Sir ROBERT BORDEN:

My colleague is proposing to feed my right hon. friend now.

Mr. A. K. MACLEAN:

I will give him all the information he can comfortably read in a couple of days.

Mr. SPEAKER:

When shall this Bill be read a second time?

Sir WILFRID LAURIER:

It is only reasonable that we should have time to digest the information! that was promised, before taking up the second reading.

Air. A. K. MACLEAN:

I am ready to give the information now.

Sir WILFRID LAURIER:

I should like to digest it before we take the second reading.

DOAtINION LANDS ACT AMENDMENT.

Hon. ARTHUR AIEIGHEN (Minister of the Interior) moved that the amendments made by the Senate to Bill No. 5, to amend the Dominion Lands, be concurred in.

Sir WILFRID LAURIER:

What are the amendments?

Air. MEIGHEN:

Subsection 1 of section 10 of the Dominion Lands Act, chapter 20 of the statutes of 1918, is amended by striking out the words " or purchased homestead " in the fifth line thereof. There was another place in the Act where the purchased homestead provision was still included notwithstanding the fact that purchased homesteads had been abolished. Consequently, it was merely by a clerical oversight that the words or purchased homestead" were left in. The Senate struck them out and properly so. The Senate also struck out a clause which provided that when a patent was issued, and before it was delivered from the office of the Department of the Interior, it might be cancelled by the minister without recourse to the Exchequer Court. The Senate took the view that it was not good practice to cancel a patent after issue even though it was still *within the office of the minister. The matter is not of sufficient importance to refer back to the Senate and I am prepared to accept that amendment. There was another amendment which was of a clerical character and it is also accepted.

Alotion agreed to; and amendment concurred in.

Air. G. B. NICHOLSON:

I would just like to point out that subclause 2, reading that no male person under the age of twenty-one years shall be prosecuted for any offence under the provisions of this section, is either designed to maintain a double standard of morality, or else it is a direct contradiction of paragraph 1. I submit that if the Parliament of Canada establishes the principle that a girl has come to the age of responsibility at eighteen years, it has no right to establish the principle that a man up to twenty-one has not come to the same age of responsibility.

I further submit that the clause is setting up a vicious principle, in that it is saying to young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one: We recognize that you have

free license to do as you like during this period. Now the Act would be very much stronger if subclause 2 were omitted entirely, but I submit we are not keeping abreast of the times if we set up anything that would be in the nature of a double standard of morality. Subclause 1, providing for raising the age of consent from sixteen to eighteen years, is excellent so far as it goes, but subclause 2 certainly should be dropped, otherwise we are saying to our young men: We give you all the license that you wish, we invite you to do as you like between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one-the most vital years of a young man's life,-and we will undertake to correct the habits you have formed after you have passed the age of twenty-one.

Mr. DOHERTY:

If the hon. gentleman will allow me, I will explain the reason for having in the Bill provisions to which he objects, and which he argues is creating a double standard of morality. Might I point out to him that the section which he [DOT] commends-and which I am glad to see meets with his approval,-and the provision of the law up to the present which has been the .same, save as regards the age fixed for the young girl, proceeds on the assumption that there is a double standard, but a double standard more severe as against the man than against the girl, because the man is made a criminal.

So he should be.

Mr. DOHERTY:

This section makes the young man a criminal and extends the criminality as regards girls of higher age than the law previously provided, but it does seem that there is a severer provision as against the man than there is against the girl, and I think quite rightly and quite properly. The reason why the provision in question was inserted is this: You are making this offence, which it takes two people to perpetrate, a crime as regards one of them. By this section you are increasing the age at which the girl is held to be capable of consenting; you are raising the age of the girl in such a manner as to make it an offence henceforth on the part of the man to have relations with a girl with regard to whom, up till to-day, that was not an offence. The reason why that provision was introduced with regard to the boy up to the age of twenty-one, and the representation made in its favour, was that when you are dealing with a girl who may be just under the age of eighteen years, and a boy, say, of nineteen or twenty years of age, there was

really no strong reason to assume that, as between young people of those ages respectively, the guilt or responsibility in the matter was entirely on the part of the young man. I do not want to go into the argument in detail. I think all our experience of human nature would lead us to concede, even if we do not think this provision ought to stand as it is, that there at all events is some force in the argument. The provision itself has been very strongly supported'-I am speaking now of the main provision raising the age-by the Social Service Council of Canada while they very strongly recommend the enactment of the first section raising the age, they also expressed the view and recommended that there should be a clause which would give protection to boys up to the same age and in the same way as the section protects the girls. That involves a section fixing precisely the same age for both sexes, and I think, perhaps, there may be a general consensus of opinion in favour of accepting that. The reason for carrying the age up to twenty-one was that which I have given. It was represented to us by people who have had very considerable to do with the detection and punishment of offences of this kind, that when you raise the age of the girl to eighteen you diminish very materially the presumption, as I have said, that the entire responsibility for what happened was upon the young man. It was pointed out that in those very years is the time when young men are more open to the influence, or more apt to be carried away by the influence, of passion, and that experience would go to show that under those conditions the young girl-any girl of seventeen or eighteen years-may fairly be assumed to be as well qualified to control herself, and to prevent conditions arising where unfortunately these offences may be committed, as the young man up to the age of twenty-one. However, this is not a question upon which I am wedded at all to the fixing of a particular age; I am absolutely in the hands of the committee as to what age limit, if any, should be fixed with regard to the young man. This is a question, of course, as to which there can be no suggestion that there should be any consideration come into play but what, in the judgment of this House, would best conduce to the maintenance of morality.

It has been pointed out to me also in this connection, and as a ground for making a provision of this kind fixing this particular age, or possibly another age, with regard to the young man, that we are mak-

ir.g this a crime. Undoubtedly the consequence will be that the young man who offends in this regard will be made a criminal; he is going to be subjected to the treatment of a criminal and started in his early youth with the brand of criminality upon him. Unless the proposed amendment passes, that _ has not been the case up to the present time. We all fully appreciate, and there is no occasion to dilate upon it, the very grave consequences that, without regard to legislative enactment, fall upon the girl who sins in this way, and I have no desire to make the position of the young man better in that -regard than her own. On the other hand, I do not think it is quite correct to point to this section as giving a license to the young man to do what he likes with regard to girls of the age referred to. If that appreciation of it be correct, then the law up to the present has given a license to men of all ages to do what they please in. that respect.

But now we are creating a new offence. This Bill makes it an offence for all men over twenty-one years of age, and assumes absolutely their exclusive responsibility for the commission of this sin, which, as I have said, takes two people to commit. Whether it is wise or unwise, in making that extension and raising the age of the girl, also to make that offence apply with regard to men of -all ages, is a question that, at all events, is serious, and calls for consideration. As I have s-aid, however, I am not wedded to this particular age. I am quite in the judgment of the committee and of the House as to whether the age with regard to the young man is. the -age 'that should properly be fixed, or whether we should fix the same age as- for the girl, or any intervening age, or whether there should be any provision at all fixing the age. I would only like to call the attention of the committee to what has been said in support of this proposition, and perhaps particularly to the fact -that by making legislation which will be applicable to young men of all ages you are perhaps not bettering the po-sitaon of the girl who has the misfortune to be a participant in this sin, but you are very materially aggravating the consequences to the young man. So far as those consequences will operate as -a deterrent, of course I think we would aill hold up both hands for them. But I think it is well to look at the other side of tthe picture and to consider whether in the general interest of the community it is well to enact a law that will sttart out in his career in life branded as -a criminal every young man

who may have yielded to temptation in this particular regard. If we could do something to mitigate the social consequences to the young woman probably it would be better, but I do not imagine that we can, nor am I affirming absolutely that it would be. But the question really pressing is: Will society as a whole gain if we blast as a criminal at the very outset of his career the young man who, under the circumstances provided for by the section, has yielded1 to temptation and fallen into this sin and committed this- offence, whose gravity I do not want to minimize, but which, at the same time, i3 an offence to which youth at that particular stage of its career is exceedingly liable, by the weakness of our human nature, to find itself guilty of. But as I have -said, I am quite prepared to take the view of the committee upon that question.

Mr. DEVLIN:

I am glad to hear the minister say that he is not wedded to this legislation.