Mr. Diefenbaker:

Mr. Speaker, I know it is all in good spirit but these unintelligible interruptions represent a better contribution on the part of backbenchers over there than they ever made when they were on this side. I continue:

You will understand, therefore, our irritation and worry when our efforts to bring about such an increase meet demands here for further tariff protection against Canadian imports, already so much less than your own exports to Canada.

Is that not what we say? The hon. gentleman said this on July 13. We believe we can take these words and repeat them:

You will understand, therefore, our irritation and worry when our efforts to bring about such an increase meet demands here for further tariff protection against Canadian imports, already so much less than your own exports to Canada.

The resentment caused in Canada by this process is increased when attempts are made to justify these demands for more protection on the ground that the requirements of defence make national self-sufficiency in certain commodities essential. This argument may well be valid in respect of certain vulnerable areas which might be closed to you as a source of supply in time of crisis or war. Surely it does not apply to Canada. We are the less impressed by the argument because on many other occasions we are told by other American authorities that defence can only be considered as a continental problem and dealt with on a continental basis. It is, I think, a simple, though significant, fact that any further restrictions on Canadian imports into the United States would make further defence co-operation more difficult.

Did anybody ever speak as strongly as that after he was out of power? I ask you this, Mr. Speaker-

Mr. Pearson:

I said it in the house the other day.

Mr. Diefenbaker:

Then, finally, my hon. friend said this:

At least that is how I feel about it,-

Well, Mr. Speaker, that is how we feel about it, too. But, the other night, as again today, he ridiculed us for having spoken up. I direct to his attention the next words:

-and I am sure you would wish me to express my feeling in plain language as is customary when Americans and Canadians speak to each other.

This, Mr. Speaker, certainly is an exceptional statement. All we are asking is that today, because of the changes that have taken place recently, the views expressed then be the views of this parliament. Can you conceive of anything that would do greater harm to Canada at a time when congress is meeting, when these protectionist groups in all parts of the United States are waiting for an opportunity to introduce legislation which will further reduce exports from Canada, that the leader of a great party, the Leader of the Opposition, receives such unmitigated joy from the fact our protests have resulted in us as Canadians being slapped down? That is something I cannot understand.

Mr. Pearson:

May I ask the right hon. gentleman a question? Has he considered that one possible way of protecting ourselves against that American threat would be to take the British offer of freer trade seriously?

Mr. Diefenbaker:

I notice that my hon. friends did not do that in their resolution.

Mr. Pearson:

We did.

Mr. Diefenbaker:

I wish I had that resolution here. It is simply rounded with verbiage, circumscribed all types of words. I should like to read it to you because it certainly does not represent anything like my hon. friend said a moment ago. I am sorry I have not got it here because it indeed represents the greatest example of an endeavor to effect a pretense of words to signify one thing while so surrounded by qualifications as to mean nothing whatsoever.

You are an expert at it.

Mr. Diefenbaker:

I continue:

The second disturbing matter which I mentioned was the United States agricultural surplus disposal policy and its effect on our exports abroad. At the moment, this may be, from the Canadian point of view, the greatest single irritant in our relations.

I ask my hon. friend, what did they do? It existed on July 13. It was not removed during the years they adopted this attitude of going to Washington, not doing it openly, you understand, but going in by the back door and whispering so that it could not be heard

in Canada that we did not like this agricultural disposal program. Not a word of it! Not a word of it effectively when in power and then a few days after going out of power pointing out that this is very serious at the moment and that this may well be, from the Canadian point of view, the greatest single irritant in our relations.

Your post-war agricultural policy has resulted, in spite of efforts to avoid such a result, in large surpluses.

The effort to liquidate these by other than normal marketing methods has affected directly our own exports in a commodity such as wheat, from whose sale abroad we derive a far higher proportion of our national income than you do or ever will. Nor can we, with our more limited financial resources-

I emphasize those last words.

-afford to match your new sales methods, giveaways, easy or tied credits, or acceptance of local currencies-

That is what was said on July 13. How different from what was said at the convention a few days ago!

As a result, our own traditional markets for wheat are in danger. If we lose them, or a large part of them, I can assure you that there will be a howl across the border and that our relations generally will suffer.

Today he does not object to a howl. He just objects to us speaking up. What a change in a few months!

I know that those in Washington who are directing agricultural policies are doing their best, within the legislation under which they must operate to avoid these undesirable results, as we in Canada must do also.

I am not going to read any more, Mr. Speaker, but I do suggest that my hon. friends should develop a degree of consistency certainly not apparent in the quotations I have just placed before you. There are many other phases of this amendment that could be discussed but I do not propose to do so. I am not going to add to anything that I said at the beginning, but I must say that when the C.C.F. come along, as I would not be surprised that they might, and remove the last two paragraphs-

Oh, oh.

Mr. Diefenbaker:

Mr. Speaker, we lawyers often engage, as the right hon. member for Quebec East (Mr. St. Laurent) will say, in anticipation. If they do this, if they strike out the last two paragraphs, "and in view of the desirability, at this time, of having a government pledged to implement Liberal policies, His Excellency's advisors should, in the opinion of this house, submit their resignation forthwith", we shall wait and see what we shall see.

3539

Suggested Resignation of Government

Mr. M. J. Coldwell (Roseiown-Biggar):

Mr. Speaker, the house has listened to some long speeches today, in fact two of them, and I do not propose to speak at any great length tonight and to take up the various points made either by the Prime Minister (Mr. Diefenbaker) or by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Pearson). But I am going to say to the Prime Minister that I want to congratulate him first of all on his restoration to health, which I forgot to do this afternoon, and second, on the good guess he made. Of course, it was so obvious that no one could really miss it.

I must say that I was surprised at the Leader of the Opposition moving an amendment of this description containing the words which the Prime Minister pointed out a few minutes ago. I wonder whether the Leader of the Opposition and the Liberal party have forgotten last June.

Mr. Fraser:

They would like to forget it.

Mr. Coldwell:

As a matter of fact, on the night of June 10 the Liberal party was utterly defeated. It was obvious to me at the time, and I said so, that there was only one honourable way for the leader of that party, the then prime minister, to act, and that was to submit his resignation to the governor general and call upon the leader of the opposition, not because I had confidence in a Conservative administration but because that was the proper constitutional thing to do. .

May I say that since they surrendered the reins of office in June and told His Excellency that the Liberal government could not carry on, no party in this house could support an amendment of this description calling for the resignation of the government in order to put back in power a party which said it could not carry on. May I add that there has been a little change in the membership of the house since then because there are two more members in the government side today than there were on the night of June 10. Therefore I want to dispose of that immediately. We could no more vote for this amendment as it stands with this proposal in it than we could do anything else that appeared as unintelligent as that would be.

Having disposed of that, let me say that throughout this parliament we have tried to place our views before the house at every opportunity. We have done that by way of various amendments which under our parliamentary rules, of course, are regarded, I think sometimes unfortunately, as want of confidence motions. I know that we have been twitted and told that we knew that

3540 HOUSE OF

Suggested Resignation of Government our Liberal friends would not support us, and that therefore we were quite safe in moving these various amendments.

May I say to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the house that we did not know what the attitude of the Liberal party would be shortly after it resigned last June, when our members met in the city of Winnipeg and decided upon the course that we have followed consistently ever since. We have no apologies to offer. We have functioned as we think an opposition party should function. We have, as we said we would, supported legislation that we thought would be in the interests of the people of Canada. We have done that consistently. When we thought that legislation should be amended to make it better, we have moved amendments. When the government has failed to bring down legislation which we thought should be brought down in view of the statements made by the Prime Minister and others during the election campaign we have moved amendments along the lines of those promises that were made in April, May and June of last year. That has been our consistent policy; and come what may, we shall have no apologies to make either to this house or to the people of Canada when an election comes around as to what our role has been.

Mr. Fulton:

You will regret your stand on the farm bill.

Mr._ Coldwell: My hon. friend said we would regret our stand on the farm bill. It may be his opinion that the farm bill is not what we say it is. But we shall not regret our stand, whatever the result may be, because we believe that the stand we have taken is the right one. One never regrets something one does when one does the thing that one considers to be right. Hence there are no regrets. As far as the farm bill is concerned, I am convinced that we are expressing the views of the vast majority of the farmers across Canada. I have talked to officers of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, to officers of other farm organizations across Canada and to farmers; and I have been told without any hesitation that this legislation is a disappointment and that into this legislation has not been written the kind of price formula that they expected to find in that legislation. Hence there are no regrets as far as these matters are concerned.

This afternoon the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Pearson) pointed out quite correctly that we are living in critical times. This evening the Prime Minister placed on the record the manner in which the financial market has been acting in the past year or

more. I want to say to my hon. friends that we hold the view, that until we substitute for this speculative system planned trade, planned investment and a planned financial system we shall have these ups and downs in our economy from time to time. As a matter of fact the conditions that gave rise to the great depression of the 1930's are still underneath the present system, obscured as they have been by war, by postwar expenditures for the relief of those who needed relief, and then by war and rearmament again. Those are the factors which have kept our economy running as it has been running over the past several years.

We have now come to the point where the economy is showing signs of a recession. Not so long ago some of us in this house were talking about the rise in unemployment. In spite of all that has been said this evening, the rise in unemployment in this country over the past few months has been phenomenal and it has been alarming. There were 186,000 people unemployed and seeking work in December, 1956 and 386,000 unemployed and seeking work in December, 1957. That is what has happened in the course of one year.

Mr. Martin (Essex East):

And 50,000 more since then.

Mr. Coldwell:

As my hon. friend interjects, the figures are still rising according to the more recent figures that have been given to us. I therefore say that we have the right to say to this government, "What are you doing about the situation, and what did you do about it in the autumn of last year?"

Mr. Martin (Essex East):

And "What did you promise?"

Mr. Coldwell:

What did you do about that matter? You told some of us that we should not be discussing unemployment, that to talk about unemployment and the possibility of some recession was to bring on recession and to bring on unemployment. In other words, you told us that, like ostriches, we should put our heads in the sand and try to hide from ourselves the conditions that are prevailing all around us. We do not propose to do that, Mr. Speaker.

The same thing applies with respect to farm prices. I am not going into farm prices tonight because the farm problem has been so well debated in this house on the bill which is now before the house and which the government has changed. However, what I am saying is this. What has happened was obvious earlier last autumn; and it was then that steps should have been taken to set up public works programs. I am thinking of

this northern project, mining roads, development roads and so on. When was it announced? It was announced on January 2. When has that project to be completed by the provinces? It must be completed by June. Obviously there is not sufficient time for the provinces to make the necessary preparations and do the kind of job that is required to be done if it is going to alleviate to any great extent unemployment in our country.

I look around and see the numerous things that need to be done in this country. I am not going to put the figures on the record. We have heard a good deal about housing and about new units that have been started and completed over the past year. That is fine. I am glad to know that. But when I see the figures showing the numerous houses already existing with no running water, no bathroom facilities, no inside toilets, I realize that the sanitary organizations of the municipalities and so on could do with some financial assistance in order that they might improve the sanitary conditions from one end of this country to the other.

Two weeks ago tomorrow I introduced in this house a resolution calling upon the government to do something for our educational system. At that time I gave a good many reasons why we should be doing that. I am not going to recapitulate them tonight. However, in the gallery that afternoon there happened to be a gentleman with very high qualifications whom I had never met before but who sought me out and said this to me, "Have you ever thought of this; have you ever thought that Canada did a magnificent job in the air training defence plan, one that proved to be of great benefit to Canada in the years after the war; that defence training plan gave you airfields and facilities of every description". He said to me "You said this afternoon that by 1980 both high school and university facilities would be entirely inadequate and would be overburdened long before then".

He asked me "Why not, as part of Canada's contribution to the world, decide that we are going to set up a commonwealth or wider educational plan so that we can bring in young students from overseas and train them educationally, scientifically and technically; build the facilities and when we are through with that plan we shall have provided ourselves with the facilities which would enable us to take care of our young people in the future?" I thought that was a very excellent idea. There are so many things that might be done in order to relieve unemployment and in order to distribute purchasing power.

Bear this in mind; when people are unemployed they cannot purchase eggs, they 96698-2244

Suggested Resignation of Government cannot purchase butter and they cannot purchase meat, with the result that the farmers who produce those things feel the effects of unemployment, not as acutely as the people in the cities but nonetheless fairly acutely.

Some of us who were here in the 1930's recall that in 1936 and 1937 our people were in the depths of the greatest depression this North American continent has ever seen but, in 1938, 1939 and 1940, when as governments we began to make great expenditures in the field of rearmament because of the threat overhanging the world at that time, we found farm prices rising; the price of eggs rose as did the price of butter, meat and other farm commodities. The two things are inter-related and I say that our government has neglected these aspects of the economic situation.

I said a few moments ago that among other things we should use financial methods to meet this unemployment problem. What did I mean by that? I meant that under the leadership of our governmental institutions -our Bank of Canada, if you like, or a new organization of that description-we should establish a national investment organization.

Such organization would not order but would direct the savings of our people into socially desirable channels, into housing, into improved sanitary conditions, into the elimination of level crossings. What a blot are the deaths at level crossings at the present time. I say that we have many things which we should do other than those which are being done. I say to the Minister of Labour (Mr. Starr) that it is all very well to appeal to our private citizens to do the little things within and around their homes to give some employment in the winter period, but that is a relatively small contribution to the elimination of unemployment.

I think I had now better put on the record this amendment which I now move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles):

That the amendment be amended by striking out all the words after the words "steady administration" and by substituting therefor the following words:

"this house is of the opinion that the economic conditions now facing this country, including the uncertainty of our export markets and the alarming unemployment situation revealed by figures released during the past week, call for consideration by the government of the United Kingdom trade proposals as well as other means to secure increasing markets for our farm and industrial production, and also for consideration of immediate action to relieve unemployment and distress by adopting a fiscal policy which will enable the government to re-direct investment and embark on a comprehensive program of public development."

Suggested Resignation of Government

I say to all hon. members in every part of this house that I believe this is an amendment which should be supported in all quarters.

We have heard a great deal about the Thorneycroft proposal back in September last for a freer trade agreement between Canada and the United Kingdom. I do not know where my hon. friends of the Conservative party stand on this proposal and I certainly do not know where my hon. friends of the Liberal party stand on it either, because I noticed that when the trade delegation was in the United Kingdom day after day hon. gentlemen rose in this house who appeared to be very perturbed lest members of that delegation should visit certain industrial plants that might be competitive with plants in the areas they represented in this house. I wonder just how genuinely interested some, not all, members of the Liberal party were in the freer trade proposals. Freer trade is the word that should be used because, as Mr. Thorneycroft said at the time, this would have to be worked out over a period of years and we believe one of the essential things which Canada should be doing is giving leadership in the direction of freer trade across the world. We have suggested the establishment of an export and import board to assist in the sale of our products and the exchange of items for the things we need.

I was very interested the other day to hear one of the hon. gentlemen in the Liberal party rise and ask about the acceptance of sterling. We suggested that in 1947 and my hon. friends in the Social Credit group also suggested it. Always the suggestion was met by the government then in power with the statement that it could not be done and it would not be economic to take any local currency, sterling or any other overseas currencies. Yet we have seen the United States since that time promoting its trade with Japan and some other countries by taking quite large quantities of local currency and by re-investing it to develop those countries which supplied it.

I would even suggest that we make arrangements through a proper import-export organization to exchange goods on a basis of value for value, if you like, and I would certainly like to see trade channels opened up in some directions where I am sure we could dispose of some of our commodities-for instance some of our vast accumulations of wheat-in the years to come. I have in mind particularly the 600 million people on the mainland of China.

As hon. members know, we have long urged the government to recognize the fact that

there is a government in control of the mainland of China and resume diplomatic relations without approving of their form of government or what they are doing, so that our traders may go into that country, if for no other reason, under the auspices of Canadian officials who can introduce them and assist them in the sale of Canadian goods. I want to say that this suggestion is becoming more and more acceptable not only in Canada but in the country whose lead we have followed, namely the United States. One reads the statements which have been made in that country from time to time. The time has come when the facts should be faced and when recognition should be granted. There we have the possibility of trade with some 600 million people, a potential market which is important not only for our farm production but also for our industrial production. I am quite certain that some of our Canadian industries -the electrical industry or the automotive industry with its large output in Canada- could find markets overseas provided we accepted either the goods or the currencies of those countries with whom we traded these things. These are all ways in which we could relieve unemployment.

We have listened today to long speeches which, I have no doubt, are election speeches. I thought as I listened to the Prime Minister tonight that this was the handbook for the Conservative party for the next election which was probably being put on the record this afternoon; and, of course, the Prime Minister and his colleagues have now the facilities which they did not have before to get these things together, facilities which I am afraid my hon. friends in the Liberal opposition will greatly miss, and facilities to which we have never had access. Perhaps we are just as well off doing our own digging, because after all when we do our own digging it sticks in our memories and we do not need to get up and read a long manuscript; we know what we are talking about without having to read from a manuscript.

Mr. Sinclair:

Or read from other people's speeches.