Mr. STEWART (Winnipeg North):

I

wish to talk about wartime housing for a few minutes. I do not like Wartime Housing Corporation or what it has done. It has been most dictatorial and dogmatic in its approach to the municipalities. I can speak with some authority in respect of one municipality and that is the city of Winnipeg. A tremendous storm gathered at the idea of these potential slums being built in Winnipeg and objections were made not only to the corporation but, I am informed, even to the minister; yet nothing came of them. These dwellings were put up, some in my constituency and some in other constituencies in the city of Winnipeg. By and large they are a waste of money. In the Elmwood district we are spending $300 thousand on wartime housing, and these homes, as I said, are potential slums. Men are coming

back from the war and they will go into these houses. They will not regard them as homes but merely as places of shelter which they will leave as rapidly as possible. There are no basements in these dwellings. Representations were made to the corporation that basements are needed in Winnipeg. We have been told by Wartime Housing that dwellings no longer have basements. There are none in the modern type of building, but I would point out that buildings of that type cost $10,000 and not $3,000. The fact that they have no ' basements is serious. In the first place, those who will occupy these houses will be young couples. They will have children, and usually babies play on the floor. The floors in these houses will be appreciably colder than the area two or three feet further up. Therefore the children will be subject to chills and colds and possibly pneumonia.

When we objected we were told that the specifications were the same all across Canada.

I wrote a letter on July 2 to the minister in which I said that the specifications in Winnipeg are not the same as for Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, and other areas, so that apparently there is no uniformity of design by Wartime Housing Limited. I received from the department the answer that "the statement that the houses being constructed in Winnipeg differ from those being built in Moose Jaw, Saskatoon and other points is not according to fact." In other words, they denied what I had stated. "I am assured by the officials of Wartime Housing," the letter said, "that they are exactly the same as those built in other municipalities in the west. The fact of the matter is that the houses are uniform, and the by-laws and regulations of the various municipalities differ widely. Wartime Housing units are being built to conform to a national building code, and the only deviation from the code is where we have had to substitute materials which are unobtainable or in short supply." I asked the department a question which was answered on page 607 of Hansard. It seems to me that there must be a good deal of confusion in the department in view, of the conflicting answers given. I suppose that the Minister of Reconstruction sometimes answers half a question and the Minister of Munitions the other half, because they do not tally. I asked the question:

Are building specifications for these houses the same in each of the cities mentioned?

The answer was a categorical and very short no. I should like to know what the situation is. I see no reason why basements

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could not -have been built in these homes. The digging of the basements would not have used materials which were necessary or vital to the war effort. They could have been excavated by a couple of bull-dozers in a week, and the addition of basements would have given the occupants a sense of permanency which they will never have. We are told that these are only temporary structures. Well, it is a rather expensive undertaking if these are only temporary structures, for we are spending $30 million this year on such buildings. But the committee knows that there is nothing temporary about them. They are built and they will stay there. In the same area there w'ere homes built allegedly on a temporary basis after the last war and they are still there. They were built without basements, and the people have had to excavate basements for themselves in the course of the years. After the houses have been constructed it is ten times as difficult to dig a basement. Worse than that, the specifications call for insulation which is not at all like those of normal houses in Winnipeg. There are no doors on the cupboards, and that is a cheap and unnecessary sort of economy. There are wooden eavestroughs. Perhaps that may be necessary in time of war when metal and zinc were short, but I hope that wooden eavestroughs are not going to continue. There is no power wiring. The expenditure of another $30 per building would have put power wiring in these houses. When you have no power wiring you have this result. A woman would have seen this; most men would pass it up. In the summer time you have temperatures of eighty or ninety degrees in the shade. If you want hot water for a bath you have to put on the kitchen range or the stove; that is the only possible way you can get hot water in these houses. Because we are chiseling to the extent of $30 on power wiring, we are putting people to all sorts of inconvenience and discomfort.

What is more, these houses do not meet the specifications laid down by the by-laws of the city of Winnipeg and, heaven knows, they are not too strict as things are now. But wartime houses come nowhere near the by-laws. Objection has been taken to that fact, but we were told we have to get houses and the only way we can get them is to take this offer of Wartime Housing. The city council said: "We cannot argue; we have to take what we can get." For the expenditure of another twenty-five per cent these houses could have been made permanent structures. I think it is a very poor form of economy indeed to build such homes. As it is, I am certain that they

are going to descend into hovels and eventually into slums. The objection that has been riised to the houses in the particular areas in which they are built has been raised by working-class people who do not object to low-rental housing and who do not object to cheap dwellings. After all, their own boys and girls are going to settle in these homes. In this community as in other communities we find that through the years the people have been industrious and frugal. They have saved a little money; they have managed to establish an equity in Canada. They have bought their own homes. Now they find, cheek by jowl with houses which they have built, these wartime structures which everybody is convinced will not last. I know soldiers who have applied for them. They have done so for one purpose only, and that is to get shelter for themselves and their families, and then to get out of them just as fast as they can. They are houses in which the tenants are going to take no pride at all. When people take no pride in their homes we know what happens.

There is another point on which I should like an answer from the minister to-night. I brought it up before, but he was not here at that time; perhaps he missed it. Wartime Housing put out a long questionnaire. There are many questions on the form. There are two questions which are entirely unnecessary, and I should like to see them knocked out if it has not been done by now. One question is: "What is your nationality?" The other question is: "What is your religion?" The men wrho are getting these houses are the men who fought for Canada. They fought overseas as Canadians. They were not Jews or Gentiles, Catholics or Protestants, believers or unbelievers; they were Canadians, fighting for Canada. They died for Canada in the same way and were buried in a common grave, united at last in the common bond of death. I think it is atrocious that any government department should have the audacity to put these questions on any form such as that which Canadian soldiers have to answer. I only hope that the minister to-night will tell this committee that these two vicious and iniquitous questions will be knocked out of the questionnaire.

Mr. HOWE:

I should like to ask my hon. friend if he knows of any case where the information given was used to the detriment of the man who gave the information?

Mr. STEWART (Winnipeg North):

I know of no case where the information was used to the detriment of any man. But why are these questions in there if they are not for a discriminatory purpose? I do not say they are.

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and Supply

Yet, if they are not for a discriminatory purpose, they are entirely unnecessary; they are redundant; they have nothing to do with the right of a soldier to get a home, surely.

Mr. HOWE:

It seems to me they are questions that a man answers very frequently. I know a great many blanks which a man fills in. To become a soldier I suppose he had to fill in that exact information.

Mr. STEWART. (Winnipeg North): Why

should a soldier have to answer that? What has his religion to do with his right to have a home, or his nationality either?

Mr. HOWE:

No reason at all, but there are certain activities in connection with Wartime Housing where it is rather important to know that. For instance, it affectu the school accommodation and Wartime Housing does something in the way of assisting schools. Sometimes it has to supplement the separate schools and sometimes it has to supplement Protestant schools. It is well to know what the problem is to be. Wartime Housing also builds church accommodation.

Mr. ROSS (Souris):

Community churches

and schools.

Mr. HOWE:

It is a good idea to know

just what the needs of the tenants are. My hon. friend is denouncing Wartime Housing and all its works. I only wish he could convince, say, the people of his same political faith in his city who are hounding me continually for more and more. I deny absolutely that we are building an inferior house; I deny that we are building a temporary' house. I claim that we are getting better value for the money we are spending to-day than any other builder. We are the only agency today building houses which will range in rent 'from $22 a month to $31 a month. We can build basements, yes, but the only effect would be to raise the rent of the occupants from S6 to $7 a month. There is no agency that subsidizes such houses. We build them and rent them at an economic rent. We believe that there is a requirement in the field of $22 to $31 rents. If any man wants a. better house there is nothing to stop him from going and renting a better house at the price the better house would cost. We could very easily satisfy that need by building a different type of house, but we think that can be very well left to private interests. The man who can afford to pay a higher rent can perhaps make his own arrangement. We are dealing with houses that we regard as the minimum comfortable house at this time.

My hon. friend says that there is no pride in the tenants. I wish he could see some 47696-1441

of the developments in Canada. I wish he could see the one at Sea island in Vancouver, as beautiful a residential development as one could see. I should like him to see some at Windsor and Hamilton. I think he is talking without having explored the situation in any way whatever when he says there is no pride of possession, in the owners of these houses. The gardens around these houses are a treat. Our housing projects are well operated. We do not really stop at being landlords. We operate community halls for each group of' houses. We have a person whose duty it is to see that good conditions are maintained in each group of houses. It is his duty to see that something is done in the way of serial welfare. Certainly everything is done in the way of maintaining the houses. I have read speeches from people who know very little , about the houses. The surprising thing is that tenants, who should know a great deal about them, communicate with me very seldom. I never go to a city that has a group of wartime houses without dropping in on the development and dropping in at random on two or three of the tenants to ask them how conditions are, and I may say that the impression I have gained is quite different from the speech of my hon. friend who has been denouncing an institution that I think is beneficial under present circumstances.

Mr. STEWART (Winnipeg North):

I shall not answer the minister's points just now, but I should like to know definitely from him whether he is going to keep these questions about nationality and religion in these forms?. I do not think the answer he gave was at all convincing. If the corporation wants to know what the conditions are with respect to the building of schools, then it must put the questionnaire before the entire community in which they are building these homes. I think these questions, are completely unnecessary, and I should like a definite answer from the minister.

Mr. FLEMING:

There is some information I should like to obtain from the minister. The item we have before us contemplates a total expenditure for the year of $30,000,000 on housing development. In his statement this afternoon the minister indicated, if I understood his statement correctly, that this was to provide for 7,000 houses to be built. I have some questions on the 7,000 houses. If the information is not readily available I am quite agreeable to its being brought down to-morrow. I take it from the minister's last statement that he classifies the 7,000 houses as permanent?

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Mr. HOWE:

Yes; we never build anything else.

Mr. FLEMING:

Then I shall put it in this way. How many of the 7,000 houses are being built with foundations and how [DOT]many without?

Mr. HOWE:

We have noted the question.

Mr. FLEMING:

Out of the 130,000,000 there had been spent in the first five months of the fiscal year something less than $1,000,000. How many of these 7,000 houses have now been constructed? On how many has construction commenced but not yet been completed? Within what time will construction be completed? Do the 7,000 houses include those contemplated for veterans? If they do not include any being provided under the Veterans Land Act, how many of the

7,000 have been earmarked for occupation by veterans? I take it that information will not be available to-night. .

The minister indicated this afternoon that the houses are to provide a need in the field of low-rent housing. To use his own words, "They are to hold the situation." I take it that he contends there is some lack in this field which would not otherwise be provided. In that regard I should like to ask this question. I think in the first place the committee would like to know what is the estim-. ated rent and in full detail how it is arrived at. In the second place, what is the cost of the sites? If any'of these are being provided by the municipalities concerned, are they being provided on the basis of donations, fixed taxes, or fixed assessments? Are there any subsidies involved, directly or indirectly, in arriving at the rent which is estimated?

What relationship have the 7.000 houses to those which are intended to be built by Housing Enterprises of Canada Limited? Much has been said about the efforts of this new housing company, formed under part II of the National Housing Act to provide houses. We have been told that already an attempt is being made to construct integrated housing in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Does the figure of 7,000 houses estimated here bear any relationship at all to those houses?

. I have some further questions on the subject of building materials.

Mr. HOWE:

I wonder if the hon. member would ask his questions to-morrow. I had intended asking the committee to rise at this time so as to permit the transaction of other business before eleven o'clock.

Mr. FLEMING:

I have not many more

questions. Perhaps if I put them on record now, it would save time to-morrow.

Mr. HOWE:

Would the hon. member

put them on quickly?

Mr. FLEMING:

The next group of questions is on the subject of the requisitioning of materials.

First, what quantities of building materials are being requisitioned at the present time by Wartime Housing Limited, or by the government?

How long does the government contemplate that either it or Wartime Housing Limited will continue to requisition material?

Has any account been taken of the possible liability that private builders may be under for breach of contract-in consequence of materials on which they were depending being requisitioned by the government or by Wartime Housing Limited?

What quantities of building materials has Wartime Housing Limited1 or the government on hand at the present time?

What quantities of two-andk>ne-half inch nails are in storage in Toronto, in the hands of either the government or Wartime Housing Limited?

Does the government still expect that private builders in Canada will build 40,000 houses in the first year after victory?

What is the number of employees of Wartime Housing Limited? Is there any reduction of that number in prospect? Is there any accompanying reduction in the activities of Wartime Housing Limited in prospect in the near future?

Item stands.

Progress reported.

The house in committee of supply, Mr. Macdonald (Brantford City) in the chair.