Mr. COLDWELL:

I wanted to be clear on that. What we would have to do would be to consult the government of the United Kingdom, for instance, and if they concurred, then this action would be proceeded with?

Mr. MARTIN:

That is right.

Mr. CHURCH:

Mr. FULTON:

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that several references have been made this afternoon to my remarks with regard to the Japanese, because it allows a reference to them now to remove from the committee an impression which may have been left as a result of the extraordinary distortion of my statements which was made by the Secretary of State in his speech last night. He said, as reported at page 1310 of Hansard, after having read a statement of my own:

He discharges his conscience with the remark that most of the Japanese are not citizens.

The Secretary of State was asked by the hon. member for Vancouver South to read a little farther on, but this the minister refused to' do. The purpose of the remarks which the minister quoted was to show that the steps proposed by the government under order in council were not steps against Canadian citizens. That was the whole case. Whether it be right or wrong is a different matter. My whole case was founded on the assumption that the Japanese dealt with are not Canadian citizens. The minister was pressed to continue the quotation but he did not, so that I will now complete the quotation for him by adding the sentences immediately following. After having said that most of the Japanese affected are not citizens of Canada, I went on to say:

They are not being deprived of their citizenship by order in council. I would be among the first to object to such a step.

But when the minister came to those two sentences, instead of reading them, he said, "and so on." I am not going to impute motives. I merely repeat the remarks now and draw attention to the fact also that therein may be found the answer to the question raised by the hon. member for Winnipeg North.

The second quotation from my speech that was made by the minister was taken from page 624 of Hansard. Again he was pressed by myself to give the whole of the quotation, but this he refused to do, saying "I am making my speech now." I submit, Mr. Chairman, that that is not strictly acurate , because the minister was making my speech-

Mr. DIEFENBAKER:

Making it over.

Mr. FULTON:

-and distorting it, or as my hon. friend, the member for Lake Centre says, making it over. I do not object to the minister reading a passage from my speech if he will read the whole of it.

Mr. HOMUTH:

It might do him a lot of good.

Mr. FULTON:

The remarks which I made, and which were not quoted by the minister,

[Mr. Church. 1

were based on my thesis that the people sought to be deported are not Canadian citizens. The minister just read those portions which suited his desire, and since he refused to continue the quotation when pressed to do so, I will now read it for him. I said, as reported at page 624 of Hansard:

I think hon. members and the people generally should bear this in mind also when dealing with this matter, that the weight of evidence is to the effect that many of the Japanese evicted by these orders of deportation were certainly not subjects or citizens.

That is the point I was trying to make, and that is the point I repeat here, that the government in these orders in council is not taking a step which affects the status of Canadian citizens. Therefore there can be nothing inconsistent in subsequently saying that the government must not in future take steps by order in council to affect the status of a Canadian citizen.

In case there should be any further doubt in the minister's mind, I should like to read my further words, which were equally available to the minister had he desired to present a fair picture to the committee. I said, as reported at page 1154 of Hansard:

I have asked continually that the members from British Columbia be given a fair opportunity to state their case against the Japanese in order that this parliament of Canada may decide the matter on principles of justice.

Those words speak for themselves and it is not desirable to enter into further controversy over this matter, though it should be said that I restrain myself from doing so only by the rules of the house forbidding me to impute motives to another hon. member.

Mr. COLDWELL:

Mr. Chairman, I was hoping that the question of Canadians of Japanese origin would be discussed on another occasion and be decided by the house. I hope that the government will find some way of bringing the matter before the house so that there can be a completely free vote of the house on this question. I know perfectly well that there are hon. gentlemen on all sides of the house who feel that the bill as now redrafted with the amendment confirming certain orders in council will embarrass them perhaps more than they desire to be embarrassed.

I said that I hoped the Japanese question could be discussed on another occasion. My opinion, and I have stated it on a number of occasions, is this, that any person in this country who has been proved by the courts of this land to be guilty of disloyalty or sedition should be dealt with according to Canadian law and that we should not penalize a whole people on account of their racial

Canadian Citizenship

origin. I state that without fear of being termed anti-democratic, for I believe it is the democratic point of view.

I welcome this citizenship bill, not because I think it will do all that we desire, but because it is a step in the right direction.

I am very much in support of the idea of incorporating in the bill something in the nature of an expression of the rights of a Canadian citizen. Like my colleague the hon. member for Winnipeg North, I was impressed last evening by the argument that this bill did not cover all classes of our citizenship and that a very large proportion of our citizens are not covered by the proposed amendment; that is to say, the native Canadian born. That, I think, is a grave defect in the amendment, which at first I was prepared to support. -

I think the suggestion made this afternoon with regard to the preamble is a good one. The preamble, of course, is not a part of the statute, but none the less it serves to guide those who subsequently interpret the law. However, the difficulty that confronts one is this: If the amendment of the hon. member for Lake Centre is defeated, can a similar amendment be moved to the preamble? I am not sure as to the procedure. I do not want to risk losing the opportunity to incorporate somewhere in the bill an expression of the rights of a Canadian citizen.

As has been so often stated in the house during the past few days, there have been times when governments have seriously interfered with the rights of Canadian citizenship, and one of the reasons why I am in favour of a certificate being given to all those who come into this country to live here is that I think it is well they should have something to show that they are domiciled in Canada. During the debate to-day I was thinking of an old friend of mine who in 1919 happened to be a resident of Winnipeg. He was not involved in any way in the strike. One day the immigration authorities sent him a registered letter ordering him to appear to show why he should not be deported; he appeared, and he was told that he had been in some way implicated in the strike and that they had decided they were going to deport him. "But", he said, "I am an Englishman; I was born in England." Then he was told, "That makes it all the easier to deport you." Well, he went to a lawyer. The lawyer is still in Winnipeg, and my friend to whom I refer as a good friend is still living in Canada and, as a matter of fact, was a few years ago the highly respected member of a large city school board, an outstanding educationist, and subsequently chairman of that board. The lawyer said, "Have you not forgotten something?" He asked, "What have I forgotten?" "Some years ago", said the lawyer, "you wanted to vote, and they asked you for a birth certificate to prove that you were a. British subject, and you could not produce a birth certificate." The reason my friend could not produce a birth certificate was that his parents had been immigrants into Great Britain; he happened to have been born shortly after they arrived and his birth was never registered. .

Mr. MARTIN:

There are thousands of cases like that.

Mr. COLDWELL:

So the lawyer suggested to him that he apply for naturalization; and he got his Canadian naturalization papers. My friend, who has a keen sense of humour, received a notice that on a certain day he was to report at the C.P.R. station in Winnipeg. He did so; he was ordered into a room, and then the commissioner, who at that time I believe was Mr. Jolliffe-

Mr. MARTIN:

And still is.

Mr. COLDWELL:

-said to him, "You are going to be deported." Another man said to him, "What is your objection to going?" He said, "I happen to be an Englishman, born in England", and this minor official said to him, "Oh, well, we have got one of you Englishmen where we want you. You will go back to Dngland." Then my good friend casually put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his Canadian naturalization papers. It was found that, with these papers, he could not be deported, and he went back home and stayed in Winnipeg.

This afternoon other cases have been mentioned. Another good friend ' of mine. English-born, was arrested and put in gaol. He even went to the expense of sending his family back to Great Britain. As a matter of fact, if I may divulge this, his son is at present acting as my secretary, and as a little shaver in England sawr his father on the screen under arrest in the city of Winnipeg and called out in the theatre, "That's my dad".

I am glad that these certificates are to be issued to all our people. I know there is some objection to the five-year period for those who come from democratic countries' with institutions similar to our own. I can . sympathize wfith that feeling. We might perhaps have worded the bill that the application may be made within the five-year period.

Japanese Nationals

Mr. MacNICOL:

Or follow the Australian act.

Mr. MARTIN:

The Australian act is the same as ours.

Mr. COLDWELL:

These certificates will in my opinion, be of great value to people who come here from abroad. As one who was not born in this country but who became domiciled here by long residence, I should be proud, although it is not necessary for me to get such a certificate, that I had been able to get it within five years of having come to this country. I think those of us who were bom across the seas in the old land would have been proud to have had something to show that we had been received formally into the Canadian family. To my mind, this objection to some of these clauses is more or less beside the point. It is not anything which reflects on the individual.

Mr. MARTIN:

Can we not dispose of this section now?

Mr. COLDWELL:

I would much prefer to see whether some solution could not be arrived at regarding the incorporation somewhere in the bill, either through the preamble or an amendment, embodying a statement of rights. I prefer it in the preamble. As I say, I do not want to lose the opportunity of Someone being able to move it in the preamble on account of the loss of the proposed amendment, which, if I may guess the tenor of the debate, is certain to be defeated. I would like a little more time to consider the procedure, and therefore, Mr. Chairman, with your permission I should like to call it six o'clock.

Progress reported.