Mr. MEIGHEN:

I am not allowed to

seek again; I would like to get the facts on * Hansard.'

Mr. GERMAN:

The hon. gentleman can go to Major Leonard if he doubts what I have said. Or let him get the fact where-ever he likes. I have made my statement on my responsibility as a member of this House that this commission and this Government has made a settlement with J. D. McArthur on the basis of keeping out not $550,000, but $150,000, thus going against the award of the arbitrators and making a clean gift of $400,000. I think, in the face of that, the less these gentlemen say about wrongdoing the better.

Now, how about the Davis contract? Why, all the Government have to do is to hold back the money if there is anything wrong. Why do not they do it? These commissioners say that Fauquier Brothers made an immense amount of money by getting a contract because of inside information. And from the first page of this evidence to the last there is not one line, not a tittle, to justify such a statement. If there were, this Government has yet to settle with Fauquier Brothers, and if there is anything wrong, having the money in their own hands, let them keep it. Let me see whether they will do that or not. They did not do it in the case of McArthur. These gentlemen do not say, but they insinuate and it is a most insulting insinuation-that these men had inside information on the Transcontinental Commissioners Which they should not have had. And again there is not a tittle of evidence from first to last of this book to show it. Mr. McArthur denies it, Mr. Davis denies it, Mr. Fauquier denies ,it and Mr. Parent himself denies it.

Mr. MEIGHEN:

Surely, the hon. gentleman knows a little of what he is talking about. Mr. Fauquier admits it.

Mr. GERMAN:

I beg the hon. gentleman's pardon, he does not admit it. Mr. Fauquier, in answer to Mr. Lynch-Staunton's question whether he had got information that there was not as much moss as the engineers had estimated, said: I made inquiry as to what moss there was. But it was an inquiry open to everybody. And I challenge the hon. gentleman to contradict that (by the evidence.

Mr. MEIGHEN:

He got the information from the engineers of the commission, as to the estimates of moss, and it was inside information.

Mr. GERMAN:

The hon. gentleman is

mistaken. Let him read the evidence; it does not read that way. Mr. McArthur says he got information but it was information that anybody could get. And the engineers say the same thing; there was no secret information about it. Mr. Fauquier says: I knew there was not as much moss as they thought. But whether the quantity was large or small does not matter for he said he would have put in the same price, 13 cents a yard, if there had been 5,000 yards which I think is the quantity the engineers estimated. The evidence shows conclusively that these gentlemen acted in good faith from beginning to end.

And what further insinuations are made against Mr. Parent? In contract 8 with M. P. Davis and Company, there was a question of timber price. Mr. Davis put it in at $80 a thousand feet. And he says: I put that in because I believed that on timber delivered in that country it is a proper price. These commissioners insinuate that Mr. Parent, the chairman of the commission, changed the date of the document from the 8th to the 18th of October to show that the document had been signed subsequent to the putting in of this timber price. And be was asked the question and his reply was: It may have been changed, but if so, it was changed since I gave up the chairmanship of that commission. And that is the class of insinuation that runs throughout the whole length of this so-called report of Royal Commissioners, men appointed to investigate and hold the scales of justice even as between the Transcontinental Commissioners and the people of Canada. Can any man say that a report of that kind is justified by the evidence? I say, no; any man who reads the evidence must come to the conclusion that it is a garbled statement got up for a special purpose of a partisan character, to discredit a political party, and, if possible, to injure one of the greatest industrial enterprises ever established in Canada.

On motion of Mr. Joseph E. Armstrong, the debate was adjourned.

On motion of Mr. ILazen the House adjourned at 10.57 p.m.

Friday, March 27, 1914.