Mr. HANSON (York-Sunbury):

It never

got that far.

Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):

This is

a little confusing, because the chairman knows as well as I do that a majority of the members of that committee were supporters of the government.

Mr. MacNICOL:

Exactly, and you could

not get anywhere.

Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):

When

there would be brought before the committee the question of investigating any particular contract, it is useless to say that a member had the right to investigate it, because he had not. I would point out to the minister that it would be a great deal more satisfactory if he would accept the suggestion made by the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) that this body should be made as non-political as possible, by having an equal representation of government and opposition members, possibly with the exception of the chairman. I supposed that I had the purpose of the committee straightened out in my mind, and I can now quite well understand why there has been much confusion with regard to the matter.

The minister said that one of the primary functions of the committee was to see to it that a dollar's worth of work, goods or services, was obtained for every dollar spent.

Mr. THORSON:

That is the objective.

Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):

I submit

to him that that is an utterly impossible ideal to set before the committee in view of the fact that it did not investigate a single contract. How in the world could they find out, for example in connection with a contract submitted for the manufacture of aeroplanes, whether a dollar's worth of services was rendered for each dollar spent. That would have been a useful avenue to follow with regard to some of the larger contracts.

Mr. THORSON:

Name some of those

contracts.

Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):

I could

name some of the aeroplane contracts. I could also name some in connection with gasoline. My information is that it would be well worth our time to go into some of them.

Mr. CASTLEDEN:

And wartime housing.

2026 COMMONS

War Expenditures-Mr. Johnston (Bow River)

Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):

There is

suspicion all over this country-the minister will admit it-that huge profits are being made. In instances where it is suggested- and there are good grounds for the suspicion -that excessive profits are being made, it would have been well for the committee to make an investigation. It would have cleared up a tremendous amount of misunderstanding and, by tending to raise the morale of the country, have definitely helped our war effort.

At six o'clock the house took recess.

After Recess

The house resumed at eight o'clock.

Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):

When the house rose I was discussing the apparently confused . operations of the war expenditures committee. It seems that there has been a great deal of confusion over the order of reference relating to this committee. It must be evident to the house that there should be a clarifying of this order of reference. I was interested in the remark of the Minister of National War Services (Mr. Thorson) in regard to the Department of Munitions and Supply when he said it was one of the greatest achievements of the war. He pointed out that under this department something over a billion dollars had been spent in the setting up of government-owned industries. I think the minister is perfectly right in saying that the Department of Munitions and Supply is one of the most important departments of the government at this time. I have persistently maintained that that department, which controls the production of this country, is most important, and we should not overlook the fact that that department should have, shall I say, a thorough investigation, not that I am trying to imply that the minister in charge is inefficient in handling that department, but in view of the great importance of that department.

The Minister of National War Services also tried to differentiate between a secret session and a session held in camera. I agree with the greater part of that statement; I can see a decided advantage, if it is properly handled, in the committee itself sitting in camera, if it is clearly understood that when the report of the committee is brought back to the house and concurrence in that report is moved, the members of this house in secret session be allowed to go into every detail of the work that was carried on in the com-Jiittee. I do not think it is right that that committee should carry on its work in camera and the members of this house as representa-

tives of the people of Canada have absolutely no information as to what was going on. It is also a matter of note that members of this house are ignorant of what policies or recommendations of the committee were accepted by the government itself. I recall just lately one of the members who was on that committee stating that he did not know of one recommendation of the committee that was adopted by the government. That seems to make the committee useless.

I also note that in the entire work of the committee they had only eighty-three sittings. That does not seem to be anything approaching a thorough investigation of the problems set before that committee. The work was thought to be so voluminous that the committee divided itself into three parts, each part taking a separate portion of the work. But my understanding is that never did those three subcommittees sit at the same time, on the same day; the reason being that there was a shortage of reporting staff. That is rather shocking, when 3-ou think of a committee of that size going to all the trouble they did go to, staying here in Ottawa away from their own work during those six weeks; yet one of those committees at least had to sit idly by because the reporting staff was not large enough to. take care of the three subcommittees sitting together. Therefore it seems to have been useless to set up three subcommittees, especially when they worked only two or three hours a day.

I am not trying at all to belittle the work of the committee, because from reading the record I know that a great deal of strenuous work was carried on by it. Yet I am told that there was a great deal of confusion among the members of the committee themselves, not knowing where they were going. I hope that having had the experience of the past year's work in that regard, the Prime Minister will see to it that those difficulties are removed.

The work of the committee must necessarily entail a great deal of interviewing of officials from different departments to get the detailed information that the committee requires. But I cannot bring myself to believe that the committee will ever get anywhere unless it examines more thoroughly into the contracts, regardless of what the Minister of National War Services said, as chairman of that committee, that it was not a fact-finding committee. I really do not know what that term involves. He said it was not the function of the committee to investigate particular contracts. I think there will have to be a reexamination of the order of procedure of the whole thing.

War Expenditures-Mr. Johnston (Bow River)

Giving all due credit to the members of the committee for the work they did and the laborious time they had, I often doubt whether the results were worth the efforts made. It may be recalled that, speaking in the house a couple of weeks ago, referring to this committee, I expressed the opinion that the scope of reference should be widened to include production and the organization of production. I am more convinced now than I ever was that that is our problem, and that is why I referred a moment ago particularly to the Department of Munitions and Supply. If we are going to win this war we must get rid of that inferiority complex, saying that we are doing well enough. When a question is put to a minister in regard to contracts with a certain company, the reply is usually, "Well, that company has more contracts now than it ever had in its history." That is no answer to the question at all. Surely to goodness in war time it should not be a matter of whether or not a company has more contracts than it ever had before. The point should be, is it producing to capacity; could it produce more if certain changes were made. Perhaps we have now reached the point where some headway can be made, for in my opinion that is the most important question confronting this nation at the present'time, and it seems to be the question that is most evaded.

I do not want to belittle the suggestion that the saving of money is important, but, after all, that is not my great concern at this time. I think money should be made the servant and not the master of this nation. I do not want to criticize the Minister of Munitions and Supply (Mr. Howe) too severely, but I am quite convinced that he is not capable of carrying on the tremendous work of placing orders, checking those orders, checking costs and all the other work that is entailed in seeing that the production organization of this country is such that we can carry on at maximum capacity. The expression has often been used, even by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) himself, that we are doing a marvellous job, that we are producing 100 per cent to capacity. Certainly that is not correct, and I think it is the wrong sort of propaganda to be putting out to the country. The fact is that though I have visited a number of factories I have never found one which, in my opinion., was doing what it should be doing, that is, working to anywhere near capacity. For us to go out and tell this nation that we are producing to capacity is, in my opinion, breaking down the morale of the people. They have only to walk by the factories to see the situation. They see

some of them closing at five o'clock in the afternoon. They go by the employment offices in the cities and see hundreds of men unemployed. Finally they reach the point where they say, "Well, if the government is not more concerned about the safety of the empire than that, why should we worry?"

I have spoken to men working in certain factories. I have been told that the manager of a plant deliberately told his men that they must not work so quickly. One chap told me that the manager of a factory producing war material had this to say to him. This man's job was boring holes in pieces of iron. The foreman of the factory said, "We want you to drill fifteen holes to-day". The man replied, "Why, I can drill thirty." The manager said, "We are not asking you what you can do. We are telling you to drill fifteen." The man answered, "All right; I will drill two if you say so." This is the sort of thing that should be looked into by this committee, I contend, and this is exactly what I want to point out to the Prime Minister. I do not think the Minister of Munitions and Supply has time to investigate all these cases, but when members of this house have information such as this, I believe the committee should conduct a thorough investigation. Another man in the same factory, whose job was sawing metal, told me that the foreman said to him, "When anyone comes by, pretend you are cutting this piece of steel in two." Imagine that; he was to pretend he was doing some work!

We know that in the past delegations of workmen have come to Ottawa to interview various ministers. These skilled mechanics have come here from factories producing army trucks, and so on. They did not come to ask for any increase in wages; they came to complain because the factory was deliberately slowing down its .production. I do not need to tell hon. members what plants I have in mind; they know. These are perhaps the three largest plants in Canada. If the cabinet have not already interviewed another of these committees, they soon will be meeting a group of men who are coming down to see them in regard to paper production in Canada. I was astonished to hear, as I think the Prime Minister will be astonished when he hears, that although those in charge of the salvage campaign are advertising far and wide that there is a great shortage of paper and that we must save every scrap of paper we can, there is one large paper mill in this country which, in war time, is working only three days a week.

2028 COMMONS

War Expenditures-Mr. Johnston (Bow River)

Mr. HANSON (York-Sunbury):

Where is that?

Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):

That is the Abitibi plant.

Mr. LACROIX (Beauce):

And the St. John

Paper company in Quebec.

Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):

I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that with a situation like that there is simply no use in talking about an all-out war effort, or in trying to keep up the morale of the people. These fellows said to me on the train, "You ought to walk down the streets of our town and hear what the people are saying about our war effort."

Mr. McIVOR:

I do not think that is generally true, and I can give examples to the contrary.

Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):

I am not going to permit the hon. gentleman to interrupt like that.

Mr. SPEAKER:

Order.

Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):

I want to ask you this, Mr. Speaker. Is it true in one instance? If it is, that is a crime. If it is true in the case I mentioned and in connection with the factory mentioned a moment ago by the hon. member for Beauce (Mr. Lacroix), here we have two factories at least that are working only part time. The mere fact that the hon. member for Fort William (Mr. Mclvor) knows of one factory working full time is not evidence of an all-out war effort.

Mr. McIVOR:

I know of more than one.