Mr. BLACKETT:

Will the hon. member

permit a question?

Mr. IIACKETT:

Mr. Chairman, I was before the Senate committee for a number of days following this bill while the hearings were going on. I shall not attempt to enumerate the interests represented! there, but many interests were represented and many witnesses were heard. During the time I was there, which included the better part of a week, I thought the bill received very careful attention, especially from a large body of men from the eastern provinces.

Mr. BLACKETT:

I am perfectly willing to retract.

Mr. HAOKETT:

He goes further and says that this man has added to the crime by having been a Conservative organizer. I believe that the hon. gentleman is accurate in stating as a fact that the vice-president of the commission did at some time have something to do with politics. I should hate to think however that every member of this chamber is unfitted for any honourable post

Radio Broadcasting Act

because at some time he had sought and been found worthy of the confidence of the electorate of some constituency. I consider it most unfortunate that a distinguished member of this chamber should wish to point to every man in this house and say that because he has at some time been a partisan he is unworthy of high office. If he is going to apply that rule to this and other countries, what esteem can he have for the bench, what esteem can he have for the incumbent of any office that is worth holding?-because in democratic countries positions of high trust are invariably given to those who seek, and show themselves worthy of, the confidence of the people. I reiterate therefore that to say, without substantiating the statement, without bringing forth anything to justify such a charge, that this body which has recently come into office is unworthy of public confidence, designates, I fear, a type of mind and a partisanship which detract from the value of the judgment uttered in those words of condemnation. The hon. member says that Bill Murray should go home- and I speak of Bill Murray because he was at McGill with me, a boy from British Columbia, an active, energetic lad who has made his way in the world and is welcomed not only to Canada but to other countries where expert radio advice is sought; he is called in because he is supposed to know more about the technique of radio development than anyone else. When the hon. member refers to that gentleman as a stranger, and harks back to .that cry that is sometimes heard in the back ranges, that he is a foreigner-

Mr. BLACKETT (Translation):

At Richmond.