On the orders of the day:
Right Hon. L. S. St. Laurent (Prime
Minister): Mr. Speaker, I promised yesterday to be more precise about what further legislation it was intended to have dealt with. I went over the list of the matters I had mentioned to the house on February 21, and I find there are three that are not yet on the order paper. One is the legislation to confirm the Northwest Territories boundary survey. We will not be able to proceed with that unless the legislature of Alberta adopts its own legislation early enough to allow it to be proceeded with at this session.
The other two were, first, legislation to set up a peace bridge authority. That is being put on the order paper in the other place today. The remaining matter is the Canadian National Railways annual financing bill, and notice of the resolution in that respect is being put in Votes and Proceedings so it may come on our order paper immediately.
There is one other matter that had been mentioned, and in the absence of the Minister of Justice I was not able to ascertain what the position is with respect to it. I had suggested on February 21 that there might be a small amendment to the Canada Evidence
Act or another appropriate statute to facilitate the use of photostatic copies of documents to make it unnecessary to impound originals in prosecutions under federal legislation. The Minister of Justice was to ascertain whether there was not already sufficient authority in the statutes, and I have not been able to ascertain whether or not that would be necessary.
There is another matter that I omitted by inadvertence to mention on February 21. There was then the possibility that legislation might be asked for to assist in implementing the provincial legislation establishing agricultural products marketing boards. We have now reached the position where it does seem to be advisable to prepare legislation to enable the marketing boards for agricultural products set up under provincial authority to operate more effectively and without some of the legal objections that have been suggested heretofore.
