Mr. BRETHEN:

I understood from the

minister's explanation that these supplementary estimates were preparations for new buildings, but it looks as if we are going to be committed under these items for huge expenditures for these buildings. I understood it was the intention of this government to withhold the expenditure of large sums of money for public buildings until such time as the financial condition of this country warranted going on with them. I do not believe we have reached that stage yet.

Mr. BRETHEN:

Do they examine the men who enlist to ascertain whether they are physically fit?

Mr. BRETHEN:

Evidently the demand

for this legislation comes from that type of fair which is not so much agricultural as it is in the nature of a circus. It seems to me that any fair that must depend for fifty per cent or even two-thirds of its finances, as I understood the minister to suggest, upon the turn of a wheel of fortune or upon some game of chance can hardly be called an agricultural institution, and I do not think there is any justification for such a fair. The people of any community who support an agricultural fair only on condition that these entertainments are allowed do not want a fair at all; what they really want is a circus. I am opposed to this legislation. The minister said that it was not possible to carry on a fair without something of this kind. Let me -tell him that I attended a fair in the home town of the Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) some years ago and found it purely agricultural. And I know that they carried on for a number of years in that way. I have not been there within the past two or three

years and therefore I do not know whether this is still true, but I do know that that fair was a success under those conditions. It was purely agricultural, and there are a great many other fairs in Ontario which have been conducted successfully along the same lines.

I am not in sympathy with any fair which is seventy-five per cent circus and twenty-five per cent agricultural.

Mr. BRETHEN:

To make my position

clear on this, I move that section 5 be struck out.

Mr. BRETHEN:

This section is in the

nature of class legislation. If this man with the punch board were operating outside the fair ground he would be taken in charge as a criminal, and I do not see why we should make a distinction because he is inside the fair ground.