Mr. BRYCE:

We know as much about it as you do.

The CHAIRMAN:

Order.

Mr. ST. LAURENT: But with respect to that I commend the argument made by the hon. member for Kamloops, in which he cited chapter and verse and text of the Immigration Act and the Naturalization Act which provided that this could be done, in some cases should be done, by the governor in

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council, and called attention particularly to the fact that among the undesirables are those who, by the laws of a country at war with this country, are also subjects of the enemy country, and asserted-and I think he was fully justified in making the assertion'-that subjects of the Japanese race naturalized here nevertheless by the laws of Japan remained subjects of the enemy country. Japan, though it has surrendered its armed forces to the allies, is still in the position of an enemy of this country. It is stated that even those born of Japanese parents in Canada are by the laws of Japan, Japanese subjects. There is something which raises a serious question.

It is unfortunate that questions of that kind should arise. It is unfortunate that there should be any civilized nation that cannot carry out to the full the spirit and the letter of articles 55 and 56 of the charter of the united nations:

55. With a view to the creation of conditions of stability and rvell-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, the united nations shall promote:

a. higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development;

b. solutions of international economic, social, health, and related problems; and international cultural and educational cooperation; and

c. universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.

56. All members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in cooperation with the organization for the achievement of the purposes set forth in article 55.

But human nature for a long time has been what it is to-day. The Samaritans of the days of our Lord were people with whom the Jews had no contact or no relations, and the parable of the good Samaritan gets its point precisely from the fact that the Samaritan was one despised by all Jews. Human nature is such that you cannot in an instant make it over; and it is difficult to conceive that a group of persons of the Japanese race, known as our hon. friends from British Columbia who have lived alongside of them say they know them, can become a part of a united community here which would respect to the letter every tittle of this undertaking we have pledged ourselves to carry out under the terms of the charter of the united nations.

I am not advocating that these people should be deported, but I am calling attention to the fact that there do arise situations where general principles have, for other reasons, to be excepted from, departed from, in some cases. It so happens that the War 63260-85 J

Measures Act is no longer applicable. Anything which might be feared from the exercise of undue authority under the wide delegation of powers from parliament contained in that act cannot happen now. I hope this country may never be in a position when it can happen again. But those who have real responsibility have to discharge such responsibility as results to them from the statutes in the form in which they are from time to time applicable and from the implied responsibility which they put upon those on whom they confer power.

The other paradox which this journalist, in describing the "spy probe" referred to, I think does pretty well characterize the situation. He says:

Liberals were not merely embarrassed, many of them were deeply distressed by the suspension of habeas corpus and the whole business of detention, interrogation and confession, with its strong odour of tyranny. Regardless of the guilt or innocence of the accused, many Liberals feel that the necessity of these extraordinary measures has not yet been demonstrated. And of the cabinet, they're inclined to blame the Minister of Justice for having hearkened too readily to the R.C.M.P. True, all the government did was carry out the recommendation of a royal commission, but Liberals have a sneaking suspicion that the recommendation might have been a little less drastic if it had met more opposition.

I do not agree, but I am not challenging anyone's right to hold that opinion.

What is the minister reading from?

Mr. ST. LAURENT: From the last issue of 'Maclean's-. "Backstage at Ottawa, by The Man with a Notebook." I do not know who the man with a notebook is, but evidently he has seen what has been going on in the house.

Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):

That is

because he met the woman with a feather duster.

Mr. ST. LAURENT: He concludes in this way:

But don't let all the fuss about this civil liberty issue blind you to the fact that it's a purely parliamentary dispute. All parties in the house know that if. by any wild chance, they could have defeated the government on the question of its spy probe procedure, the government could have gone to the country and won a smashing victory.

This may be one reason why the other parties didn't mention the issue in their amendments to the address in reply.

My hon. colleague suggests I do not agree that habeas corpus was suspended. No; I stated on a previous occasion that habeas corpus was not suspended, but the order in council was such that when it was brought

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before the court and an order in its terms produced before the court, the result would be what the result was in the Gray case, where the habeas corpus writ issued and where it was quashed when the order in council upon which the man's detention had been made was produced to the court on the return.

I have no quarrel with the Winnipeg Free Press. The Free Press has great traditions. It was my privilege to know and to be for a considerable time in the company of its late editor, that great Liberal, Mr. John Dafoe. I know how keenly he felt about this, and how strict he would have been in applying every tittle of that undertaking in the charter of the united nations. I know the respect which he enjoyed of those who have succeeded him, and I am not surprised that they should persist in that attitude. The respect we have for them does not make it necessary for us to share all their views, and need not blind us to the fact that there can arise situations, such as those which the hon. member for Kamloops dealt with so effectively in his argument, which must be taken into account in administering affairs for which one has any responsibility.

Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):

I begin by adding my-

That's a joke.

Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):

I might even try that;.you cannot tell. I begin by paying my compliment to the hon. member for Kamloops. He must be in a strange position: praised by the Minister of Justice on Wednesday and damned by his colleague the night before. Thus doth politics strange bedfellows make. When one sees two ministers, one relying greatly on him and the other tearing him apart, one can see to what point certain people have been driven in supporting an impossible proposition.

I do not intend to follow the Minister of Justice seriatim in what he said. I am ready to agree with him that the late John Dafoe was a great man, but just what that has to do with this bill I do not know. Apparently the Winnipeg Free Press has been dexterized, or something of that sort since and it now occasionally takes a different point of view.

The minister read from the Bankruptcy Act, but he did not read from the Evidence Act, which I intend to do. Section 5 provides:

No witness shall be excused from answering any question upon the ground that the answer to such question may tend to criminate him, or may tend to establish his liability to a civil proceeding at the instance of the crown or of any person.

The section which applies is that famous section 5, with which all lawyers are familiar,

I Mr. St. Laurent.]

and which provides protection for the individual unless it be specifically taken away. It provides for the protection of the individual in giving evidence in other proceedings, and he is liable then only for perjury.

Let me go a step further with respect to the Bankruptcy Act because of some practical experience which I have had with it. Even though no protection has been asked for I know that the criminal courts in my province have refused to accept statements by a bankrupt pertaining to charges which were later laid against him. Therefore in that province at least we give him the usual protection.

The Minister of Justice said that if we can have creditors ask questions of a bankrupt- I am not using his exact words-is it not reasonable to suppose that when we had these employees-"we" being the government of Canada, I take it-and learned that they had given information to a foreign power could we not ask them about the matter? Certainly you could. No one has ever doubted for a moment the right of an employer at all times to ask questions of employees in such circumstances. But take a look at the man by the name of Shugar. This is not sub judice at the moment; it is a matter which has been disposed of. It is not merely a matter of asking questions of a suspected person. I hold in my hand a press clipping from the Ottawa Citizen of April 25. This is what he says:

Kept in absolute ignorance of the reason for his arrest for the first three days of his incarceration, Dr. Shugar said he was kept under constant guard in a small, stifling hot room measuring nine feet by eight feet and in which a two hundred-watt lamp, completely unshaded, burned continually. This lasted for fifteen of the twenty-eight days he was held at Rockcliffe, he said.

From then on he went on a hunger strike, as we all know, and so on. That man appeared before the royal commission. He was charged. The evidence was all brought before the court and a magistrate of this city found what? He found that there was not even sufficient evidence against him to warrant a commital or being remanded for trial. What does that mean? In the language that a layman can understand it means that the crown did not produce sufficient evidence which, if unanswered, might lead a jury to convict That in very simple and lay language is the rule which guides magistrates.

The minister then went back some years ago. I am quite sure he had some assistance in making the studies of Hansard when his party occupied the benches over here. I am quite sure he has had that, but it will be

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observed that in each and every case he mentioned it took place in war time. These things were not done in war time. I believe the Gray case came up in Calgary in 1918.

Mr. ST. LAURENT: It was not the Gray case that was in Hansard. I referred to Hansard of 1932 and it had to do with a period when the same political party was in power.

Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):

I realize that. I am going back to the Gray case. If I remember correctly, that came from my own home city. But these were all detentions under a statute. Let me go a step further. I am going to ask the minister this simple question. I appreciated the difficulty that he had when he spoke before. I appreciated his frankness in saying that it gave him very great concern indeed when he had the order made. In view of what happened since, does the minister not think it would have been infinitely better if the other side of his mind had prevailed and the orders had never been signed?

Mr. ST. LAURENT: The minister does not agree. He had to take a grave responsibility, but still feels that it would have been a greater responsibility, in view of the existence of provisions which enabled to be done that which was being recommended to him, to refuse to do it.

Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):

Then why the reluctance to sign the order? The minister never had any doubt about it, apparently.

Mr. ST. LAURENT: I did give it serious consideration, because in my case at least when a serious matter has to be decided I do not just jump at the decision; I turn over the arguments for and against it and try to come to a reasoned as well as a reasonable decision.

Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):

In other

words, the minister does the same as everyone else tries to do in coming to a conclusion; he tries to give it some thought.

Mr. ST. LAURENT: Yes.

Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):

With the

great oration the minister made just now that is how he came to the conclusion.

Mr. ST. LAURENT: The hon. member

was giving the impression that I never had any hesitancy about it.

Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):

I thought

the minister used the word "reluctance" some time ago. I believe he did. However, we shall let that part of it pass.

I shall now turn to the bill itself. The impression has been given that here we are doing something contrary to what has been

done in the United Kingdom. I wish to clear that up by reading a short extract from the eleventh edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britan-nica," volume III, page 943. The extract is headed:

Bill of Rights.

On February 13, 1689, the declaration of right was delivered by the lords and commons to the Prince and Princess of Orange, afterwards William III and Mary.

In December, 1689, the rights claimed by the declaration were enacted with some alteration by the bill of rights, next to Magna Charta, the greatest landmark in the constitutional history of England and the nearest approach to the written constitutions of other countries.

The reason I read that is this. We have been told that we have all these rights by common law, and so on; but in the mother of parliaments it is a matter of a statute, and has been so for one hundred and fifty years. I am not suggesting that the British legislation is in the exact form of the amendment moved here, but let us get away from this idea that there is anything wrong in putting in statutory form a bill of rights which, as far as personal liberty is concerned, is all the hon. member for Lake Centre has been trying to do.

I very much enjoyed the address of the Minister of Justice in which he poked fun at the hon. member for Lake Centre. I was glad the minister promoted the hon. member to be Minister of Justice, and I am inclined to think the promotion will become a fact perhaps just a little sooner than many of us anticipate. The minister being at the moment the substance and we the shadow, I am sure he will agree that when the hon. member for Lake Centre becomes the substance he will make a very fine minister indeed. I am sure everyone will agree with that. But all this amusement, which caused great applause from hon. gentlemen opposite; this statement that you are the substance and we the dhadow simply amounts to this, that you are in and we are out. We know that, and quite frankly we tried to get in but failed. Is there anything more to. be said about it than that? But it does not mean for one moment that, being the shadow, we here do not accept our responsibilities, particularly in public utterances about statutes of this country, just as seriously as anyone on that side of the house. Democracy means, of course, that you must have an opposition. I am sure the Secretary of State is grateful to hon. members on this side for two suggestions which he has adopted by way of amendment to his bill, one coming from this party and one from the hon. member for Winnipeg North.

I do say this, Mr. Chairman, and with it I. am going to close. We on this side have

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constituencies as well as hon. gentlemen opposite. We also try to represent all the people of Canada, just the same as hon. gentlemen opposite do. The newspaper which the hon. gentleman read said they would have won a wonderful or a smashing victory; and public sentiment at that time being uneducated and: not knowing the facts, I believe there was some justification for that view.

Oh, oh.

Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):

That may be amusing, but I am just giving you a few facts. I am glad you are laughing over them and not crying; that time has not yet come. With respect, however, I say that we have advanced this suggestion seriously. We had hoped the minister would accept it. I know it is outworn, but we believed that in the so-called1 spy cases things were disregarded which should not have been disregarded. So that when this bill does pass we say, please believe that we have contributed our share. No citizenship bill should be political, and we here have not approached it in that way.

Mr. STEWART (Winnipeg North):

Mr. Chairman, I always listen to the Minister of Justice with respect and admiration, but today he was disappointing. The mountain groaned in the pangs of birth and lol a mouse was born. The _ right hon. gentleman gave me the impression of shadow-boxing, but he could not locate the shadow; his footwork was slow. The burden of part of his remarks was to the effect that there was nothing new in the interference by parliament with the citizens. That I concede. As far as these spy cases go, however, we are objecting to the interference with the citizen by the executive, without parliament knowing anything about the matter. However, I shall deal with that a little later on.

There is a confusion of thought among certain hon. members to my right which I should like to see cleared up. The hon. member for Kamloops, to whom I refer again, said yesterday in all sincerity, I take it, as reported at page 1304 of Hansard:

We have Always regarded ourselves as free men. We have taken it for granted that ours is a heritage of freedom. Ours is the proud attribute of those who can say, "We are free, and no man can impose on our rights unless we consent." That surely is one of the greatest possible attributes of Canadian citizenship.

I quite agree, but as far as I am concerned that applies to all Canadian citizens, no matter what their colour, their creed or their sex, and in the mind of the hon. member for Kamloops I do not think that does apply to all Canadian citizens. That is where the confusion of thought arises. In this party to my

right are certain members from British Columbia who will wholeheartedly support the hon. member for Lake Centre in his justifiable demand for a bill of rights, and who then will turn around when we get to section 16 or so of the bill and demand that Canadian citizens be deported from this country. How can they reconcile this in their own minds? There is only one way of achieving some sort of reconciliation, and I put it up to the leader of the opposition. I hope this will be drawn to his attention; I do not see him in the house at the moment. I put it up to the leader of the official opposition that it is his responsibility to this parliament and to Canada to state explicitly the policy of his party in regard to the deportation of Canadians of Japanese descent. I want to know where we stand on this business of citizenship, because there has been a lot of hot air about it in this house. I want to know, too, where the Liberal party stands. The Minister of Justice said he wras not advocating that the Japanese should be deported. What does the government advocate? We know what the Minister of Veterans Affairs advocates. We do not know what the Minister of Justice advocates. I think we know that the Secretary of State would oppose the deportation of Canadian citizens, if we are to believe his words as they appear in Hansard. All right, then; I think it is the responsibility of the government of Canada to state here definitely what is to happen to Canadian citizens of Japanese descent. Either this act of citizenship means something or it means nothing; and if it means nothing let us tear it up and stop wasting the time of this house and of the country.

I listened to the remarks of the hon. member for Lake Centre. I thought he put up an excellent case indeed, and no one could question his sincerity on the matter of fundamental civil rights or the rights of any citizens at all. But when he was asking for this bill of rights thoughts were running through my mind. Was he speaking for his party to-day? Had he forgotten the history of his party, how time after time it has taken away the rights of Canadian citizens? Might I remind him of what happened in 1919, before the Progressive Conservative party had its face lifted. I would remind the hon. gentleman that in that year Mr. Meighen, who was a member of the government and who afterward rose to the prominence of leader of the Conservative party, had to deal with a situation in Winnipeg known as the general strike. On one occasion during that strike ten Canadian

Canadian Citizenship

citizens were arrested, and what did Mr. Meighen do? He sent a wire to Winnipeg, the contents of which were as follows:

Notwithstanding any doubt I have as to the technical legality of the arrest and detention at Stony Mountain, I feel that rapid deportation is the best course, now that the arrests have been made; and later we can consider ratification.

That was the concept of justice, democracy, citizenship-call it what you like-of Mr. Meighen in 1919. A man would be arrested and thrown into prison; and after that the government would validate these actions. That was the time, may I remind the house, when the founder of the C.C.F., the late Mr. Woodsworth, was arrested. I believe I should tell The house, in the speech he made at Winnipeg, his actual quotation from Isaiah-and for this he was arrested and charged with seditious libel-was: "And they shall build houses, and inhabit them." I think that text ought to be given to the Minister of Reconstruction.

The Minister of Justice dealt with the amendments of 1919 to the Immigration Act. I should like to quote from page 4017 of Hansard for 1926 when my predecessor in the constituency of Winnipeg North, Mr. Heaps, spoke. Might I add that Mr. Heaps was one of those who suffered in 1919. In connection with the amendment to the Immigration Act he said:

A bill which was introduced in this house which took away from a British subject the right of trial by jury, one of the foundation-stones on which the whole system of British jurisprudence has been built up in the course of many a century. Yet it received all its readings and was passed in the course of twenty minutes. The bill was passed in another house in an equally brief period. Its enactment into law therefore took only the short space of forty minutes. Under that act men in Winnipeg were arrested and were to be deported.

And Mr. Manion, trying to allot the blame fairly, said, as reported on the same page:

In fairness to the Conservative members in this house, is it not true that in respect to that bill which my hon. friend says passed the house in twenty minutes-I was a member of the house at the time-there was not only no protest from the Conservatives, but no protest from the Liberals or the Progressives at that time?

You were all in it. All parties in the house took away the liberties of citizens in 1919. Have you changed so much in these intervening years? Are the faces so new, or are the names or the labels new? We have no guarantee at all that such a thing will not happen again, given another wave of hysteria in this country. That is why it is essential that, despite our common law, despite magna charta and habeas corpus we must have some

protection for Canadian citizens in this country, and a bill of rights might perhaps give some protection additional to that which now exists.

Speaking in the debate yesterday, the Secretary of State quoted Tennyson:

A land of settled government,

A land of just and old renown,

Where freedom slowly broadens down From precedent to precedent.

That poem referred to Great Britain. My colleague, the hon. member for Vancouver East, suggests that it be brought up to date, amended, and applied to Canada, in which event there might be a slight change:

A land of settled government,

A land of just and old renown,

Where freedom slowly narrows down From order in council to order in council.

Mr. MARTIN:

Not quite as good poetry as the one the hon. member quoted first.

Mr. COLDWELL:

Not quite as good a poet, either.

Mr. STEWART (Winnipeg North):

I

should like to deal briefly with this order in council P.C. 6444. Here was a secret order in council under which the government arrested certain Canadian citizens. It has been said in the house that there were no such things as secret orders in council. The Minister of Justice said that he forgot-and I accept his word, without reservation whatsoever. He forgot. But how many lapses of ministerial memory will occur in the future? Furthermore, can we possibly legislate against such lapses, in the hope of securing safety for citizens in Canada? I doubt it. very much.

These people were arrested and held in a barracks, as was pointed out by the hon. member for Calgary West. Some of them were held in a small room, with a bright light blazing on them all the time, day and night, although this was denied in the house, too. Well, if that is British justice, if that is Canadian fair play, I do not know the meaning of the words, at all.

I should like to remind the committee of what the Minister of Justice said when he was talking about coroners. He said that the Royal Commission had no more right than a coroner to condemn those in custody. But what were the words of those estimable gentlemen who make up this royal commission?

We were not impressed by the demeanour of Shugar or by his denial, which we do not accept. In our view we think he knows more than he was prepared to disclose.

The magistrate said there was no ground upon which a prosecution could properly be

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brought, and he very properly rebuked two of our supreme court judges. But these judges had already given their decision against this man whom the magistrate found innocent.

Of course we need some security for people in this country, greater security than I think this government is prepared to give us.

Another statement made last night by the minister was this:

The protection under our system depends upon two things: first, the guarantees provided by the common law and set forth in part in Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights; and second, the fundamental democratic tradition and the British operation of parliament itself. Those are the guarantees relied upon in our system, which the government believes to be the best way of guaranteeing the rights and freedom of the subject.

That is lovely, but it means nothing. In the first speech I made in the house I directed most of my remarks to the Minister of Mines and Resources, who is responsible for immigration. I said then that the practice of this government so far as immigration was concerned was to have different classifications for citizens coming to this country. You had preferred types; you had non-pre-fererd types, and even those lower than nonpreferred who could come in only under special permits-the Turks, Italians, Armenians and Jews.

When I hear a government espousing a citizenship bill, and asking that the rights and privileges of citizens be observed,- while at the same time denying those rights and privileges in such a flagrant way, I have my doubts about the good faith of that government, even though I can accept the word of the minister. As a matter of fact, however, I do not accept the word of the government in this regard, because I believe they will flout democratic principles whenever they feel like it.

The Secretary of State, like the Minister of Justice, spoke of these great freedoms for which Liberalism always stood. Then the minister went on to mention the Japanese question, and showed how Liberalism had desecrated its own principles. I have asked the leader of the official opposition to make a statement of the policy of his party with respect to Japanese-Canadians. I should like to see the leader of the house do the same thing. .

Before this debate is concluded I should like to hear the Minister of Mines and Resources tell the house that discrimination in connection with the immigration laws will no longer be permitted-or will this bill be just another Pharisaical presentation to the house?

I would refer to a speech I made last September, when I asked that there should be a bill of rights. I had been in the house for only

two weeks, and I was optimistic. I thought the Liberal government might possibly see some reason in a bill of rights. Now I admit that the possibility of amending the constitution is something more than remote, so that we shall have to incorporate such a bill of rights in legislation.

When speaking on second reading of this bill I said that we should have a bill of rights. When the hon. member for Lake Centre introduced his amendment I thought it was one I could support. But a more careful consideration of the matter and a more careful reading of his amendment convince me that it is one which I cannot support. It is not because I disagree completely with the principle. contained in the words of the amendment, for I find myself in agreement with much of what is said; what I disagree with is the narrowness and restrictiveness of the amendment. A bill of rights surely cannot apply only to a small group of people in the community; a bill of rights should apply to every man, woman and child in the country. This amendment would have the effect of making its principles apply only to those who receive certificates of citizenship and, to my mind, that is too narrow and too restricted. It does not constitute a general bill of rights because of its restrictiveness, and on that basis I shall have to oppose it.

I think the hon. member for Lake Centre and I see eye-to-eye on many things in this bill. It is no secret that I intended to move an amendment to the preamble of the bill, where I thought such an amendment properly belonged. The amendment was to have been as follows:

Whereas this act establishes Canadian citizenship it is deemed advisable to reaffirm the bases of that citizenship and to assert that the following rights shall belong to every Canadian and shall be held inviolate-the right to civil, religious and political liberty; the right to freedom of the person, of speech and associaton; the right to equal treatment before the law:

I would suggest to the hon. member for Lake Centre that he consider withdrawing his amendment and substituting the one I have just read. There would be nothing unusual in having such an amendment to the preamble. After all, we did a similar thing in connection with the united nations charter which we accepted last year by which we pledged ourselves to reaffirm our faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and the worth of the human person, and in equal rights for mankind. If it were agreed that such a declaration of faith be made to the world, then to that extent we should make the same affirmation of faith to the people- of Canada.

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Mr. COLD WELL:

Reference has been made to the revocation of naturalization certificates which it is provided may be done through the courts or by a commission. I should like to know the position of a British subject by naturalization granted in Great Britain or in Australia or in New Zealand. Have we the right to ask the court here to revoke that naturalization certificate? Have we the right to revoke it ourselves?

Mr. MARTIN:

Section 25 provides for their concurrence.