Mr. JOHN BRACKEN (Leader of the Opposition):

Before the proceedings of the day are entered upon I should like to refer to a matter which I am sure will be of interest to every member of this house. I refer to a report in the morning press that one of our number has been distinctly honoured since we met here yesterday. I wish to take this opportunity on behalf of my associates and myself, and on this occasion I think I can speak for every member of the house, of extending to the Right Honourable Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe) our sincere congratulations.

We regard it occasionally as a privilege, sometimes as a right, always as a responsibility, to tell the minister how he can do his job much better than he has done it before or is doing it now. But on an occasion like this, when his war-time service has been recognized by the crown and when it has been expressed in his appointment to the high position of member of the king's privy council, it is one time when we can extend to him our warmest congratulations on this recognition

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of a war-time task well done. I make these comments whole-heartedly on behalf of every member of this group and, I would like to think, of every member of the house. It is an outstanding honour which has come to one of our members, an honour which is richly deserved.

Mr. M. J. COLDWELL (Rosetown-Biggar):

Mr. Speaker, I should like on behalf of this party to associate myself with the words of the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bracken). We may not always agree with the minister in some of the policies which he is placing before the house or has placed before the house in days past. But I think we all recognize that the distinction conferred upon him to-day is a mark of the appreciation not only of Canada but of the British commonwealth of the remarkable services which he made to the common cause during the war.

Mr. SOLON E. LOW (Peace River): Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the members of my group would want me to join with the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bracken) in expressing our sincere and warm congratulations to the right hon. gentleman who has been distinctly honoured by being made a member of the king's privy council. It is not inconceivable, sir, that the contribution of the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply during the time that he was also the minister of munitions during the war was responsible for the victory of the united nations. I think that that is quite possible. While, as the other two gentlemen have said, we may not always have agreed with the things done by the right hon. gentleman, we must admit that all he does is done with a whole heart and a good spirit and with real intent; and we congratulate him upon his success and upon the signal honour which has come to him.

Speech!

Right Hon. C. D. HOWE (Minister of Reconstruction and Supply):

Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank the leaders of the opposition parties for their very kind words on this occasion. I feel that the cordiality of the reception of the news in this house almost equals the honour itself as conferring on me a real distinction. I can only hope that I can continue to serve Canada in a manner worthy of the honour which has been bestowed upon me.

Mr. T. L. CHLTRCH (Broadview):

Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to move, seconded by the hon. member for Davenport (Mr. Mae-

Nicol), the adjournment of the house under standing order 31 for the purpose of discussing a definite emergency, a matter of great and urgent public importance, namely, the United States embargo on coal, issued on June 11 to the Ore and Coal Exchange of Cleveland and on account of the great lakes shipping strike, which embargo was temporarily suspended, and also the tie-up of nearly 25,000 hopper coal cars at United States lake ports ready to unload coal for Canada to Canadian ships, and to discuss the grave peril of drastic shortages of supply to Canadian homes without any supply whatever, especially in central Canada next fall and winter, and the urgent need of an all-Canadian national coal policy accordingly.

Mr. SPEAKER:

I am not quite sure that this is a matter of urgent public importance, but of course, under standing order 31, if twenty members rise the hon. member may proceed.

And leave having been granted:

Mr. CHURCH:

I shall not detain the house for more than a few minutes. I first brought up this important question of a national fuel supply and a national policy for Canada on March 19, 1923. I am not going to repeat now what I said at that time, and what I have reiterated several times since, but I wish to impress upon the government the gravity of 1 he present situation, especially to central Canada. An opportunity will be afforded me, I have no doubt, under the main estimates to go into this matter more fully, but at the moment-

Some hon. MEMBERS1: Louder.

Mr. CHURCH:

Louder? Well, Mr. Speaker, I am not going to speak for more than five minutes this afternoon, and I want to impress the importance of this matter on the government and on the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply. By the way, I knew him when he was a young engineer and I should like to congratulate him now on the honour that has come to him. To come back to the coal question, we are faced with the most awful winter that Canada will ever have experienced. I have urged upon the government from time to time the importance of a national fuel policy. According to the latest reports we have received, we shall be shut out from the United States this winter by embargo as far as a coal supply is concerned. Geologists there say that they have a supply for seventy-five years, and I do not think that Canadians should depend further upon the United States for their coal. Thousands of cars are tied up in the United

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States-twenty or twenty-five thousand

American cars at lake Erie ports-and I suggest that the time has come for us to take action and move them. In Alberta and in the maritime provinces, I suggest, lies the solution to our problem, through a national fuel policy. Although, as I have said, I first brought this matter to the attention of the house on March 19, 1923, little has been done about it by the government. The problem is largely one of transportation, and the shortages are in the central provinces, in which there are no coal deposits. The east should move coal as far west as possible; Alberta should move it as far east as it can, and it is for the government now to take active steps to solve the problem by a national supply.

I would ask the hon. gentleman who is seconding the motion to say a few words on the subject.

Mr. J. R. MacNICOL (Davenport):

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church) deserves the unstinted praise of the whole country for his energy and foresight in bringing this resolution before the house, and Your Honour also deserves unstinted praise for allowing it to 'be presented for discussion. I wish also to thank the house for allowing it to be discussed.

Before I proceed to address a few words to the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe) may I pause to congratulate him personally upon the high honour that has been conferred upon him. I have said on many occasions across the floor of the house that he is one minister who invariably knows what he is talking about, who knows all the answers; he has a vast fund of information such as few other men in this house can draw upon. Once more I congratulate him sincerely on the high honour that has been conferred upon him.

A few days ago the minister made this statement, as quoted in this morning's Globe and Mail of Toronto, which brings it up to date:

Unless the production and transportation of coal is resumed in the United States in the near future, the central provinces of Canada are faced with nothing less than a calamity, and our people and our industries may be faced with hardship and distress on a scale never experienced during the war years.

That announcement by the right hon. gentleman has caused in my part of the country very grave anxiety over the possible experience next winter. It was quite right that he should warn the people of the calamity that is facing them, and it devolves upon the whole House of Commons to see

that that threatened calamity is averted, or at least the severity of fuel conditions mitigated as far as possible.

We take up a lot of time in this house on matters of little or no importance, the decision of which is of little consequence to the people, but here is something that is of colossal import to everyone. When I was last at home I went to my old coal dealer and was informed that it was useless leaving my order for coal. I have quite a number of buildings and the comfort of their tenants depends upon me. For their safety I may have to order oil burners. In my own home I have" to take out two boilers and have them replaced with a single boiler equipped as an oil burner. I do not mind doing that, but everybody cannot do it. In my own section of the city there is a large working-class population. It would be certainly financially impossible, for one out of twenty-five to buy an oil burner. They have to burn coal. It is a tremendous problem for these humble homes, in which from ninety to ninety-five per cent of the population reside. They will be the sufferers if they cannot get coal. The other five or ten per cent may be able to purchase oil burners. If they are able to obtain the oil they will not suffer, but the great mass of Canadians, particularly in Ontario and Quebec, which provinces have no coal of their own, are in jeopardy.

I am sorry to learn that the anticipated production of coal in the lignite area of northern Ontario is not to be had. It has been found that the moisture content of the lignite coal there is so great that the cost of production would far exceed the value received. That will be a serious blow to northern Ontario, because, as the hon. member for Timiskaming will say if he speaks on this subject, they have been expecting to get coal from northern Ontario. Therefore from whatever point of view it is considered it is a serious problem and a great menace to Ontario people.

I am now going to speak particularly for the people of Toronto. In Toronto we have an energetic mayor. He is always keenly alive to the best interests of the people. A few days ago he issued a solemn warning which can be found in the Toronto Telegram of June 7, as follows:

The mayor pointed out that last year, to June 6, eighty-six coal-carrying ships had docked in Toronto harbour, with 418,849 tons of coal. This year to date, only twenty-six ships have arrived with 97,440 tons, a loss to date of 321,409 tons.

This is a most serious threat to the comfort of the people of that city during next fall and winter. Within three months time

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we shall start burning coal in Toronto. The month of June is half gone. How many homes in Toronto have coal I do not know; I have not any, I could not get it. The great majority of homes in Toronto are without coal, and within three months we shall have to start burning it, because many of the homes in that city are heated in the winter with hot water. That system of heating has the reverse effect in the fall months if the heat is not on. The radiators, being full of cold water, will cool the house down to an almost unbearable degree. Therefore it is a matter of vital importance to these people. The minister is probably doing all he can with the staff under his control, but we have to do more than that. What more can be done at the moment I do not know.

Yesterday the coal controller issued a statement in which he said, according to the Toronto Globe:

The shortage in the central provinces this winter is estimated at somewhere near 5,500,000 tons.

This is a serious problem for the people in the central provinces of Quebec and Ontario. I wonder if hon. members realize what it means for the two provinces to be short

5,500,000 tons of coal. It has been said by some that we might use hydro-electric power. Well, the hydro commission in Toronto issued a statement in which they said that to heat five per cent of Toronto homes would require one-third of the hydro power, which is somewhere in the neighbourhood of two and a half to three million horse-power. It would mean that if the homes of Toronto and environs were to be heated by electricity, one-third of all the power that hydro has would heat only fifteen per cent of all the homes.

I am not going to proceed at any length. I am sure that what will be said by the mover and what will be said by the hon. members will attract the attention of this house. That is what we must do-attract the attention of the house to the serious threat to the health of the people of these two great central provinces-I shall not speak of the other provinces at the moment-I certainly will support the minister in anything he can do to expedite shipments of coal and its delivery to the dealers in Ontario and Quebec.

Mr. CLARENCE GILLIS (Cape Breton South):

There is no doubt about the seriousness of the matter raised by the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church), but in reading the document that he passed to Your Honour I find that he has it chewed up in such a fashion that it is difficult to understand exactly what subject he wants action on at the moment.

The seriousness of the coal situation in Canada did not develop yesterday or the day before. It has been slowly developing over the last twenty years, and it has been heading inevitably toward what we have at the present time.

In his motion the hon. member for ..Broadview deplores the fact that the United States has placed an embargo on coal. I would not expect them to do anything else. The people of the United States have developed their own resource to take care of their own requirements. In addition, in the last three or four years they have been exporting twenty million odd tons of coal to Canada to help us out. It is an indictment against us. We should not scream because the United States government is protecting its own people in their fuel requirements. The indictment in the statement made by the hon. member for Broadview is against ourselves, in that although, a nation of eleven million people, are in possession of one-half of the north American continent, which has as great fuel resources as has the United States, we have neglected to develop our own resource to meet the requirements of our own people. I have no argument or quarrel with the United States government for seeing that the requirements of its own people are met at this time.

As to overcoming this fuel shortage, I do not expect the minister to do it, because you cannot cure in a short time a disease that has been growing for more than twenty years under both Liberal and Conservative administrations. For the last twenty years particularly I remember pilgrimage after pilgrimage leaving the mining areas, both east and west, and converging upon Ottawa with briefs, the preparation of which cost a great deal of money, pointing out to both Conservative and Liberal administrations the situation which was slowly developing and indicating that the time was approaching when, if Canada did not expand her own resources, we could not expect to lean on the United States. I have said that in this house many times during the last five years. The mechanics of a national fuel policy have been set out time and again by representatives of the miners' union, by provincial governments and by interested citizens. Unfortunately all these submissions went to the archives, and nothing was done.

In my opinion the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe) is helpless to do very much at this time. You cannot develop a -mine overnight; you cannot increase production in old, worn out mines. In the beginning of the last war the recommendation was advanced in this house, and in briefs submitted to the government, that new development

should be undertaken in the coal fields. That requires a large capital outlay. The present operators are not going to spend the money; they have made this abundantly clear. No agency in Canada, other than the government, is going to tackle that problem and make the capital expenditure necessary to increase both the quantity and quality of fuel available in this country. The government cannot meet the present emergency, either, because I do not think production can be stepped up in the industry as it exists at present. A royal commission has been set up to study this question, and by this time I suppose that commission knows more than anyone else in Canada about the possibility of increasing production and the problems of marketing our coal. I suggest to the minister that he get in touch with the personnel of that commission and ask for an interim report on the possibility of getting additional production. I do not expect the minister to be able to do anything about it. I do not know what the royal commission would suggest, but I see no possible chance of improving the situation to any great extent from Canadian production; so if we are to depend upon our own production this year a great many people in Canada will go cold. The only solution is to get assistance from the United States, as we have done in the past.

The hon. member for Broadview also points out that some fuel is available in the Untied States, but that because of the strike on the great lakes that coal cannot be brought across to Canada. As I understand the hon. gentleman's motion, there are some 25,000 cars at lake ports. I am not going into the merits or demerits of that strike on the great lakes, though I will say that it too is the result of neglect. I do not think the strike on the great lakes ever should have developed. The only question at issue there is the establishment of an eight-hour day, something every other classification of worker on this continent secured many years ago by .legislation.

Mr. MITCHELL:

My hon. friend speaks of neglect. Neglect by whom?

Mr. GILLIS:

Neglect by both Liberal and Conservative governments.

Oh, oh.

Mr. GILLIS:

They have been in power.

How about the C.C.F.?

Mr. GILLIS:

We have not been in power yet. When we are, you will not have any discussion of this kind taking place. If we had been sitting over there when this war broke out there is no doubt about what we

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would have done in connection with fuel. Do you know our policy? We would have developed new mines.

We would have lost the war.

Mr. GILLIS:

I get a lot of fun out of this sort of thing. Every time you throw a stone into a pack of wolves you hear a howl from the one you hit. This is just a natural development; I don't mind it. He who has a guilty conscience is very susceptible to criticism.