Mr. VALLANCE:

May I ask a question?

Mr. COWAN (Long Lake):

Yes.

Mr. VALLANCE:

In view of the wonder

in my hon. friend's mind as to how and why my electors chose me, I would ask: Does he not wonder, as I do and as I am sure the house does, how the constituency of Long Lake ever came to choose him?

Mr. COWAN (Long Lake):

I hope to deal in a few minutes with the rumours about an election, and then my hon. friend will get all he wants. As I was saying, Mr. Speaker, this delay, delay, delay, is just a repetition of the experience that we had last spring when hon. gentlemen opposite opposed the government's relief legislation, and what was the result of that delay? There were telegrams pouring in to the member for South Battleford-red telegrams, threatening revolution, and if there are sections of Canada which were not able to raise a bushel of wheat, and therefore were unable to get the bonus of five cents a bushel, it is because of the attitude taken by the Liberals in this house last spring. I was brought up on a farm and I know a little about farming.

Mr. VALLANCE:

Very little.

Mr. COWAN (Long Lake):

I have more

acres than you and I have won two prizes at ploughing matches. On a farm the soil has to be prepared the year before, and hon. gentlemen opposite know that in parts of Saskatchewan the land was absolutely dry

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without a drop of water in the soil, and it has been in that condition for three years. The same condition prevailed throughout twenty-six states of the union. The land was dry clean through, and the farmers had absolutely no chance last fall to do farming as they wanted to do it. If hon. gentlemen opposite had cooperated with us last spring in putting that relief measure through speedily, these farmers would have been able to get the money and get the grain to sow, as well as the other things necessary to enable them to carry on farming. But you stopped that. I charge you with ruining a large part of my constituency of Long Lake. There is a section in my constituency one hundred miles long and fifty miles wide where there was not a blessed thing growing this year and thousands of farmers in that section today have absolutely nothing to live on. I say that hon. gentlemen opposite are largely responsible for that condition. They might just as well swallow it now for they will have to swallow it on every platform in Long Lake. Let my hon. friend from South Battleford come on down there with me and I will show him where he gets off at mighty quick. I say that that delay caused absolute ruin to thousands of our farmers. It is not the low prices of commodities so much, although dear knows prices are very much too low, but if it had not been for the action of hon. gentlemen opposite last spring these farmers would have had at least something to sell. At the present time they have nothing to sell, and they have no means of living, and I say that that is because of the attitude which hon. gentlemen opposite took last spring in holding up that relief legislation. Because of their action this government and this parliament is now required as a duty to come to the assistance of that part of the country. Deny that if you can.

I see my hon. friend from Lisgar (Mr. Brown! over there. He made a speech in this house the other night, and it was the funniest speech I ever listened to in my life. He started out by telling us that he approved of some parts of these agreements and disapproved of the rest. Well, when he got through speaking he had never mentioned the parts that he approved of. He could not find any good things in these agreements to mention at all, and he a minister of the Gospel. He did nothing but denounce the agreements. Do you know what his speech sounded like to me? It sounded for all the world like the exclamations of a man who had swallowed a lump of sugared honey which had been soaked in sour milk. Accord-

ing to him, this preference of six cents a bushel on wheat is absolutely no good to the farmer in the west because, he says, if Great Britain under her anti-dumping legislation shuts out Russian wheat from that market Russia will dump it on to some other market and so depress the world price. What other market, I ask him? Italy? Will it climb over Italy's wall with a tariff of 81.40 a bushel? Will it get into France, where conditions are about the same, or into Germany? What other market? The Fiji islands or the Cannibal islands? There is no other market. The only market we have is the free market of Great Britain under these treaties, and we have got that market. These treaties are going through. They tell me my hon. friend from Lisgar (Mr. Brown) has a fine farm and that he is a mighty good farmer, which surprises me. He raises wheat; he has wheat to sell. The next time he goes to sell wheat is he going to take advantage of this sheltered market that the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Stevens) talked about the other day? Would he go for that shelter? Say, he would be there so quick, he would go so fast that he couldn't hear the hurricanes over the mountain! Will he take the six cent preference? He will stick it down in his jeans so quick-and then when he gets his pocket bulging full he will get out and denounce this government.

I said I would refer to the rumours of an election. If it were not for one thing we would call the bluff right now. But there is just one point that we have to consider. The government led by the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) has negotiated these agreements; they are in effect now. But negotiating the treaties is only one part; the administration is another thing, quite a different thing. Do you think for one second that we are crazy?

Yes.

Mr. COWAN (Long Lake):

Should we

hand the administration of this over to you who have challenged the democracy of the empire? Do you think we are going to take any such chance? What would happen? I am a foolish man to be here and any man is foolish to be here who has to make a living-

Mr. VALLANCE:

You are not half as foolish as the Long Lake constituency.

Mr. COWAN (Long Lake):

Say, look here, my dear boy-

Mr. SPEAKER:

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but I would call his atten-

United Kingdom

tion to the fact that the proper form of debate is to address the chair. Hon. members should be referred to in the third person.

Mr. COWAN (Long Lake):

I will do that, Mr. Speaker, but you know out in the wilds one gets in the habit of using very direct language to one's fellow man. Up in the Yukon you would understand the language we sometimes use.

My attitude towards an election is this, that this government, which had the brains, the courage and the ability to bring about the conference, carry on the negotiations and put through these treaties, will be given authority to proceed for a period of three years and make a success of them. Then when the success is assured we will have the election. The desire for an election on the part of hon. gentlemen opposite is quite easily understood. It is common knowledge that when times are hard they think any election will run against the government-

That is the reason you are there.

Mr. COWAN (Long Lake):

Hon. gentlemen are so scared of these treaties becoming a success, and of the prosperity that will result, that they do not want to wait. When we are ready to have an election wre will have it, but we won't be stampeded into it.

Hon. members are continually referring to the statement made by the present Prime Minister prior to the election that he was going to blast his way into the markets of the world. Oh how they like to dwell on that! Well, what happened? He went, and we loaded him with the ammunition that was necessary-

It missed fire when he got there.

Mr. COWAN (Long Lake):

If you did

not have a good supply of gunpowder-or nitroglycerine-I do not know what you would do. What happened to the party opposite when they went to negotiate a treaty anywhere, within the empire or outside? The only thing I ever saw that they had in the way of ammunition was a wreath of white feathers around their necks and their hands up. We provided them with the ammunition; probably some had been used up. There may be some there yet. That makes no difference; the Prime Minister had the power and the means to negotiate successfully, and he used those means, no, we are not through with governing this country, and when we are through-

Mr. LAPOINTE:

Pity the country then!

Mr. COWAN (Long Lake):

I am pleased

with these treaties because of their effect upon western Canada. I do not like parochialism;

I never yet have found the dividing line between eastern and western Canada. I do not know where it is and I am not going to hunt for it. Just the same, our farmers need all the help they can get. And what has been done? The removal of the cattle embargo. Well, some of our friends across the way say, as a Liberal friend of mine said at a meeting out there, "What is the use of trying to raise cattle? There is not enough rainfall on the prairies to give the cows water." His idea evidently was that a cow waters itself by holding its mouth up and letting the rain fall in. That is the idea of my hon. friends opposite. They have no idea of grappling with the situation, and the result is that they blundered and fumbled everything. The removal of that cattle embargo wTill be of great benefit to us. Provision is also made for hogs and dairy products, and we find that these agreements are directly in line with the policies advocated by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Weir). Ever since he took office he. has been working night and day in an endeavour to change agricultural conditions in western Canada, trying to get the farmers away from simply raising grain and getting them interested in mixed farming. We have that now, in large part; that policy is now in force. It has had a splendid effect already, and under these agreements the minister will be able to carry out that plan more effectively. I say to my hon. friend from South Battleford (Mr. Vallance) and other hon. members opposite that if there is a man in Saskatchewan today more popular than Hon. Robert Weir I should like to find him.

Mr. VALLANCE:

You embarrass the minister; you shock his modesty.

Mr. COWAN (Long Lake):

I have not

yet discovered any modesty on the part of hon. gentlemen opposite. I see my friends from Saskatchewan opposite. If they would only get the hon. member for Melville (Mr. Motherwell) sitting up there I could get a snapshot of the whole outfit, and I would exhibit it as a picture of the greatest collection of incompetents we have in the house today. '

I wish I had time to deal with my hon. friend in the far corner, who made a statement the other day which was absolutely incorrect. He said the children in our part of the country could not and did not go to school. I have before me the official report of

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the government of Saskatchewan, and I find that the number of rooms in elementary schools in that province has increased from 5,367 in 1920 to 6,946 in 1931. Does that look as if the children had no opportunity to go to school? The number of days the schools have been open has increased from 178 in 1920 to 201 in 1931. What do hon. gentlemen mean by making such statements? I want to tell the hon. gentleman that no matter how hard up we may be, no matter what drought conditions may exist, no matter even if there is a Grit government in power, it will not make any difference in Saskatchewan; our children will be educated. Sometimes we have trouble in supplying all the necessities; I admit that, but we supply them, and our children never will be neglected, whether they be Protestants or Catholics. They will be properly educated.

I wish I had a few moments to deal with the question of banking. We are not going to revise the Bank Act this year, and I approve of that action. The rate of interest is too high; it must and will come down.