Mr. STEWTART (Leeds):

I will take that.

Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):

The Minister of Public Works is responsible, I suppose with the blessing of the hon. member for East Toronto. This whole bill is in the name of the Prime Minister, and he is not present. The acting Prime Minister knows nothing whatever about these items, and the responsible ministers are not here to answer as to the details of the items.

Let me take the next one:

Buildings and improvements, Department of Agriculture, $500,000.

Where is the Minister of Agriculture? He is absent; he is not here to explain this item. Does the Minister of Public Works know the details of it?

Mr. STEWART (Leeds):

Wait and see.

Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):

Does the Minister of the Interior know the details? Does the Minister of Railways know the details? Not one of them, not even the Minister of the. Interior knows the details.

Then we come to the next item:

Harbours and rivers generally, $2,500,000.

Is the harbour of Vancouver included in that amount? Where are the amounts to be spent?

Mr. DURANLEAU:

In Canada.

Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):

What a glorious remark by the Minister of Marine 1

What a wonderful amount of information given by him! He tells us that $2500,000 of the people's money to be voted by this committee and parliament-

Oh, oh.

Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):

This is no laughing matter, may I tell my hon. friends. This is a proposed expenditure in connection with unemployment relief, and when I ask the Minister of Marine, who is supposed to know something about it, where this is to be spent, he tells me that it is to be "spent in Canada." That is all the information this committee and parliament are apparently entitled to get. It is entirely consonant with the extent of the information we are able at any time to extract by painful degrees from the Minister of Marine. Then I come to No. 10:

Alterations, improvements and additions to public buildings, and to supplement where necessary, upon the authority of the governor in council, specific amounts provided in the schedule to The Public Works Construction Act, 1934, $4,000,000.

A bulk amount of money, blanketed, and no minister has yet given any details in regard to this item. Then the Minister of the Interior has a long item:

To provide for the construction and development of public buildings, camp sites, electric light and telephone systems, highways, bridges, streets, sidewalks, landing fields, air harbours, trails, water and sewer systems, recreational areas, wharves, and river protection works; to provide for the development of historic sites including buildings, repairs and restorations; to provide for the purchase and acquisition of building sites, also

And this is the finest in the whole evil paragraph:

-to provide for the construction of the Golden-Revelstoke (Big Bend) section of the trans-Canada highway. $1,500,000.

Will the minister tell us how much of this is to be used for the construction and development of public buildings, and where? How much is to be used for camp sites, and where? How much is to be used for electric light and telephone systems, and where? How much is to be used for highways, bridges, streets, and sidewalks, and where? How much for landing fields and air harbours, and where; how much for trails, and where; how much for water and sewer systems, and where; how much for recreational areas, and where; how much for wharves and river protection works, and where; how much to provide for the development of historic sites, including buildings, repairs and restorations, and where these works aire to be proceeded with? "To provide for the purchase and acquisition of building

Public Works Program

sites"-how much is to be spent for this purpose,, and how much on the Golden-Revelstoke section of the trans-Canada highway? We have not been vouchsafed the slightest information from any responsible minister of the crown in regard to any one of these items.

Then next is the Lac Seul protection works, $175,000. We have not been told the nature of these works.

Mr. GORDON:

I know something of this. The Lac Seul protection works are very closely allied to the Seven Sisters falls.

Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):

My hon. friend is out of order; I did not give way. My point is that until someone interrupted me no one has yet given any information to this parliament in regard to these items.

Mr. MANION:

Nobody could; you will not wait for it.

Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):

It is all very well for my hon. friend to say that, but it should not be necessary; it should have been in the schedule.

Mr. MANION:

That is just common ordinary nonsense.

Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):

Then what you put in last year was common nonsense.

Mr. MANION:

The hon. gentleman is just making a political stump speech, that is all.

Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):

My hon. friend is out of order. Take the estimates of the Department of Public Works, the ordinary estimates for this year, and what do you find? You find public works chargeable to income amounting to $13,024,050, and you find every single item detailed so that it can be discussed by members of the house and the fullest information can be given when the items are before the committee. But when we come to schedule A of this year's legislation Public Works Construction Act we are asked to vote millions and millions in bulk without the slightest information. Last year, as the Minister of Railways will recall, we made the same complaint, offered the same criticism, and we got then a reasonably detailed schedule, so that this committee and, the house and the country were in possession of reasonable information concerning the proposed expenditure of public money. I say in the sinoerest possible way that when the Minister of Public Works, the Minister of Railways, the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Agriculture,-who is not here- and the Minister of Marine are all joined as

the great quintuplets in these expenditures which we are supposed to authorize this evening, they should give this committee the most detailed and exhaustive information in order that we may pass upon them intelligently.

Mr. STEWART (Leeds):

My hon. friend seems to have become impatient, and rather carried away by the opportunity which he thinks has presented itself of making a political stump speech on this occasion.

Mr. JACOBS:

On this political bill.

Mr. STEWART (Leeds):

I want to call his attention to the regular estimates of this department as they have been prepared year after year under eyery government. The schedule to this bill contains just as much information as is contained in the estimates of the department year after year.

No, no.