Mr. DIEFENBAKER:

What date?

Mr. ST. LAURENT: I have not the date, but it was just as soon as we got the information that these articles had been located in the city of Quebec. It states:

I have now been informed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that certain Polish art treasures which were brought to Canada by ithe Polish authorities in 1940 and which subsequently disappeared have mow been located at l'Hotel Dieu, Quebec city, Quebec. The articles at this location are said to be contained in twenty-three trunks and one wooden box and to have been stored previously at the Redemp-torist Monastery at Ste. Anne de Beaupre.

As we agreed with your solicitors, we are communicating the information to you for any further action you and your solicitors may wish to take.

On the orders of the day:

Right Hon. J. L. ILSLEY (Minister of Justice):

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) asked for the production of certain papers. He said:

Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that the minister admits that the mounted police were used for civil purposes, he can have no objection to producing the reports given by Corporal Car-riere and Constable Houle, either bo himself as Minister of External Affairs or to the Minister of Justice, and I would ask whether or not those reports will be tabled.

Later he said:

Them I would ask the Minister of Justice whether he would produce these reports, because they deal with a civil matter, and the mounted police do not deal with civil matters.

To which I replied:

I shall be glad to give consideration to my hon. friend's request and give him an answer tomorrow. I am strongly under the impression that police reports to the commissioner, if there are any, are not under any circumstances producible in this house.

I find that there were certain reports from these two members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to their superiors but that they were of a confidential character and were so marked, and I therefore must decline to produce those reports on the ground of public interest.

I have not been able to find any indication in the authorities that anything turns on the distinction my hon. friend made yesterday between police activities in criminal matters and in civil matters. If anything did turn

Polish Art Treasures

on that, the same rule would clearly apply to reports made in civil matters. I quote from Bourinot's Parliamentary Procedure, fourth edition, page 251:

The practice of asking for reports from officers, addressed to particular departments of the executive government, is considered to be open to serious objection. As to "confidential documents" passing between officers of a department, Mr. Speaker Peel observes: "They are not necessarily laid on the table of the house, especially if the minister declares that they aye of a confidential character." He adds: "that if a minister stated in his place that a document was of that class, the house should tajie his word, and he was not bound to lay it on the table.

The observations which apply in that citation to reports from officers of a department apply a fortiori to reports from members of the police forces to their superiors, and it would be clearly contrary to the public interest to produce such secret and confidential reports or lay them on the table of the House of Commons.

Mr. DIEFENBAKER:

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, when the minister states that it is not in the public interest to produce the papers I believe his statement must be accepted; but when he says that there is no authority for it and that it has not been asked before in parliament I must say that the Prime Minister himself, when leader of the opposition on July 2, 1935, at page 4133 of Hansard asked for the production in this house of certain instructions given to the mounted police of that day, and himself desired the production of those papers. As a matter of fact-and I want to be frank- the answer given by the Prime Minister then was that he did not think they were producible. It is fair enough to say that; and I cannot find that it was discussed later. But certainly in 1935 the present Prime Minister when he was leader of the opposition thought it only proper to produce them.

While we are speaking about production, sir, I would suggest, being bound by what the Minister of Justice says, that possibly the Secretary of State for External Affairs, having chosen selected portions of a letter a few moments ago, will now table in the house the entire letter or state paper, as the case may be, because of citation 315, which I shall now read:

A minister of the crown is no.t at liberty to read or quote from a dispatch or other state paper not before the house, unless he be prepared to lay it upon the table.

He has referred to one of the documents that I had in mind, and I suggest, sir, that he now be asked to table the entire letter from which he read a selected extract.

Mr. ST. LAURENT: I have not the letter here; I shall give the request made by the hon. member for Lake Centre very sympathetic consideration.

Hon. DOUGLAS ABBOTT (Minister of Finance):

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Low) referred to a telegram he had received from the secretary of the Retail Merchants Association of Alberta relating to the matter of commercial rentals, and suggesting that authority be retained by the rentals division of the board to deal with each case on its merits when application for a board ruling is made by a tenant. He asked me if I would give the matter consideration and make a statement with regard to the request.

I would say now with respect to the commercial rentals situation that there still remains in order in council PC. 9029, the wartime leasehold regulations, section 6, subsection 1, which makes it an offence for any person to charge a rental which is higher than is reasonable and just.

As the government is continuing rental control on housing accommodation, it is necessary that this section remain in effect.

This section has general application; accordingly, it remains an offence for a landlord to charge a rental for commercial space that is clearly unreasonable and unjust. Should any such case be brought to the attention of the wartime prices and trade board, investigation will be made.

Hon. members will realize that it is unusually difficult to assess the value of commercial accommodation because so much depends upon the value of the site, nature of the business carried on, and the volume of business attributable to the location.

It must be also remembered that rent control of commercial space has now been in effect for over six and a half years. During this time many locations which in 1941 had little commercial value have now become quite valuable for one reason or another. Because of these factors previous maximum rentals in effect are not necessarily relevant in determining the reasonableness of the rentals now being asked.

Since December 1, 1945, the law has permitted a landlord to enter into a lease with an existing tenant at a rental that was mutually satisfactory to both parties, provided that the term of the lease was for a period of five years or longer and the lease contained

Rent Control

no predetermination clause. The five-year period was reduced to a three-year period in the spring of 1947. It would not be the government's intention to examine into the rentals reserved under these leases, as these were lawful rentals.

Mr. FLEMING:

I take it it is clear that it will continue to be the responsibility of the wartime prices and trade board to enforce the provisions of section 6 (1) of the wartime leasehold regulations with respect to unreasonable and unjust projects.

Mr. ABBOTT:

I believe I can answer that in this way, that if it is clearly established that a rental which is unreasonable and unjust is being charged the board would consider taking a prosecution. It is open under the section for anyone to do it, with the consent of the board or with the consent of a provincial attorney general. I am not prepared to say now to what extent the board should be or would be prepared to undertake the task of prosecutions. What I have said, in effect, is that if cases of that kind are brought to the attention of the board, investigations will be made.

Mr. GREEN:

May I ask a supplementary question? Does the board have power to reduce rentals, or can it merely prosecute?

Mr. ABBOTT:

It can only prosecute.

Mr. MacINNIS:

May I ask a supplementary question? The minister said that if it was clearly established that the rent was unreasonable and unjust, certain action would be taken. How is that to be established before it can be brought to the attention of the wartime prices and trade board?

Mr. ABBOTT:

Perhaps I should put'it this way. Presumably the tenant would be in the best position to decide whether he thinks the rent is unreasonable and unjust. He could complain, I assume, to the wartime prices and trade board. An investigation would be made and the investigator would come to a conclusion one way or the other. If he came to the conclusion that it was clearly unreasonable and unjust I assume that the board would institute proper proceedings. I have stated that the board will investigate complaints of this kind to the extent of its capacity.

Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):

As I understand it, this will have nothing to do with the right of the landlord to evict his tenant. The only remedy suggested now is that the tenant may prosecute if the rental fixed is considered unreasonable and unjust-or is it "or unjust"?

Mr. ABBOTT:

And.

Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):

We have had this phrase in our legislation for a long time. I am sure no one appreciates more than the minister the difficulty of basing a prosecution upon words of general application such as "unreasonable and unjust". I was wondering if the board had had any success in prosecutions of the kind, realizing as I do the great difficulty of asking a tribunal to decide. Perhaps some refinement might be made in that term, or more definite words used, so that in the event of the proper authorities launching a prosecution they would have some hope of succeeding. This is like asking what is the size of the chancellor's boot, or something of the kind. It is a very broad phrase, and I am inclined to think that it would be difficult to enforce a regulation under those words as they stand.

Mr. ABBOTT:

Answering the first question, I understand that before the over-all ceilings were applied early in the war there were two, or possibly three, prosecutions under the "unjust and unreasonable" clause, and I understand there were two convictions. Then the over-all ceilings were put on and a breach of the price ceiling automatically was considered to be selling at a price which was unjust and unreasonable.

Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):

Would the minister, for example, regard an increase of 100 per cent unreasonable as against 40 per cent?

Mr. WILLIAM IRVINE. (Cariboo): The question which I intended to ask the minister has been asked already by the hon. member for Calgary West, but I should like to add this: Does the minister not think that the term "unreasonable and unjust" is so general that a conviction would be difficult to obtain?