Alfred Henry Bence
Progressive Conservative
Mr. BENCE:
I am quoting the minister's
exact words as they appear on page 3701, but on the next page he is. reported as saying:
As I say, we bought some alcohol from our plants which cost us eighty-eight cents per gallon laid down at. Sarnia, but I believe the price at the distillery is somewhere between seventy-two to seventy-eight cents a gallon.
I should like an explanation of the disparity between those two statements. Is the fifty to sixty cent price based on eighty cent wheat, or is it the seventy-two to seventy-eight cent price that is based on that wheat? It is possible that the difference may be made up by the fact that the distilleries are selling alcohol which they are producing in their own plants and offering for sale to the government, while the other figure may have been an estimate of what it would cost in a plant established by the government. I should like to know whether a recent process known as the Park and Telford process was brought to the attention of the administration. I understand that a new process has been developed in the United States within the last four or five months which it is claimed will effect a saving of around ten cents per gallon in the production of alcohol from wheat, I believe this process eliminates the use of malt barley. Can the minister give us any information in connection with the plant which is being established at Thorold, Ontario, other than the information that was contained in the reply given to this house the other day, which merely was to the effect
War Appropriation-Supplies
that it would be operated by a company known as the Ontario Paper company; I think the name of the manager or president was also given. I would like to know what the approximate capacity of this plant will be, whether it is producing alcohol from wheat, and whether it is the kind of plant that can be turned over to the use and production of industrial alcohol from other products, such as molasses, when the war is over.