Mr. SPEAKER:

The leader of the opposition has referred to a remark I made about asking questions on the orders of the day. I think it is in the mind of every hon. member of the house that we are likely to continue for some days. Where a question is not one of

urgency then it should conform to the rules of the house and be placed on the order paper. If questions are to be permitted to be asked on the orders of the day they must be reasonable in their claims as to urgency.

Mr. BRUCE:

Knowing that members of

the administration desire to see in advance what questions are to be asked I sent a copy of this question to the minister about midday. If we are to be denied the privilege of asking questions on the orders of the day, there will be no need to send them copies in advance.

Mr. HANSON (York-Sunbury):

You do

not have to do it anyway.

Mr. SPEAKER:

The mere fact of sending advance notice of a question to a minister does not mean that the question may not be as much out of order as the minister replying to it. In this instance I have no doubt that the question ought to be placed on the order paper.

Mr. J. H. BLACKMORE (Lethbridge):

Mr. Speaker, this house and the country have a right, I believe, to hear a definite statement of the position and the attitude which is taken by the Social Credit movement with regard to the San Francisco conference and the Dumbarton Oaks proposals which are declared to be the basis of the discussions at San Francisco. May I deal first with the situation generally and then state specifically the Social Credit attitude to the Dumbarton Oaks proposals and to the proposals of Bretton Woods which Dumbarton Oaks necessarily involves. Then may I set forth the Social Credit attitude to the general idea of establishing a world organization to ensure peace.

In September, 1939, parliament met in special session, the last session in the life of that parliament, to meet the peril that faced the nation because [DOT] of nazi Germany's acts of aggression which brought Great Britain into the war. On that occasion the Social Credit group in the house took an uncompromising stand against the rest of the members in the house when they urged total mobilization of Canada's resources in finance, industry and

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man-power as being essential for the total war effort that would be required to meet the grave peril we faced. At that time Canada could have given leadership in the world and it might have had a profound effect upon the subsequent trend of the war. However, the government chose to be guided by its advisers and adopted policies dictated by considerations of compromise and political expediency. Subsequent events have proved the rightness of the stand the Social Credit members took in 1939.

On this occasion parliament once again is meeting in special session, the last in the life of the present parliament, to deal with a new world situation. Once again the Social Credit members find themselves in honour and duty bound to take a stand which is likely to conflict with the government and hon. members of the other parties. Once again we find ourselves compelled to challenge the policy which this house is being asked to endorse and to warn hon. members of a new peril which faces our country, a peril far greater in some respects than we faced in 1939.

On this occasion the government is asking us to approve a policy which if made effective would, with military victory in sight, result in the loss of the fruits of that victory and of everything in defence of which Canada entered the war. The Canadian people were told that we went to war for the defence of democracy, that we were fighting for the preservation of human freedom against the threat of slavery in a totalitarian world. Since then, under the stress of war conditions, we have moved with growing rapidity toward a totalitarian state and now we are faced with the very real danger of becoming vassals of a world dictatorship to which we are required to surrender our sovereignty and with it every vestige of our constitutional democratic rights and liberties. That is the issue which is before the house, and every other issue pales into insignificance beside it.

I know some hon. members will be inclined to treat our warning with impatience, as being too fantastic to consider seriously. Hon. members will remember that they treated our proposals about conscription in the same manner. Who was right? I make a special appeal to hon. members not to be too hasty in their judgment until they have considered the facts. And the facts are very simple.

The basis of this thing we call democracy is the sovereignty of the people. Democracy, government in accordance with the will of the people, can exist only if the people have complete sovereignty to order their affairs in

accordance with their will, through their parliament, provincial legislatures and local governments.

The essential spheres of sovereignty are three: First, the country's economic institutions; second, the country's political institutions; and third, the country's armed forces which exist to protect the nation against any threat to its sovereignty. The sovereign authority of the people is effective to the extent that they exercise control over these institutions. That is to say, the more decentralized is the power of control and1 the nearer the people are to the institutions of government, the greater is the measure of democracy. Centralization of control is destructive of democracy; remote control is destructive of democracy; the weakening of sovereignty is destructive of democracy.

Strange to remark, Mr. Speaker, during the whole of the past thirty years we have witnessed in the world a wide-spread attack being made against democracy and decentralized or democratic institutions. A type of society has been spreading throughout the world which is the opposite of the democratic concept. Its basis is the centralization of power and the control of the people by a ruling group-a set of planners. We call this type of state, totalitarian, because all the power of control is centred in those operating the institutions of the state-political, economic and military. It was against the threat of having this kind of dictatorship imposed upon us that we went to war.

Now the government is asking this house to approve a policy which involves the establishment of a world organization under an executive body which would have effective control of the armed forces of all nations and could mobilize economic sanctions against any nation for the purpose of imposing its dictates. That is what the Dumbarton Oaks proposals involve which are to form the basis of the San Francisco conference. However, those proposals cannot be considered without reference to the Bretton Woods proposals, which involve a centralization of economic power on a world scale by setting up a world authority with control of the monetary policy of all nations.

It will be argued that the Dumbarton Oaks proposals specifically provide that each nation is to have its sovereignty. But what is the use of talking nonsense like that when you at once proceed to set up an organization where it is impossible for any nation to have its sovereignty?

It will be argued that the Dumbarton Oaks proposals envisage the control by each individual state of its military forces until it

San Francisco Conference

surrenders it. But there will be such mechanism set up in this whole arrangement, including Dumbarton Oaks, UNRRA, the monetary fund, the international bank and all the rest, that such pressure will be brought to bear on any nation which hesitates to surrender the control of its forces that it will be obliged to surrender those forces in order to subsist.

Thus we find that the policy that the government is asking this house to approve involves the surrender of Canada to an international authority of all effective sovereignty and the concentration of power in an alien-dominated international group over, first, our economic policy, second, through this, our political policy, and third, of the armed forces. In short the power of the proposed international authority will be absolute. Every vestige of effective democracy will be destroyed and Canada will become a vassal state under an overriding international dictatorship. The British commonwealth will be swallowed up in a federated agglomeration of servile states. The relationship of this parliament to the world authority would be that of a Canadian village council to-day to this parliament. Human freedom would be a mockery, and we would have a world totalitarian dictatorship fastened upon us until conditions became so intolerable that a universal revolt would destroy it. And, Mr. Speaker, the design of the planners of this whole set-up is that when this universal revolt occurs there will be fastened upon the people in their helplessness and uncertainty and chaotic condition another dictatorship which will be one of military power.

These words may sound extreme, but the more they are contemplated the less fantastic I think they will sound.

I cannot understand this government, which under the present Prime Minister has always professed such jealous concern for the preservation of Canadian sovereignty against any measure of control from Westminster, being so anxious to surrender every vestige of effective national sovereignty to some, as yet unspecified group, whose interests cannot by the very nature of things be identified with those of the Canadian or any other British people.

I find myself in the contemplation of this thing completely astounded, Mr. Speaker. It was hailed by the Liberals and by many other people as a great achievement when in 1926 the Balfour declaration was issued defining the British commonwealth as being composed of autonomous states, equal in status and in no way subservient or subordinate to one another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs. What has passed over the

world in the brief space of twenty years that makes it desirable now to destroy not only the newly acquired national status of those states but also whatsoever democratic control we enjoyed prior to the imperial conference of 1926? Anyone who finds himself at a loss for a problem to solve may dig his teeth into that one for a while.

The Social Credit movement believes that Canadians and other British peoples of the commonwealth are fighting the forces of totalitarian aggression for the preservation of their constitutional democratic rights and privileges, and for the application of those in a properly functioning post-war democratic order, free from the evils of the pre-war social system. The Social Credit movement further believes that the basis of a properly functioning democracy must be the complete national sovereignty of the people in ordering their affairs, and the greatest possible decentralization of the power of control.

One thing which has astounded me, Mr. Speaker, during the last four years is that we have never been able to find1 in our Reader's Digest or any other of the periodicals which are supposed to be progressive-products of the intelligentsia!-any evidence of a concentrated attempt to find out how to make democracy work. All we have been able to read is articles undertaking to show that democracy cannot work and that we should not try to make it work in future.

Social Crediters contend that the discovery of the machine and the highly improved technological skills of the past century have rendered it more and more possible for people to be free, and that consequently the democratic freedom of the people should be increasing rather than decreasing.

Finally, the Social Credit movement believes that the proposals for the centralization of economic control on a world scale through a world monetary authority backed by armed force of overwhelming strength and involving the centralization of political power on a world scale, which was formulated at the Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks conferences, and which is to form the basis of the forthcoming San Francisco conference, would, first, involve the surrender of every vestige of effective national sovereignty; second, destroy Canada's democratic constitution; third1, place this nation at the mercy of an alien-dominated international power; fourth, render Canadians helpless to effect a democratic reconstruction of the national economy in accordance with their wishes; and, fifth, establish an armed world dictatorship wielding absolute power.

San Francisco Conference

We are therefore utterly opposed to the establishment of any international organization which involves the surrender of an effective national sovereignty to a central authority vested with power over parliament and the legislatures of Canada and able to enforce its dictates by economic sanctions and the use of force.

But some people, I fancy, are wondering and are asking, how do you propose to have effective cooperation among the nations for the preservation of peace? Mr. Speaker, all I point to is the record of the British commonwealth and the British empire. There were those who argued in 1914 that the reason Canada participated in war by Britain's side was that she had to, and that the same was the explanation of the reason the other members of the commonwealth participated. But what shall be said of the participation of those members of the commonwealth in the present conflict since, in 1926, they had been declared equal in status to the British motherland? They cooperated freely. The Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) has rejoiced over that and we have rejoiced with him. We cooperated freely. Why? Because we realized that there were at stake principles which to us are sacred. Are we to be told that it is impossible to get France, and Denmark, and Norway, and the South American republics, to take a similar point of view and to understand their own interests in a way similar to that in which we understood our interests, and that it is therefore impossible to get them to cooperate in time of grave peril in their own interest? To suppose such a thing, is, I submit, a reflection on the intelligence of mankind generally. So that it is not necessary to presuppose a central power with the ability to force people to do the right hing.

Mr. HANSELL:

The wrong thing, sometimes.

Mr. BLACKMORE:

Quite so. This is the Social Credit position. There are those who argue that we do not favour an international organization or understanding to preserve the peace. That is utterly false. The thing we are opposing at this time is the method to be adopted of attaining that organization, the machinery to be set up and the technique to be followed.

Mr. HANSON (York-Sunbury):

Well, do you know of a better 'ole?

Mr. BLACKMORE:

We do.

Mr. JAQUES:

We don't know of a worse one.

Mr. BLACKMORE:

The Social Credit

movement wrill give its full support to the establishment of a world peace organization- the hon. member for York-Sunbury (Mr. Hanson) can see what he thinks of this-under which, first, each nation retains its complete sovereignty to order its affaire in accordance with the will of the people; second, undertakes to maintain adequate armed forces-if the hon. member will just listen he will hear a lot which will be good for him. No wonder the hon. member is so hard to teach, when he is talking when he ought to be listening. May I interrupt there for a moment or two to make a comment? It is said quite freely that the reason why the league of nations broke down was that the United States was not in it and Russia was not in it and this nation and that nation were not in it. The reason the league of nations failed to stop Japan from going into Manchuria and Man-chukuo was that the whole body of people who were in the league of nations collectively did not have the military force to stop Japan. Why did not they have that military force? Will somebody explain that? And what guarantee have we that under the Dumbarton Oaks arrangement the individual members would maintain a sufficiently powerful military force?

I have given two conditions under which Social Crediters will support an international organization. I proceed.

Third, each power undertakes-here is where our programme will begin to hurt somebody- to go to the aid of any other member of the association of nations who is the victim of armed aggression. Now we undertook something similar to that, if I recall aright, under the league of nations. But when Ethiopia was in danger, and it was proposed that Canada should come to its aid by oil sanctions-what was the result?

Mr. HANSON (York-Sunbury):

We retreated.

Mr. BLACKMORE:

Yes. Why? To keep out of war! It sounds ludicrous to-day, does it not? What was the main reason we withdrew? Because we did not have the military strength, and all the members of the empire did not have it, and the United States along with us did not have it, and France did not have it, and we knew we could not enforce our demands.

Mr. HANSON (York-Sunbury):

We did not have the will to do it.

Mr. BLACKMORE:

The reason we did not have the will was that we did not have the strength. That was all.

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I have mentioned three conditions under which Social Creditors favour an international organization. Fourth, each member undertakes to prohibit its nationals from owning or controlling any property or economic undertaking in another sovereign country. The significance of that measure for avoiding war will not be appreciated without a considerable amount of study and thought; but that is one of the most important measures, and if that stipulation is not embodied in the arrangements we make, all our attempts at attaining international peace will be futile.

Fifth: Each nation undertakes not to export goods to any other nation, except in payment for imports from that nation, without the consent of that nation's government. That sounds as though it were going to touch somebody's pocket; consequently that stipulation will not be very acceptable. But the embodiment of the last two undertakings will go further towards producing a peaceful condition in this world than all the achievements of several San Francisco conferences.

Finally: Each state undertakes to receive payment in goods and services for any debt owing to its nationals. Do you need a Dumbarton Oaks, with an international police force, to enforce these regulations? All you need is good neighbourly sincere faith and honesty in approaching facts as they are in the world.

By requiring that each nation should, first: prohibit its nationals from owning property in another state; second, refrain from exporting goods into another country against its government's will, and, third, agree to accept goods and services in payment of any debt, Social Crediters provide for the removal, or at least the partial removal, of the main cause of war.

Is there any provision for any one of these stipulations in Dumbarton Oaks, or in Bretton Woods, or in any of the other conferences which have been held? Not a sign of it! The main cause of war is economic. That has been mentioned by half a dozen venturesome souls in this debate already. Fact-facing individuals who are honest and sincere acknowledge that the main cause of war is economic. Economic in what way? In the ways I have indicated.

Here is the general situation. Each nation in the world is in danger constantly of having an adverse trade balance. That is number one. Each nation in the world is in danger of falling into unpayable debt. All members of the house recognize that truth with respect to Canada. Each nation in the world faces the danger of being unable to obtain the goods it

needs on which to live; this, either because it cannot produce enough goods to pay for the goods it needs, or because it cannot get other nations to accept the goods which it can produce to trade for its needs.

There is the situation, and I submit that the very first thing that statesmen of the world must do, the first thing that members of this house must do, if they really, sincerely and honestly intend to remove the cause of war and produce in this world a state of freedom from war, is to grapple these problems head on, to put their teeth into them and to stay with them until they find the solution. And the solution is not to be found in any of the vapourings we have heard in this house up to the present time, with the exception of a little hint here and there in the speeches of this person or that person. There has not been a hint of it in the Prime Minister's speech, not a hint in the speeches of most members who have risen and with enthusiasm supported him. There was not even an indication that they understood that the problem was there.

I wish to point out to the members of the house that neither Bretton Woods nor Dumbarton Oaks recognized this fundamental difficulty nor prescribed any means of overcoming it. This fact casts suspicion upon the whole method of procedure being followed by the united nations and makes any fact-facing individual of sincerity and honesty ask himself this question: Do the experts not understand the real cause of war? Do the men who were at Dumbarton Oaks not understand the real cause of war? Why, it seems hardly possible. If they know anything at all about economics they must know that. Well then, if they understand the real cause of war and are not regarding it, then are they merely deluding the people, or, worse still, are they craftily striving to attain some selfish ulterior objectives?

Social Crediters doubt these men and suspect foul play. Social Crediters have what they believe to be overwhelming evidence to show that there is operating in the world to-day a gang of men who can be classified as international financiers. These men engineered the first great war with its cost of millions of human lives. They engineered the peace at the close of the last war and they engineered this war with a definite objective to be attained. They are responsible for the colossal loss of life and property that has been endured by the world in this conflict, and they are seeking through the peace treaty conferences to attain the objective for which they engineered the war.

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What are their aims? It has been possible to trace their aims through confidential documents, confidential statements hidden away here and there from the beginning, from some months before the last war right up to the present time. The objective they] intend' to achieve is an international dictatorship of finance so that they will be able to have themselves or their particular pets appointed to the governing positions, and will be able to wave the wands that will force nations to bow. And the methods they propose to use are debt, taxation and centralization of power. Any member who sat in this house and who has worried about the rapidly mounting debt in Canada, as everyone has, will have plenty of evidence that these men have been attaining their objective quite effectively ini this country.

To Social Crediters both Dumbarton Oaks and Brett on Woods are steps along the way to the attainment of the objective these international financiers have set themselves; and virtually every piece of mechanism included in those proposals indicates that it was designed to be part of a scaffolding for the erection of the structure which is ultimately desired. Dumbarton Oaks, through the indirect use of Bretton Woods, is definitely designed to gain control of the credit and finance of every nation. Of course it is still in its infancy; you do not see the huge claws which the tiger will later grow; you do not see the powerful teeth that by and by will become evident. But just imagine what it will grow into 1 Dumbarton Oaks is designed to cause every nation to surrender its power.

Just to test this for a moment or two let me talk to my C.C.F. friends, for whom I have *much respect because I believe they are honestly trying to find a way out of the difficulty, and let me address these words also to the Prime Minister. If suddenly the. world should become a British empire, a British commonwealth, would they favour the establishment of a Dumbarton Oaks for the British commonwealth? No, they would not. They would fear a threat to Canadian freedom. Then why not work for the British commonwealth, instead of for the destruction of the British commonwealth? I doubt that ten per cent of the members of this house would support a Dumbarton Oaks for the British empire; and the mere fact that they would not support that should warn them against the dangers of supporting a Dumbarton Oaks in which power might be placed in the hands of peoples ill informed and numerous, strange and utterly incomprehensible to us. I wonder if the members of the C.C.F. or the Prime Minister or the Liberal party would favour the establish-

ment of a Bretton Woods scheme in the British commonwealth. They would not, for one moment. They would sense a threat to Canadian liberty. Then why build up one in which China's millions, India's millions, Java's millions, the Japs and the Russians will be able to out-vote us by ten to one?

The organization envisaged by Dumbarton Oaks is somewhat similar to that which obtains in the United States; I believe that is what the Dumbarton schemers are planning. Has that organization removed poverty or insecurity in the United States? Has it enabled that country to distribute its goods among its own people and give them the good things industry in that country should enable them to enjoy? Not at all. Then what guarantee have we that Dumbarton Oaks will do for the world what a similar organization could not do for the United States? That is an important matter. *

During the course of a speech which I took the liberty of delivering in this house on November 27 last, as appears at page 6630 of Hansard, I quoted from an article by Paul Einzig in the London Daily Express of August 10, 1944, in which he characterized the Bretton Woods proposals as a "menace." He concluded his article with these portentous words:

The return of the gold standard under a cloud of obscurity must be prevented if this generation and the next are to enjoy the hard-earned fruits of victory.

What does that mean? It means that everything the men are fighting for will be lost if this Bretton Woods project succeeds.

Mr. SPEAKER:

The hon. gentleman has spoken for forty minutes.

Mr. BLACKMORE:

I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that it will be a good thing if every member of this house does a great deal of very serious thinking about these two proposals before making up his mind as to the attitude to be taken by our delegation to San Francisco.