Mr. Coldwell:

I did not say that.

Mr. Sinclair:

He read the speech of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Pearson) which was longer than his own speech.

Mr. Coldwell:

I did not say that, because I do not know. My hon. friend does.

Mr. Sinclair:

You misunderstood me. I was talking about his reading of the speech made by the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Coldwell:

Oh yes. I think that might to some extent be regarded as a compliment although, of course, it was done in a very critical manner. I might find some data in that which might come in handy to me on some future occasion.

I do not propose to speak any longer. We have had a long day. I have moved an amendment. The amendment wipes out a part which I think should never have been included in the motion. I am quite sure the Leader of the Opposition and those with whom he conferred must have had their tongues in their cheeks, because they knew perfectly well that we could not support an amendment of that sort calling for the restoration of a Liberal government in the circumstances under which they resigned last June and the situation which resulted in a general election.

I want to say this to my friends opposite: do not imagine for one moment that I am expressing any confidence in the Conservative party. I am going to say this very seriously: never in my experience have I seen a group of men assume office with a very clear promise and responsibility in at least one important particular and then go back so completely on that promise. I refer to the trans-Canada pipe line debate.

They were going to get rid of these buccaneers; they were going to end this nefarious deal. The Prime Minister went round the country talking about black Friday. Some of us who participated in that scene will never forget it. But they seem to have forgotten about it, and tried to shelve the whole thing by referring it to a royal commission. I am not going to talk about the personnel of that royal commission. I have never tried to attack the personal character of any man on that commission, and I would not do so because I think they are all estimable citizens, but I cannot yet see how a gentleman who controls and operates one of the greatest privately owned public utilities in the world can give an entirely unbiased view on whether or not the trans-Canada pipe line should be publicly or privately owned. Nor can I see how a gentleman with great private interests in a foreign country-foreign-con-trolled organizations in that country-can give an unqualified verdict in support of the elimination of foreign control over some utilities in our country. As I said over the radio, and I say it again in this house, I regard this as a betrayal of trust.

Mr. Speaker:

I hope the hon. member does not intend to pursue this subject because as he will recall it was the subject matter of an amendment moved in supply some time ago and was dealt with then. It is not in the amendment tonight.

Suggested Resignation of Government

Mr. Coldwell:

I have finished what I intend to say in that regard and I will not refer to it again. But I do wish to say that soon or later I suppose the government will go to the country. I said something about the constitutional position regarding the Liberal party. I have a vivid recollection of 1926. I have a vivid recollection of the position taken by a great leader of the Conservative party, the Right Hon. Arthur Meighen, a gentleman with whose views I sharply disagreed in the main, but nonetheless a great Canadian and a great lawyer who was a distinguished leader of the opposition and for a short time prime minister of Canada. He held the view, which I think is consonant with the constitutional practice throughout the British commonwealth, that a government which can command a majority in the house has no right to ask for a dissolution, and this government has had the largest majority of any government in my experience in the 22 years I have been here. What the Leader of the Opposition should be proposing is not that we should vote with them but that there should be a coalition between the Liberal and Conservative parties because in the final analysis there is not one atom of difference between them. The only difference lies in their administrative approaches. Fundamentally they believe in the same things. They are the same people, and there is a possibility of a coalition. What a coalition it would be. What an overwhelming majority the Prime Minister would have.

Mr. Balcer:

We keep our promises and they don't.

Mr. Coldwell:

I said I would not mention the pipe line question again. Don't provoke me.

Mr. Speaker, I think we have had a very interesting day. We have had a very tiring day. I always find it a little tiring and trying to listen to very long speeches and we have had them today. However, I suppose that the speakers are justified in putting on the record all that they can find to put on, and I should not think that much more could be found to put on the record on some future occasion. The amendment is before the house. I suggest it is a good amendment and that everyone in this house should vote for it.

Mr. Speaker:

I am not sure that the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Rose-town-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell) does not overlap a previous amendment relating to unemployment but I shall let it stand for the time being and consider it later on.

Mr. Solon E. Low (Peace River):

Mr. Speaker, this has been an extremely interesting day. It is unfortunate after the excellent speeches

3544 HOUSE OF

Suggested Resignation of Government we have heard thus far that we have to continue until ten o'clock but we have to do so and much as I dislike the thought of burdening you with any further verbiage I have to do my duty and so I must continue until ten o'clock.

It was refreshing indeed to see the life that had sprung into the Liberal party somehow during this past week. For the first hour today the members of that party showed signs of being right up in the clouds. I was somewhat disappointed in the way they became deflated, however, a little later on and grew exceedingly quiet. I want to pass on a word to my hon. friend the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Pearson). In the next few years you are going to hear a lot of things that will be hard to take and which you will find disconcerting. What you have to do is just sort of roll with the punches and not let it bother you too much because, after all is said and done people are doing what they think is their duty in this house. I am sure they do not mean anything really personal just as I am not going to mean anything personal as I present what I have to say tonight.

The new Liberal leader made an excellent speech this afternoon and I congratulate him on it. I am not going to say, as the Prime Minister (Mr. Diefenbaker) said, that I congratulate him on everything but his courage. I do not intend to talk about the question of courage at all. As a matter of fact, I am not at all sure that the Prime Minister was correct in diagnosing the attitude of the Leader of the Opposition as a lack of courage. I think what the Prime Minister really should have done was to have described it as discretion.

After all the build-up since the beginning of the real advertising for the Liberal convention, a great many people, of course, have expected fireworks here in parliament this afternoon and this evening and that is the reason they gathered in such large numbers today and filled all the galleries and even the standing room because they expected to witness a dramatic moment. They fully expected to see the Liberal party come back to life and move an amendment that everybody on the opposition side of the house would have to support and therefore the government would have to resign and there would be a new election.

Instead what did they witness in parliament today. During the supper hour I heard a good description of it. The description ran that the people of Canada today witnessed a good argument between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. It was rather like two men seen drifting in a canoe

down a swiftly flowing river and when they were about to go over the falls they were still heard engaging in loud argument about who had broken the paddle. That is about the extent of the argument we heard today.

For weeks the Liberal press has been saying, "Just wait until we get our new leader, and we'll show ya'." On the other hand, the Conservative press and the Conservative party have also suggested they were itching for a fight and the press has been saying, "Bring on your new leader, his father and all his brothers and relations, and we'll lick the bunch of ya'." The fact is that when the showdown came the one was afraid and the other "dassn't". That is how it looked to the public today. However, I am not going to say that the Liberal leader lacked courage. Sometimes it takes more courage not to fight than to be quick to get into one. Let us say, then, that the new Liberal leader used discretion thinly coated with daring, the kind of daring that says, "I'll betcha can't lean six feet out of the barn loft window without falling and breaking your neck". Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition thought the Conservatives would be unwise enough to try it. I am not so sure but that they will; nobody knows yet.

The Liberal leader used discretion in the amendment he moved because no doubt he believes that he who strikes and runs away will live to fight another day. I am not quite sure after all the emphasis he placed on the term "Liberal policies", both as he spoke and when he read his amendment, that he really expected us or anybody else in the opposition to take it seriously or be prepared to vote for it.

In spite of all this, the amendment contained some interesting sections and spoke, among other things, of growing unemployment. I think everybody knows that unemployment is indeed serious today and I believe that the situation at the present time gives every indication of growing more serious. Because of this we believe that every effort ought to be made to relieve that situation. The question that arises is this: Is the Conservative government to blame for the present stagnation and unemployment?

One does not have to go back very far and one does not have to quote too many statistics to find the answer and I certainly will not indulge in the extensive quotation of statistics the Prime Minister engaged in this afternoon. But if one were to simply go to page 42 of the Bank of Canada report for 1956 one would read these amazing sentences in Mr. Coyne's report. I wish to point out with emphasis that I am speaking of the report

Suggested Resignation of Government

for 1956 and not for 1957 or recent months. At page 42 of that report Mr. Coyne wrote:

It is not an accident that periods of inflationary prosperity are usually followed by periods of dislocation in production and employment. One of the main purposes of efforts to contain inflation is to avoid this aftermath.

I have been convinced for a long time that some governments use unemployment as a definite and deliberate policy and I am certain that back in 1956 Mr. Coyne, the governor of the Bank of Canada, saw it coming and also realized that unemployment would be used as a deliberate policy. When I speak of unemployment being used as a deliberate policy I think of a comment I heard made by the Right Hon. Ernest Bevan in a speech right here in the city of Ottawa some few years ago when he visited this city some time before his death. He said, in effect: If we had not been afraid of the communists and communist expansion in 1950 we in our country would have brought on a policy of unemployment as a means of readjusting our economy.

I do not think there is any question about the fact that governments have used it, and that the situation we are now in with respect to unemployment was foreseen by the governor of the Bank of Canada. I am certain that it did not come as any great surprise to some people who were in the driver's seat. Stagnation had set in long before the election of June 10. Everybody knows about the serious dislocation that had occurred in agriculture. Beginning in 1951, when farm cash income reached its peak in this country, there began a very serious decline that continued year after year until in 1957 the farm population numbered approximately 16 per cent of the total population and received less than nine per cent of the national income. That in itself was a very serious thing and foreshadowed unemployment, because every time farm cash income drops there will be dislocation in industry and someone will have to be laid off. That situation was brought before the government of the day and the Liberal government failed to get into serious grips with it.

There was the rising tempo of failure of small businesses, beginning in 1956 and continuing all through 1957. That should have been indication enough to the government of the day that we would be facing serious unemployment before the year was out.

There was the slowdown in housing construction. It came almost to a standstill early in 1957 when, as I recall it, there were only a very few hundred starts during the whole of the month of January and the early part of February.

There were signs of quite serious unemployment showing very early last spring in the

lumber industry. Complaints were made about it right here on the floor of the house and actual figures were quoted showing the number of people out of work in the lumber industry. In British Columbia particularly some cities like New Westminster had to undertake quite a lot of relief work for those out of work and who had been out of work for months in the lumber industry. That was well known.

The automobile industry early in 1957 began to show very serious signs of unemployment and stagnation. Men were being laid off and a call came for the government to try to do something about stimulating automobile sales through a reduction of sales tax and excise tax.

The farm machinery industry was hit hard early in 1956 and it continued all through 1957 to show signs of difficulty. Of course, unemployment increased there. Everybody knows about the textile industry and how unemployment has been developing in that industry for the past two or three years.

I suggest, Mr. Speaker, it was certainly not a matter of surprise to anybody that unemployment began to pile up this last autumn, and that it has reached the alarming figure of 386,000 people out of work today. As a matter of fact, unemployment and growing stagnation were among the real issues in the 1957 election campaign. The interesting thing to me is that try as we did we could not get the Liberal party to get down to a discussion of that real issue in the first six weeks of the campaign. They continued to avoid it and to live in the clouds, to build straw men and set up phony issues. I do not think there is anyone who can doubt that at all. All during the campaign they remained in the clouds. The real root of the trouble was laid as far back as 1955, during the 20th year of continuous Liberal rule.

I want to refer just for one moment, Mr. Speaker, to just a very few figures which will indicate the truth of what I have just said that the real root to the whole situation was laid back in 1955. I refer for my facts to the statistical review of the dominion bureau of statistics, Ottawa, December, 1957. I find on page 66 a table indicating the total loans that were in existence through the chartered banks, as at the end of the various periods, beginning in 1954 and down to October, 1957. Here is what I find. In 1954 the total loans advanced through the chartered banks stood at $4,095 million.

Mr. Speaker:

Order. Will the hon. member allow me to ask the house to moderate its conversation a bit. There is a buzz in the house which makes it very difficult to hear.

Mr. Low:

Thank you very much. You are a real pal, Mr. Speaker. I repeat the figure

3546 HOUSE OF

Suggested Resignation of Government so that those who are kind enough to listen may catch the trend of what I am trying to say. I am pointing out that in 1954 all the chartered banks in Canada had loans on their books to a total of $4,095 million. A year later, at the end of 1955, those chartered banks had a total of $4,891 million, which was an increase over the year before of $796 million. By the end of 1956 they had $5,363 million in loans, an increase over the year before of only $471 million. By the end of the first 10 months of 1957 the total loans outstanding amounted to $5,439 million, or an increase of only $76 million over the previous year.

That tells the story, Mr. Speaker, of the tight money policy so far as the banks are concerned and it tells it very effectively. The reduction in the rate of increase in money supply was from $796 million in 1954 to 1955, and down to $76 million near the end of 1957, in the face of the fact, Mr. Speaker, that all during that period we had a very steady and spectacular increase in the gross national production.

If you look at the facts from the Bank of Canada statistical summary for 1956 you discover that in 1954 we had a gross national production of $24,336 million; in 1955, $26,916 million; and in 1956, $29,866 million, and we understand that for 1957 it was over $30,000 millions. But in spite of that great increase in the gross national production during those years, far more goods to distribute to our people throughout the country, there was a steady decline in the rate of increase of the money supply. That tells the story, more effectively than I can do it, of the effect of the tight money policy upon this country that was initiated under Liberal rule and with Liberal concurrence back in the fall of 1955, and it has continued more or less unabated until this day. Indeed, Mr. Speaker, there is ground for sincerely believing that the real roots of the unemployment situation were put down during the Liberal regime, and there is no use their trying to squirm out from under their responsibility in that regard at all.

There appears to be no doubt that seeds of stagnation were sown and firmly packed into the Canadian soil during the time of Liberal rule. It was clear as far back as the beginning as 1957 that unemployment was bound to increase unless clearer vision and more courageous action were brought to bear upon Canada's problems and more realistic economic policies were adopted. Seven months after the new government took office we have to ask this very important question. Has the present government done all it could reasonally be expected to do to halt the downward trend and to relieve unemployment and prevent further expansion of it? I have not

very much time left but I will perhaps have time to begin to answer that question. It is a question we must ask and answer honestly if we are expected to know how to cast our vote on this amendment.

In the first place, the Conservative government appears to have realized the seriousness of the situation and as far as we can tell they did not attempt to minimize it or to hide the facts. That is commendable. I have to give credit where credit is due. They have done some things. They have taken some steps to bolster employment. We must admit that. Whether they have done all they can is another question.

The present situation, Mr. Speaker, indicates very clearly the need for some technique to inject directly and quickly into the hands of the consumers of this country new purchasing power with which those consumers themselves can increase economic activity by their effective demand for the goods and services that are available for sale. That in itself would go a long way toward clearing away unemployment and preventing any further growth of it. But, Mr. Speaker, we have not got it, and that is the thing that we Social Crediters, ever since we came into this house back in 1935, have been pleading with governments to provide themselves with, a technique for injecting new purchasing power quickly and directly into the hands of the consumers of this country so that they themselves can cure unemployment.

But what have you done? Nothing. We preached to the Liberals over here-they were over here by the way and we were over the way-for 22 years. Nothing was done although on several occasions we had people on the front benches of that party agree that we had something and one of them one day went so far as to say, "Oh well, we know you fellows are putting forward an idea that is probably a good idea but we will not let you put it into effect; we will do it ourselves." But they never did. They went out of power and that ought to be a warning to some people.

Some people never learn.

Mr. Low:

We do hope they will, however. As I have said, the government has given evidence that it realizes the seriousness of the unemployment situation and has talked about the methods it is going to use to try to clear it away. But they have been fringe methods. They have been tinkering instead of getting right at the root at things. The Leader of the Opposition said today that what is needed is bold and courageous action. He said that we need a good measure of public investment to hold the line while we are creating a better atmosphere in which

trade and so on can take place. It would be interesting for him to define what he means by that bold action. It would be very interesting for him to tell the house what he means when he says that public investment should be used. I should like to know what he is going to do about it, how he will raise the money and what kind of investments it will be put into. Those are things we ought to know.

But let me say a word about our friends on this side of the house. They have failed without question to bring in a budget. That is serious because let me point' out, Mr. Speaker, that if the government had seen its duty clearly and had faced up to the situation they would have brought in a budget and they would have provided themselves with the right to budget for a deficit so they could do some public investment that would alleviate the unemployment situation. But they have not had the courage. I think the hon. member for Coast-Capilano (Mr. Sinclair) was reported in the press the other day as saying that a deficit budget was something that should be made use of at the present time. Maybe that is what the Leader of the Opposition had in his mind. If it is, perhaps he would suggest it. But I tell you, Mr. Speaker, that the government will not begin to deal effectively with the unemployment situation until it brings in a budget and provides for some deficit budgeting.

I think the government ought to look very seriously at that situation and make some plans. It looks as if they are going to have some time, sort of a lease on life, and perhaps that time could be well used. You know, it is all to the good to go off and do a little bit of meditating. I see the hon. member for Essex East (Mr. Martin) looking at me. I think he realizes that meditation is good for the soul. I suggest that the Conservatives go off into

Business of the House

the quiet of the night, meditate on these things and see if before we reach the end of the present session they will not be able to bring forward some really effective methods by which they can deal with the unemployment situation. I see it is ten o'clock, Mr. Speaker, and as I have not finished yet I would move the adjournment of the debate.

Mr. Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):

You

would like a chance to meditate before you tell us how you will vote.

Mr. Low:

I should like to have a chance to meditate so I can inform my hon. friends over there how we are going to vote on their subamendment. I can already say that we could not possibly vote for the amendment, but I shall go into silent meditation. I should like to move the adjournment of the debate.

On motion of Mr. Low the debate was adjourned.

Mr. Chevrier:

May I ask what the business of the house will be?

Mr. Green:

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we shall continue with this debate.