Mr. WALSH:

There are some points I want to make before I sit down. I am sure the Minister of Finance knows a great deal more about the matter than I do myself, and there is a useful little pamphlet entitled "Building Societies Eliminate 'Peaks and Valleys' in Industry" which he will find interesting. It touches, I believe, on that particular point. I have no doubt he has a copy of it.

Let me come now to the Department of Labour. I have not noticed, either in the budget or in the debate so far, anything that will give us a lead as to measures for the relief of unemployment and to establish a new social order in Canada. I have here clippings from newspapers of the maritime provinces. The Minister of Labour and his chief assistant, the chairman of the National Employment Commission, visited the maritime provinces during the past summer and held meetings in different places, assembling councillors and members of parliament. Every time I read one of these reports I thought it was the report of a Liberal convention. When they brought together the members of parlia-

[Mr. Walsh.J

ment, particularly in the St. John district, to discuss relief measures, it was of course not natural to expect the hon. member for Royal (Mr. Brooks), who lives a few miles out of St. John and who happens to be a Conservative, to be invited to participate in any of these conferences. He was a Conservative and no doubt it was taken for granted that he might not have very much to contribute to the discussion. I suggest, however, that he could have been invited, if only as an act of courtesy on the part of the Minister of Labour, and given an opportunity to express his views and offer assistance in the effort to solve the unemployment problem.

Mr. ROGERS:

The Minister of Labour was not responsible for summoning any of the meetings; they were arranged by those who were interested in the particular communities where the meetings were held.

Mr. WALSH:

The meetings were conveniently arranged., probably by the Liberal organizer of the district, so that Conservatives were not present.

Mr. ROGERS:

That is not correct.

Mr. WALSH:

I do not know what is correct, but I know that if I had time I would read a list of names and the minister would be surprised to see how many prominent Liberals were in attendance at these meetings. I suggest that the Conservatives, even if in opposition, are interested in the problem of unemployment and are willing and anxious to offer their assistance in finding a solution of the problem.

I want to read one or two extracts relating to the National Employment Commission. In Hansard of March 8, 1937, at page 1600, an hon. member makes the following statement:

I am in favour of investigating commissions, but managing commissions are sometimes dangerous. We have an employment commission. Let me tell the house that I do not believe much in that commission. It is a window-dressing [DOT]commission. . . .

The question has been asked about the number of unemployed. On February 8 of this year I asked this question:

Certain questions are set out.

To which the minister replied:

Mr. Rogers: All available information was

included in the report of the National Employment Commission with respect to the registration of recipients of direct relief -which was tabled in the house on the 5th day of February. As other data is abstracted from the registration returns it will be made available.

Mr. Pouliot: I thank the minister for the copy of the return, but I must say it contains no information about the previous occupations of the unemployed. Therefore it is of no use at

The Budget-Mr. Thorson

all. I cannot see its usefulness as it does not show what the unemployed can do, or how they can be employed. This is a very important point and one that should not be overlooked...

The speech of the Minister of Labour on the second reading of the employment commission bill on March 30 last year shows that he is fully qualified for his position.

I agree with that.

I would be quite willing to give him blanket authority to study this whole matter and report to the house. He is a reliable Minister of Labour and I am very sorry that in order to relieve unemployment all he has by way of assistance is a commission which is really more of an obstacle than a help.

These are not the words of a Conservative opposition member; they are the words of a Liberal member at present occupying a seat in this house and at present sitting not very far from the minister himself.

Mr. ROGERS:

My hon. friend is not suggesting that I inspired them ?

Mr. WALSH:

I do not think the inspiration would come from that source, but I want to emphasize the fact that one of the minister's own supporters absolutely disengaged himself from any connection whatsoever with the National Employment Commission, condemning it in the same terms in which it was condemned from this side of the house last year, to which condemnation little or no attention was paid.

Who is the member?

Mr. WALSH:

The member for Temiscou-ata (Mr. Pouliot). Let me remind the house -this has already been emphasized-that this year this commission has cost us $87418, and I notice in the supplementary estimates we are asked to vote a further sum of $275,000, making a total of $362,418- for what? For a national employment commission who are recording certain facts and figures that should be recorded in the bureau of statistics, and who are not doing one iota to aid unemployment. They are doing nothing real and practical to solve the problem of unemployment in Canada.

I tell the Minister of Labour that I have had the utmost patience with his efforts to solve this problem, but I am entirely losing patience with the attitude and action of the employment commission. I listened to an address by the chairman of that commission in Montreal on January 11, and the facts he gave on that occasion and the expressions he used were illuminating. He embodied in his report the latest figures from the drought area of the west. Why these figures should be included by the Department of Labour in statistics with respect to the unemployed is beyond me. The people in the drought area,

who have the misfortune to be out of employment and on relief as a result of a contingency due to nature alone, over which they had absolutely no control, should be looked after through the Department of Agriculture, and the statistics of the Department of Labour should not be confused by the inclusion of the drought area figures. The people there are not unemployed in the true sense of the term; they are unemployed for a definite and specific reason and therefore should be looked after by the department primarily responsible for their rehabilitation and replacement.

During the course of his remarks the chairman of the commission drew an analogy between a boy's knowledge of a lobster or a lobster's knowledge of a boy. When he finished we did not quite understand whether the lobster knew more about the boy or the boy about the lobster, but he did suggest that the knowledge of the people of Canada regarding the unemployment problem was somewhat similar in character.

Mr. SPEAKER:

Order.

Mr. WALSH:

I am sorry I have to conclude, as I have other interesting data that I should have liked to present, but I hope I may have an opportunity to do so at some other time.

Mr. J. T. THORSON (Selkirk):

When the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning) made his budget statement to this house he presented an encouraging picture of progress to the people of Canada. He was quite frank in his admission that much remained to be done, and that frankness gives hope that further progress will be made. The right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) has proposed an amendment expressing regret that the government has failed to take effective measures to deal with the problem of unemployment. The debate therefore affords an opportunity of considering the policies that ought to bp followed by this country, and perhaps our best approach to this problem is to analyze the effect of the policies of the past in the hope that we may profit in the future by avoiding the mistakes of the past.

No useful purpose is served by reminding the people of Canada that the leader of the opposition promised to end unemployment, that his government went into office on the strength of that promise, and that he failed to fulfil it. The important things to remember are the policies that were initiated by his government for the purpose of performing the promise that he made, and the utter failure of those policies to accomplish the purposes for which they were designed. The Bennett

The Budget-Mr. Thorson

administration sought to end unemployment by raising the tariffs against imports from abroad and restricting their entry into Canada in the hope that their manufacture in Canada rather than abroad would solve the problem of unemployment.

It is obvious that these policies did not end unemployment. Instead they did real harm to Canada, for they sacrificed the primary producers of this country in the interests of the secondary industries, and in so doing they did harm not only to the primary producers themselves, but also to those engaged in secondary production as well.

I intend to confine my remarks largely to two commodities that were, prior to 1930 at any rate, the principal items of our external trade: wheat, our most important export, and textiles, our most necessary import; and I shall endeavour to show to the house the disastrous effect which the Bennett tariffs against textiles had upon the export of Canadian wheat. I take wheat as an example of primary production and textiles as an example of manufactured goods, 'but what I have to say with regard to wheat and textiles might also be said of other primary products and other manufactured goods respectively, the differences being of degree rather than of kind.

An analysis of Canada's export trade shows that at least seventy-five per cent of it consists of the products of agriculture, mining, forestry and fishing, either in their natural state or after primary processing. The list of the twenty leading commodities which Canada exported during the calendar year 1936 in the order of their value shows two things: first, that wheat is our most important export commodity, amounting to 22-3 per cent of our total exports in that year; and second, that our primary production constitutes our basic wealth and the means whereby we are able to maintain our export trade and create the necessary credits abroad which enable us to purchase the commodities that we need from abroad, and which we in Canada must have if our people are to enjoy a decent standard of living.

Since Canada is a large exporter of primary commodities she must therefore be a large importer of manufactured goods; for there is no other way by which she can put into circulation the basic wealth of her primary production. If we wish to sell our goods we must be willing to buy the goods of others. An examination of the distribution of our imports during the fiscal year ending March 31, 1930, according to the classifications used by the bureau of statistics, shows that our most important imports from the United Kingdom,

continental Europe and the orient consisted of fibres, textiles and textile products, these being 36 per cent of our total imports from the United Kingdom, 31-7 per cent of our imports from continental Europe, and 52 A per cent of our imports from the orient.

Since 95 per cent of our total wheat exports went to the United Kingdom, continental Europe and the orient, and since wheat is our most important export commodity, and since our most important imports from these countries were textiles, it follows that Canada's trade with the United Kingdom, continental Europe and the orient depended primarily upon the exchange of wheat for textiles. These are the principal items in that trade, and when Canada raised her tariffs against textiles, after 1930, she touched the heart of our trade relations with our chief wheat importing country. By prohibitive tariffs against textiles the Bennett administration succeeded in restricting the import of textiles into Canada, but in so doing that administration not onlv lost markets for Canadian wheat, but also allowed the Argentine, Canada's most dangerous competitor in wheat production, to gain the markets which Canada had lost. That, too, Mr. Speaker, was one of the causes of continued unemployment in Canada; for the loss of markets for Canadian wheat meant reduced purchasing power for the Canadian wheat producer, and therefore less ability to purchase the products of Canadian manufacture. The reduced volume of production, for example, of the agricultural implement industry, is directly traceable to policies of the kind that I have mentioned; and that reduced volume means both reduced employment for those engaged in that industry and higher prices for implements to the farmer.

Let us examine for a moment where the wheat exports of Canada went in 1930 and the extent to which they have been reduced since then. I now place on Hansard a short table showing the average exports of wheat per annum during the five year period ending March 31, 1930, as compared with the subsequent five year period ending March 31, 1935, and the main countries to which these exports actually went.

Sir GEORGE PERLEY:

I do not want to interrupt the hon. gentleman, Mr. Speaker, but there is a rule of the house that nothing may be placed on Hansard unless it is read, except it be done by unanimous consent. I think your honour raised the point here the other evening in regard to another member, and made that ruling.

Mr. THORSON:

This table, Mr. Speaker, tells a striking story. In the first place it shows that continental Europe prior to 1930-

The Budget-Mr. Thorson

Sir GEORGE PERLEY:

I rise again to a point of order, Mr. Speaker, and I ask your ruling. Is it permissible for the hon. gentleman to place a table on Hansard without reading it, unless he first seeks the unanimous consent of the house?

Mr. THORSON:

The privilege has been extended on numerous occasions, Mr. Speaker; the table is very short, and its substance will be contained in the remarks I now propose to make.

Sir GEORGE PERLEY:

I have no objection-

Mr. THORSON:

I will read the table.

Sir GEORGE PERLEY:

The hon. gentleman has stated that the privilege has been extended on other occasions. I know of no person to whom this privilege is accorded except the Minister of Finance when making his budget speech. That is ~iy understanding of the rule; if I am wrong your honour will correct me.

Mr. SPEAKER:

I should like to hear what the hon. member has to say as to the point of order raised by the hon. member for Argen-teuil (Sir George Perley).