Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister) moved:

That on and after Monday the 13th March next to the end of the session, government notices of motions and government orders shall have precedence on Mondays over all other business except introduction of bills, questions by members and notices of motions for the production of papers.

Hon. R. J. MANION (Leader of the Opposition) :

Is this the motion to wipe out private members' day?

Mr. MACKENZIE KING:

On Monday next.

Mr. MANION:

If this carried, Monday next would not be private members' day?

Mr. MACKENZIE KING:

No.

Mr. MANION:

I wish to say a few words with reference to this motion. Let me make it clear that I have no personal objection to the wiping out of private members' days if there are any important government measures to come forward, though I have no doubt that some private members will have some objections. As I look down the list of government measures dealt with so far and compare those measures with private resolutions already disposed of and other private motions still on the order paper, it strikes me that the business proposed by private members is much more important than anything the government has brought down to date.

I have been intrigued on a number of occasions this session by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) lecturing the house about the importance of getting on with government business. Last Wednesday, for example, he rose and gave us a real tonguelashing because we dared to take up some of the time of the house in dealing with the munitions contract with the Janin company.

I have been wondering exactly what is government business this year. There are the trade agreements, for instance, and we have been accused of holding them up. Are they

Precedence jor Government Business

government business? I should think they are, and rather important business. Then there is the Bren gun contract and the Janin contract, contracts involving with other expenditures an outlay of some $63,000,000 this year-that is the total amount of the defence department estimates. Yet, both we and hon. members to my left were violently attacked last week by the Prime Minister because we dared to discuss the letting of contracts, not by public tender, not even from a selected list, but, so far as I know, to pets of the Department of National Defence, or at any rate, to pets of this government. When I listened to the Prime Minister last week getting so enthusiastic on his subject, attacking us because the hon. member for Vancouver North (Mr. MacNeil) brought up the question of the shell contract, let to one who is the builder of the post office here, a gentleman who is a contractor for the construction of public buildings-

Mr. MACKENZIE KING:

Is this in order, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. MANION:

I am discussing the reasons relating to whether we should go into government 'business or continue in private business on a certain day, and I think I am quite in order.

When I heard the right hon. gentleman even bring up the phantom of war, as he did the other day, to frighten the people, I suppose without any more basis for it than there is a basis for very much that the right hon. gentleman says; when he did that, and dodged the question that was put to him whether he favoured or agreed with the letting of contracts by the Department of National Defence without competition to pets and favourites of this government or of the defence department, I could not help thinking he was taking a rather serious attitude. I doubt whether the right hon. gentleman the other day, when he stood up in this house and implied or made a statement to the effect that we are possibly on the verge of war, had anything at all in the back of his head except the idea of evading the question put to him as to whether he favoured the giving of contracts on that basis.

Mr. SPEAKER:

Order. I think the hon. leader of the opposition is getting rather far away from the subject of the resolution. The motion is to take away Monday as private members' day, from Monday next.

Mr. MANION:

Well, sir, of course I accept your ruling. At the same time I say that to me the letting of contracts to spend $63,000,000 on defence is certainly of very much more importance from the point of view of 71492-1024

public business than a number of things that have been dealt with as public business.

I am arguing that the questions which the Prime Minister submits that we should not discuss in this house at all, which he is now ruling out by proposing to take away private members' day, are more important than the matters he calls public business. I am going to deal with some of these for just a moment, to show the difference. Here is a list of matters called public business dealt with so far this session; let us see how important they are. There was of course the speech from the throne. Then, supply. Supply comes in as a sort of filler-in; it is one of the measures 'brought in when we have not anything else to proceed with. When the government runs out of its regular business it brings on supply. While the estimates are in a sense public business, they are not important enough or urgent enough to have everything else sidetracked in order that they may be dealt with.

Then there was a bill amending the Food and Drugs Act, brought in by the Minister of Pensions and National Health, dealing with cosmetics and making a few other little changes in the regulations of that department -just the ordinary type of bill that every department tries to bring in from time to time. I have had enough experience in government to know that every department likes to bring in, every year or two, a few amendments to the act governing that department. That is the type of government business that was.

The next item I have noted here is the legislation authorizing the raising of $750,000,000 to meet loans and obligations, brought in by the Minister of Finance. Certainly it is important, but it is in fact just one of the things, perhaps the most important, that merely give the house an opportunity to discuss the inflationary ideas of the social crediters. Then there was the bill of the Minister of Justice relating to penitentiaries, perhaps one of the most important, though to my mind not so very important. This suggests a reflection. The penitentiaries bill was to set up a commission to govern the penitentiaries of Canada. I am just as humanitarian as my right hon. friend the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) or any other hon. member. I believe in humanitarian treatment of prisoners. But I submit-

Order.

Mr. SPEAKER:

Order. I think the hon. member is straying too far from the subject of the resolution. The resolution moved by the Prime Minister is to take away Monday as private members' day.

1618 COMMONS

Precedence for Government Business

Mr. STEVENS:

On a point of order, sir; perhaps the leader of the opposition would be diffident about advancing this point himself, but one of the most widely accepted practices in the House of Commons is that the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition be given reasonable latitude when they are dealing with questions on the orders of the day or concerning the procedure of the house. Never in my experience in the house have I ever heard any leader of the opposition called to order on such extremely narrow grounds as this. Strictly speaking there may be some slight departure from the details of the motion, but the motion concerns the business of the house and the conduct of it, and I submit on that ground that the leader of the opposition ought to be allowed to proceed, upon the precedent and practice of this house.

In the second place I invite your honour to give special attention to this point: How can we intelligently discuss the motion before us unless we are allowed to review the measures which are government measures and those which are private, and to weigh the question whether or not private members have had reasonable opportunity to present their views?

Mr. LAPOINTE (Quebec East):

But not to debate the merits of those questions.

Mr. STEVENS:

Not at all; but my leader was just reviewing the character of those measures. I do not like to use the word that has been used in the past in this house, more by my hon. friends opposite than by others, the word "gag"; it is an objectionable word, but it is very expressive. If we are to be confronted by an overwhelming majority applying restrictions of this kind, then the democratic liberties of parliament will indeed have been restricted. I submit that on grounds of practice and on a reasonable interpretation of the rules-your honour I am sure will agree that no rule can at all times be applied on its narrowest interpretation-there must be some reasonable latitude. I bespeak myself on behalf of the members of parliament that the leader of the opposition should on this occasion be accorded the ordinary latitude that has been given to the leader of the government and the leader of the opposition in this house from time immemorial.