Mr. Garson:
No, I think not, Mr. Speaker.. I am just speaking offhand, of course.
Mr. Diefenbaker:
The minister would
remember that.
Mr. Garson:
No, I do not. I am sorry, but I do not remember.
Mr. Diefenbaker:
All right.
Mr. Garson:
But in any case, it would not necessarily be relevant to the particular aspect of the matter that we are discussing at this time.
Mr. Diefenbaker:
I was asking for information. I thought the minister would know what had happened.
Mr. Garson:
In any case, Mr. Speaker, if such a section were drafted by my hon. friend I would feel that our proper course in this chamber-which was the course we followed not so long ago upon another occasion-was to refer such an amendment or such a provision to the attorneys general of the provinces by whom, and only by whom, under our constitution, the law is enforced and order maintained. The leader of the opposition seemed to be under a considerable-misapprehension in this regard when he was indicating the other day that the Department of Justice was at fault in not having taken-some action with regard to the foreign, language newspapers in Toronto that, in his-view, were guilty of publishing sedition. In; making that charge against the Department, of Justice, I think that he was taking a. position which was rather embarrassing to himself, in that these same papers-I would
2142 HOUSE OF
Communist Activities in Canada not say all of them, but most of them-were engaged in publishing the same sort of matter,
I suggest,-and probably he could tell us- during the time he was premier of Ontario and during the time his attorney general and his government had the responsibility for enforcing this section of the Criminal Code in that province.
Mr. Drew:
On a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson) has made a statement with which I should deal immediately. The quotations that I gave were quotations from Vestnik of this year. I used them as illustrations of the type of thing that is now being published.
I definitely have information that there has been a steady acceleration of this type of production. When I said that this was something peculiarly within the responsibility of the Department of Justice, I would point out that there is a branch of the R.C.M.P., which is under his authority, which deals with this subject; and also that the provincial governments have not the translating facilities .available to deal with this matter. But I (know he has. I know that he is having translations made within his department I (hope with his knowledge-of these various papers at this time.
Mr. Garson:
My hon. friend is quite right in saying that we have the translating facilities. But I should think that a man who has held himself out, for so long as he has done, as an authority upon dominion-provincial matters would by now, after these many years, have come to know, by contacts in the house or in the Ontario legislature, that it is the provincial attorneys general who have the administration of justice and not the Department of Justice which he has been criticizing.
Mr. Drew:
Mr. Speaker, these statements must be corrected. It is not the provincial attorneys general. The provinces are responsible for the administration of justice, and the Minister of Justice has it within his authority to act in every single case where he knows of any offence under the Criminal Code.
Mr. Garson:
I suggest to my hon. friend with all deference that he is quite wrong; that if and when we act we act on the authority and with the approval previously obtained from the attorney general, as we know to our cost, because on some occasions provincial attorneys general-I am not mentioning any province in particular here-wish us to appoint counsel, whom we pay, to represent them in such a prosecution.
Mr. Drew:
Which you initiate.
Mr. Garson:
If my hon. friend would take the trouble to get the British North America Act and read section 92 he would find that what I am telling him is quite correct.
In his interjection my hon. friend intimated that there has been-I have forgotten the word he used-rather a change for the worse in these publications. I hope it is not because of his departure from Ontario as premier that these papers have changed for the worse.
Mr. Drew:
That is a silly statement, a typically silly statement.
Mr. Garson:
Well, that was my hon. friend's statement, and I agree that it is silly. I am in entire agreement with that.
Mr. Drew:
You are dealing with a serious subject. Deal with it in that way.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order.
Mr. Garson:
May I say, Mr. Speaker, that the provincial attorneys general themselves who have this responsibility, and who discharge it when they feel there is occasion to do so, have made no representations to our department that the present sections of the Criminal Code and the Official Secrets Act are inadequate to deal with what we have been referring to in this debate here today. And I must confess with all deference that this fact carries considerable weight with me, because it seems to me that these men who have the responsibility are the ones best qualified to express opinions upon this point, and when we receive no general representations from them that amendments are required, we are inclined to feel that the law in its present state is satisfactory. May I say that we are confirmed in that view by the very resolution which we are discussing here today, because, as explained by the hon. member for Eglinton, it indicates no substantial change whatever in the law.
In the course of discussing this matter the hon. member for Eglinton said, as reported at page 2109 of Hansard:
On looking at the present state of the law, I remind hon. members that the state of the law in Canada today is not as it was when those communists were convicted of the offence of inciting the use of force to overthrow the governmental structure of this country.
He was of course referring to the prosecution of Tim Buck and his associates. Then he goes on to say at page 2110:
In the year 1936 when the parliament amended the Criminal Code it eliminated the offences of which the communists, in the trial to which I have referred, were convicted.
That statement, Mr. Speaker, is in part incorrect. It is true that in that year section 98 was eliminated; but the section providing for seditious conspiracy, under which the
third charge against Tim Buck was laid, and upon which he was found guilty, was not eliminated, and is still in the law today.
I might add this point, that the repeal of section 98 did not in any way embarrass the prosecution of the communists and fellow travellers arising out of the Gouzenko disclosures. Under the law as it then stood, it was possible to convict, and we did convict, a number of those persons. And more than that, I say quite confidently that if section 98 had been in the Criminal Code at the time of those prosecutions arising out of the Gouzenko disclosures it would not have enabled us to secure a single conviction in those cases in which there happened to be an acquittal.
It is for these reasons that, while agreeing entirely with everything that the hon. members of the Conservative party have said with regard to the danger of communism- and I think I can speak for every member in this house when I say that interested as we were, and honoured as we were to hear the eloquent statements of the case which they made, there was not one of us who did not entirely agree with all that was said in that regard because we were of that view before they got up to speak at all-agreeing with all that, I suggest that whatever ideal merits the position which my hon. friends have taken in this matter may have-and I admit that the ideal merits are excellent-what they have completely failed to prove in the course of their arguments yesterday and again today is that the law as we have it now is inadequate; and more particularly they have completely failed to prove that any amendment along the lines of that which they are advocating would serve any purpose which the law as at present constituted might fail to serve.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Has the minister the unanimous consent to continue?
Yes.