Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Leader of the Opposition):

A few days ago the Prime Minister made mention of a national bond issue which the government has under consideration and I think he intimated he would have a further statement to make. As the press is giving a good deal of attention to the matter, perhaps he would inform the house.

Right Hon. R. B. BENNETT (Prime Minister) :

Before the orders of the day were

proceeded with I intended to inform the house that I proposed to make a statement to-morrow before the orders of the day are called.

Mr. THOMAS REID (New Westminster):

I understand that a commission under Sir Alexander Gibb is coming here to make an investigation into the harbour boards of Canada. I should like to ask the Prime Minister if he will consider the harbour board of New Westminster as coming within the scope of that inquiry?

Right Hon. R. B. BENNETT (Prime Minister) :

I have no difficulty in answering this

question. I will consider the harbour board of New Westminster. I had occasion to do so recently when their half-yearly interest fell due.

Hon. ROBERT WEIR (Minister of Agriculture) :

There was an attempt to raise the freight rate to $17.50 a head, but I understand the rate is still to remain at $15 a head.

Agridultvral Conditions

Mr. HARRY BUTCHER (Last Mountain):

I wish to speak in support of the amendment that was moved by the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Brown) and. I am led to do so because I cannot but believe that the Prime Minister, his colleagues and supporters are not yet fully seized of the facts in connection with the unfortunate condition in which the agriculturists of this Dominion find themselves at this time. I am led to the conclusion that the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) in particular is unaware of the actual facts, and I am led to that conclusion because of statements that the right hon. gentleman has himself made and because of conclusions that he has drawn from the facts to which he referred in those statements. I am also led to the conclusion that that is the case because the government has not shown the same alacrity in dealing with the requests of the farmers as it has in dealing with the requests of other classes. Let me illustrate this by pointing out that when the manufacturers of barbed wire-and I presume they are not numerous-approached the government, the government was very quick to respond to their request and to fix a price for duty purposes on barbed wire, on the ground that barbed wire was being imported into Canada against the interests of the producers of barbed wire in this country. Precisely the same thing happened when the refiners of gasoline approached the government and again when the manufacturers of cars did so.

I have already, once in the house during this session, sought to enumerate the ills of the farmers in western Canada and I do not apologize for endeavouring to-day to repeat some of the statements that I then made. I do not hesitate, because of certain statements made recently by the Prime Minister himself. I remember that on one occasion the Prime Minister said in this house that hon. gentlemen opposite, referring to us on this side, had made statements that could not be substantiated. At the same time he said that we had made exaggerated statements as to conditions that prevailed in western Canada. He went further than that and said we had broadcast throughout the country statements that could not be substantiated in any manner

or form'. The right hon. gentleman did not enumerate the statements, but I imagine that he was: referring to statements that have been made on this side to the effect that many farmers in western Canada are insolvent. I believe I was one of the first offenders in that'..respect. I remember saying in my first address in this house, my maiden address on a. major debate, that I fully believed in my own constituency at least sixty per cent of the farmers were insolvent, and I repeat that statement to-day as being my honest conviction.

Mr. SPEAKER:

May I ask hon. members to refrain from indulging in loud conversation while an hon. member is addressing the chair. In this building there are many offices provided for the transaction of business and also spacious lobbies.

Mr. BUTCHER:

I should like to explain my understanding of the word "insolvent." I was using that word in the ordinary every day acceptance of the term. Who is the insolvent man? He is the man who is possessed of money, goods and land to a certain amount, and at any given date that amount is less than the total amount of his liabilities. That being the case, I affirm again that a large majority, in my opinion sixty per cent of the farmers in my constituency are to-day insolvent.

The Prime Minister, in refuting statements that we had made and in proof of his contention that they were exaggerated, made three major statements. In the first place he said that tens of thousands of farmers in the west had money in the bank. Then he said that new wealth to the extent of $1,900,000 had been produced in the west during the last three years. Finally he said there were a large number of cars in the western provinces and he suggested that the possession of those cars indicated that the statements we had made were exaggerated. I admit without any qualification whatsoever the truth of those three statements made by the Prime Minister; they are irrefutable. But I go further and say that they neither prove his contention nor disprove ours.

In the first place he said that tens of thousands of farmers had money in the bank. There is not the slightest doubt that that is true. But it is a very vague statement at best. There may be men who have a few dollars in the bank. There may be men who may have lots of money in the bank. There may be men who this spring obtained an advance from the bank, and then deposited the proceeds to their credit in the bank, and who

Agricultural Conditions

may now have a small amount which will be gradually diminishing during the summer. But if ever}' one of the tens of thousands of farmers that the right hon. gentleman speaks of have a large amount of money in the bank, our statements may yet be true.

May I draw attention to the fact that according to the census returns of 1926 there are in the three provinces that the right hon. gentleman mentioned 247,162 farmers. Taking my own statement that 60 per cent of these men are insolvent, what do we find? Sixty per cent of 247,162 is 148,000. That still leaves approximately 100,000 farmers who may have money in the bank. So I say again that the right hon. gentleman's statement to the effect that there are tens of thousands of farmers in the west who have money in the bank neither proves his contention nor disproves ours.

Then he said that since 1928, 81,900,000,000 of new wealth had been created in the west, and in addition there was S100,000,000 of new wealth created in the great mining areas in the three western provinces. That sounds like affluence, I admit. It sounds as though we were wealthy in the west. But I think it is advisable to analyze the statement and see what it produces.

The population of the three prairie provinces, according to the 1926 census returns, was 2,175,900. Very good. We find that the wealth produced per capita for the three years was $873.21 and the wealth produced per individual per annum, $291.07. The figure quoted by the right hon. gentleman was the gross agricultural wealth. It allowed absolutely nothing for the cost of producing that wealth. In the year 1928 it is very probable that the cost of production bore a reasonable ratio to the amount of wealth produced. In the year 1929 it was not so good, and in the year 1930 the cost of producing was greater than the value of the new wealth produced. I could produce all kinds of evidence to this house to show that such is the case, but I want to read a quotation from a letter that I received two or three days ago. It is a letter from a very reliable farmer who has been farming in our district for approximately thirty years, a man who takes no active part in politics, has no axe to grind, a hard-working man and a good farmer, with three sons to assist him in the operation of about nine hundred acres of land. This is what he says: .

Well, I took my usual inventory and made up my books for the year on April 1st. My profit and loss account showed that the operations on the farm for 1930 were a loss of nearly $2,500.

He says further:

Still, we will try again. There are lots who say they won't. It is the first time in thirty years that I have farmed that I have seen the western farmers' morale so low.

I say to this house without fear of successful denial that the production of new wealth for another year or two more on that basis will certainly bankrupt the west. Close to the farm occupied by the writer of this letter, there is another farm of about nine hundred acres, farmed by four brothers, splendid men in every way, hard-working, intelligent, excellent farmers, with only one failing that I know of, and that is that they would never support me as a candidate for election. These men have assured me through a mutual friend that they made a loss on their operations last year. What is true of those two farmers is true of hundreds of thousands of farmers in western Canada. We do not want to go on producing wealth on the same conditions as those under which these men produced new wealth last year.

The right hon. the Prime Minister in his remarks said that we on this side of the house had stated that the western provinces were going into bankruptcy. He said it unintentionally, I think, but he did make that statement, as you will see if you look up Hansard. No speaker on this side of the house said that either of the provinces or all of them were likely to go into bankruptcy. We did not say that the whole of the farmers were going into bankruptcy. What we did say was that a reasonable proportion of them were.

Mr. BENNETT:

Would the hon. gentleman point to where I made the statement about the provinces going into bankruptcy?

Mr. BUTCHER:

I shall be very pleased

to do that. May I quote from his remarks?

Mr. BENNETT:

Yes, I want to hear how it is put.