Mr. ILSLEY:

Yes. That is a new feature of this bill, that the labour of the owner may be taken into account in arriving at the lending value.

Mr. KNOWLES:

Before the dinner recess the minister replied to the criticism that some of us on this side of the house had made that there was a lack of planning in this housing legislation, and in his reply he referred to the many places in the bill where the phrases "town planning" and "community planning" appear, and also in particular to this part V which we are about to consider. I want him to know that before we made the criticism we offered, we-some of us at any rate-had studied the bill closely and were fully aware of all these references in it. My point is that the effect of this legislation will be determined not by the use of words in reference to town planning and community planning but by the financial provisions of the bill; and when one studies those provisions I feel that they have not the effect in regard to planning, so far as

attempting to meet our housing needs in the immediate post-war period is concerned, which we should like. The results will be quite haphazard. Houses will be built under this legislation not according to the report of the James committee or of other committees, not according to the needs which may be specified by the municipalities that are closest to the problem, but according to the results of the assistance being given financial institutions under the bill. It is on that basis that we criticized the bill as not being founded on the concept of planning; nevertheless we welcome the part of the bill to which we have come.

Mr. ILSLEY:

What does the hon. gentleman mean? Does he mean that we should pay the municipalities to make plans, or that we should make plans ourselves over the heads of municipalities and pay the costs?

Mr. KNOWLES:

I mean that there should be cooperation between this government and the municipalities in drafting plans and deciding where houses are to be built according to the needs which have already been specified and laid down, and that there should be a definite subsidy, definite federal contributions toward the cost of building houses under public housing authorities.

Mr. BLACKMORE:

In other words, we want to know whether money will be the servant or the master. If it is the master we shall not have very many houses; if it is the servant we shall have plenty of houses.

Mr. CHURCH:

I hope, the minister will investigate in Toronto the private company which was appointed toward the end of the last war to provide housing accommodation. I was head of the city at the time and it was one of the most mischievous institutions we have ever had. They built no houses but built apartments at high rentals, so that they did not relieve the housing situation at all. I would ask the minister to make an investigation under section 24, which provides for ministerial investigations into housing conditions. They had good intentions and did public work, but I am sorry to say I really do not believe that the housing situation was assisted at that time.

Mr. ROSS (St. Paul's):

That calls for some remarks from myself, if the committee will permit me. It only goes to show what misconception there is about the institution in question. About that time there were two institutions, one called the housing commission, set up in Toronto by the government. It was an absolute failure. The city had to take over the whole thing and it lost a lot of money. Up until the last few years the

Housing

Toronto Housing company has given housing at low rents. Hon. gentlemen, to my left hare asked about planning. I suppose that this man I was talking about to-night, Mr. L. M. Wood, has done more in connection with the planning of houses and all that sort of thing in Toronto than any other man. Because of the difficulties we got into I must defend myself. I have been a director of the company without any remuneration for about twenty years. I would suggest that the Toronto housing commission be investigated, not the Toronto Housing company.

Mr. CHURCH:

The board of control and our officials also know about it all. This company put it over the city. It cost the city a lot of money.

Oh, oh!

Mr. CHURCH:

Hon. members may laugh. The company had good intentions no doubt, but they never did a thing for housing. The company was formed and it had a provincial charter. What did it do to relieve the housing situation? It did nothing. Some of it is in my riding. I could tell you what the rents are. I would ask the minister to investigate that city company to see if it is the policy of the government to carry on the old principle under which private companies are appointed to relieve the housing situation. They did nothing to relieve the housing situation.

A national bill is a good thing if it does not wind up by allowing private companies to charge fabulous rates for housing.

It seems to me that our hon. friends to my immediate right should get together and define what they mean by 'semi-philanthropic".

Mr. CASTLEDEN:

The minister said that he might have some slight difficulty in getting the life insurance companies to invest their money if they were guaranteed only 2i per cent. May I suggest to him how they might do some planning by which it might be possible for those companies to get more than that out of it? Under this set-up the life insurance companies through their interlocking directorates might cooperate with the lumber companies, the cement companies, the steel companies, the construction associations and government to arrange to put up some very nice $2,000 dwellings to show a cost of $4,000 with the rentals in proportion, and they might easily clean up five per cent or more on their investment.

Mr. DUPUIS:

I should like to ask the minister if this money will be spent in this country on a pro rata basis of the population in each province, or will it be on a haphazard distribution according to the request from each province? I ask that question because I should not like to see a repetition of the outburst of temper and prejudice we heard last night from the premier of Ontario.

Mr. GRAYDON:

He had some pretty good precedents during the last two or three weeks.

Mr. DUPUIS:

May I refer to paragraph 11 of section 2 of the bill which states:

"Family of low income" means a family which receives a total family income less than five times the economic rental of a family housing unit required to provide sufficient accommodation for the said family.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, since the time of the union of lower and upper Canada most of the rich families have lived in upper Canada and a large number of the poor families in lower Canada, the province of Quebec to-day.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN (Mr. Ross, Calgary East):

I must call the hon. member's attention to the fact that we are considering section 25.

Mr. DUPUIS:

As a member from the province of Quebec I think I am entitled to be assured, before this bill passes, that there will not be any further outbursts of prejudice and discrimination from any other provinces. I think I am entitled to that, Mr. Chairman. May I say that during the Bennett regime hundreds of millions of dollars went to the west. We gladly contributed to it, and whenever Ontario needed special legislation to help it out we never heard a voice from Quebec raised in this chamber or outside of it against Ontario. .

The ACTING CHAIRMAN (Mr. Ross, Calgary East):

I ask the hon. member to

confine his remarks to the section under discussion.