.

The hon. Minister of Railways and Canals has made the statement that eight cents a pound is just what I wanted. If he will read what I said he will find that I asked for ten cents per pound customs and ten cents per pound excise.

You did not ask for what you wanted, but you, got what you wanted.

Mr. TAYLOR.

Any person who has read ' Hansard ' and who has followed the discussion which took place day in and day out on several occasions must know that all of the arguments of the then opposition were to the effect that ten cents a pound duty was prohibitive. The present hon. Minister of Customs suggested to Sir Mackenzie Bowell, who was then Minister of Customs, that as ten cents a pound was prohibitive he might as well prohibit it altogether and the government accepted that proposition. What was the result ? The present hon. Minister of Customs went through the country claiming that he was the father of the oleomargarine resolution and the late Speaker, Mr. Bain, wrote a letter approving of the suggestion that the

Mr. TAYLOR.

hon. Minister of Customs was the party who had introduced and carried through this law.

Hear, hear.

Mr. TAYLOR.

My hon. friend the Minister of Customs says ' hear, hear.' What had he to do with it ? Who was the party who introduced it ? He simply suggested, when we were in committee, that as ten cents per pound would be prohibitive it might as well be made prohibitive and the government accepted the suggestion. Yet, he claimed credit for having been intrumen-tal in bringing about that law. Mr. Bain, through correspondence in the press, challenged me to meet him and discuss the question and to bring ' Hansard ' and the records of the House. I accepted the challenge and left him to name any place of meeting that he liked in the country. He named a strong Grit hole in my constituency where there was not a Tory living for five miles around.

Mr. FRASER, Blessed place.

Mr. TAYLOR.

I accepted his challenge and we drove to this place. The hall was filled with 300 or 400 people, and he read from ' Hansard ' and the Votes and Proceedings and I made my speech. We left it to the vote of the audience as to who had won the bet, and notwithstanding that he had named his ground and named the audience more than seven-eights of the people stood up in favour of my contention. If you have ever seen a gentleman leave a meeting like a dog with his tail between his legs you will know how Mr. Bain left that meeting and the hon. Minister of Customs would have done the same thing if he had been there with his loud voice. He claimed that he was the man who was responsible for having that law passed and now the hon. Minister of Agriculture comes forward with a Bill claiming that the law passed by the Conservative government is ineffective because it does not contain machinery for enforcing the penalty. What is the penalty in the Act ?

No oleomargarine, butterine or other substitute of butter manufactured from any animal substance other than milk.

Is process butter manufactured entirely out of pure milk ? Is there not some ingredient in it that would make it a substitute for butter, and bring it under that Act ?

Not that we know of.

Mr. TAYLOR.

Well, you can very easily add two words as an amendment to that Act which will bring process butter under it, but what you want to do is to resort to the fraud of making the people think that you are introducing a new Bill and posing as the friends of the farmer. If you amend the existing Act by two words it will be stronger than the Bill you introduce now. I do not believe that the Minister of Customs, occupying the honourable office that he does, should take upon himself to misrepresent me, by stating that I asked for ten cents a pound customs duty and eight cents a pound excise duty on oleomargarine. My words are on record that I asked for ten cents customs and ten cents excise, which would be just as prohibitive as total prohibition of the manufacture and sale, but the government made it ten cents customs and eight cents excise. If there is any person in this country to whom credit is due for having that law in the statute-book prohibiting oleomargarine, it is the hon. member for Leeds (Mr. Taylor) who is now addressing you.

Hear, hear.

Mr. TAYLOR.

Nearly every Liberal member in the House spoke against that measure at the time, and some of them are in the House to-day, and some are not. Now, after seventeen years the Minister of Agriculture comes forward to try and make the farmers believe that he is introducing an Act to protect them, and that the present law is not sufficient for that purpose. The Minister of Agriculture said that he was not left at home at the elections of 1887 because of his vote on that resolution. The question was not brought up in that election.

That every person who contravenes the provisions of this Act in any manner whatsoever shall incur a penalty not exceeding four hundred dollars and not less than two hundred dollars, and in default of payment *shall be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding twelve months and not less than three months.

I will refer to the hon. Minister of Justice (Hon. Mr. Fitzpatrick) and ask him if there is not legal machinery in the country sufficient to enforce the statute law' of this country. What better could the hon. Minister of Agriculture do in his Bill ? He talks about the law' not being effective. The Act which I am responsible for getting the government to pass seventeen years ago reads as follows :

The hon. gentleman is mistaken. The whole contest in my county in 1887 turned on that question, and my hon. friend's heelers were primed to come there and try to beat me, but my majority was three times as great as it was before.

Hear, hear.

Mr. TAYLOR.

It was not in the elections of 1887, but in the elections of 1892 that the phamphlet quoting his speech was circulated and the Minister of Agriculture was snowed under.

You are entirely mistaken.

I have no desire to detract from the efforts of the hon. gentleman (Mr. Taylor) in this direction, and I give him all the credit due him for the Bill which he speaks of in such appreciative terms. But the hon. gentleman (Mr. Taylor), was in favour of a Bill to put eight cents a pound excise duty and ten cents a pound import duty on this * article, and he will see that this gave a protection of 25 per cent to the manufacturers of oleomargarine in Canada. True to their protective instincts, the Conservative government were in favour of encouraging the manufacture of oleomargarine in Canada by a 25 per cent duty.

Mr. TAYLOR.

If the government put eight cents a pound excise duty on biscuits would the Minister of Customs manufacture any ?

If they put an excise duty of eight cents a pound on biscuits and an import duty of ten cents a pound, we would have 25 per cent protection and we could get along very well. That is precisely what the hon. gentleman (Mr. Taylor) thanked the Conservative government for doing in the case of oleomargarine, when they put 25 per cent protection on to promote its manufacture in this country. I give the hon. member (Mr. Taylor) credit for that and, my friends claim the credit for me that I was opposed to the manufacture of oleomargarine, but-terine and other such substances in this country at all. I am willing to leave it that way. There is no quarrel between the hon. gentleman and myself. He thanks the Conservative government for putting a less excise than export duty on oleomargarine, and I held that it was better to prohibit it altogether, and my views prevailed with the government, and that law is the law of the land to-day. And to-day the hon. gentleman (Mr. Taylor) seems to manifest hostility to the prohibition of the manufacture of this process butter which tends to reduce the value of our dairy products. The fact that people are about to invest large sums of money in machinery for the manufacture of this kind of butter shows that they are confident that it will be a legitimate enterprise under the present law, and I have no doubt that they have taken legal advice on that. The leader of the opposition has facetiously referred to nipping ideas in the bud, but I suppose the ideas of the leader of the opposition have come from the bud to the full fruit in some cases. The idea of manufacturing this butter in Canada is just in the bud, and the Minister of Agriculture thinks that this session should not pass without preventing this budding idea from bearing fruit. I am heartily in accord with my colleague, and I believe that every gentleman in this House who has the protection and encouragement of our dairying interests at heart, is in accord Hon. Mr. FISHER.

with the Minister of Agriculture in his policy in this regard. I have no desire to detract from any service -which my hon. friend from Leeds rendered to the dairy interests by any resolution he moved in this House.