of Canada before the measure was voted on by Parliament. I remember that a motion was introduced in amendment by my friend the late Mr. Monk, then member for Jacques Cartier. His motion read that the question of reciprocity should not be voted on by the Canadian Parliament until the people had had a chance to pronounce upon it. His motion was supported by my hon. friend the present leader of the Government, and we know that later on there developed obstruction to the passage of that measure. It is interesting to remind the House of the frantic appeals which were made in respect to that measure brought in by the hon. member for Shelburne and Queen's. Perfervid appeals were made to the province of Ontario in particular, by the general manager of the Conservative political campaigns of the day. Sir John Willison said: The future is a sealed book which only the Gods may read, but at least the country should have time and opportunity to express it self. At least the constituencies may demand the right to pronounce the final judgment. It is intolerable that two party politicians, however able and trustworthy they may be, should settle the political destiny of Canada by a secret negotiation with a foreign country. Surely no Government has the right to impose upon the country, without consultation with the people a .policy which involves such momentous consequences, and surely if it persists every means of delay and obstructions should be employed to force dissolution of Parliament and to secure for Canadians the simple and incontestable right to determine their own commercial policy and their own political destiny. So, Mr. Speaker, in order that the people might determine our policy at that time on a question which was not a new one, but dated back as far as 1854, the Conservative party, and some gentlemen who belonged to that House of 1911 are still in the House, obstructed the passage of the measure and forced the government to appeal to the country. Sir Wilfrid Laurier had been returned by a considerable majority of the votes in the election of 1908. However, he dissolved Parliament in 1911-mark the contrast between him and the present Prime Minister-Sir Wilfrid Laurier dissolved Parliament and was defeated on> the 21st of September of that year, on two different issues; he was defeated on the issue of reciprocity, and defeated on the naval issue, and defeated above all by the whispering campaign. Here is the contrast between the Conservative party and the Liberal party. Here we have a Government elected for war purposes, and war purposes only. In 1908 you had a Govern- ment possessing the full confidence, of the electorate of Canada, presenting a measure to Parliament on a question which was not new, but was as old as the oldest amongst us could remember. And yet, Mr. Speaker, because this measure was, in the minds of the Tory party, a measure destined to fix the commercial future of Canada, they forced the issue; they obstructed the measure and brought about a dissolution. Mark the contrast. In the elections of 1917 we had an appeal that was epitomized in a very concrete slogan: "Win the War." The only object of the elections of 1917 was that of winning the war, and from the Prime Minister down to the humblest member in the Unionist party, that slogan was heralded throughout the country. It was said that the Government should be allowed to manage the public affairs of the country until the war had been won, and then the people could pronounce on the policies of both political parties. After the defeat of Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal party in 1911, the right hon. gentleman who now represents King's County, Nova Scotia (Sir Robert Borden) took office. With his Cabinet, he administered the public affairs of Canada until the year 1914, when we were suddenly awakened by news of the most stupendous war in history. That was the time, Mr. Speaker, to form a Union Government. Thus understood British statesmen; thus understood French statesmen; and so did the Premiers in Australia, in New Zealand, and in Newfoundland. Not so the Tory party in Canada. The other day the right hon. gentleman who leads the Government (Hon. Mr. Meighen), taunting my hon. friend the leader of the Opposition (Mr. Mackenzie King), said: "I do not understand why the leader of the Opposition is anxious to have an election to-day. In 1914 his party was most anxious that there should not be held any general election." How generous on the part of the Government not to have held an election in 1914! Sir, when the history of war events in Canada is written it will be surprising to know that at one moment the Tory Government, in the month of November, 1914, was ready to dissolve Parliament and to launch the country into a political contest, when already thousands and thousands of lives were being mowed down in Flanders' fields in Belgium. At that time, Mr. Speaker, it was wise and patriotic on the part of the Liberal party to oppose any dissolution of Parliament. One might say that from that moment until 1917-and this is the point-1 wish to emphasize-from 1914 until 1917-Parliamentary, yes responsible Government was suspended in Canada. We had the War Measures Act; we had the extension of the Parliamentary term; we had the suspension of Habeas Corpus, one of the most sacred of all the liberties enjoyed by British subjects, if not, indeed, the most sacred of them. And finally we had the War Time Elections Act, the most iniquitous measure ever passed by any Parliament in any country. Sir, I have no hesitation in saying that in 1917, after the War Time Elections Act was passed by closure we had only the semblance of an election. The election of 1917 was but a sham, and all over Canada, in at least eight of the nine provinces, it was an official debauchery. It has been stated by my hon. friend from Westmoreland (Mr. Copp) - and he brought affidavits to prove his assertions-that there are at least fourteen or fifteen members sitting in this House who were not regularly elected. Mr. Speaker, we know what took place. I was present at the Liberal Convention two years ago, and I heard an acquaintance of my right hon. friend the Prime Minister, Mr. Adamson of Winnipeg, whose father and father-in-law both sat in this House of Commons, state to the Convention assembled,'on his word of honour, that two telegrams which I shall read to you had been sent during the campaign. He had the code and the key thereto, and he decoded the telegram to the Convention. On the 30th November, 1917, the following telegram was sent from the present Prime Minister to the late Prime Minister: Would like one thousand soldier votes at large for Manitoba, of which 300 for Selkirk,, balance. divided between Provencher, Macdonald and Springfield or same proportion of division, no matter what our allotment maybe. He read another telegram sent from Senator Sharpe to Senator Tanner, dated Winnipeg, December 4, 1917:

Halifax, N. S. W. J. Tupper received a telegram from your assistant secretary and in reply would say: please allot all unattached' votes equally among the following constituencies; Pro-vencher, Springfield, and Selkirk, for the province of Manitoba, and in Saskatchewan, Saltcoats, North Battleford, Prince Albert, Swift Current and Humboldt. This will assist us greatly. W. H. Sharpe. I know-I want to be fair-that the Prime Minister has mildly denied the paternity of his telegram addressed to Sir Robert Borden, the ex-Premier, but Senator Sharp never denied the authorship of the telegram which was addressed to Senator Tanner. All of us of the Liberal party, who hail from the province of Quebec do not know what took place in the other provinces except from what slips through the press or through the quarrels which occur to-day between the officials who were identified with that election, but we know what happened in our province. We know that for the county of Chambly-Vercheres 700 soldiers voted at St. John's. We know that Colonel Melville who was commanding at St. John's declared that he did not know where his domicile was, and for that reason voted himself in Chambly-Vercheres. You have only to present facts such as these and you have completely proven your case. Yes, Mr. Speaker, having sat in this House for a quarter of a century, having passed through several general elections, knowing the rough and tumble of a political contest, having read the history of the British Parliament and of British institutions, I have no hesitation in saying there were no elections really held in 1917, but that the elections of that year were nothing short of an official debauchery. . The salient fact through all the elections of 1917, or, if I may so speak, the raison d'etre of the Union Government, was the objective which I mentioned a ' moment ago-that is to say, winning the war was the only purpose. Is it necessary to prove that? Why, we have the evidence from the lips of one of the most astute members of the present Government. We have the evidence from the Minister of Immigration and Colonization (Mr. Cal-der). On June 11, 1919, he said: The present Government as originally constituted was not created for the purpose of making a general revision of the tariff. This Government was formed for war purposes and to carry out a war policy. I find exactly the contrary in the speech from the Throne. There I read: My advisers are convinced of the necessity for revision of the Customs Tariff. In order to secure the most complete information a committee has conducted an extensive and thorough inquiry, and has secured the views of all parties and interests in every province.

Ybt the Minister of Immigration stated two years ago: The present Government as originally constituted was not created for the purpose of making a general revision of the Tariff. This Government was formed for war purposes and to carry out a war policy. Shall we believe the minister who uttered those words in 1919 or must we believe the minister who drafted the speech from the Throne? But my hon. friend said this further: When the Government wa® constituted' it was composed of Liberals and Conservatives and the members composing the Government held1 strongly divergent views on the tariff question. What is true of members of the Government is equally true of members of the House on both sides. The members of this House /were not elected because of their tariff leanings. I do not wish to he personal but let me take one or two illustrations. Then he takes the case of our esteemed friend the member for Macdonald (Mr. Henders) : The hon. member for Macdonald was supported by all sections of the people in his constituency regardless of any ofpinions he held on the tariff because, I say again, the tariff was not an issue when he was elected a member of the House. Then speaking of my genial friend the member for Regina (Mr. Cowan) he said: Will any person say that the people of that constituency were at that time thinking of the tariff or of a general revision of the Tariff ? They were not. At that time the people were thinking of and voting on the issue that was before the country. I claim, Mr. Speaker, that this evidence coming from a member of the Government and knowing the circumstances that surrounded the last election, is sufficient to justify any fair-minded member in this House in voting in favour of the amendment, and to ask that in all sincerity, in all justice, the people of the country be called upon to pronounce between the Opposition and the Government. I will admit, as I stated a moment ago that a union of both parties was a logical sequence of the declaration of the war; but what was logical during the war, and immediately after the war, is illogical to-day, and wd must strip of its disguises the Government which continues under a war agreement when we have reached peace. The master of the English language in the British Parliament is Mr. Asquith. It has been my privilege to listen to that great statesman on many occasions and I do not know in the English World a Parliamentarian who can marshal his phrases in such beautiful order as the present leader of the Liberal party in England, Mr. Asquith. He made such an apt description of the coalition in England that I feel inclined to apply his burning sentences to the existing coalition in Canada. Here is what he said in the month of January last: Now, let us turn for a very few moments nearer home. We see the same necessity for cleanout ideas and policies. The native atmosphere of the coalition is fog-fog which blears outlines and destroys perspectives. A combination of this kind, no longer justified by the supreme necessities of war, is driven to the task which, as the government of this country, is imposed upon it, or whieh it has imposed itself-it is driven, by the necessities of its being, to cater for at least two sets of opinions at the same time, and fhe inevitable result is a policy, if policy it can be properly called, of aviguities and compromises, or, of I may say so, of zigzag and see-saw. That is an apt description of the present coalition of interests and appetites in this country, Mr. Speaker. It makes for ambiguities and compromises with two sets of opinions, as you saw last week. It makes also for a policy of zigzag and see-saw. The supreme issue of the war has come to an end. The Government, of course, did not win the war, although they claim to have done so; the boys in the trenches won the war. There have been radical changes in the Cabinet; the Prime Minister selected by the people of Canada in 1911 has resigned; the Cabinet has been re-cast three or four times at least since 1911; the name of the party has been changed-and public opinion has also changed. Are we to be told Mr. Speaker, that a caucus which selects a Prime Minister, a leader of the party, shall be substituted for the will of the people and of Parliament? Are we to be told that bureaucracy shall take the place of free government in this young democracy? Ah, I say to my hon. friends, the Progressives, the Farmers who sit alongside of me; This is the old, old 'issue between reaction and progress, between Liberalism and Toryism, because whatever be their name-Liberal, Conservative, National, we know that it is the same old Tory party. And this brings me to the distinction made by a famous English writer as between the Tory and the Liberal. Commenting on Gladstone's definition of the Liberal as the man who trusts the people, this writer said: The Tory looks down from the institution to the man; the Liberal up from the man to the institution. The Liberal says. "The state is made for man, and not man for the state"; the Tory reverses the dogma. Democratic government to the Liberal is an essential condition of the free growth of the individual soul; to the Tory, if he believes in it at all, it is a piece of efficient political machinery. The Tory' theory, in other words, is expensed in terms of duties, the Liberal in terms of rights. And, Sir, it is a right that we are asserting to-day in moving this amendment. We assume the right of calling upon the Government to dissolve Parliament in order to give the people of Canada an opportunity of pronouncing as between the two political doctrines-an opportunity which has been denied since 1911. But, Mr. Speaker, there is not only this question involved in the present amendment; there is, in my judgment, another paramount issue which justifies an appeal to the people. We are informed from all quarters that an Imperial Conference is to be convened for the mohth of June, that ministers from the various Dominions are to gather in London, and that they will he called upon to pronounce on the question of sharing the naval defence of the Empire. That is the declaration made by the Prime Minister of England. And we have also a declaration made, it is said, by Lord Milner, that the question of Home Rule for Egypt should also bring the Dominions together in order that they may be consulted on that most important policy. I leave aside this last question, because I cannot believe that we shall be involved in it, as we have nothing to do with Egypt. But the other declaration made by the Prime Minister of England, that the burden of naval defence had become too heavy for Great Britain, and that the Dominions should be called upon to share in that defence, creates at once, a rtiost important issue. On many occasions the ex-Prime Minister, the right hon. gentleman from King's, N.S. (Sir Robert Borden) has declared, in England and in Canada, that our country should have a voice in the affairs of the Empire-that Canada should be consulted on the policy of the foreign office. It is true that, at the Imperial Conference, in 1911, Mr. Asquith, who was then Prime Minister of England, said that all this was a sham, that the Dominions could not share in framing the foreign policy of Great Britain. Sir, if we should have a voice, if Canada should be called upon with British statesmen to decide the foreign policy of the Empire, you could see at once in what old world troubles we might be embroiled. As my hon. friend from Beauce (Mr. Beland) stated so eloquently this afternoon, if Canada was called upon to pronounce on such a foreign policy, it would mean that there would be some sort of central authority in London where the Dominions would be represented according to population. Well, although I belong to the minority, and although I know that quite often we are denied the right and the privilege to speak on Imperial affairs because forsooth, we are supposed to be born rebels, yet I know, and I have enough regard for public opinion in [DOT] Canada, for public opinion in English-speaking Canada, to say that never, never, never shall Canada surrender her rights as a free self-governing commonwealth. Canada is a self-governing dominion, will take part in the defence of the Empire or in the defence of Great Britain whenever Great Britain is on her trial; but Canada will do so of her own free will; there will never be any central authority in London to dictate a policy to Ottawa in that regard. If it is true that an Imperial Conference is to convene in the month of June to discuss the problem of the part Canada shall take in the naval defence of the Empire, I say that the question transcends all other issues and that the Government clearly has no mandate-to even discuss it! They have no mandate even to approach the issue; to take it up with Imperial statesmen and commit this House to a policy. I say that the Government should dissolve Parliament and ask the people by way of a referendum what is their will with regard to this grave question. Any organic change in our constitution would be a serious departure, which should be specifically authorized by the people. This is a most vital issue, yet we are kept in the dark with regard to it. I suppose we shall be told in a few moments by' the Minister of Justice (Mr. Doherty) that, as he said the other day in Montreal, "Canada is a nation." True, Mr. Speaker, we have a territory and we have a population, but as I understand the elements of international law there lacks an essential attribute: Canada has no sovereignty. But we are told by the right hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Foster) that Canada'is "a nation within the Empire" yet our status is not the same as that of Scotland, Wales, or Britain. I am eliminating .poor old Ireland, but I hope that the day is not far distant when Ireland shall have her share in the Government of Great Britain. Is our status equal to that of Britain, Scotland, Wales, even the Isle of

Man? Mr. Speaker, if we are a nation within the Empire, what about the requisition of our ships during the war? Our ships were commandeered, I understand, owing to the emergency of the occasion, but what about the returning of those ships to Canada when the shipping interests of this country were clamouring after the armistice: "Give us back our ships. Do not send them from Liverpool to the extreme sections of the British Empire to help the merchants of Liverpool and of Glasgow. Return them to Canada." We are "a nation within the Empire", and we pride ourselves upon that distinction; yet there is an embargo on our Canadian cattle, an embargo which rests on what Sir Charles Tupper stated was a lie. It is not true that Canadian cattle suffer from pleuro-pneumonia, but it is true that free-trade England wishes to protect the cattlemen and breeders of Scotland and the North of Ireland. We are "a nation within the Empire," but I remember that in 1911 when the Rainbow and the Niobe came to Halifax the Canadian Government received word from the British Admiralty that Canadian ships flying the King's colours and the Canadian ensign might not go beyond the three-mile limit lest they should create complications with some other power. I am sorry that the Minister of Marine (Mr. Ballantyne) is not in his seat, but some time during the session I should like to know from him how it is that the present so-called Canadian navy is going round the world flying the British flag and the Canadian ensigh at the same time. By what process, through what channels, did we obtain in this year of Our Lord 1921 the privilege which was denied to the late CJoyernment in 1911? The Minister of Trade and Commerce waxed eloquent the other day when he said that before Confederation Canada was bound first to the provinces, then to the other Dominions; and, as things progressed, as events emerged, Canada became bound to the Empire, and in a glorious peroration the Minister added: "Now, Canada is bound to the world." Noble words, Mr. Speaker; yet I read in the Gazette of February 4 that Canada was denied the right to conclude a commercial pact even with Nigeria and the Gold Coast. Here is what I read in the London correspondence of the Montreal Gazette of that date: On inquiry at the Colonial Office by your correspondent, the information was vouch- safed that negotiations had taken place directly between Canada and the Governments of the Gold Coast and Nigeria for preferential agreements somewhat similar to that now existing between Canada and the West Indies. It was soon discovered* however, that tne granting of such a preference was forbidden, in the case of the two African Governments, by the Anglo-French Convention referred to, and there the matter ended. It appears that not only West Africa, but also East Africa, is thus hound, the bar in the latter case being the Berlin Convention, which prevented a proposed arrangement between a British colony there and Australia. The statement of the Colonial Office, when asked whether the Anglo-French Convention could not be terminated, was that it would take about five years, in the event of the British Government being willing to make the effort, which would doubtless require a considerable amount of persuation. Canada and .the other Dominions have outgrown entanglements of this kind, but other parts of the Empire still find: themselves in the leading strings in which Britain's foreign policy of [DOT] former days has placed them. I hope that if this matter is followed up by the Department of Tradt? and Commerce the right hon. gentleman who presides with such distinction over the affairs of that department will take a leaf out of the late Government's book so far as its trade policy is concerned. When British preference was voted by this Parliament in 1897, there were obstacles in the way, there were the German and Belgian treaties with Great Britain; but the Prime Minister of Canada went to England, where he pleaded the cause of Canada and the cause of the Mother Country, and the two treaties were denounced forthwith. To-day we are attempting to trade with Nigeria and the Gold Coast, and I hope the precedent of Belgium and of Germany will help the Minister of Trade and Commerce. Canada is a nation; but will the right Hon. Minister of Justice (Mr. Doherty) at least give us a hint as to when we shall have a right to appoint consular agents, or consuls, in the various countries of the world ?