*Mr. DUFF:

Does the hon. gentleman want

the dates?

Mr. BIRD:

I want the dates and the

data. I will ask the hon. member for Brome for the dates, and the hon. member for Lunenburg for the data.

Mr. DUFF:

I have the dates that Captain Read went in and caime out. If the hon. member is serious, I will give them to him. I have the log.

Mr. BIRD:

I am not particular about the log.

Mr. DUFF:

I thought not.

Mr. BIRD:

On this question there are too many logs in this House.

Mr. DUFF:

There is some log-rolling too.

IMr. Bird.] I i , !' "! -l

Mr. BIRD:

When it is not logs, it is icebergs. I accord to the hon. member for Brome that he is sincere in his opposition to this project, but I would commend to him a little more serious investigation of the facts of the situation. I felt from his speech that he had made no such investigation at all. The same is true of the hon. member for Kings, P.E.I. (Mr. Hughes). I also admire that hon. gentleman's straightforwardness on almost every topic he is interested in. I think he is equally sincere in this, but his whole argument was based upon absolutely vague and indefinite quotations. As regards the very author, Mr. Low, from whom he quoted, no one would gather from the hon. member's speech that Mr. Low was an ardent supporter of the Hudson bay route, and yet that is what Mr. Low is after his experiences there. He is a practical man. He went through the strait one summer and he came out the next. His faith in the Hudson bay route was in no sense weakened by his experiences. Indeed, it was strengthened, and from the last chapter of his book one gathers that he was an ardent supporter of the Hudson bay route and a believer also in its commercial value.

The hon. member for Lunenburg (Mr. Duff) falls into the same class exactly as the other hon. members to whom I have referred. He may think we people who dwell on the prairies know little about matters of the sea. Probably he is right; but after all what anyone knows about the sea does not amount to very much. After listening to speeches against this project this evening, one would think that before anybody has a right to express an opinion regarding the Hudson bay route, one must smell of tar and wear baggy trousers or have smelt of tar and have worn baggy trousers. I do not agree with that at all. It is very interesting to 'listen to these practical men. A sea yam is probably one of the most interesting species of fiction there is, and no doubt the hon. member for Lunenburg can hold his own in that respect. He has not been as near to the Hudson bay as I have, so why set himself up as being superior to the rest of us?

Mr. DUFF:

I went by water and my hon. friend went by land. There is the difference.

Mr. BIRD:

It does not matter how one goes.

Mr. DUFF:

It does. If you go by water,

you get seasick.

Mr. BIRD:

The hon. member never saw the bay. .

Hudson Bay Ry.-Mr. Bird

Mr. DUFF:

I beg the hon. member's pardon. I saw the Hudson strait and cape Ghidley.

Mr. BIRD:

That is not the bay. That is 500 miles from the bay.

Mr. DUFF:

But. that is where the ice is. You have to get through there before you get to the bay.

Mr. BIRD:

I am afraid the hon. gentleman's imagination sees ice all the time, and it has a kind of refrigerating effect upon him. I challenge anybody who listened to the hon. gentleman's speech to-night to indicate wherein his claim to superior knowledge is above that of the rest of us.

Mr. DUFF:

I did not claim that.

Mr. BIRD:

I do not think it is equal to ours, because we have spent more time in delving out the facts, ns is evident by his speech.

Coming to the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell) I am glad to find that since the last time he addressed the House on this subject he has been investigating further. The minister is one of those gentlemen-and there are a good many of them-who form their opinions first and collect their evidence afterward. That is a hazardous procedure, because the evidence is so varied and contradictory that it is often hard to sustain one's first position. The hon. gentleman the other day quoted evidence to show that Port Nelson was not a port because it silted up and needed constant dredging; that you could not build there because the foundation was sand and so on. To-day, after having investigated the matter further, he quotes other evidence which proves exactly the opposite.

Mr. MOTHERWELL:

Ohl

Mr. BIRD:

Well, he quoted Captain Bernier the last time he spoke; indeed, he quoted him again, and Captain Bernier on his oath says that the channel at Nelson silts up and for that reason it is of no use as a port. That was practically all the evidence the hon. gentleman had the last time he spoke and it is about forty years old. To-day he quotes such men as McLachlan, men of technical training. Mr. McLachlan is a man who has lived at the port for three or four years, who has had it under his observation. The minister quotes McLachlan, and McLachlan says that Port Nelson never silts up, has not silted up for the last one hundred years or more and probably will not silt up for the next one hundred years; that the bed of the river is hard pan, that is, that it is scoured clean constantly by the swift current, and that at

high tide it has a depth of 33.7 feet right up to within two and one-half miles of the island. I challenge any hon. gentlemen here to show me anywhere, with one or two exceptions, any important port that has started out with such a reputation as Port Nelson has at the present time. Some hon. gentleman over here quoted Liverpool, and I was somewhat amused to hear an hon. gentleman compare Liverpool with Port Nelson. There is nothing similar; there is nothing parallel. There was not any water at Liverpool at any time except at high tide. The port of Liverpool was dug out of sand dunes in the fifteenth century. One of the original movers in that great enterprise said that in making Liverpool a port, they had made a silk purse out of a sow's ear. You have no sow's ear at Port Nelson; you have a proposition that is scarcely equalled anywhere else in the world. You have a clean, straight channel leading right up to your docks, within two and a half miles at any rate. As regards dredging all these exaggerated statements about dredging are not true. The government figures themselves prove that.