Mr. Adamson:

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker; and I also thank the minister.

Mr. Rodney Adamson (York West):

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of personal privilege. In tonight's press I see a report by the Canadian Press to the effect that the Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys (Mr. Prudham) had stated that I wished Canada unilaterally to raise the price of gold in Canada. This so shocked me, as it is the very antithesis of everything I have said on the subject for many years, that I ask the right for complete and absolute denial at the earliest possible occasion-which is now.

What I advocate now, as in the past, is not that Canada set a price for gold, but that she, as the world's third trading nation, establish a free market for gold in Canada, so that an acceptable price may be arrived at, based on the open market decision within a country not employing exchange or currency control. This is the whole basis of my argument about gold as a monetary unit, and as an agent of convertibility. I introduced a bill this session on this very point.

I regret I had to be out of the house in the dying minutes of the debate on gold, and I regret that my point was not understood about the free market. I hope the minister will understand this-and I see he is in the house. I know he did not misstate the point deliberately, but I wish to correct it now. What I said in the debate on the bill was that Canada should take the lead and establish a free market for gold, so that a price could be arrived at within a free economy- not that we could artificially peg the price at $50, or any other amount, which would be quite impossible.

I agree with the minister in what he said. I wish merely to correct any misunderstanding, because his suggestion is the very antithesis of everything I have said in the house for years.

[Mr. Knowles.)

Mr. Adamson:

I want to say something in answer to the same argument because I think it must be dealt with now. First of all may I say, in the somewhat more robust language of the north, that the hon. member for Timiskaming made a damn fine speech this afternoon. McIntyre mine has been referred to. I have been underground in McIntyre many times. Some years ago McIntyre discovered what is known as the twenty-five vein system. It is to the north of the property. It is a nearly vertical vein structure of quite high grade. It runs about an ounce per ton which is about four times the average grade at the mine.

As the hon. member for Timiskaming said, the ideal is to have a mill feed of constant grade running to the mill. The situation at McIntyre is that in the old Pearl lake porphyry area and the other older parts of the mine the grade may run from -15 to [DOT]2, perhaps even less than -15. This ore is mixed with a proportion from the twenty-five vein system area to bring the average grade up to what the minister said, about -29 ounces per ton.

So far as increased costs are concerned, let me take the case of Kerr-Addison. At the present time Kerr-Addison is probably the greatest gold mine in Canada and North America. Quite conceivably it may become the greatest gold mine in the world. It has a wonderful deposit of ore. Years ago before the war they cut off mining or hoisting or breaking ore when they got below -06 ounces per ton. As costs rose they stopped breaking at -07 and as they rose further at [DOT]08, -09 until now I believe any rock containing less than one-tenth of an ounce is considered waste rock.

The quantity of ore between -06 ounces per ton and -1 ounces per ton runs to many hundreds of thousands of tons, and many thousands of dollars' worth of gold is lost to Canada and to the national wealth of the country for all time. That is an example of what increased costs are doing so far as the destruction of our national wealth is concerned.

With regard to the question of sealing off, in one, maybe two, and possibly three cases that I know of an extremely high grade section was discovered and sealed oft. I think the highest grade section was discovered some years ago at the O'Brien mine in the Cadillac area. I have forgotten what it ran, but it was 20, 30 or perhaps even 50 ounces per ton over a very short distance and a very small ore chute. I am not sure how big it was but I saw the ore in place and it was just like looking at the national mint. It was a very beautiful sight. But it was a very small occurrence and to safeguard that very high grade deposit the stope was barred and locked to prevent high grading. That was some years ago.

There may have been one or two other cases. Siscoe had some high grade and there may have been other cases where, a small chute of tremendously high grade ore having been discovered, it was wired off for a temporary period simply and solely to prevent high grading until such time as the ore could be mined. Incidentally, that was a long time before the Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act came into force and had nothing to do with sealing off high grade ore in order to mine low grade ore. What the hon. member for Timiskaming has said is absolutely correct. It is nothing short of ridiculous to think that any mine would seal off high grade today.

Mr. Rodney Adamson (York West):

Mr. Speaker, I see no reason why this bill should be unduly held up at this moment. However, I just wanted to answer certain statements which were put on the record by the hon. member for York South (Mr. Noseworthy) with regard to the earnings of gold mining companies. Of the 53 straight gold mines which are at present in production, the average yield is rather less than per cent on the present price of the stock. May I say that that yield is considerably under the yield of any group of manufacturing stocks or that on stocks of any other producers of primary products. As to dividends paid, for the straight gold mines in 1953-that is the 53 straight gold mines which were producing-the average dividend was 15 cents. If one excluded the McIntyre mine

which is now more of an investment trust than a gold producer, the average dividend would fall to 9 cents. I merely wanted to put these facts on the record in order to show that today the gold mining industry is not making profits and is virtually scraping the bottom of the barrel.

As to wages, while the wages paid in the straight gold mining industry are less than those paid in the base metal mines, nevertheless they compare favourably with and are very much higher than the average of industrial wages across Canada. I have the statistics in front of me but I will not burden the house by putting them on the record. However, they are here in the dominion bureau of statistics' statistical review and in the Labour Review.

There is one other comment I should like to make with regard to wages in the gold camps and it is this. The cost of living in the settled camps is considerably lower than that in places such as Sudbury or the industrial centres of southern Ontario and industrial Quebec. Rents are lower. The cost of living generally is lower. Hence, after the cost of living has been taken out, the balance position of the gold miner at the end of the month is, I submit, little if at all inferior to that of the worker in any other industry in Canada.

I think that is all I wish to say on the bill now, Mr. Speaker. As I said yesterday, we support it. I will not repeat anything I said yesterday on the matter. I merely wanted to correct a statement which I believe can be shown to be untrue.

Mr. Adamson:

Yes. The report states that the figure was $3.14 in 1952 and that it was $3.93 for 1953.