Mr. INGRAM.

I listened very carefully to the statement made yesterday by the First Minister as well as to the statement made by the Minister of the Interior. I

have also listened to the statements made by the hon. member for Calgary (Hr. M. S. McCarthy) and the hon. member for Montreal (Mr. Ames), and I am bound to say that no hon. gentleman can read the statements of those four hon. gentlemen and come to any other conclusion than that the figures given on the two sides are as far apart as Australia is from Canada. And yet the right hon. First Minister tells us that he wants to listen to other arguments from this side of the House before he answers the arguments advanced yesterday. If the right hon. gentleman wishes to shorten the debate on this question, the best plan he can adopt is to answer early in the debate the statements made by hon. gentlemen on this side of the House in order that other hon. gentlemen may not find it necessary to prepare themselves to prolong the debate. Surely the government ought to be ready to point out to the opposition in what respect the statements made by the hon. member for Calgary and the hon. member for St. Antoine are wrong. That can be done if the government is right; but any one reading the statements of the four hon. gentlemen who spoke cannot come to any other conclusion than that they) derive, their information from entirely different sources ; therefore it is necessary that some explanation should be made by the government. This is an important question ; and the idea of the government coming down with these two important measures, and having only the meagre statements made by the right hon. the First Minister and the hon. Minister of the Interior, is something I have not noticed in this House before on a serious question of this kind. In the case of our general distribution, we had more satisfaction than this. We are treated in a contemptible manner by the government on this question, and I am surprised at the course taken by the right hon. the First Minister on this occasion.

Mr. INGRAM.

My right hon. friend has been good enough to state the difference between the figures given by himself of the number of votes polled and the figures given by my hon. friend from Calgary. But the figures in regard to the number of post offices, the number of homestead entries and the number of school districts, have not yet been explained.

Mr. INGRAM.

Yes, for Dominion purposes.

Mr. INGRAM.

Across the river from Edmonton. i

Mr. INGRAM.

The right hon. gentleman draws his conclusions from the number of votes polled. The Minister of the Interior claimed that that is a proper source from which to make the delimitation. Evidently that view is supported by the First Minister. The statement made by the member for Calgary (Mr. M S. McCarthy) is that owing to certain difficulties amongst the ranchers in the southern part of Alberta at the time of the general election of November 3, 1904, many men engaged in ranching were obliged by reason of an order issued by the government to absent themselves from the polling divisions at which they would have a right to vote and by reason of this thus absenting themselves the number of votes polled in the south was less than it ought to have been or otherwise would have been, bad it not been for the order issued by the government. But, on the other hand, in the north we have the statement made that more votes were polled than were on the voters' lists. Therefore the northern part of Alberta derives a greater benefit from calculating from the number of votes polled, by reason of the fact that more ballots found their way into the boxes than there were names on the voters' lists in the north while the percentage of votes cast in relation to the number on the list in the south was less than it should be, as I have said by reason of the men having to be absent to obey the order of the government or lose their cattle. Is that a correct statement of fact ? If it is then If you take the number of votes polled you are not doing a proper thing for the south as against the north. That is unfair if that statement is true and I have not beard it contradicted.