Mr. Maurice Bourget (Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Public Works):

Mr. Speaker, I will take the hon. member's question as notice. I will be glad to bring it to the attention of the minister, who will be back tomorrow.

Inquiries of the Ministry VETERANS AFFAIRS

Mr. A. J. Brooks (Royal):

I wish to direct a question to the Minister of Veterans Affairs relative to the Department of Veterans Affairs office in Kingston, Ontario. Is it the intention of the Department of Veterans Affairs to reduce the district office of the department at Kingston, Ontario, to a sub-district office, and have the documents of the district office at Kingston been parcelled up and transferred to Toronto and Ottawa? If so, what is the reason for this change?

Hon. Hugues Lapointe (Minister of Veterans Affairs):

It is the intention of the department to reduce the Kingston office to the status of a sub-office, and I believe this decision is being implemented at the present time. The decision was reached following a survey of the work load in that particular district and because of the decrease of the work in that office it was decided that it would be both more efficient and more economical to reduce the office to the status of a sub-office. The personnel will be decreased by about 25,

I believe. Part of the work will be done in the Ottawa district office and part of the work involving the county of Northumberland will be done in the Toronto office.

Mr. Brooks:

Has the minister received any protests from any veterans organizations in Kingston opposing this move?

Mr. Lapointe:

No, sir.

Mr. E. G. Hansell (Macleod):

Mr. Speaker,

I wish to raise a point of order. It concerns the manner in which questions on the orders of the day are being asked. I understand that in asking questions on the orders of the day the intent of a question must not be the imparting of information but simply the asking of a question.

What I have in mind is a question asked by the hon. member for Okanagan Boundary (Mr. Jones) this afternoon. As a supplementary question he asked whether the minister was aware that Indians on a certain reserve have taken up shotguns, apparently against the provincial officials.

I do not object to the question but the purport of the question is that a statement has been made which may result in a wrong interpretation. We do not know whether or not

[Mr. Bourget.I

the statement is true, and it could be interpreted that a sort of civil war has commenced between Indians and provincial government officials.

Mr. Ferguson:

Get it in the movies. Call in Hollywood.

Mr. Hansell:

I do not know what all the gabble is about.

Mr. Ferguson:

The kids will love it.

Mr. Hansell:

That information is given. I think we have a right to know the source of that information. Otherwise it may cause some considerable reflection upon individuals and, in this case, perhaps upon the British Columbia provincial government.

Mr. Jones:

In answer to that statement may I say that the information was given on the C.B.C. news this morning.

Hon. W. E. Harris (Minister of Finance):

If I may speak to the same point of order, Mr. Speaker, I should like to say this. Earlier the hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam (Mr. Regier) asked a question in which he said that the banks had made a certain pronouncement with respect to lending on mortgages. While I do not profess to be fully informed about what the banks do, I am reasonably certain that I would have been informed of this development. However, it is my impression that only one bank stated that its portfolio was now full of mortgages and that it was unlikely to have additional money for mortgage lending.

This question was put in the form of the banks' announcement and I am sure-at least I speak subject to correction-that the bankers' association did not say there would be no more bank lending on mortgages. I say that only to emphasize the point of order, namely that some questions are placed in the form of a statement of fact and that they are never caught up with if they are in that form and happen to be wrong.

Mr. Speaker:

Perhaps I might take this opportunity to inform the house how fully I appreciate the basic difficulty whenever question time comes along. As hon. members know, the same rules apply to questions asked orally and to written questions placed on the order paper after notice. There is a long list of limitations as to the type of questions which may be asked before the orders of the day are called. They are to be found at page 119 of Beauchesne's third edition. Although they are not obliged to do so, hon. members sometimes, through courtesy, give notice to the minister who is to reply to the question. Sometimes I myself receive a copy of the notice, for which I am grateful.

Most of the time, however, I do not get a copy of it. I do not complain about this matter because hon. members are not obliged to give me notice. But I cannot judge a question until I have listened to it. Once I have listened to it, if I see that the minister is ready to reply, I feel that it is his wish and that of the house generally to have the question dealt with.

There is no doubt in my mind that some questions contain a great number of unverified facts and should be prohibited before the orders of the day are called. If I were to interpret the rules in the way in which they should be interpreted and if I followed the previous rulings given over the years by my predecessors and reported at page 119 of Beauchesne's third edition, I think I could cut off about 95 per cent of the questions that are asked. Such action would be interpreted as extremely drastic action on my part. I myself do not see how we can properly give justice to hon. members who from time to time complain about the manner in which these questions are being asked.

I would ask the hon. member for Macleod (Mr. Hansell) to realize that I agree with him but I would ask him to put himself in my position and to realize how difficult it is for me to enforce, in the way in which they should be enforced, the rules of the house with respect to these questions.

Perhaps I might venture a comment which some hon. members may feel to be uncalled for. I will risk making it, depending upon the indulgence of hon. members. We often hear some hon. members say that the British system with regard to question time is better than ours. May I say that in the British house no question may be asked without previous notice. I myself would much prefer that system.

Mr. Hansell:

Mr. Speaker, I would not want it to be thought that I was criticizing your decisions or your work as Speaker of the house, because I certainly would not do that. All I am suggesting is that when questions are prefaced with statements, we at least have the right to know the source from which the statement comes.