Mr. Macdonnell (Greenwood):

Yes; he says the communist novice finds a release from this worry by subjecting his soul to the canon law of the Kremlin. It sounds crazy; yet here are capable men, some of them very distinguished, who did it. Then there is this brief further quotation:

But it is clear that, as soon as the intellectual convert began to know more about conditions in Russia, his mood changed.

I shall have a little more to say about that later.

Mr. Stick:

Send that book to Dr. Endicott.

Mr. Macdonnell (Greenwood):

He may have seen it; and he may be incorrigible. I want to read a sentence or two further, because I think they illustrate the great mental gulf that exists between ourselves and these people. Here is an extract from that part of the book written by an Italian named Silone, who was in Moscow a great deal between 1921 and 1927:

What struck me most about the Russian communists, even in such really exceptional personalities as Lenin and Trotsky, was their utter incapacity to be fair in discussing opinions that conflicted with their own. The adversary, simply for daring to contradict, at once became a traitor, an opportunist, a hireling. An adversary in good faith is inconceivable to the Russian communists.

A little later he speaks of a conversation he had with a communist woman, who said to him:

If you happen to read in the papers that Lenin has had me arrested for stealing the silver spoons in the Kremlin, that simply means that I am not entirely in agreement with him about some little problem of agricultural or industrial policy.

Later he speaks of other things along the same line. I have outlined these things to you and brought these points before you briefly because I believe they are things that serious people should be thinking about. After all, we all face the fact that at the present time the western world is competing with the communist world, you may say, for the minds and hearts of hundreds and hundreds of millions of other people.

It is customary to say-and of course there is a great deal of truth in saying it-that what we must do is to make it clear that our economic organization is better. I do not belittle the importance of that suggestion at all. But that is not the whole story. The economic condition in Czechoslovakia could have been improved until it was an earthly paradise and it would not have affected what happened there two years ago. That happened not because the men engaged in it were in want. As a matter of fact, most of the leaders in this movement are not in want. It is not people who are in want who head up these things. It is people with dominating personalities, with this strange aberration which I have brought to your attention. I say, therefore, it seems to me that we are just on the fringe of the problem if we content ourselves with saying that all we have to do is to make it appear that we are more prosperous in the democracies than others are under the communists. We all believe that we are immensely more prosperous than the people are in Russia today. I do not think

Communist Activities in Canada anyone doubts that. But that has not been sufficient to affect the situation. We say, of course, that it is partly because they do not know; but it is much more than that. In the end we have to admit that,-I was going to say it is moral values, but it is a bit hard to use the word "moral" about a system that we detest and abominate so greatly, and so I change the wording a little and say it is nonmaterial values which are going to control this situation in the end. After all, what have you in Russia today? You have a small number-I suppose there are less than five million people in the communist party, as they call it-who, by their cohesion, fanaticism and something which approaches faith, are dominating well on to two hundred million other people. That is what we have. We cannot bring ourselves to call it a faith but we must at any rate concede that it is a tremendous motive power. As I said a moment ago, we are competing with this, and the competition raises all kinds of questions.

Some hon. members will have seen it reported a couple of days ago-I think it was in the press yesterday-that Lord Boyd Orr at some meeting put forth the view that the world might as well face the fact that it had, as it were, to match deficiencies with surpluses or we would be in grave peril. As a matter of fact, we have been doing that for years with regard to western Europe and far east in Europe. Lord Boyd Orr raised the whole question as to whether our imagination has got to range much more widely. Without undertaking an expression of opinion on that matter I suggest that it is not a matter which any of us can disregard.

I have tried to bring to your attention, Mr. Speaker, this strange intellectual aberration which took these people into the communist fold-and then happily their better natures reasserted themselves and they came back. But we know that there are a great many people who have not come back. I suggest that we are "put on the spot" in no uncertain way to consider our own position. A striking speech was made about a year ago by a man who is well known to most hon. members. I refer to Bruce Hutchison. He made it in Winnipeg, and he says some things with which we may not agree; nevertheless they are said by a serious man to serious people. He was speaking to the St. Andrew's society, and I think you will agree that is serious enough. He says some things that I think we should not brush aside. He said:

Now, clearly the idea of democracy is at war with the idea of dictatorship. Freedom is at war with slavery. Certainly, but what do we mean by

Communist Activities in Canada democracy? What do we mean by freedom? And why do we fight for them? It's time we got down to examining our own motives . . .

The basic, the terrible and perhaps the fatal thing that has happened to our civilization can now be grasped and understood. . . It is that our western civilization is losing, if it has not already lost, its faith in its beginnings.

We are not going to admit that, but here is a serious man saying it; and it cannot be lightly regarded. I go on to read again. He gives what I think is a perfectly wise definition of the difference between our civilization and the Russian one. He refers to-

. . . the original assumption, common to Christianity and other religions, that the universe is managed by a system of invisible order, and that every man is protected by certain natural laws beyond the reach of human legislatures.

Then later on he says that the Russians reject this wholly, and he goes on to make what I think again is a searching statement:

Since there is no universal power,-

This is the Russian view.

-nothing is left but the power which some men can exert over others.

There I think you have it stated clearly. That is their faith: power, naked power and nothing else. Then he goes on to say:

It is this cardinal lie, this father of all lies, which spawns the Russian system and the Hitler system and every system of tyranny. It is this lie we are now accepting in the western world under the name of science or progress, or political panacea, or economic enlightenment or ultimate truth, or anything else you care to call it.

Then finally he says:

If this goes on we shall be trying to oppose the resurgence of a powerful pagan idea, which has destroyed many civilizations in the past, without any contrary idea of our own in a struggle which ideas, and not other weapons, will finally settle.

Some may feel that these are strange arguments to be using in a secular assembly on the matter of communism; but I make no apology for doing it because it seems to me that these are matters in which we have all got to interest ourselves, not merely the churches and not merely the educational institutions, although the responsibility is primarily theirs, and although I suppose we must look to them chiefly for leadership. But we must not forget our own part because there is the final challenge that we have all got to face.

I have been talking about matters which go far beyond any amendment or indeed far beyond any law. Yet the law cannot be disregarded because it enters into all areas and all departments of human conflict. It is for that reason that I shall support this amendment which, as I have said more than once, is not suggesting any witch-hunting or any psychoanalysis. It is merely suggesting that the department shall use its best endeavours

to see whether the law can be , still further improved to the end that, as to the efforts of all agencies-labour, business and every other agency-that are seeking to deal with this matter which threatens the very vitals of our existence, these efforts may be further assisted.

Mr. M. J. Coldwell (Roselown-Biggar):

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, I was not here during the whole of the address of the leader of the opposition (Mr. Drew) yesterday; I entered the house just before he moved the amendment under discussion. I have listened with a great deal of interest this afternoon to the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Macdonnell) for whom I have a great respect, particularly because I have known in days gone by how forthrightly he has stood for civil liberty. I quite sympathize with him when he says that he belonged to a civil liberties association some few years ago into which the communist or Labour-Progressive party infiltrated, and described how these people remained until the dying moments of a meeting in order to get their kind of resolution through after the more democratic people had got tired and had gone home to bed, which is the usual practice of communists and others of like mind. He criticized the C.C.F. because, he says, on the address on February 20 we amended the amendment to a motion that was then before the house by adding words to it. Let me point out that the amendment when amended dealt with "harmful activities of communists and fascists in Canada". It was not the same, nor had it the same intent, as the amendment moved yesterday by the leader of the opposition (Mr. Drew). If we examine the language of yesterday we find that it reads as follows:

Legislation should be introduced so that communist and similar activities in Canada may be made an offence punishable under the Criminal Code.

These activities were interpreted this afternoon by the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Macdonnell) as overt acts, if I may use the term that he himself used. Let me point out to him that in all democratic countries, at least within the British commonwealth of nations, there is on the statute books today legislation adequate, I am sure the Minister of Justice would say, to deal with overt acts of sedition or conspiracy to commit overt acts. Consequently, as far as that goes, the two amendments were different in their conception. Perhaps I might go further and say that, in my opinion, the policy of the government under discussion at that time involved also failure to do certain things, we will say, for the unemployed, to improve our social security legislation and so on. But I am not going into that phase of it this afternoon.

I rose to say that I view with a considerable amount of misgiving the obvious intent of an amendment of this description placed before the House of Commons. Throughout the ages our forefathers have fought for certain civil rights, and I believe that the freer people are to express opinions, the freer to organize, even when we think the organization may be against the public interest, so long as there is no conspiracy to commit overt acts, and overt acts are not committed, the better it will be. Throughout the ages we have found the way of dealing with movements such as we are now discussing. Go back into our history, and we find that the foundations of the freedoms that we now possess were established in Magna Carta as long ago as 1215, guaranteeing to every man a fair trial by his peers. Then we have habeas corpus whereby no man may be arrested and incarcerated without charge and trial. Yesterday when the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) was speaking, he referred to criticisms of himself as minister of justice several years ago. The criticism that was made of the government and of the minister of justice at that time was that people had been picked up without charge and without trial, and incarcerated, and that no opportunity was given for their production in court to be properly charged under the law. I think that was the criticism that was made of the government at that time. On occasion we contrast that with what happened in the United Kingdom, where, for example, Dr. Allan Nunn May was picked up, taken into Old Bailey, charged, speedily tried and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. That is the method which is time-honoured under our democratic procedure.

I do not like to see any suggestion introduced into this chamber which would seem to indicate that we are going to do something beyond what we have done so successfully to curb subversive activities in the past.

About a week ago I was asked by telegram to express an opinion on this very matter. Not knowing it was going to be introduced into this house, I replied by telegram in these words:

Speaking as the leader of a democratic socialist party actively opposing communism, I believe outlawing of communist party political error of the first magnitude. All of our countries have seditious conspiracy acts under which subversive activities can be dealt with according to law. To drive the party underground encourages secret conspiracy, arouses ill-placed sympathy, jeopardizes legitimate political discussion and undermines faith in our democratic institutions.

That, Mr. Speaker, is the position that I want to emphasize before this house this afternoon. There is of course always a danger from people who do not believe in constitutional methods. That danger comes not only

Communist Activities in Canada from the communist party, but from other parties right on the other side that today we lump under the heading of fascists. When we speak of safeguarding our Christian civilization let us bear in mind that the churches have recognized-and when I say "the churches" I mean all the churches-that communism as we know it today arises very largely out of the misery and want of depressed peoples.

A few moments ago the hon. member for Greenwood pointed out that often the leaders of those movements were not those who suffered poverty, misery and want. To some extent that is true; but the following which they gain is among the mass of the people who suffer from evil conditions; and we have to beware lest we confuse agitation against evil conditions with communist activities. Not so long ago practically everyone who criticized the evils of the present system of society was classified as communist, and sometimes was persecuted as such.

I have on my desk the report and encyclical of the archbishops and the bishops of the church of which I happen to be a member. In 1948, at Lambeth, 329 archbishops and bishops of the Anglican communion in all lands met to consider what they termed the nature of man and man's obligations to society. They have one or two things to say in that report that I think are pertinent to a discussion of this kind. They say this:

Communism cannot be overcome by argument alone. It has to be outlived, not merely out-fought. Under the providence of God its truths will pass into the experience of humanity; its untruths and half-truths will be self-destructive. It is for the church to be faithful to the word of God and for Christians to live, and, if need be, die for the truth of God as He allows them to see it. But let us be sure that its martyrs die for the Kingdom of Christ and not for some lesser loyalty. By making common cause with anti-communist forces, the church might have some success but such a short-term policy would prove in the end to be disastrous to the church, both in the east and in the west.

And then this to the members of their communion:

(Churchmen) must do full justice to the truth in communism, both its critical insights into history and its desire to help the oppressed.

The church ought not to allow itself to be identified with social reaction. Its members should be ready for social and economic change and quick to welcome into the councils of the church men and women with the workers' experience of living conditions. '

What is true of a church is true of this assembly. If I understand the basis of this institution, it is an institution in which ideas of various sorts may be expressed and advanced, sifted, accepted or rejected. It seems to me if we are going to agree that in this institution that is the democratic

Communist Activities in Canada procedure, then by che same token we have to admit that this is the proper procedure in society.

What I am afraid of in regard to a resolu

tion of this description is that legislation flowing from it may be used either now or in the future to prevent free discussion, free consideration, and activities that should be of a proper nature. Let us remember that in the long struggle for freedom of action and freedom of speech ideas have arisen from time to time which have not been acceptable to a majority of the people where they have arisen. That was true to a large extent of religious ideas a few short centuries ago.

I recollect that in 1671 a man who became famous in the story of the great republic to the south, William Penn, and his colleague William Mead, became Quakers. They were execrated by the country in which they lived. They tried to propagate their ideas. They were arrested for preaching openly, on the street, to some three or four hundred people in the city of London. The magistrate who tried them instructed the jury to convict for causing a riot, although no riot had taken place. The jury-that safeguard, in my opinion, of the rights of the common people-refused to accept the instructions of the magistrate. Though the jury were confined by the magistrate, habeas corpus proceedings were instituted and they were released. The jury's verdict of acquittal then had to be accepted.

It is through age-old methods, old and historic customs which have grown up in our society, that we can protect it against subversive activities. We have the laws on our statute books today-and I have no doubt the Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson) can, and perhaps will, point them out to us in this debate. We have adequate laws dealing with sedition, seditious conspiracy and the committing of overt acts. But I believe we endanger the effectiveness of our laws when we drive underground the activities of subversive elements, whether they be communist or fascist.

I venture to say we would have heard very little of one or two of the leading men in the present Labour-Progressive party in this country had they not been arrested during a time of grave unemployment and difficulty in the thirties, and sentenced to terms of imprisonment. We created for the communist party-or the Labour-Progressive party, if you care to call it that now, for it is the same thing-certain martyrs. That martyrdom was held up across the country in order to attract attention and to bring persons

rMr. Coldwell.]

of ill-founded sympathy into their movement to support their cause. Consequently I say the house would be well advised to vote the amendment down.

Let me repeat that we have on the statute books in my opinion all that we require in order to meet this menace of Soviet communism in Canada. Let me also point out that Canada's representative approved the universal declaration of human rights of the United Nations. Looking at the preamble of this document, in the second paragraph I find this:

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and-

And then these words:

-the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people.

Then if I look at the actual articles we have approved I find that article 19 of this declaration says:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Yesterday we heard the suggestion that there should be some limitation of certain parts of the press of this country. Let me repeat my belief that our democratic institutions and our democratic ways are sufficiently strong that we do not need to fear a handful of people who are circulating literature against our institutions, and who are engaged in propaganda against this institution of parliament and against those institutions which guarantee to us the freedoms we now enjoy, provided, of course, they do not propose their violent overthrow.

Then, article 20 states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

Assembly or association to discuss, to criticize, to plan, to forward and to promote our ideas within the law. Then, article 22:

Everyone as a member of society has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each state, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

And article 23(1):

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

If we fulfil the articles of this declaration of human rights, then that, in my opinion, and not by legislating against activities of the

type discussed in the house in the last day or two, is the manner in which to meet the threat of communism. And so I say that in the light of the long experience that we in these democracies and these institutions have had, with the legislation now on our statute books sufficient to deal with overt acts, we would be ill-advised indeed to pass new legislation comparable with that we had on the statute books under the heading of section 98.

I do not wish to prolong this discussion, but I did rise to say that if we are going to protect civil liberties and if we are going to place before the people of other countries Canada as a free nation, then let us not adopt any of the methods of countries behind the iron curtain. The more we suppress, the more ammunition we give them to fight us and perhaps if we give them enough ammunition, ultimately to destroy us.

The issue was raised, I think by the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Laing), about the issuance of a passport to Mr. Tim Buck. The passport was not issued to him in order that he might go on his recent journey to visit Soviet satellite countries. I felt that that was a question that it was better not to have raised in this house. After all we do not want to be in the position of the countries behind the iron curtain where people are not allowed to move freely because of their political opinions. The farther we get away from that kind of thing the stronger we are in our ability to fight communism in all its forms.

Goodness knows, I have no love for the Labour-Progressive party or the communist party or any of their activities. Indeed, sometimes they describe me in their speeches as enemy No. 1. The very book quoted this afternoon by the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Macdonnell) containing six essays by six former outstanding members of the communist party has a preface written by one of the leading democratic socialists of Great Britain, Mr. Richard Crossman, M.P. The words of that preface which the hon. gentleman read are words with which we can agree absolutely.

I was not here yesterday but my colleagues from Vancouver East and Winnipeg North said exactly what I would have said had I been here and what I have in mind today, that if we want to protect this country against subversive ideas then let us remove the conditions in which they may flourish and go forward confident in our free institutions and in our traditions of democracy. Then I am confident we can meet any threat from any quarter which Stalin may control.

Communist Activities in Canada

Hon. Stuart S. Garson (Minister of Justice):

Mr. Speaker, in opening the statement which I think should be made today by the head of the Department of Justice may I first of all congratulate the leader of the opposition (Mr. Drew) on having introduced for discussion a matter the importance of which I think every one will agree is quite beyond exaggeration. There may be those who will think that he placed too much stress upon the dangers with which politically free countries of the world are faced in the present world situation, but I am certainly not one of those who think so.

One has only to consider a few of the main circumstances of the situation to realize that today political freedom is in mortal danger of extinction. One has only to realize that the greatest land mass in the world with uncounted resources and millions of virile if untrained people, people who do not chafe under the lack of freedom because most of them have never enjoyed it, have been brought, if not under the direct control, certainly under effective indirect control of the masters of the Kremlin.

We have only to consider that the mounting of any kind of revolution against such a group of determined men is a vastly different thing from what it has ever been at any previous historic time. In the days of the Roman emperors any group of resolute and determined men who could possess themselves of a few relatively primitive weapons of that day could mount and sustain a revolution for considerable periods of time. The history of the later days of the Roman empire is filled with reports of efforts by the emperors to put down revolutions in various parts of the empire.

But now that war has become the end of a complicated series of assembly lines which stretch back, not only into the forests and the fields and the workshops and the mines but into the research laboratories where hundreds of scientists are working, with perhaps only a few knowing what the whole scope of their inquiry is about, it is apparent that once a group of men as determined and able and ruthless as the masters of the Kremlin have got into the controlling situation in which they are in Russia at the present time, it is almost impossible for anything except a palace revolution to upset their might.

That is the world in which the free countries live at the present time. We are living in the face of a proclaimed philosophy which has for its purpose the destruction of our system of government and our way of life and which states that it is impossible in this one small world for both our system and

Communist Activities in Canada the communist system to survive. It may have been that a quarter of a century ago we would have been disinclined to pay too much attention to these warnings, but after having been through a great war which was caused in no small part by the fact that we failed to heed similar warnings by Adolf Hitler, I think few thoughtful people today will want to regard our present predicament as other than exceedingly serious.

Without wishing to traverse ground which has been covered at great length by preceding speakers who have dealt with what might be called the political philosophy aspect of this matter, I think it is rather important to state that free countries are abandoning one of their most powerful weapons, if not the most powerful in their whole arsenal, when they in any way abridge political freedom. Unlike the preceding speaker, I am not one who thinks that the resolution now before us would go very far in that direction. After the long and interesting and vigorous speech with which the leader of the opposition introduced this debate and in which he reviewed, although quite cursorily, what had been done in the way of legislation in Australia, South Africa and other countries; after he appeared to be making the strongest possible case for the introduction of repressive legislation in this chamber, I was very much surprised to find that the text of the amendment which he introduced rather dimmed the impression of what I thought was going to be delineated as repressive legislation; and any idea that repressive legislation might have been in mind was totally dispelled by the lucid presentation of the hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming) when he rose to speak.

I think we will all agree that the hon. member for Eglinton is a good lieutenant to his leader. No leader could wish for better in my opinion, but the hon. member for Eglinton suffers from what, in relation to his leader, is a terrible handicap. He has a clear mind.

When he applies his clear mind in this case to the rather vague language limned in his leader's oratory of course he cannot help but let the cat out of the bag, and what a tiny kitten it proved to be. For the hon. member made it, to use a phrase he is fond of using himself, crystal clear that his party does not propose as in Australia to declare the communist party outlawed or to dissolve it or to appoint a receiver for its property with any surplus over liabilities going to the government. They do not propose as in Australia to permit the governor general to outlaw organizations, other than trade unions, which are dominated by the communist party; nor to provide imprisonment for

[Mr. Garson.l

officers and members of unlawful associations who do not cease their activities; nor to empower the governor general to publish the names of any members of the communist party or its organizations after May 10 whose activities he, the governor general, deems prejudicial to the government; nor that any person declared to be prejudicial will be barred from employment in the government or government authority. Nor does the- Conservative party propose, as in Australia, that such a person may be banned from holding a job in any of the key industries of the country. These provisions that I have named are merely omissions from the speech of the hon. member for Eglinton, but let me list some of the express disclaimers taken from his speech at page 2106 of Hansard. He said:

What this amendment proposes to illegallze is overt acts.

In another place on the same page he said:

The acts at which this amendment is directed are acts which, as I have said . . . strike at the roots of our freedom:

Further down on the same page he said:

There is no suggestion here of . . . purges of libraries . . . There is no suggestion here of destroying . . . books . . .

At page 2107 of Hansard he said:

The people will want to know what are the essentials of that foul doctrine of communism.

He said that making communism an offence under the Criminal Code was not what was proposed by the leader of the Conservative party (Mr. Drew). Further down on the same page he said:

There is nothing here that calls for a discussion of the padlock law.

On page 2108 he proceeds to spell it out even further. He said:

If you simply passed legislation to declare the Labour-Progressive party to be an illegal organization, that would not get at the root of the problem.

I suggest, Mr. Speaker, with all these statements of what the amendment does not mean it is quite clear that the sort of concept of legislation indicated in the amendment is certainly not very repressive. I do not think the leader of the C.C.F. party (Mr. Coldwell) has much to fear in that regard. I shall show-and on this point I entirely agree with him-that the amendment if drafted could not be an amendment to the law as it stands at the present time because everything that the amendment is designed to cover is in the law now.

Mr. Diefenbaker:

Will the minister allow one question before he goes on?

Mr. Garson:

Certainly.

Mr. Diefenbaker:

He was dealing with Australia, and I followed him with great interest. Are there any other clauses or terms in this legislation to which he has not referred? I merely ask for the purpose of information. I was quite interested in what the minister was saying.

Mr. Garson:

I should not like to say definitely whether or not there are. The source of my information was what I thought was the best source available at the present time, the New York Times. I have listed the main headings.

Mr. Diefenbaker:

I saw that. I thought possibly he had the bill.

Mr. Garson:

I suggest if we were to pass this resolution and if we were going to give it any effect, as we would have to do, that if we called in the most skilful draftsman we could obtain and he started to put the ideas in this resolution into an amendment to the code, and if he left out all that the hon. member for Eglinton has said is not meant by it, he would discover that there is not a single thing which is said to be meant by the amendment which is not prohibited at the present time by the Official Secrets Act or in the sections of the Criminal Code dealing with unlawful assembly, treason, sedition or seditious conspiracy.

I do not want to detain the house too long, and the time available to me this afternoon makes it impossible for me to deal in any great detail with all of these sections. Let me look for a moment at the crime which I think is most closely relevant to this discussion, that of sedition. It is covered at the present time by section 134 of the code, but it is not defined, and for very good reasons which were referred to by the Right Hon. Ernest Lapointe. They will be found at page 3900 of volume IV of Hansard for 1936. This is what he said on that occasion:

May I read what constitutes sedition in the English and Empire Digest, 15th volume, at page 633:

"An intention to excite ill-will between different classes of Her Majesty's subjects may be seditious intention; whether or not it is so in any particular case must be decided upon by the jury after taking into consideration all the circumstances of the case. Sedition embraces everything, whether by word, deed, or writing, which is calculated to disturb the tranquility of the state, and lead ignorant persons to subvert the government and laws of the empire."

Later on the same page he refers to Hals-bury's Laws of England, second edition, volume IX, and quotes the following:

Sedition is a misdemeanour at common law consisting of acts done, works spoken and published, or writings capable of being a libel published, in each case with a seditious intention.

Where the words are oral the offence is called the speaking of seditious words; where the words are written the offence is called the publication of

Communist Activities in Canada seditious libel; where two or more combine for the furtherance of a seditious intention the offence is called seditious conspiracy.

Then it goes on to prescribe the penalty. This is a pretty all-embracing sort of crime, and as I shall indicate later by quoting from a source which I hope my hon. friends opposite will regard as accurate, Mr. Meighen, there is a very excellent reason why it has not been defined in the law.

I would point out the fact that in connection with sedition, as with all other crimes, the problem of enforcement arises, the problem of apprehending the transgressor, of prosecuting him, and in proper cases of convicting him.

In that connection there is an old saying which I do not think has ever been improved upon as a statement of the position. It is very sententious and covers the whole point, and is to the effect that the devil himself knoweth not the mind of man. So even if we were to pass a law, which would be contrary to our political principles, making the mere holding of seditious thoughts an offence under the code, we still would have no way of knowing what were the thoughts of any man, or of proving what they were in a court of law, until we could adduce what he had either said, written or done, to indicate what was in his mind. In other words that overt act would be on the one hand evidence of what he had in his mind and also, under our law, the basis of the charge of sedition against him.

I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that a careful examination of the sections of the Criminal Code dealing with unlawful assembly, treason and sedition will indicate, particularly in the case of sedition, that the law today is sufficiently extensive to support convictions in all those cases where overt acts can be proved, which I think was the point made by the leader of the C.C.F. party. And I suggest that in those cases in which overt acts cannot be proved, the mere creation of a new offence of communist activity, or similar activities, would not overcome the need of evidence to establish those overt acts, for without an overt act we have no evidence of wrong ideas or of communist activity or similar activities. That is a practical reason, I think, why in the other place, when the question of the repeal of section 98 was being considered, Senator Meighen said that even section 98 did not punish anyone for his ideas. Speaking of a memorandum which had been read to the members of the other place by the government leader there, from the then minister of justice, Senator Meighen put it in this rather pungent language:

The memorandum quotes an opinion of Macaulay's that it is only when the individual, having

Communist Activities in Canada harboured wrong ideas, gives effect to them to the detriment of the state that he ought to be punished. Who within the four walls of parliament or anything other than a lunatic asylum would ever entertain a contrary opinion?

That is to say, in line with what was said a few moments ago by the leader of the C.C.F. party, it is only for overt acts that punishment is inflicted. Then Senator Meighen went on, speaking of section 98:

This section never did, does not now, and never could punish anybody for harbouring an opinion, nowever foolish, lunatic or dangerous.

I believe I have heard or read somewhere, though at the moment I must confess I cannot recall when or where-and I hope my hon. friend the leader of the opposition, who is not in his seat, will correct me if I am wrong-that on occasion he has advocated the reintroduction of section 98 into the Criminal Code. Certainly during the present debate the hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming) had this to say, at page 2108 of Hansard:

It is worth remembering that in the past communists in this country have been placed upon trial for offences of the kind I have been describing here tonight. It was not when the law was in its present form.

Here I interject that as far as the law of sedition is concerned, the only recent time it was not in its present form was when sec-ti&n 98 was in the Criminal Code.

It was at an earlier period when there were some teeth in the law.

I suggest that up to this point in his argument the irresistible inference on the part of one who heard the hon. member for Eglinton was that he was in favour of the reinstatement of those teeth in the law; but in the very next sentence he backed away from it:

At the moment I am not advocating any particular and' detailed form of legislation.

So we have had some strong words against communism, some references to indicate the great virtues of section 98, but a backing away from taking responsibility for suggesting definitely that it should be reintroduced. The hon. member then went on to explain at great length why in the case of Rex v. Tim Buck it was possible to get a conviction; and I leave it to hon. members whether the impression he left was not that this conviction was brought about because of the presence of section 98 in the Criminal Code. It will be recalled that I asked the hon. member what were the charges against the accused in that case. That question was evaded, although quite relevant to this discussion.

The fact of the matter is that in Rex v. Buck, the citation for which is 57 Canadian Criminal Cases, page 291, the accused was

charged under three counts, two of which were under section 98 and the third a count of seditious conspiracy under the law as it was then and as it still is. The wording of the third count, and I am reading the exact form of the indictment, was that the accused-

-did become and continue to be members of the communist party in Canada, a section of the communist international, and did conspire together to further the objects and aims of the said party and1 the objects and aims of the said communist party of Canada, a section of the communist international, are of a seditious nature intended to incite His Majesty's subjects to attempt otherwise than by lawful means the alteration of the government of the Dominion of Canada and to incite persons to commit crimes and disturbances of the peace and raise discontent or disaffection among His Majesty's subjects, and promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of such subjects.

I put it to any reasonable person whether or not an indictment describing activities in those broad terms would not cover communist activities, under the law as it stands at the present time. The result of that case was very significant. The accused were found guilty on all counts. What did that mean? It meant that if there had been no section 98 in the Criminal Code at that time, in the absence of that section a charge of seditious conspiracy could have been laid, and, as the case turned out, a conviction obtained.

As I indicated earlier, I am somewhat fortified in my views as to the relative efficacy of section 98 as compared with the law as it stands at the present time, by the views of a man who I am sure shares the feelings of hon. members of the Conservative party opposite, on the subject of communism. That is Senator Meighen, to whom I referred a moment ago. What did he say about section 98 in the discussions that took place at the time it was being repealed? I quote from his address on that occasion.

Mr. Diefenbaker:

What date was that?

Mr. Garson:

I can give it to my hon. friend afterwards.

Mr. Diefenbaker:

You have not got it there?

Mr. Garson:

Yes, I have it here, but I shall have to search for it. It was June 20, 1936.

Mr. Diefenbaker:

Thank you.

Mr. Garson:

He says:

Nothing forbidden under section 98 was lawful before section 98 was passed.

It was unlawful before section 98 was passed and unlawful after it was passed.

The section simply made specific and definite a certain line of conduct which always had been sedition; but it was put in the form of words, definitely described so that there would be warning to everybody that such a thing was sedition. In this connection I want to discuss what sedition is.

And this is an exceedingly important statement that he now makes.

In the common law of England sedition has not been defined, nor has fraud, for the very obvious reason that any definition that the wit of man could devise of either one or the other could be circumvented by some act which, while it would be sedition or fraud, would not be so within the definition. But sedition has always been a crime and heavily punished. The courts have decided on the facts just what constituted sedition, and out of those decisions there has grown a body of jurisprudence, which is in effect today in England, and indeed in all civilized countries, though not of course the same in all, that forbids sedition under all circumstances and at all times.

That law is in effect in Canada today,

Now let us look at the use that was made of section 98. Maybe I do my hon. friends an injustice, but if seems to me that the only possible interpretation that could be put upon the language which is used in the resolution is that it favours the reintroduction either of section 98 in its precise form or of some substantially similar provision. Let us see what use was made of it during, if I mistake not, the sixteen years it was in the code. Last year, in order to ascertain to what extent this section was invoked in the enforcement of the law as being one good indication of its value in stopping communism, I had my deputy write to the deputy attorneys general of the provinces to find out how many times it had been used during the whole period of its existence. I received the following report:

Use of Section 98

Prince Edward Island none

Nova Scotia none

New Brunswick none

Manitoba none

Alberta none

British Columbia one

There was the following report from the deputy attorney general of Ontario:

In connection with your telegram of the 7th instant regarding section 98 of the Criminal Code, the only record we have of a prosecution-

He goes on to say that the only record he has of this is the case of Rex v. Tim Buck. Then he says:

This department does not keep statistics, and it is of course possible that there have been others, but a search of our files indicates only the one, and I have no recollection of any other prosecutions under that section.

Thus, Mr. Speaker, during the whole period of its existence, at a time when, I suggest, there was at least as much communistic activity and sentiment as there is at the present time-and I think a great deal more-the only single occasion of which there is any record -1 should enter a correction there; we have no reply from Quebec, so we do not know whether it was invoked in that province or

3, 1950 2141

Communist Activities in Canada not-in these other provinces on which section 98 was used was in the case of Rex v. Tim Buck, and in this case it would have been possible to have secured a conviction, and a conviction was secured, on the third count of seditious conspiracy. .1 would therefore be curious to know what sort of provision, in line with the resolution which has been moved by the Conservative party in this chamber, my hon. friend the leader of the opposition and his legal advisers could produce which he would think would accomplish the purpose that he has in mind and which is not already covered by the existing law.

Mr. Diefenbaker:

Will the minister allow a question?

Mr. Garson:

Yes, surely.

Mr. Diefenbaker:

Did he or anyone in his department have the draftsmen of his department, within the last year, draw a draft suggested amendment to provide for changes to-be made in the law of sedition in order to cover the present situation with respect to communism?