Mr. COLDWELL:

Yes, but I am speaking generally of all investments of all nations of the world. It is not altogether true of our own country at this time. May I say to the Minister of Finance that when he speaks of a balanced budget-which is desirable-a balanced budget under these circumstances may actually restrict the places where this money may be invested, and the very people demanding a balanced budget may be those who will suffer from a lack of safe places in which to invest their money,-although in my opinion that might have under some circumstances the beneficial effect of forcing the cost of money down and diverting it into industrial channels. That might be at least a good temporary effect.

Mr. VIEN:

The hon. gentleman is in favour of a balanced budget, is he?

Mr. COLDWELL:

I believe every intelligent man believes that we ought to be able to balance our consumption with our production; that, of course, is the kind of balanced budget I would like to see in Canada. There is also a factor which those who look to foreign trade as a solution will have to face; for, as it diminishes, the home market will have to consume the products of industry -and I am speaking not of one country but of all countries. This means that the national income must become more widely distributed within the nation and we must look more and more to our home market and the purchasing power of our own people for a way out of some of our economic difficulties. If we fail to reach this conclusion by a process of reasoning, I believe we shall reach it through (Mr. Gold well.]

hard experience. Surely we have a picture of maldistribution in this country. Poverty is rampant, unemployment continues in the midst of vast resources, efficient machines and labour are idle and yet we have impressive bank balances. Monopolistic industry and wealth accumulation are actually increasing while relief costs mount. But the government does nothing to meet the situation, and that I think justifies the moving of the amendment.

We are sometimes told-indeed the Minister of Finance indicated it the other evening, that wealth in Canada is widely distributed. He stated proudly that there were over 4,000,000 savings bank accounts in Canada and 6,500,000 life insurance policies. However, I find upon examination that 92-5 per cent of the savings accounts average slightly over $100 while 1*2 per cent average $289,000. That is, one per cent of the depositors own over 35 per cent of the total savings deposits. The minister also mentioned life insurance. The president of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, speaking on January 1, 1937, had said this of North America that some twelve per cent of all policyholders had less than $300 protection; 45 per cent had less than $1,000 and 90 per cent had less than $3,000.

The Life Underwriters' Association of Canada put it a little differently when they said that out of every hundred young men starting life at age 25, by 65 years of age, 36 will have died, one will be wealthy, four will be well to do, five will be still working and 54 will be dependent, wholly or in part, on charity, children or friends.

In other words, only five per cent of those still living will have achieved economic security. Our income and wage returns tell much the same story. Of 2,713,000-I am using round figures-adult persons, excluding farmers-they should be excluded because in 1933 in the two provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, only 76 persons whose principal work was that of farming had sufficient income to be assessable for income tax-1.526,000 or 56-2 per cent received less than $1,000 ; 643,000 or 23-2 per cent received between $1,000 and $1,500 ; 448,000 or 16-5 per cent received between $1,500 and $3,000 ; 85,000 or 3-2 per cent received between $3,000 and $10,000 and 11,000 or 0'4 per cent received $10,000 or over. Those figures were for the year 1930.

Mr. BENNETT:

There is $1,000 that is exempt.

Mr. COLDWELL:

These are people gainfully employed and all income is included. That was before the worst days of 1931, 1932 and 1933. It is useless to say, as is often said, that the standard of living is higher to-day than it was a century ago. It seems to me

Use of Canada's Financial Resources

that we should judge it, not by what it is but by what it might be. Unfortunately, scarcity seems to be the keynote of the present economic system. May I add that that is the objective of trusts, of cartels, of selling rings, of selling agreements, yes, even ultimately of tariffs. Because of this, from time to time cotton, coffee, grain, automobiles and so on have been destroyed in order to raise prices and restore profits. Last year our government rejoiced when the fire sale wheat policy got rid of what was called a surplus, but which should have been a reserve, a reserve of which we are sorely in need at the present time. Had all the people in the world who needed food received it, there would not have been a kernel of wheat left over at any time. The same is also true of industry and of industrial products. A survey in 1929, our boom year, of our potential production showed that our paper mills were running at only 80 per cent capacity, our oil refineries at 50 per cent, our flour mills at 53 per cent, our bakeries at 35 per cent and so on. In the light of the statistics that I have quoted this afternoon, can it be said that we as a parliament or as a government have provided adequately for the people? I think not.

The other evening the Minister of Finance emphasized the increase in deposits and currency, but let me remark that that is the natural result of the business upswing. The building boom in Great Britain has had repercussions in this country and the huge rearmament program has undoubtedly affected us to a remarkable degree. We can thus account for the upswing. But I say this to the gentlemen of the Liberal party: All this will pass, perhaps is passing, but what preparations has this government made for the Canadian people? It seems to me that that is the pressing question at the moment. Nothing has been done commensurate with the urgency of the situation, and the evils disclosed by the mass buying probe remain. Agriculture languishes before the demands of all kinds of well-organized industry. We have been told that the promised medicine from the Liberal free trade bottle cannot be administered, because it would destroy confederation. The Minister of Labour (Mr. Rogers) made this quite clear. The hon. member for Winnipeg South (Mr. Mutch) admitted it, and the hon. member for Melville (Mr. Motherwell) asked for the compensating adjustments that some of us have been advocating for a number of years. Private members on the Liberal side of the house confess their inability to secure the free trade for which they fought and about which they talked so much in western Canada over a long period of years.

Mr. ILSLEY:

Do not you think that is a misstatement?

Mr. COLDWELL:

I think it is a perfectly correct statement.

Mr. ILSLEY:

Is there not a difference

between free trade and freer trade?

Mr. COLDWELL:

I said "free trade."

Mr. ILSLEY:

You said both.

Mr. BENNETT:

In 1896 Laurier said at Brandon that he wanted free trade as it then was in England.

Mr. COLDWELL:

Gentlemen who are today ministers of the crown and private members of the Liberal party certainly advocated not only a freer trade policy but what amounted to a free trade policy in their election speeches in western Canada. That being so, we ought to endeavour to understand and solve the internal problems of unemployment, agriculture, the depression and the poverty which surround us. It seems to me that these are the real problems raised by the amendment. The necessity for this can be seen from the fact that while we have hundreds of thousands on relief the gross dividends paid by corporations in 1937 surpassed the previous all-time record of 1930. In other words, the maldistribution of which I spoke is more obvious in 1937 than it was even in 1930. In our opinion, to rectify this serious cause of social unrest will require more than a change in monetary policy, although we regard monetary policy as one of the fundamentals of any policy.

Other fundamental requirements, if I may enumerate them briefly, are the operation in the public interest and on a national plan of mines and forests, water powers, monopolistic industries, together with effective social control of wages, hours of labour and the prices of farm products, guaranteeing to the farmer an adequate return for his labour, and so on, to ensure that we have purchasing power and the means of distributing goods within our own economy.

I would add this, that salvation in my opinion will not come miraculously or through any external commercial arrangements that we may .make, but must be worked out within our own economy, and there is no single or even speedy cure. The road must be carefully planned and followed towards social security and economic justice. It is sometimes argued, of course, that the planning of our economic security or of society generally would be difficult because we would not know what goods to produce. As to that, let me quote from a report of the National Survey

1302 COMMONS

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of Potential Productive Capacity in the United States-the Hoover committee, as we sometimes call it, because it was appointed by President Hoover-which reported on January 1, 1934. This is what that committee, in some respects a very conservative one, said:

Strange as it may seem, it is easier to determine human needs than it is to determine the ability of society to extract raw materials. On the average, people of a given culture eat only so much food, wear out only so many clothes, live in only so many rooms. If "scarcity values" (of works of art, etc.) are excluded from consideration-and they naturally fall outside the scope of our study since our concern was with physical quantities-the amount of goods and services the population would like to consume can be calculated with an accuracy far greater than the accuracy with which we can determine the possible output of any industry.

Some will say that any kind of economic planning would lead to regimentation. To me economic security for all is the only road to real freedom and real democracy. That is why I advocate it. The present system regiments masses in poverty and in want because it places, as I said before, salability before necessity. It dooms the masses to scarcity and only enables those who own the productive resources to accumulate the profit on goods which they do not themselves produce. Only unorganized farmers, fishermen and other small individual producers are under economic compulsion to produce for less than the real costs of production. This problem the present government refuses to face; hence again I say the amendment is fully justified.

Where does the Liberal party stand in relation to this pressing problem? Before the election the present Minister of National Defence (Mr. Mackenzie), whom I am glad to see in his seat, and the member for Van-couver-Burrard (Mr. McGeer) told the people that the Liberal party stood for monetary reform, for those very monetary policies that were so vehemently denounced by the Minister of Finance the other evening. If I recollect, the Minister of National Defence was going to issue hundreds of millions of dollars, and I cannot tell what the member for Vancouver-Burrard was going to do. But I heard him speak, and I know he obtained thousands of votes in the province of Saskatchewan because of the very spectacular promises he made, ostensibly on behalf of the Liberal party. We said then that these gentlemen would never be permitted by the Liberal party to carry out the policy they advocated. But by these means, of course, they obtained thousands of votes. How can gentlemen rise on the Liberal side of the house and accuse

social crediters of getting votes by false pretences when that kind of thing was done so widely all across Canada by prominent members of their own party? Why are these members silent to-day, and why have they been silent these many months in this house? Surely as sincere men, and I believe they are, they must be disillusioned as thousands must be who voted Liberal. But unlike the rank and file they have a place here and can speak, and this is the time and the place to speak.

The hon. member for Rosthern (Mr. Tucker) did rise and express himself again this afternoon, although I noticed a somewhat different tone in his speech this afternoon from the tone he used in the first speech he made on this subject, and to which he referred this afternoon. But I am glad that he rose today and said some of the things he did, and may I say to the other gentlemen that I think honesty and sincerity of purpose demand that they too should follow his example and rise in their places and let the house and the country know exactly where they now stand in regard to the preelection promises which they made. Let us look at some of them. .

We were to have a nationally owned central bank, issuing national credit and national currency to meet our national needs. And what have we got? We have a central bank that is neither publicly nor privately owned; it is a hybrid affair. Personally I believe that a central bank can best function when it is completely publicly owned, and I do not believe a compromise of that description is ever very satisfactory or very effective.

Then, large public works were to be undertaken. The hon. member for Rosthern this afternoon mentioned some of the public works that might be carried out. I am sure that we in this corner of the house would be very glad to support a program which would give us a decent highway all across Canada. But what happened to the public works? They have been either restricted or discontinued, and unemployment remains with us. Indeed to-day there are literally hundreds of thousands of people on relief, and in my opinion-I have said this before-the most pernicious form of dole is the dole that we today have in the Dominion of Canada. The member for Rosthern spoke of young men of thirty who had never worked. I have seen the effect upon such men in later life also, at forty or forty-five years of age, men who have not worked for five or more years; and I am going to tell you that even if these men get the opportunity again, they will be physically

Use of Canada's Financial Resources

unfitted to work. But they are never going to get the opportunity, exactly because of the conditions to which the member for Rosthern referred, namely, that thousands of young men of thirty and under are to-day seeking jobs, and because they are not married and therefore have no homes to maintain and are in the vigour of early manhood, they will be preferred for the jobs that are going.

Mr. WARREN:

Is not the unemployment situation in the west largely created by the lack of a crop?

Mr. COLDWELL:

The unemployment

figures for the month of January show that employment is actually down in the east, and surely that cannot be accounted for altogether by the drought in the west.

Mr. FURNISS:

It helps.

Mr. COLDWELL:

Of course the relief figures in western Canada are due in part to drought, but in the west, in these relief areas, there are roads which are a disgrace to Canada, roads which are impassable; yet no public works of that nature are undertaken.

Mr. WARREN:

Is it not true that a great many of the unemployed in western Canada have drifted into Ontario during the past year and added perhaps to the unemployment in that province?

Mr. MacNICOL:

With the freer trade policy.

Mr. COLDWELL:

Well, until Ontario and British Columbia undertook to place barriers against the coming into their province of young men from western Canada, I, at least, thought this was a country where freedom of movement on the part of the people was guaranteed under the British North America Act. True, some young people have come into this province from the west.

Mr. WARREN:

Many of them.