Mr. Dunning;

What is the limit?

Mr. Manning:

Mr. Prime Minister and gentlemen, this is an occasion which obviously calls for plain speaking and a frank expression of our reaction to the address delivered this morning by the Minister of Finance. Mr. Ilsley's comprehensive address might well have been reduced to one simple word of two letters: No! For that reason his statement conveyed much more than just an unsatisfactory negative answer to the considered opinions expressed around this conference table by the provincial premiers. It conveyed an attitude of uncompromising rigidity on the part of the dominion government that is indefensible in the light of the circumstances as they are.

Then Mr. Manning is reported again on page 538 as follows:

Now, Mr. Prime Minister, I cite these facts not in a spirit of bitterness, but rather for the sole purpose of emphasizing the attitude of uncompromising rigidity which the dominion government has adopted in this matter.

And again:

I am forced to say this after listening to the reply of the Minister of Finance to the submissions of the provincial premiers that, if this conference fails, and I sincerely hope that even yet it will not fail-but if this conference fails, the responsibility for its failure will rest squarely on the doorstep of the dominion government and will be due to the attitude of uncompromising rigidity expressed on behalf of the government by the Minister of Finance this morning.

Then as to the apparent reason for the real charge made by the Minister of Justice I should like to quote Mr. Ilsley from page 624, the final page, as follows:

As the Prime Minister reminds me, I must proceed at once with the preparation of the budget. It is not possible for me to wait until an agreement is reached, and I will have to prepare the budget in the light of the fact that no agreement has been reached. In the meantime my suggestion is that we should adjourn sine die, and that the government take into consideration the points of view that have been expressed here today, and then arrive at a decision as to the procedure to follow and the position to take.

Mr. DUNNING:

I do not claim that the average at the present time is 7 per cent, but I do claim that a fair average would be not less than 6J per cent.

Central Mortgage Bank

Mr. DUNNING:

I may be forgiven, then, for presuming that the silence opposite on the

(Mr. Coldwell.]

part of hon. members of the Conservative party gives consent to the case as put forward by the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George. I just wish to refer briefly to the argument that we should go ahead with the farm relief, that as a country we should compensate mortgagees to the extent of fifty per cent of their losses in connection therewith, but that we should relieve these same mortgagees of the obligation, which the bill passed by this house placed upon them, to extend some relief on their own account to the urban mortgagors of this country. That is the issue.

The saving to the treasury by this amendment, if we accepted it, would not, in my opinion, amount to more than 810,000,000. But can anyone count the saving to urban mortgagors which would be represented by the reduction of their interest rate to five and a half per cent? The hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George says that most of the mortgages in this part of Canada are held by individuals and not by institutions. If my memory serves me rightly, the figures given in our own banking and commerce committee, of urban mortgages held by institutions represented before that committee, so far as these central provinces are concerned, were in the neighbourhood of $130,000,000, a very large proportion of which would be eligible for reduction in interest, which reduction, under the terms of the bill as it left this house, would be given by and at the expense of the mortgage institutions and not by and at the expense of the federal treasury. The federal treasury would only enter to bear its proportion of the loss represented by adjustments as a result of depreciated values and the other features of the bill along that line.

Mr. STEV.ENS: Would the minister permit a question?

Mr. DUNNING:

I put it as an outside figure.