Hon. IAN MACKENZIE (Vancouver Centre) :

I should like to ask the Superintendent

General of Indian Affairs if he has received a request from the Minister of Finance of British Columbia asking for permission to assess Indians employed in industry in that province a special 1 per cent duty.

Hon. T. G. MURPHY (Minister of the Interior):

No such request has been brought to my notice.

PENSIONS AND ALLOWANCES On the orders of the day:

Mr. C. G. POWER (Quebec South):

I

should like to repeat the question I asked the

167S

Unemployment at Churchill

Minister of Pensions and National Health the other day as to whether or not it is proposed at this session to 'bring down legislation amending the Pension Act.

Hon. MURRAY MacLAREN (Minister of Pensions and National Health):

This matter

is now under consideration.

Mr. SPEAKER:

Why cannot the hon.

member ask his question? There is no necessity for reading this article.

Mr. McINTOSH:

I am laying the foundation for the question.

Mr. SPEAKER:

Ask the question and be done with it. There is no need to read anything.

Mr. McINTOSH:

All right. If it comes

to a matter of asking a question, I can soon do that. The question is this: Is it true that workers from eastern Canada are being sent to Churchill? This article states that unemployed men paraded at the Pas as a demonstration against eastern workers being sent to that part of Manitoba. I should like to know if that has been done, because this is a question of interest to the whole of western Canada.

Hon. R. J. MANION (Minister of Railways and Canals):

I am rather glad the hon. member has brought up this question, because during the last few hours I have been inundated with this statement from various people in the west. I see according to one newspaper sent me that Premier Bracken made the statement that large numbers of men were being taken to Churchill from the east, and the mayor of The Pas is reported to have made a similar statement. I was looking into the matter, without knowing anyone was going to bring it up, so I think I can give a fairly intelligent answer.

The number of men taken to Churchill as working on the line from The Pas to Churchill amounts to approximately one thousand, but of that number about one half are men who have been in there for a number of

years, who have some special qualifications and who have been reemployed. In round figures, some four hundred men I am informed have been taken from The Pas, or about a third of the total number employed. The men taken from other sections of the country, and certainly those taken from the east, with very rare exceptions, were men who had been there in previous years and who had some special qualifications. There were some men taken from Renfrew county, men who have been there for a number of years. They are called adze men; they have special qualifications for working timber. Other men were taken from the maritime provinces; they were steamship men, who have been there for some years. I do not think the numbers of these men have been increased.

With regard to The Pas, there is no doubt that many men went there looking for work this year. I am informed by people in the west that hundreds of men vrent to The Pas on freight trains and in other ways, in the hope of getting work. Of course it is impossible for the Department of Railways and Canals to supply work for all these men. They went in on their own. responsibility, and we have taken as many as we can take. Probably 90 per cent of all the employees on the line from The Pas to Churchill and at Churchill have been taken from Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and I think that is a very fair proportion.

There may be very good arguments advanced in support of the contention that men should not be brought from other sections of Canada, but only those men who have special training or who had previous knowledge of the work were taken from other parts of the country, and their numbers are very small. I think it well that this fact should be made known to the people of western Canada. I can assure my hon. friend and the country that The Pas and western Canada have been treated very fairly in this matter. It may be pointed out that Winnipeg, for instance, has thousands of men unemployed. We did take perhaps 150 men from Winnipeg, but surely that city has some right to be considered. There were a few men taken from Regina, a few from Selkirk and a few from various other sections, and I may say that I was approached from all over western Canada, asking me for positions at Churchill. I suppose for each position we had to offer there were from ten to twenty applications.

Mr. McINTOSH:

Do I understand from the minister that only 10 per cent of the men have come from the east and that these men are all specialists in their work?

Questions

Mr. MANION:

That is correct. Those

men were brought from different parts of the east; some were brought from the maritime provinces and a few came from around Port Colborne. Some of them came from the maritime provinces, some from the town of Port Colborne, and a few from Renfrew county, but they were all men with special training.

Hon. PETER HEENAN (Kenora-Rainy River):

Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct

the attention of the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) to a despatch from the staff representative of the paper Labour in Washington, dated May 19, as follows:

Canada will reply in June to the American note asking if this country is prepared to go ahead in the near future with the development of the St. Lawrence waterway. It will say that the Dominion is favourable to the improvement provided satisfactory joint financial arrangements can be made but will state that there need be no-

Mr. SPEAKER:

I will ask that the hon.

member for Kenora-Rainy River (Mr. Heenan) direct his question to the government. What happens to be published in some foreign newspaper is of no particular interest to the house and does not necessarily form a basis for a question. If the hon. member has a question to ask which is of interest to the country and to this house, he can ask it without reading from a foreign newspaper.