Mr. MARTIN:

Are you against the bill?

Mr. ROWE (Dufferin-Simcoe):

His department should be called the department of political expediency, because it has a "gunshot" prescription for everyone. The minister tries to please my friends to the left, and he tries to please my friends on the right.

Mr. LAPOINTE (Quebec East):

With indifferent success.

Mr. ROWE (Dufferin-Simcoe):

He has not pleased you and he has not pleased me, and after the election he will not have pleased himself. I ask him what he has done to regulate supply? There is not an hon. member who does not know that for ten years, independent of what party has been in power, we have shut our eyes to the problem of meeting world conditions. We have told the

flVlr. W. E. Rowe.]

world that they must pay what we asked them for our wheat. We fixed the price of our wheat and they bought wheat from the Argentine. We haphazardly marketed our bacon and they bought Danish bacon.

Mr. MARTIN:

Are you against the bill?

Mr. ROWE (Dufferin-Simcoe):

My hon. friend from Essex East does not know anything about the bill. Someone says he does not know a horse from a cow. I do not know whether he does. In all fairness, Mr. Speaker, let me say that we have in this country a problem which is beyond joking in this house. I say we must face this problem. I so pleaded with the government which has gone out of power. I am pleading with the government which is now going out of power.

Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):

Which is going back into power.

Mr. ROWE (Dufferin-Simcoe):

I say to the minister, who probably would make a better leader of the government than the right hon. gentleman who is absent, that the chief reason why his government is going out of power is because it has failed to face this problem. I ask, Mr. Speaker, how long do you expect Canadian agriculture to be the " loss leader " of the type of economy we have in this dominion? How long do you expect the farmer to work for ten cents an hour while he pays the price for the man whoworks for a dollar an hour? How long doyou expect him to pay the penalty of protected industry? How long do you expect him tocarry on and to save this country from

collapse? He has saved it through the most difficult years of its existence. We must meet him part way.

When I asked the Minister of Agriculture what he had done to standardize our agriculture in world markets, he said it was done under another bill. Surely there are no more bills coming. Why are they brought in during the dying hours of the session? Why were they not brought in years ago?

Mr. GARDINER:

That provision has been on the statutes for years.

Mr. ROWE (Dufferin-Simcoe):

Yet we find that Denmark, in her supply of bacon to the old country markets, varies not five per cent from week to week, while under our present administration of the Department of Agriculture our supplies to the British market vary up to 55 per cent.

Mr. GARDINER:

They are the best in quality that they ever were.

Agricultural Products-Marketing

Mr. ROWE (Dufferin-Simcoe):

Why should they not be? Progress knows no retreat.

Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):

Hence this bill. .

Mr. ROWE (Dufferin-Simcoe):

What has been done to meet world competition? The Minister of Agriculture changes his policy from day to day. He raises his ante in election bids from week to week, and now asks for a blank cheque in order that he may homestead on the back concessions, looking in election year for votes at home rather than for markets abroad.

Mr. GARDINER:

We have no concessions in our part of the country.

Mr. MARTIN:

Are you against the bill?

Mr. SPEAKER:

Order.

Mr. ROWE (Dufferin-Simcoe):

We cannot expect, by giving the minister any such arbitrary powers, to restore the levels of farm incomes. We need an aggressive and consistent national policy which recognizes the difficulties and complications of changed national and international conditions. We must give first consideration to home markets for our own farmers. Surely there is no one who will disagree with me when he realizes that we in this country consume approximately 85 per cent of all that we produce. The greatest market for agriculture is the home market. Therefore we must foster our home market first. Then there are the secondary markets for our surplus foodstuffs, particularly within the British empire.

There is a feeling in Canada to-day that our government must offer subsidies to our farmers. I have no strenuous objections to that, provided the subsidies are in the national interest and are made under a defined national plan, and provided the federal treasury can afford to make expenditures of this type. I believe it is important for the government to make certain that the investment shows some sign of returns in prospect. Some years ago I suggested that we should have a national export board in Canada and that we should have a bonus policy for high grade products so that they could be placed on the markets of the world in competition with the rest of the world. Perhaps my suggestion fell on deaf ears. But it seems to me that the present policy of the government is to stay on the back concession lines and bid for the support of men under local conditions rather than meet world conditions.

If we are to embark upon a policy of farm subsidies the government, I submit, should plan to give some consideration to the following requirements. It should give some consideration to a diversified and intensified agriculture, not to wheat alone. It should give some consideration to soil improvement. Inducements should be offered to farmers who put a larger proportion of their acreage into legumes and fertility restoring crops. Improvement payments should be forthcoming to farmers who take measures to prevent further destruction of the soil by erosion. Inducements could be offered to farmers to produce products which Canada now imports from other countries, because we do import considerably from other countries. Despite the fact that we are floundering along, trying to find markets overseas, we import thousands of head of cattle and thousands of dollars worth of animal fats. Some consideration should be given to the transference of marketable crops into industrial consumption. But what this country needs more than anything else is a national export plan to sell our surplus products on the markets of the world in face of organized international competition.

These suggestions would require no coercion or control. Farmers would simply have the choice of taking advantage of the inducements or of following their usual routines in accordance with modern supply and demand.

It is questionable whether we can offer the farmers of Canada permanent relief through any process of purchasing their surplus crops and holding those surpluses as threats over future crops.

A national export board rather than a local control board is justified at the present time. We must meet world challenges rather than consider domestic expediency. We must face new problems in new ways; we must meet national challenges with national policies. New nationalized marketing policies of almost every supply country in the world constitute a practical competitive condition such as Canada has not been forced to meet before on the export market. This militant competition of state-directed marketing monopolies has already demonstrated its ingenuity and efficiency in world markets. We, therefore, must find a sound, sane and comprehensive plan to distribute our surplus products more systematically in face of this new form of state-assisted competition.

Local organizations, inspection and different forms of competition are all important for our domestic markets. But may I suggest that they are more or less provincial, in authority and in constitution. I believe it is the responsibility of the dominion government to coordinate provincial organizations towards a greater nationalized plan to dispose of our surplus products.

Agricultural Products-Marketing

The bonuses, subsidies or subventions which may be necessary must be directed nationally to encourage in our agricultural export products higher quality, more standardized grade and greater regularity of supply.

Our agriculture has been haphazard in the past and it has now become local. It is sectional so far as western wheat is concerned; it is seasonal for the live stock producers in the east. It has grown to be almost political. We must encourage mixed farming by means of a national policy applicable to all parts of Canada, designed to stabilize prices in our great domestic market through the necessary national export assistance which we now know is so essential to meet the new form of competition in world markets. It is all very well in these last days of the session to let things go by the board and to neglect those issues that touch the very heart of Canadian prosperity. Do hon. members realize that even in old England they have spent $40,000,000 to subsidize agriculture? Do they realize that in Italy and Germany, indeed in all the old countries of Europe, the governments have had bonus policies and have endeavoured by every means possible to make their countries self-sustaining? They have introduced a nationalized export policy with the result that to-day we in this dominion are faced with a situation such as we have never had to contend with in the past. Do hon. members know where Canada will sell its wheat in the future?

Mr. HAYHURST:

This bill deals with products other than wheat.

Oh, oh.