Hon. JAMES MURDOCK (Minister of Labour):

Mr. Speaker, I am now going to undertake my maiden budget speech. I would not have undertaken to interject a number of thoughts into this debate except for the fact that there appear to have been very many things said on the opposite side of the House, very many matters referred to, that should be put right-matters upon which hon. members should at least have the viewpoint of others; and when I say others I do not mean particularly my own views. I shall deal with a number of subjects that have been under discussion in this House-unemployment, the tariff, and very many other questions that hon. gentlemen opposite have interested themselves in.

I want to commence-and I regret that the hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Irvine) is not in his seat-by referring to certain matters that that hon. gentleman has brought before the House. During the debate here on Wednesday last the hon. gentleman referred to me. He was dealing with the question of the Civil Service Commission having exclusive jurisdiction over the fixing of the salaries of civil servants and he said: "Has the government made no effort at all to remove any such discrimination if such discrimination exists?" He had at the previous sitting of the House, as well as at the particular sitting in question, indicated that there was discrimination between the salaries of male and female employees in the civil service, and that the government should of its own motion remove that discrimination. I had stated that the government had no authority other than was given in the Civil Service Act, section 45B, which provides that the Civil Service Commission shall fix the rates of pay of civil servants, such rates to become effective on approval by the Governor in Council. And so my hon. friend at the last sitting of the House said: "Has the government made no effort at all to remove any such discrimination if discrimination exists?" I would respectfully refer my hon. friend to a perusal of the files of parliament last year wherein he will find that in the case of the postal workers the recommendation of the Civil Service Commission was sent back to that body three times by the Governor in Council without any result; and finally the recommendation of the commission was approved by the Governor in Council because evidently it was impossible to persuade the commission that any changes were advisable or necessary.

Then the same hon. gentleman, at a former sitting of the House, drew the attention of the government to a specific instance of distress and lack of employment on the part of a newly arrived immigrant into Canada. He cited a specific instance and read into the record a letter which will be found at page 1459 of Hansard1. This letter referred to an individual immigrant who had come to Canada and who, according to the letter of that particular immigrant, had suffered great hardship and distress since his arrival. At the time I asked the hon. gentleman if he would give me the name of the immigrant in question and he very kindly sent the name to me across the floor. I at once took the matter up with the Deputy Minister of Immigration and, again without making public the name of the individual in this House, I want to read the reply of the deputy minister as it affects this particular individual in whom my hon. friend from East Calgary manifested such marked interest. The letter from the Deputy Minister of Immigration is dated March 24, and states:

I have received your message, covering a letter read by one of the members of parliament in reference to an immigrant at Calgary, and, as the name was given to you in confidence, it is not mentioned in this memorandum. There is no question that the record is a proof that we should not have allowed this family entry into Canada. It is a pity that, with all we have endeavoured to do for this man, he has in no way attempted

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to meet the conditions here. The family arrived in August of last year. It consisted of the father, mother and three children, aged 4 years, 2 years and 2 months. The father was 24 years and the mother 23. They were immediately placed in a vacant Land Settlement Board property near Condor, Alta. Work was obtained for the father with Mr. H. Meeres, a farmer of that district. The family had only $1.40 on landing and Mr. Meeres at once spent $50.50 towards getting furniture and supplies for them. They were only there two weeks when they became discontented and wrote in f-o the Land Settlement oince that they wished to 'reave. The supervisor called on them on September 3th; talked the matter over with the family and they [DOT]decided to remain.

On October 0th the Land Settlement office was ad-vised that, despite all the advances made by Mr. Meeres, the head of the family had left his employment and had gone to work for another farmer. The Hatter he also left without giving any notice.

The man being out of work, our Land Settlement office took up for a second time the question of employment for him and secured work with a farmer named Bice at Condor, Alta. Mr. Bice undertook to give this man work not only during threshing and during the subsequent fall work but also undertook to give him employment during the winter months cutting posts, but Bice informed the supervisor on October 19th that the family was practically useless to him.

Another position was then found with a farmer at Blackfalds, where the family proceeded on November 4th. This farmer provided them with a cottage in which to reside. On November 13th the Land Settlement Supervisor visited them but the immigrant refused to accept work, stating that his wife would not go out to farm and that she wished to be deported.

The family were then taken to Red Deer, where work was procured for the father at Greencourt with a lumber company who offered to give him steady winter employment. Nothing further was heard by the Land Settlement office of either the man or family until the immigrant turned up in Calgary on December 20th. Two days later he called at the Land Settlement office and was informed that work could be obtained for him, although it would take a few days. The immigrant advised the officials that he did not wish to go out into the country until after Christmas. He called again on January 2nd and informed the Land Settlement officers that he had himself located a position and did not desire to go to the country.

According to letters, appearing in the press, this immigrant still wishes to be deported, although he has secured a permanent job with the Consumers' Milk Company at $75 per month.

The facts in connection with this case show that the immigrant has been placed in no less than seven different positions by the Land Settlement branch, none of which he retained for any length of time and in several instances leaving his employers in bad circumstances in so far as farm labour is concerned. Although in a permanent position at Calgary at $75 per month, he is still writing to the papers and wishing to be deported.

And those, Mr. Speaker, appear to be the facts of the case in regard to which we heard so much a short time ago, and on account of which this government was so wrongly condemned, in so far as its immigration policy was concerned. Again I am sorry my hon. friend is not in the House, because I have something that should be of special interest to him, considering that he is one of the representatives from Calgary. I notice that the hon. gentleman representing West Calgary (Mr. Shaw) is here and I am sure he will bring

this matter to the attention of our hon. friend. I have here a clipping from the Calgary Herald dated April 3, 1925, and of course I would expect, if my hon. friend from East Calgary (Mr. Irvine) were in the House, that he might raise objection to the accuracy of anything emanating from the Calgary Herald. He might intimate that it was not altogether sound and fair in so far as these matters are concerned. Be that as it may, this article in the Calgary Herald of April 3 is captioned in large headlines and reads:

Refusing to accept jobs, two hundred men ordered out of labour bureau.

Majority of them alleged to be persistent idlers, and when Superintendent Carnill fails to persuade even one to take farm work, he closes door on them. Civic authorities checking up situation and police are making an investigation. Farm hands may have to be imported.

I notice in this article, which is of considerable length, a statement which is alleged to have been made by the acting mayor, Dr. T. W. Crawford and Commissioner A. G. Graves, in which they are supposed to have said:

"These men have been hanging around the city the best part of the winter", said the acting mayor, "and it will be necessary for the civic authorities to take some action to see that they either go to work or move on. You can say that we are going to take some action to get these loafers out of the city but we haven't definitely decided what that will be."

I would not, Mr. Speaker, for one moment suggest that this is even a fair sample of those citizens of Calgary who have been out of work during the past winter. I only call these particular circumstances to the attention of the House because my hon. friend from East Calgary laid so much stress upon the case of the individual in regard to whom I read a letter from the Deputy Minister of Immigration a short time ago, and I am sure my hon. friend from East Calgary would not undertake to justify actions or an attitude such as is indicated by the letter from the Deputy Minister of Immigration, or such as is indicated in this newspaper clipping which I have just read.

iMir. IRVINE: I understood my hon. friend to say that this man to whom he refers was really an unfit citizen. My point then was that the government should not have brought him here; and I understood that under the government's supervision he was collected and brought to this country.

Mr. MURDOCK:

If my hon. friend had

been in his seat he would not have had any such misunderstanding.

Mr. FORKE:

He was in the gallery.

Mr. MURDOCK:

There is nothing in the record that I can see that this young man of twenty-four years of age and his wife who

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was twenty-three years of age were not perfectly fit and proper subjects for citizenship in this great Dominion. The only trouble appears to have been that, for what reason we do not know, the young man was offered seven jobs, and evidently, at the time my hon. friend was speaking in this House, was holding a job at $75 a month, and was still contending that Canada was no good to him and praying for deportation. I do not know but that deportation possibly is the best thing under the circumstances, and I think that that is what the department has now under consideration.

For a few moments now I will turn to eer-tain references made by my hon. friend from East Calgary in his speech of April 7 on the budget. He proceeded, by various figures, which I assume are quite accurate, to show that the per capita debt of Canada is $548 per head, or an average per capita debt of $2,740 for a family of five. I regard it- as rather unfortunate that the hon. gentleman did not in any way indicate how it came about that this country of ours has at this time such an enormous burden of debt. There was no criticism by the hon. member on account of the fact that during the war, when the government and Canadians as a whole were doing everything possible to win the war and were regarding the winning of the war as the most important thing to be accomplished, the government in power then and for several years after the war did not undertake to reasonably lighten that enormous burden of taxation of which the hon. gentleman makes so much, and places solely at the door of this government. It seems to me that if the hon. gentleman, speaking for labour, had desired to be reasonably fair and consistent, as my experience indicates representatives of labour do desire to be, he would in some slight measure have dealt with the question of whether the previous government should not have undertaken to pay their way as they went along during the period of the war, when millionaires in certain cases were being made over night, in very brief periods at least, on account of the exorbitant profits that they were enabled to make as a result of war conditions. That it seems to me would have been a fair position to take if the hon. gentleman had felt so inclined.

A little further on in the course of my hon. friend's speech he made reference to the Liberal platform, and hon. gentlemen will have observed with what sweeping haste he passed over each item of that platform one after the other, only in casual reference and away to one side, and not with the thought of dealing accurately and consistently with each item. He referred early in the course of his remarks to the obligations placed upon

Canada as a member of the League of Nations, to the obligations placed upon Canada holding membership in the International Labour Office of the League of Nations, and he endeavoured, it seemed to me, to convince this House that no step and no action had been taken by Canada in order to ensure social justice for the workers of Canada, which was exactly what was contemplated when part XIII of tthe treaty of Peace was framed, to ensure social justice for the workers of the world. The hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Irvine) never bothered to indicate that Canada, as he well knows if he cares to analyze, stands pretty high amongst the nations of the world in its considerate and decent treatment of labour, and that, even before it was found necessary to incorporate part XIII into the treaty of Peace for the purpose of ensuring social justice to the workers of the world, Canada had gone a long way in the direction of securing for the workers of the world many of the things which are only now being developed in certain other countries. So we find the hon. gentleman going to great lengths in order to show that this government had done nothing whatever. It seems to me that he made one mistake. While referring to the Liberal platform, he had occasion to read a part of its preamble and a number of its paragraph terms. He read this:

Resolved, that the committee recommends that the National Liberal convention accept in their entirety as a part of the Liberal platform, in the spirit they have been framed and so far as the special circumstances of the country will permit.

Then he proceeded to enumerate; but the proposal which my hon. friend overlooked was that the agreement was that these were to be accepted-

As a part of the Liberal platform, in the spirit they have been framed and so far as the special circumstances of the country will permit.

Does my hon. friend, claiming to represent labour in this House, come here and, just after arguing that the tax burden on a family of five in Canada was $2,740 per annum, contend that, even so, every one of the proposals in the platform of the Liberal party, regardless of how many millions of dollars were involved, was to be here and now inaugurated and made effective, and that this government was entitled to the condemnation of this House and of the people of Canada because that had not been done? I do not think my hon. friend even talked about the question sensibly and I can hardly believe he was serious. Let me assure my hon. friend that a number of the questions that he so casually refers to have been dealt with to a much greater extent than the hon.

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member appeared to know when he was discussing the matter.

But there is one other matter upon which I wish to speak as referring t-o the hon. member for East Calgary. I accepted money for considerably over twenty years to represent labour. I was not fired in the final analysis. I understood and I have documentary evidence to the effect that my services were fairly satisfactory; but I know nothing of the aims, ambitions and contentions of labour, and all my experience in those twenty years has been for naught if the declarations and claims of my hon. friend are the real aims, claims and ambitions of labour. Let me, if I may, because time is passing, refer to one. We found the hon. gentleman preaching what, with my knowledge of the aims and claims of labour, is the rankest kind of heresy in this House, as we heard him on the floor of this House make this statement:

All that I am contending for at the present time is that combines are necessary; combines are not necessarily evil, but combines cannot be broken, and even, if they could be broken, it would be very bad business.

If labour generally throughout the length and breadth of Canada does not repudiate that dbetrine as the rankest kind of heresy, then I know nothing about the views of labour. We found the hon. gentleman, as he always is, extremely eloquent in asserting that the government had decided to attempt this reactionary move. What reactionary move? To undertake to interfere, I suppose he would say, with the natural and orderly processes of business in the form of a combination, no matter how much that combination might be sapping the life or industrial blood of this country.

Mr. IRVINE:

Will the minister really

say that it is not a viewpoint generally held by labour that combines are a natural outcome of the industrial process?

Mr. MURDOCK:

Yes, I will go that far

with my hon. friend and admit that combines are largely the outgrowth of our present industrial processes; but that does not for one moment prove that they should not be grappled with, if detrimental to the interests of the people of this country.

Mr. IRVINE:

Did I not point out also

that they should be grappled with, but in a different way from that in which the government was grappling with them?

Mr. MURDOCK:

If my hon. friend did,

I overlooked it entirely and I searched for evidence of that. I have read to the House the hon. gentleman's language. It is very specific and definite.

Mr. IRVINE:

Let the minister read some

more of it.

Mr. MURDOCK:

I do not believe it

stands for any qualification. It says:

But combines cannot be broken, and even if they could be broken, it would be very bad business.

I will leave it for labour to determine whether that is proper gospel or just rank heresy.

Mr. IRVINE:

I have no doubt what

labour will think if they read the rest of the passage.

Mr. MURDOCK:

I come now to anothei matter upon which I think some discussion should be held and that is the question that has been made so much of in this House and elsewhere throughout the country, a question upon which we note in the Tory papers gentlemen are speaking in various parts of Canada as aspirants for preferment in the next federal election. The leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen) some time ago in this House intimated that some 2,000 factories had been closed and he was very insistent to the extent of saying, "By the figure 2,000 I am prepared to stand." It seems as though that deserves a little analysis. Last fall there was held in the city of Ottawa a convention composed of the mayors -of eleven of 'the important cities of Canada, representatives of the two large railways, eight of the provinces, the Trade and Labour Congress of Canada, the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and some others, for the purpose of considering the advisability of determining in conference of those charged with the responsibility of expending public money, either in the provinces or the cities as well as representatives of the federal government, and to devise some uniform plan whereby winter work could be carried on to as great an extent as possible, even though such work had heretofore been done during summer only, for the reason that it was cheaper to do it that way. ,At the conference there were four representatives of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, and rather early in the proceedings one of those gentlemen got away from the object of the conference and attempted to decide by resolution what was going to be the cure-all for the particular question we had under consideration. His proposal was to convene a special session of parliament to increase the tariff and by that means to take care of the ills which we were supposed to have met to deal with. During the course of his remarks this distinguished gentleman made a declaration which I desire to bring to the attention of the House. He said that 1,361 factories

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had been closed down in Canada during the past two 3'ears-and the House will remember that this was in September, 1924. He was asked whether he would be good enough to give us the names of those factories and their location and he replied, "I shall be glad to supply that information but I have not got it here." We waited for some time for the .information and as it was not forthcoming we wrote and asked him for it. On October 25 there came to the office in consequence a considerable list, but it showed simply the article affected as well as the place of manufacture: for instance, we found on the list, "Tools, Windsor, Ontario; chains, Hamilton, Ontario." So indefinite was the statement that it could not be checked and we felt that this was not the information that had been .promised us. We therefore wrote for further information, calling the attention of the hon. gentleman to certain peculiarities in bis statement in regard to the factories which it was claimed had been closed down. For example, a honey factory had been closed at Lambeth and another honey factory at Listowel.

Mr. MEIGHEN:

The minister says that he wrote to " the hon. gentleman " calling his attention to certain things. .

Mr. MURDOCK:

I said, distinguished

gentleman.

Mr. MEIGHEN:

Oh, it can't be me then; who was it?

Mr. MURDOCK:

My right hon. friend is too touchy; he will know that I am referring to him when I do so. In the meantime I am dealing with the statements of an officer of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association who at a conference in Ottawa had agreed to give us a list of the names, with the location in each case, of 1,351 factories which he said had been closed down. He gave certain information which we considered not all that had been promised and we therefore wrote him for additional facts. We found that a honey factory had been closed at Lambeth and another at Listowel; a shipyard had been closed at Canning, Nova Scotia, and a com cure and1 foot comforts factory at Niagara Falls; an oleomargarine factory had also been closed at Quebec, and many others were on the list. We intimated, as I have said, that this was nlot satisfactory, so a little later, to be exact, on January 26, there was prepared a list signed

by this gentleman and "handed to me on January 31 by an officer of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association. This list disclosed on analysis some very peculiar oversights. In the first place there were only 1,251 names of factories, of which 761, or 61 per cent, were found not to be listed by R. G. Dun & Company as carrying on business on or after January 1, 1923. Then, 152, or 12 per cent-those gentlemen who have been talking about factories closing down might pay attention to this-were listed as in business in January 1923 and in January 1925, according to R. G. Dun & Company; while 22, or 1.7 per cent, were not listed in January 1923 but were in business in January 1925. Again, 307, or 24.5 per cent, went out of business between January 1923 and January 1925, this number including firms that failed and firms that withdrew from business for other reasons. The representative of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association had stated at the conference :n September 1924 that the list of factories he had contained 1,351 names, but there were only 1,251 in the list which he later furnished to the department after several requests. But this does not necessarily prove the whole story and I shall therefore take occasion to place on the record more accurate data secured from the reports of R. G. Dun & Company.

Now, this government has been held up to ridicule throughout the length and breadth of Canada by certain gentlemen of the Tory party because of the deplorable, the awful conditions that have arisen in this country as a result of its low tariff or revenue tariff tendencies. Those gentlemen opposite would have the people of Canada believe that never at any time in the history of the country except when a Liberal government was in power could such conditions exist. In view of this, I am going to submit a comparative statement which at least will be illuminating to those who might believe any such thing. I have here a table showing the commercial failures in Canada by branches of business in the years 1914, 1915, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923 and 1924. It is interesting and will bear some study, especially when you find the Tory press or a Tory aspirant to office contending that only under a Liberal government can any of these commercial failures take place. This list is as follows: