Hon. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Minister of Justice) moved:

That the name of Mr. Brunelle be substituted for that of Mr. Girouard on the special committee appointed to study the Dominion Elect.ons Act, 1934, and the amendments thereto, and the Dominion Franchise Act, 1934, and the amendments thereto.

Explain.

Mr. GREEN:

In the province of British Columbia the supreme court, which is the trial court of the province, has been trying divorce cases for many years. Its right to do so is based on the law of England, as of the year 1858, which has been held to have been in force in British Columbia when that province came into confederation. But it has been held also that the court of appeal for the province of British Columbia has no jurisdiction to hear appeals in divorce matters. The result is that the only appeal is to the privy council, and that means, of course, that there is no appeal at all except for the very wealthy people of the province. In every other province of the dominion in which the courts have and exercise jurisdiction in divorce causes there is an appeal to the appellate court of the particular province. This national parliament alone has the power to correct this situation, because by the British North America Act we were given the exclusive legislative authority in divorce matters. The purpose of this bill is merely to bring the practice in British Columbia into line with the practice in the other provinces.

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Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):

Is the power of the various provinces by statute or otherwise?

Mr. GREEN:

This parliament passed a statute six or seven years ago giving the courts of Ontario power to grant divorces, which I believe has been taken to include the power to hear appeals. Our difficulty in British Columbia arises by reason of legal decisions. It may be that these decisions are wrong, but they come from courts as high as the Supreme Court of Canada; and our present position is this, that there is really no appeal in this serious matter of divorce. The bill aims to set that position right.

Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.

Mr. STIRLING:

Will the minister explain how the losses are computed and how the dominion government will be protected in the matter of the amount of losses?

Mr. DUNNING:

As indicated in the next section of the bill, the guarantee of the dominion with respect to loss is limited to fifteen per cent of the aggregate losses of the particular lending institution. As I explained the other day, it is not a guarantee of the individual loss nor is it a guarantee with respect to losses in particular areas or related to particular branches of an institution; it is the losses of the institution in its lending operations as a whole.

Mr. STIRLING:

When will they be computed-annually?

Mr. DUNNING:

As a matter of fact that has yet to be worked out-the precise cutoff date-because the measure as at present drawn is based upon a continuous operation with power to the government to terminate at any time the guaranteeing of further

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moneys. Further on in the bill will be found a clause relating to power of regulation, and among the matters to be regulated are the proceedings in the event of default, which . regulations are now in process of being worked out. The leader of the opposition the other day raised a point with respect to the continuing of guarantee in case of default. That has been looked into since, and in order to make matters doubly sure the Department of Justice has supplied me with an amendment which I think will clarify the point. However, I think we shall reach that later on.