Mr. DUNNING:

You are a bad calculator, I am afraid.

Mr. DOUGLAS:

Mr. DUNNING:

It has paid $1,000,000 in wages.

Mr. DOUGLAS:

To whom?

Mr. DUNNING:

To the working men.

Mr. DOUGLAS:

Yes, and the money has been borrowed by people who next year must take it out of purchasing power and return it to the lending institutions.

Now I come to another question that has been brought to the attention of the house several times, and I do not propose to deal with it in detail. I refer to wheat. When the wheat board legislation was in its initial stages a great many people thought that it was to provide an orderly marketing system by which all wheat was to be delivered to the wheat board, the farmer was to receive a fixed price and a participation certificate. Then the proposal was attacked, the attack being led by Colonel J. L. Ralston. Delegations came from the Winnipeg grain exchange. Mr. J. R. Murray, then secretary of the grain exchange, was in the capital, and at that time we heard bandied about the dominion such phrases as "give the Winnipeg grain exchange another chance" and "give the farmer the right to market his wheat where he wants," with the result that there were amendments to the act which permitted the farmer to sell the wheat either in the open market or to the wheat board. Then came the present government, and the first thing that government did was to change the personnel of the board. They looked all over Canada to see whom they could get, and it is well known whom they selected. They chose Mr. Murray, the former secretary of the grain exchange, who

31X11-1024

had worked so hard the year before to prevent the wheat board from coming into existence. Putting Mr. Murray in charge of the wheat board was like putting a weasel in a hen coop to raise chickens. And he succeeded very well. Ever since he took over that responsibility we have had what is commonly known as a fire sale policy for wheat. That has been amply demonstrated by the leader of the opposition, by my desk-mate, the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Caldwell), and the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Perley), so there is no need for me to place the figures upon Hansard. But most amazing of all, when last year for the first time in five years it was apparent that wheat was going to bring a price somewhat commensurate with its cost of production, what happened? It was announced on August 28 that unless wheat dropped below 90 cents a bushel it would not be accepted by the wheat board. So we see the progress: First of all wheat was to go through the wheat board ; then it was to be through the wheat board or the open market; and now unless it is below 90 cents it is to be all sold on the open market. In other words, the 1936 crop of western Canada has been turned over to the grain exchange and the speculators. I know men in my own district who made more money out of buying options than growing wheat. It is coming to a pretty pass When one man can make more money out of paper wheat than another can make out of real wheat that people eat. The result is that the farmers of western Canada have lost on an average between 20 and 30 cents a bushel, which otherwise would have been purchasing power in the hands of the people on the prairies.

Mr. BOTHWELL:

I should like to ask the hon. member a question. Does he believe that ?

Order.

Mr. SPEAKER:

Order.

Mr. DOUGLAS:

I come now to the statement made yesterday by the hon. member for Swift Current (Mr. Bothwell) in his annual speech. He read extracts from some articles which I wrote, and took great exception to them. There is an old saying:

Oh wad some power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

Mr. McLEAN (Melfort):

Hear, hear that makes it unanimous.

Mr. DOUGLAS:

The hon. gentleman (Mr. Bothwell) must have been disillusioned on reading that article, so I do not wonder that he was a little upset. On reading his speech

The Budget-Mr. Douglas

this morning I find that I did him a service, because if you take out the articles of mine that he quoted there is not much left of his own. What he did was to give certain excerpts from my articles and say they were misrepresentations, but he did not in any case cite where the misrepresentation lay, although I asked him to do so. He did not, for instance, answer the question of certain Liberals from Saskatchewan, some of whom condemned the action of the government on wheat, while others wired to the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) asking for an explanation of the government's action. But throughout the entire speech from the throne and the budget speech there was no reference to the matter. On the hustings, of course, some hon. gentlemen were quite vociferous, but here they become as calm as Mary's little lamb. The hon. member for Swift Current said nothing to explain that. All he said was that I was misrepresenting facts. But, Mr. Speaker, I could go back over Hansard and substantiate exactly what I was saying. That would take some time and this is neither the time nor the place for it. But I will make the hon gentleman this sporting proposition: He and I are very close neighbours, and I am prepared to come to his city of Swift Current, I suggest on the first day of July, but he can name any day he likes-

Mr. McLEAN (Melfort):

Why spoil the holiday?

Mr. DOUGLAS:

I admit it would spoil his holiday, but I am quite prepared on that occasion to substantiate the statements that I made in the articles, and my hon. friend will have the opportunity there to prove any misrepresentations. I shall be very glad to come, because there there will be none of the restrictions that the rules of this house place upon a member. The gloves will be off, and we shall see whose hands are dirty. Or since the hon. gentleman is not enthusiastic about that venue and he would prefer to come to Weyburn, I can guarantee him a very warm welcome. But talking as he did about having regard to the ninth commandment, I was glad to learn that the hon. gentleman knows at all events that there are commandments-I had not given him credit for that.

Mr. BOTHWELL:

Did you give any other member credit for that?

Mr. DOUGLAS:

In his speech yesterday, at page 1565, the hon. member referred to the fact that he had received a number of resolutions, and had attended one of these meetings of protest. He says that some of the resolutions were couched in very similar language. If I remember correctly he said

yesterday that he had attended a meeting at a place called Cabri, although I see on reading Hansard that the reporter must have failed to catch the name of the town, but the hon. member mentioned it for I wrote it down and so did my deskmate. The hon. member said there was no resolutions committee appointed, that a prepared statement was brought in and put to the meeting. The man who spoke at that meeting is in Ottawa, and if I am not mistaken he is in the gallery of this house. What happened? I believe some 1,400 people gathered there-

Mr. BOTHWELL:

Five hundred at the most.

Mr. DOUGLAS:

I am merely giving my hon. friend my understanding; he can correct it later. A committee of eleven business men from eleven surrounding villages sat in with ten farmers, making a committee of twenty-one, which drew up the resolution passed by the meeting.

My hon. friend implied yesterday and on another occasion when the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Perley) was speaking that these protests coming from all over western Canada came from some central source seeking to stir up feeling against the government. He has not the courage to say so, but he implies it. Why not say plainly what he means? I received scores and scores of these resolutions, and naturally there was some similarity in the language. Several hundred people could not write resolutions on the same subject without using somewhat the same language. To imply that the feeling of protest that is sweeping across western Canada is to be attributed to only a few persons, who for subversive reasons are trying to stir up trouble is merely dragging a herring across the trail. After telling us that there is a similarity in the language of the resolutions, the bon. member does not say what he thinks about that action of the wheat board, whether he agrees or disagrees with it, whether he is pleased or displeased. He does not say what he told the people of Cabri, does not say whether he objected or acquiesced in the passing of the resolution-not a word, only that there was a similarity in the language in which these different resolutions were couched. I tell my hon. friend and those with whom he sits that perhaps nothing has been done by hon. gentlemen opposite that has caused such a widespread feeling of sorrow even among their own supporters, the farmers of western Canada, and many of the urban residents of western Canada, that the west should have been thus betrayed and that millions of dollars which should have gone to

The Budget-Mr. Douglas

the farming people and through them to the storekeepers of western Canada, are now to be found in the bank accounts of speculators on the Winnipeg grain exchange.

In closing I wish to analyze in a few sentences some of the expenditures of the budget. Of our total revenue 10-06 per cent comes from excise, 25-55 per cent from sales tax, and 18-03 per cent from customs duties, making a total of 53-64 per cent of the revenue of Canada that comes from the consuming public. I have here an article written by the hon. member for Huron North (Mr. Deachman), who reads detective stories, and fortunately leaves his thumbprint on all the campaign literature that he issues. He moans nigh unto tears about the forgotten consumer. I wonder about the forgotten consumer, when out of every dollar of taxes raised by the federal government 53-64 cents comes out of this poor forgotten consumer, whereas the income tax produces only 22-56 per cent of the national revenue. I think again of what has been said so often, that we are raising the money to run the Dominion of Canada from the people who can least afford to pay it. Somebody says: Well, the alternative would be to soak the rich. It is not soaking the rich. There is an old principle, and a good one, that "those who are strong ought to bear the burdens of the weak;" that those who have the money are the ones who ought to pay in order to keep the dominion solvent. Instead of that, the bulk of the money necessary to finance this country is taken from the people who buy goods at the store, no matter how small their incomes may be.

Let us now look at government expenditures. We find that funded debt charges take 31-3 per cent of the national income, and that interest on bonds of government-owned enterprises accounts for 9-84 per cent, making a total of 41-14 per cent. If we were to add the loans to the provinces, which in many cases are made for the purpose of paying interest charges, the total would be much higher. But leaving it at that, out of every dollar we receive by way of taxes, we pay 41-14 per cent in interest charges.

Mr. DUNNING:

No, no.

Mr. DOUGLAS:

I have given the figures: 31-3 per cent for funded debt charges, and 9-84 for interest on the bonds of government-owned1 enterprises. I should be glad to have the correct figures if I am wrong, but I am taking my figures from the budget speech.