Mr. SPEAKER.

In regard to petitions Nos. 1 to 42, asking aid for the construction of the Montreal bridge, as they involve the expenditure of public money, and in addition as petition marked 41 has not, as required by rule 85, three signatures attached to the prayer, they are out of order. The same thing applies to petitions Nos. 43 and 44 which ask a sum of money to be expended for a harbour of refuge on the Bay of Fundy. These two petitions asking for the construction of that harbour also involve an expenditure of public money and are therefore out of order. The only petition which is in order therefore, is the first one.

Mr. R. L. BORDEN (Halifax).

Before the Orders of the Day are called, I wish to mention to my right lion, friend that 1 observe a press despatch from Washington yesterday in these terms :

Washington, April 2, 1902. Secretary Hay and Mr. Raikes, secretary of the British- embassy today signed a treaty extending to the British colonies .he provisions of the original treaty between the United States and Great Britain for the preservation of industrial properties.

There was some such treaty more particularly with regard to trade marks in 1877; subsequently a treaty between France and Spain and other nations to which the United States and Great Britain also became parties at a later date. I understood that these two conventions already applied to the British colonies. I would like to know whether my right hon. friend has any information on the subject which he would like to give to the House V

The government has uo information whatever upon the subject, but of course its attention has been called to the despatch quoted by my hon. friend, and we have asked, and at this moment are expecting information with regard to it. Without having received any such information, I am quite sure of one thing; That whatever treaty has been concluded by Great Britain with the United States, would not

ipso facto apply to the colonies, but that the colonies will be left to decide for themselves whether or not they shall be parties to that agreement whatever it may be.

Mr. Speaker. At the hour at which I moved the adjournment of the debate last night, it seemed inadvisable to ask the House to listen then to the remarks which I feel it incumbent upon me to make in this debate. I would not have cared to enter into a discussion of the public questions of the day at this time, had it not been for some statements which have been made by gentlemen on the opposite side of the House in regard to two or three matters in which I am somewhat, personally concerned, and in which I have been taking considerable interest during the present administration. Hon. gentlemen opposite have made some statements in this debate which I cannot help characterizing as not only reckless hut rash, inasmuch as *they have shown thereby the lack of study of the condition of affairs and of what has actually occurred under the administration of the present government during the last few years.

First, let me say a word or two in regard to a matter which was brought up by my hon. friend and colleague the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Hon. Sir Richard Cartwright), when he spoke a week or two ago in this debate, in regard to certain figures pertaining to the census which has been taken by my department during the past year. Hon. gentlemen opposite alleged that my hon. friend the Minister of Trade and Commerce had made statements which could not be substantiated, and one hon. gentleman, the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Bell) undertook to disprove some of those statements, and asked that further proof of them be submitted. I venture to think that my hon. friend the Minister of Trade and Commerce put this matter in an incontrovertible form before the House, so far as the broad question is concerned. The statements which he made did not go into such detail as could perhaps be called absolute and entire proof on every point; but they were sufficiently detailed. I think, to appeal to the mind of any unprejudiced individual who either heard or read them, and to prove his main contention, which was that the census cf 1801 was unduly swelled in the figures of population, and that therefore

Sir WILFRID LAURIER.

comparisons on this point were unfair to the progress and prosperity of Canada during the last decade, and that it was necessary to show that these were unfair, or else the people of the world and the people of our own country, in studying the census, might not understand and appreciate to the full extent the immense progress which Canada has made in the last few years.

Now, Sir, I have under my hand a number of statements which go into greater detail than those submitted by my hon. friend. I venture therefore to supplement what he has stated by placing some of these statements before the House and the country. They are far too voluminous for me to read them all ; but I wish to read some specimen ones, which I have taken very much at random, amongst the many papers which were laid on the Table by the Minister of Trade and Commerce, and other statements which I have prepared. My hon. friend from Pictou claimed that in the taking of the census of 1891 extreme care had been taken by the government and the minister in charge of the department at that time to insist that the enumerations should be carefully and accurately made. He pointed out that, in so far as industrial establishments were concerned, the enumerators were instructed to include only those which had an annual output of $200. He therefore concluded that it was only such establishments that were included in the tabulation of the census of 1891, and that it was quite reasonable that industrial establishments yielding an annual output of $200 should be regarded as industrial establishments.

I have under my hand the instructions which were issued to the enumerators in 1891, and I find no such statement in those instructions. There was no instruction given to the enumerators that they should only include industrial establishments which gave an annual output of $200. As a matter of fact, that was the same instruction as was given in 1871, in 1881 and in this last census. I do not quarrel with that instruction, but I want to correct the impression that was conveyed by the remarks of my hon. friend from Pictou.

But, further than that, I find that in these tabulations not only did the enumerators take industrial establishments which had not an annual output of $200, but here in the bureau at Ottawa such establishments were included to a very large number indeed. I have in my hand the third volume of that census, which gives these industrial establishments. I have not undertaken to go through the whole 386 pages of that volume, but I did go through the first 80 pages, and as a specimen I find that in those 80 pages there are 339 industrial establishments included in the tabulation the product of each of which was less than $200- a pretty fair proportion, in fact a very large proportion of the whole number.

Hon. Mr. HAGGART.

What Is the proportion of the whole number ?

I have not worked out the exact proportion ; but these 339 establishments had a total annual output of $44,500, or an average of $144 for each establishment, instead of $200. This shows that the industrial enumeration was not made on the basis which has been alleged.

But, Sir, there is a much more important part of the tabulation and the enumeration which I also want to go into, that is, for the population. Hon. gentlemen opposite and their friends in the country have been making certain criticisms of the census of 1901. In the first place, I may say that the instructions that were given in 1901 with regard to the enumeration were practically the same as the instructions given in 1891, 1881 and 1871. It is true there was one difference made in the census of 1891, which was pointed out by my hon. friend from Pictou, that difference being that people who had been absent for more than 12 months were not to be enumerated ; and my hon. friend took great credit to the government of that day for taking that precaution and thereby preventing the enumerating of people who had left the country or left the particular-locality permanently. Now, Sir, what have we found ? We have found, by a careful investigation, in so far as it has gone-and it has gone very far indeed in the province of Quebec, and a reasonable distance in the province of Ontario-that if that instruction was given, it was disregarded to such an extent that we must conclude that it was wilfully disregarded. The enumerators, some of them, ignored it entirely ; because I shall be able to show, not by .general statements of the number in the aggregate, but by individual statements, that many individuals and their families were enumerated who had been more than 12 months absent from the place where they were enumerated.

Mr. SPROULE.

May I ask the hon. member a question ? Was not the first question of the enumerator this : In the event of

any of the members of the family being away, do you expect them to come back ? In the event of their not being expected back, the next question was : Have they

been away more than a year '? But in the event of the first question being answered in the affirmative, even if they were away five years, the enumerators would be obliged to include them.

There were no such instructions. The instructions were that if they were absent more than twelve months they should be held to be away permanently and should not be put on, but, as a matter of fact, they were put on in 1891 in numerous instances. In the census of 1901 the instructions were

that they should not be put on, and we have no proof or suspicion that any were included who were away more than twelve months.

Hon. gentlemen opposite have taken two positions on this question. First, they claim that the census of 1S91 was correctly taken and then they imply that the census of 1901 was not. The accusation is made that in the province of Quebec, in the census of 1901, the enumeration was excessive, that some people were counted who should not have been, and that in Ontario fewer people were counted than should have been on the schedules. I venture to say that I can prove that in the province of Quebec in 1901 no more people were enumerated than should have been, but that in the census of 1891 names were put on to an enormous extent that should not have been enumerated at all. If, therefore, there is any accusation of favouritism committed by either government in unduly swelling the population of the province of Quebec, that accusation comes with ill grace from Jion. gentlemen opposite, because it was really the late' government which was guilty. Let me cite a few instances just to show how the administration of these hon. gentlemen opposite proceeded in taking the census in 1891. Let me first say that in the investigation which I caused to be made, we found a ready means of obtaining information in the province of Quebec, where there is a large Catholic population. And I took care to have the investigation made in those counties in which the population is practically and .entirely Catholic, and not where there is a large mixed population. My hon. friend from South Lanark (Mr. Haggart) spoke of the counties of Drummond and Arthabaska, in which there is a mixed Catholic and Protestant population, and he argued that the reason of the disparity was that in the parochial census the Protestants were not included, but in the counties where I have had an investigation, the details of which my hon. friend the Minister of Trade and Commerce laid on the Table the other day, the county of Drummond and Arthabaska does not appear because we limited our inquiry to those counties where there is a homogeneous Catholic population and where, therefore, the census bulletins should give results similar to the parochial censuses.

Mr. CLANCY.

In every case has the hon. gentleman observed this rule ?

Practically.

Mr. CLANCY.

Practically-that is another thing.

The hon. gentleman knows perfectly well that there is no part of the Dominion, no matter where, where there are not some

people of a different religion from that of the majority, but the numbers are so small in the counties I have alluded to that they can be practically ignored. My hon. friend is not so familiar with the province of Quebec perhaps as some of those who come from that province, and know more about it.

An lion. MEMBER,, ) V e do not know very much about it.