WEDNESDAY, March 29, 1905.
PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT IN THE
NORTHWEST.
House resumed adjourned debate on the
proposed motion of Sir Wilfrid Laurier for
the second reading of Bill (No. 69), to establish and provide for the government of
the
province of Alberta, and the amendment
of Mr. R. L. Borden thereto.
Hon. GEORGE E. FOSTER (North Toronto). Mr. Speaker, the proposition which
is at present under the consideration of the
House, and the discussion which has so far
ensued upon it, have not lacked for variety
and dramatic incident. No legislation introduced into this parliament in my time
has been more prolific of change and of the
unexpected. Changes in principle and in
policy and in modes of thought may be
discerned comparing the present with the
past. Time was when gentlemen who within a few years made an entire change of
front in regard to their method of thinking
and acting upon any given subject, thought
it was at least worth while and in a certain
measure necessary that they should endeavour to satisfy the desire of the House and
of the country for reasonable explanation.
In those days consistency was somewhat
prized, but in the later days of the new
Liberalism cabinet ministers have grown
too practical for that consideration and do
not even deign to give an explanation for
a complete and entire change of front
brought about within the space of a very
few years. A time there was when principle was considered as something somewhat precious
and not to be repudiated ;
a time there was when responsibility
attached to principle was considered
to be of weight and importance. But, this
new Liberalism which is confronting us,
seems, when it starts for parliament, to put
into its valise every other thing necessary
or utilizable, and the last thing thought of
is principle. Party fealty and party attachments are carefully stowed therein,
and these gentlemen think that these fill the
bill—or at all events fill the valise. There
was a time when the constitution of this
country had something stable and sacred
about it. The fathers of confederation who
met in Quebec and modelled our constitution, the palladium of the rights of the
provinces and the Dominion alike ; they
believed the constitution to be an important,
a stable and sacred thing. But to-day the
constitution is thrown idly aside, relegated
to the garret of the archives, and ministers are too practical to think of
the constitution stopping them when
they want to carry out their desires.
And, although the Prime Minister had
courage, and old-fashioned thought and
method enough to bring it out and lift it
to something of its old-time importance, the
ministers who spoke after him kicked
it as a football from floor to ceiling,
and where we are to-day we scarcely know.
3364
Changes of principles once cherished are
apparent to the most casual observer, but
they are treated with so delightful a carelessness as to consistency and consequence,
that it makes it interesting to the mere spectator, even though it is somewhat painful
to the man of thought.
Let us take into consideration for a moment the circumstances which have preceded
and up to this time have accompanied
the introduction and discussion of this matter in the House. Weighing these circumstances,
would not the unimpassioned spectator come to the hypothesis that some time
ago the Prime Minister of Canada, smarting
under events which took place in 1896 and
since, had determined that with reference
to the great Northwest the situation should
be retrieved from a certain point of view,
and that in the constitution which should
be given to the new provinces the principle
of separate schools should be embodied, cost
what it might. Would that be a violent
hypothesis ? Let us see how the circumstances fit in with it. For two, or three, or
four years previous to the election of 1904
in the Northwest, in this parliament, and to
a certain extent in the whole Dominion, the question of autonomy for
the Northwest Territories was to the
front. It was particularly to the front in
the Northwest Territories; in 1901 a draft
Bill was prepared and resolutions which
met with the approval of the Northwest
Legislature were adopted.
Negotiations were undertaken ; the matter
was pressed ; the matter was considered, as
we know from the speech made here by the
ex-Minister of the Interior, and considered
often, and to a certain extent carefully and
on all sides. But the Prime Minister had
determined that to that creative body whose
duty it should be to give substance to the
constitution of the new provinces, no possible
mandate should be given by the electorate
of this country before they came to this
parliament and were asked to consummate
the creative Act. That is important to be
remembered. The Prime Minister himself
refused to undertake the erection of provinces two years ago, although there cannot
be any sufficient reason given as to why, if
the Territories to-day are equal to the
work and the duties that follow therefrom,
they were not ready to an almost equal degree to be constituted two years ago, or
one
year previous to the elections of 1904. But
it did not suit the purposes of the Prime
Minister to undertake the erection of those
provinces before the general election. Little
less did it suit him to have the subject
mooted during the time of the election of the
responsible and representative body which
was to be asked to consummate the Act of
creation of the provinces. And so the word
went forth. His own minister of the Interior, long a resident of the country, one
of the
most prominent if not the most prominent
men from that district, one who prob
3365 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â MARCH 29, 1905 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
ably knew more about the circumstances
and the history of that country than any
other man he had in his cabinet, and probably than any other man in this country,
went to the Northwest, if not under seal
and pledge not to open his mouth with reference to the conditions of the creation
of
those provinces into an autonomy, yet certainly practically carrying out such instructions
by absolutely refusing to be led into
the utterance of a single word which would
go to show the people of the Northwest
under what probable or possible conditions
autonomy should be given. But it cannot
be said that the question was not mooted.
The premier of that country, speaking in
Regina one week before the Minister of the
Interior spoke there, challenged an expression of opinion from the Minister of the
Interior ; left a certain number of questions
to be answered, if the Minister of the Interior would have the goodness to answer
them, as to the information to be given to
the people of the Northwest just then, when
they were about to elect representatives who
would be called upon to consummate the
Act of formation into provinces, as to the
conditions, with reference to territorial division, lands, education and finances,
under
which the new provinces would be brought
in. Was it not a subject which might well
have engaged the attention of the Minister
of the Interior ? Were those points of information which it would not have been
right and proper for the minister to discuss
before the people whose interests were
chiefly to be affected ? But the minister's only reply was : You must trust the
government ; and to the gentleman who put
the question his only reply was, you are a
mischief-maker, that is what you are. The
question was also put to the candidates
who were running in the Northwest. They
were challenged. They had one reply-
the reply of the drilled and the taught :
You ask us what the probable conditions
will be ; we trust the government ; we have
faith in the government. The cry of the
minister was : Trust the govermnent ;
and the declaration of the candidates
was : We have faith in the government. But from neither minister nor
candidate was there a single intimation as
to what would be the probable conditions.
So much with reference to that. Carrying
out my hypothesis, when the elections were
over and the first of the probable five years
of the government's term commenced, with
those incidental advantages which every one
knows quite well, immediately negotiations
were taken up, immediately the government
set to work, immediately the Northwest
candidates who were elected were called
into council, immediately the representatives
of the government of the Northwest Territories were called to Ottawa. Negotiations
were undertaken, conferences took place,
and in the course of a few weeks or a few
3366
months parliament was called together and
the Bill was introduced. The creative instrument was formed, and it was presented
to parliament. That creative instrument,
as it was brought down on the 21st of
February, was accompanied by a certificate
of parentage given to it by the premier. He
himself as premier, his united government,
the representatives of the Northwest, on that
side of the House at least, whose advice he
had the advantage of, and the representatives of the government of the Northwest
Territories, all had had their part in consultation or information ; and this child
was
brought forward with the certificate of parentage of a strong and united government,
having had full consultation with the representatives of the Territories to be affected.
Shortly after that was brought down, something occurred. A trouble arose, disruption
took place, and within a few days one of the
most considerable ministers of the cabinet
handed in his resignation, and gave as his
reason that he had not been consulted with
reference to the educational clause, that he
dissented from it on the record of his life,
and on account of the principles so often
and so loudly professed, and that on that
account he could not remain longer a member of the government. We immediately
asked explanations and we soon found out
that another minister of the government,—
if not the most important at least one of the
most important—had not been consulted
upon the measure. Absent from the city
and absent from the country, he had not
been allowed an opportunity—why such
haste ?—of reading the clause of the Bill
before it was brought down to this House.
There were then two facts of importance.
There was the fact that the government, as
a united body had not formed that measure
and there was the additional fact that there
was displayed a haste almost undignified to
get the Bill before the House and the
country before those two important members of the cabinet should have an opportunity
of being present in Council and expressing their views. What was still more
remarkable was this, that on the most
important clauses of the Bill, two members of the cabinet, who had been the strongest
in their opposition to the principles embodied in that clause, were the very two
members in whose temporary absence the
Bill had been passed by the Council and
submitted to parliament.
Other facts came out. It became known
in the course of time that if the members
from the Northwest supporting the government had been consulted and if they had
been aware of the import of the clauses in
question, they had not been careful enough
or had been too indifferent to make their
opinion felt. These hon. gentlemen, every
one of them. so far as I know,
expressed his dissent immediately after
the Bill was brought down and the
3367 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â COMMONS Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
Minister of the Interior had returned,
and went into, if not open yet secret
revolt. Something else came out. It came
out that the representatives of the only
government which the Territories have—
there are three members in that government—based on the agitation of the subject
in their country and their legislature, based
on a draft Bill which they themselves had
drawn. based on a desire and agitation for
autonomy—it came out that two of the
three, backed and supported by the third
member of the government, came down to
Ottawa, as the authorized negotiators on
behalf of the Territories, to confer with the
Dominion government. Was it not to be
expected that these properly authenticated
representatives of the legislature of the Territories and the people of the Northwest
would have been given an opportunity to
say something in a matter which meant
everything to their people, which meant
everything to the country which they governed, and governed under large representative
institutions ? Was it an unheard of
thing or was it too bold a thing to ask that
these representatives should have been loyally met and conferred with ? Yet what
came out ? It came out that with reference
to the most important clause of the Bill,
the only clause which to-day, you may say,
is claiming the attention of this House and
the country—the representatives of that government were casually informed about it
on a Friday and were given an opportunity
to confer and discuss just exactly three
hours before that Bill with that clause was
submitted to parliament. What reason was
there that in the case of a territory containing half a million people, with immense
interests at stake, represented by its own
government, the choice of its own legislature, the legislators in which were the
choice of the constituents of that same
broad territory—what reason was there that
the representatives of these Territories
should not have had some kind of determining voice in what was to be their constitution
? Was it not to be expected that they
should at least have had the courtesy of
constant and frequent and loyal and thorough conference ? Was there any reason
why the First Minister, who in previous
times has been always foremost and loud
in his assertion of the rights and duties
of provinces in these compacts that are
made and are merged into a constitution,
should have treated them so cavalierly as
to have mentioned the subject on a certain
Friday, and only within three hours before
the Bill was introduced into parliament sent
a sub-committee to talk over the matter with
these representatives. Two excuses have
been made, both by members of the government. The first was made by my hon.
friend the Finance Minister (Mr. Fielding).
What was it ? Oh, said he, Mr. Haultain
is only the premier of that province, Mr.
Bulyea is a member of his government,
3368
Mr. Bulyea has expressed his satisfaction
with these clauses, and Mr. Haultain only
represents his own opinion. Did I say a
while ago that there used to be such a thing
as a fair deference for constitutional methods ? That evidently does not exist in
the mind of the Finance Minister to-day.
That hon. gentleman thinks that when the
representatives of a local government are
accredited to carry on negotiations with
the Dominion government, and when one
of these representatives is the First Minister of that local government and the other
a member of its cabinet, if the one who is
a sub-member, so to speak, signifies his adhesion to the measure, the other who is
the
First Minister, does not count. It is the
tail that swings the body according to the
Finance Minister. I wonder why the tail
from the Northwest, in the person of the
Minister of the Interior, did not swing the
Prime Minister ? But another member of
the government had a still more ingenious
excuse. He said that Mr. Haultain was a
very estimable gentleman but only a Tory
gentleman and it was his duty and purpose
to oppose this government. Delightful constitutional doctrine, that is, especially
coming from an almost member of the cabinet,
the Solicitor General. If Mr. Bulyea has signified—and I do not know that he has—
his assent to that clause, it seems to me that
the First Minister of the Territories is still
left as a man to be accounted with and
negotiated with. Is it true or is it not that
during the course of these negotiations-
if you can call them such—which took place
before the 21st February, the First Minister
had frequent conferences with Mr. Bulyea
when Mr. Haultain was absent, and unknown to Mr. Haultain.
Is it true that the Liberal members from
the Northwest collogued with Mr. Bul yea and the Prime Minister unknown to
Mr. Haultain and without any invitation to
Mr. Haultain to be present ? That can
be answered ; it is either true or not true.
But, if it is not answered, and therefore
we take it to be true, it is another odd illustration of the strange metamorphosis
that has taken place in our constitutional
methods. These things are a part of what
has occurred. But something more strange
and startling and dramatic even than all
this has occurred. The Minister of the
Interior (Mr. Sifton) stood in his place in
this House and said that he had resigned
because clause 16, introduced without his
knowledge and without his consent, was in
contravention of his principles and of his
life-long political record, and consequently
he had nothing to do but to resign from
the cabinet. And, after three weeks of
fightings within and rumours without, of
multitudinous midnight parleys and countless journeys by noonday, the Minister
of the Interior came down and told
us that at last he had been able to put
the ring into the nose of the government
3369 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â MARCH 29, 1905 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
and bring it to its knees. He had lassoed
a wild steer of the prairies and brought
it up to the ring-bolt. Now, a strange,
a luminous, in some respects a lurid, light
is thrown upon this whole transaction by
this speech of the Minister of the Interior.
Mr. FOSTER. We do not know. This
may be the last day he will be out. What
did the Minister of the Interior say ? He
stated that he had dissented from clause 16
because he was opposed to the principle of
it. And what did the ex-Minister of the
Interior (Mr. Sifton) say the other day ?
He said that the moment he read that
clause, he went to the Prime Minister and
discussed the matter with him and laid
before him his objections to it. Did the
Prime Minister meet him in any way ? We
only know that the result of that conference was that Mr. Sifton, the Minister of
the Interior, resigned because he could not
accept clause 16. And, now, a strange
thing happens, and one most difficult to reconcile with all that has gone before.
The
Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) himself, in his place in parliament, declared
:
I never intended that in that legislation any
more should be granted than is at present
enjoyed under the ordinances of the Northwest. And the Minister of Justice (Mr.
Fitzpatrick) from his place in this House
declared that it was never the intention of
the government that anything more should
be put into the constitution of the new provinces than absolutely what was enjoyed
under the ordinances I have spoken of. Now,
it is to be presumed—at least, it ought to
be presumable-that when the Minister of
the Interior, an intelligent man, went to the
Prime Minister, another intelligent man and,
as we suppose, told him that because of his
reading of clause 16 he was obliged to dissent and leave the cabinet, it ought to
be
presumable in that case that the other intelligent man the Prime Minister must have
said to him : Mr. Sifton, I never meant
what you read in that clause ; all that I
meant, or mean to-day, is that the Northwest shall enjoy, as to separate schools,
only the privileges that it has at the present time. Did that conversation take place?
The moment it did, Mr. Sifton, and the
Prime Minister were at one, and there
was no cause for resignation. Did that
conversation not take place, at least so
far as the Prime Minister is concerned ?
Then, if the Prime Minister's statement,
made in this House, is correct and he never
intended anything but what is in the present ordinances, it was clearly his duty to
3370
state that fact to his Minister of the Interior and so make the resignation of that
minister unnecessary. But the Prime Minister does not appear, so far as the records
show, to have done either the one thing
or the other—or else there is a mystery, a
most mysterious mystery, as to why the
Minister of the Interior resigned. Was it
on the cards that he should resign anyway ?
And was this misunderstanding allowed to
continue in order to give him a chance to resign? For, what happens at the end of
three weeks time ? The clause is brought
down exactly to the liking of the Minister
of the Interior. If the Prime Minister did
not wish to get rid of his Minister of the
Interior, why did not he agree with him
in the way and before the breaking out
took place. Can there be any explanation
of that mystery? I leave it to hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House.
But, Sir, something else happens. The
Minister of the Interior (Mr. Sifton), the
other day, gave us the reason why it was
impossible for him to agree to clause 16. I
am not going to make a scrap-book of myself
in these remarks, because it is not pleasant to the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid
Laurier) to hear scrap-book quotations.
But let me give, in effect, the reason why
the Minister of the Interior could not assent to clause 16, as that reason was given
by the hon. gentleman (Mr. Sifton) himself.
He said, in the first place, that the Prime
Minister had been very ill-advised to bring
down that clause without giving him a
chance to impart his knowledge and opinions
concerning it. It turns out that that was
correct on the part of the Minister of the
Interior anyway. But the reason why
the Minister of the Interior could not swallow clause 16 was this—that in the verbiage,
compact, well thought out, put together by
the hand of a master, there was something
concealed. Not altogether concealed from
himself, the Minister of the Interior said—
he knew too much for that. But what was
concealed in that verbiage ? There was an
irrevocable constitutional ear-mark upon
the public funds devouring them for ever
to a separate school minority in those
Territories, an ear-mark which made one
of the greatest endowments in the whole
history of the world for sectarian institutions and sectarian purposes, in the
fifty million dollars' worth of Northwest
lands. That is why the Minister of the Interior could not swallow clause 16. Now,
it would be a pity if we could not take the
Minister of the Interior at his own valuation.
But we have endorsements, for when the
Minister of the Interior stated that in no
unequivocal language, in face of his former
leader, his former leader assented by utter
silence, the Minister of Justice assented
by utter silence, and the Postmaster General
applauded to the echo, as did also the Minister of Customs and the Minister of Fin
3371 COMMONS Â
ance. Now the further question that arises
is this: What potent and soporitic drug
had been administered to the Postmaster
General, that lynx- eyed man of business and
reader of constitutional law, what strange
mixture had been administered to the Minister of Finance, generally clear-headed
and long-sighted, and to our incomparable
Minister of Customs—what had been administered in order to put them into a sleep
of months, whilst that aptly-worded, finely
phrased clause concealed within its innocent
outside the foundation and formation of an
irrevocable constitutionally ear-marked sectarian endowment, than which there has
been none greater in the history of the
world? The Postmaster General was a
member of the sub-committee that framed the Bill. The Postmaster General has
only one of two alternatives: Either he
did not know what was in that clause, and
consequently he is unworthy of his position; or he did know it, and he assented
to it ; and if it had not been for the superior nerve of the Minister of the Interior,
this country would have been no wiser to
this day, that clause might have gone
through, and the Postmaster General would
have had to father the responsibility of it
Now has the Postmaster General any excuse to offer? Was he on that sub-committee?
Did he help to frame that clause?
Did he assent to what the ex-Minister of
the Interior said the other day? He applauded his utterance, silent under the
lash, but he assented to it. What excuse
has he with his former record staring him
in the face, read and known of all men
in this country? What excuse had he for
attempting to ear-mark with a constitutional
and irrevocable ear-mark, such an endowment as that for sectarian purposes in the
great Northwest ? That is a question which
the Postmaster General must answer. The
same question may be put to the Minister
of Customs and to the Minister of Finance.
But I thought I noticed—am I wrong,
Mr. Speaker ?—I thought I noticed that
when the ex-Minister of the Interior was
flourishing that lash, lead-loaded, and bringing it down on the backs of certain former
colleagues, and when he mentioned casually
the existence of a draftsman, he was most
particularly - not with a tear in his eye, not
with a mournful countenance but it seemed to me with something like a manly glee
- watching the effect of the tip of the lash
on the back of the Minister of Justice.
May be I was wrong in my supposition. If
so, I give it just for what it is worth. But
other things aside, the Minister of Justice
I am sure, will not shelter himself behind
the back of a draftsman, the Minister of
Justice will take the responsibility for that
clause, and in common parlance it will be
up to him to explain why, surreptitiously
shall I say, concealed in fine legal phrase
he got ahead of the Minister of Customs,
got ahead of the lynx-eyed Postmaster Gen
3372
eral, got ahead even of his premier. It may
be, and concealed in that verbiage the potency and power of a most wonderful, and
remarkable, and enduring instrument. It
is for the Minister of Justice to explain
that matter.Â
Now, either the Minister of the Interior
is right or he is wrong. Why do I conclude that he is right? Because he has
absolutely forced the government, after
he had gone out of the government. to
come to his terms. and they had three weeks
afterwards to employ another draftsman—
I am glad to say they did not get another
Minister of Justice—but certainly to employ
another draftsman, and to take out the concealed virus that was in section 16, No.
1,
and substitute for it the plain and easily
read verbiage of section 16, No. 2. Now
the Minister of the Interior made his protest on these grounds. Three weeks brought
him back into this House triumphant, leading the premier and his colleagues in
leash, and administering the lash to those
sleepy, or incompetent, or careless minnister
who allowed such a thing to get into clause
16, No. 1, and came near doing it to the
everlasting death of the sturdy yoeman of
the Northwest. This last incident is the
most dramatic of any that has occurred
so far. But we live in a time and we are
in a House where we may expect almost
anything. Does anybody suppose that this
is the last dramatic incident that .will take
place? To-morrow. may be, we will have the
anonuncement that the Minister of the Interior, formerly the victorious man in his
three weeks contest, will be re-seated on
the government benches and in possession of
his old portfolio. It may be—the premier
was not ready to answer the question today,
but he thought that he might to-morrow.
By the efflux of time I believe it will be a
pretty near to-morrow if it is to be in the
affirmative.
But here is another thought that comes
up at the same time. All this, as I said at
first. is in pursuance of an hypothesis that
the Prime Minister had determined to put
this thing through, cost what it might, and
these are the methods he has taken to put
it through—the autocratic methods. What
is the inducement that brought back the
Minister of the Interior and joined him
again to his colleagues, his leader and his
party, in the advocacy—no, not in the advocacy, but in the voting support of this
measure that is now before the House?
What was the inducement—because there
were strong inducements on the other side.
On the other side were his principles, on
the other side was his record from the old
Manitoba times up to the present; on the
other side was his reputation before the
country as an adherent of principle. What
was on this side in order to induce
the Minister of the Interior to come back
and put himself en rapport with his
leader and his party on a question and
3373 MARCH 29, 1905
upon a clause to the principle of which he
still declares he is opposed, and to which,
his whole record is opposed ?
Well, Sir, we have seen things. We have
seen in this government three of its ablest
ministers go out in the prime and vigour of
their years. One, the former Minister of
Railways and Canals, heralded, lauded, declared to be the strong man of the government,
took a stand upon principle upon a
certain most important measure and handed
in his resignation as a protest because he
believed that the measure which was introduced would be a measure fraught with incalculable
injury to his country and he
could not give his assent to it. The only
logical course for a man who did that was
to see that a measure so fraught with evil
was fought to its latest and did not become
part of the statutes of this country. But,
Sir, the Prime Minister knows a thing or
two. He approached the Minister of Railways and Canals, pistol in one hand, soporific
in the other. It is not on record,
because these negotiations were verbal largely, as to whether the trigger of the pistol
was pulled or not, but it is on record that
the soporific was taken and taken effectually. With a fine disregard of the principles
of the hon. Postmaster General (Sir
William Mulock) that public offices and
public emoluments should not be used for
purely and solely party interests the right
hon. First Minister used the money and
public offices of this country as a soporific
to lull for the time being and until his purposes were accomplished the dissent and
protest of one of his strongest ministers. To-day
he meets his former Minister of the Interior,
pistol in one hand and soporific in the other.
Here again the communications are verbal,
there is no written record, we do not know
whether the pistol had to be drawn positively or not, and we do not know yet
what the soporific is, but it is to be powerful
and effective. One other minister remained, not by any means the least strong or
the least active. On what principle he
went out, or assumed to go out, I do not
quite know nor do I quite know how he
views it. The pistol was evidently applied
but whether there is a compensating soporific yet to come or not we shall have to
wait for time to reveal. Let me hope and
express some confidence in the hope that
out of the three there will be at least one
minister who will have the manliness to
stand firm, and having gone out on principle
will stay out on principle.
Now, Sir, having got that far, let me
put a question to the Northwest members
who are supporting the government in this
House. They were like sheep without a
shepherd. Their shepherd was sporting
peacefully and pastorally in the far off southern hills and his sheep here were without
an efficient shepherd, without what we call
the leading one—I will not say the leading
sheep, it is only a simile anyway. While
3374
the leading one was away the others unled fell into an artful design, a trap, laid
—shall I say by the hon. Minister of Justice ?—No, not perhaps laid, but that facility
of verbiage, that savoir faire way of putting a thing so that it shall be preserved
and yet not seen was too much for the members from the Northwest in the absence of
their lynx-eyed, keen and well informed leader. They all fell into the pit, they groaned
in the pit and tumbled about in the pit until their leader came back and gently led
them by paths out of the wilderness back to firmer and higher ground. But, for ever
and for ever, say what you may, or think what you may, to the seven members from the
Northwest who were conferred with, who gave their advice to help
to formulate this Bill, who knew what was
in it–for ever and for ever have they to
bear the onus either of ignorance of what
was in the Bill, or of indifference as to
what was in it or of complicity in what the
hon. ex-Minister of the Interior declared
was the purpose of the clause. Now, this
ought to give food for thought not only to
the people of the Northwest but to the people of this country through and through.
Then, I put this question to the right hon.
Prime Minister : If, before the last election, he had made known his intention to
develop two provinces out of the Territories
and in giving them autonomy to withhold
from them the power over their lands and
the unlimited power to control their educational interests, how many men would he
have had back here from the Northwest ?
I ask the right hon. gentleman what would
have been his status in this country to-day ?
Is it to his credit that he kept back from
the people that information or even an intimation of it and secured a following
absolutely unpledged and without a mandate on this subject ? My hon. friend knows
that there is only one answer to that. I will
put another question to him. If the hon. ex-
Minister of the Interior had stood out on
his principle as he called it, would one
single member from the Northwest have
dared to go against him ? If he had stood
out and if the rest had stood out with him
would the right hon. leader of the government have dared to have attempted to put
through his Bill ? That is the question.
Therefore, there was an incentive and a
motive either for the use of the pistol or
the soporific. One or the other has been
used undoubtedly as no man would have
repudiated his principles and the record of
a lifetime on a most grave question, unless
there had been some further inducement
than the ex-Minister of the Interior declared before us here the other day.
Now, sir, let us go a little further. We
heard yesterday an interesting speech from
the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa).
I do not propose to undertake the ungracious task of criticising that speech as
every speech, the Prince Minister's and my
3375
own included, has its defects, I suppose,
and this speech certainly had its defects
as well as its beauties. As I listened to
that speech, whilst many thoughts coursed
through my brain, two or three might be
mentioned this afternoon. The first one
was this : what a mild and erudite and
tactful pleader for toleration and national
unity the hon. member proved himself yesterday ! How helpful it is, when we come
to the decision of a constitutional question
in the twentieth century, to have a very
fine, a very learned discourse offered to us
as to the wonderful, enduring and preservative power of the church in the far gone
centuries in keeping the light of knowledge and science burning ! But we
live in the 20th century ; we cannot decide now as to the merits of a common
school system on what were the excellencies of the repositories of learning two, or
three, or four centuries ago; we have to
take the conditions as they are to-day and
by weighing these conditions come to our
own best conclusion.
One other thing came to my mind. I
could not help but look alternately from
the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa)
to the member for Brandon (Mr. Sifton) ;
the member for Labelle chock full of religious fervour and enthusiasm, a fervour and
enthusiasm that does him infinite credit,
declaring, as the culmination of his argument, that it was impossible for Catholics
to thoroughly enjoy their religion unless
they have complete control of their education. If that is the belief of the member
for Labelle, or of any other good Catholic,
I quarrel with no man's belief. It has been
the fashion during this debate, and it follows from good feeling, to disclaim any
personal bias when we speak of each other
as Protestants or Catholics. I do not want
to enter upon that apology, or to even affirm
it is necessary, but I want to say this in justice to myself. I have been in public
life
since 1882, I have been on the back benches
and on the front benches, I have spoken
considerably often in this House (gentlemen opposite think quite too often), I have
spoken a good deal through the country, and
my speeches have been reported ; if any
man can put his finger on one single sentence spoken here or spoken elsewhere in
which I have uttered one illiberal or bigoted thought with reference to my Roman
Catholic fellow-countrymen, I would be
thankful for him to do it. I don't think any
man can. There is one circle which envelops every man that is sacred ground,
it is the circle in which his God and his
conscience meet. Against what occurs in
that inner circle I have absolutely no right
to intrude, and I claim the same treatment
for myself. But this is what I mean : If
these were the opinions of the member
for Labelle, and undoubtedly they were,
what kind of education does he want in
these provinces ? What else can he want
3376
but one that will do him good from his
point of view, a thing that is absolutely
essential if he is not going to have a mere
sham. The half hour privilege at the end
of the school day to permit a priest in the
school room to teach the dogmas of the
church—will that satisfy him ? Is that the
culmination of his depth of belief and his
power of argument all verging towards the
one conclusion ? Evidently not. Beside the
member for Labelle sat the ex-Minister of
the Interior, who, the other day, whittled it
all down to the one half hour of religious
teaching ; whittled it down to only that
and nothing more. There, near the member
for Labelle, sat the Prime Minister, who, in
1896, had the opportunity to prevent what
the member for Labelle deplored as the
robbery of the rights of the minority in the
province of Manitoba. Never before in the
history of confederation had such an opportunity arrived ; it is very probable it
will
never arrive again. The Prime Minister
told us, with a convenient forgetfulness of
the whole clause 93 : I was opposed to remedial legislation in 1896, because the law
of the province of Manitoba had been declared to be a valid law, and I was against
forcing Manitoba to relinquish what Manitoba had the right to enact. Is that the
worship of the constitution that my right
hon. friend has ; is that the only part of
the constitution he reads ? There were
two things in the Manitoba case in 1896.
They had a right to their law and it was
valid on one count, and that count was, that
before Manitoba became a province there
was no system of sectarian or denominational schools by law or practice. But there
was another point which was covered by
the British North America Act, and for
which most especially the British North
America Act was framed to cover. When
Manitoba became a province it enacted a
separate school law, and in 1890 it repealed
that separate school law, and, under such
circumstances the British North America
Act, section 93, came in, and it is the only
way in which it possibly could come in.
Does my right hon. friend deny the fact ;
does he deny the constitution ?
Then. Sir, the Roman Catholic minority
came to him in 1896 and said : True, we
were thrown down on the bad drafting or
the insufficiency of the law, whichever you
choose, but the Privy Council have declared
that we have the right to get to the federal
parliament through the federal government
and to appeal as a last resort, if parliament
considers it best to give us remedial legislation in order to restore, as far as possible,
the rights of the minority. When that appeal was made to the hon. gentleman, could
he take a part of section 93 and relieve
himself from the duty, because that particular part of the section did not apply,
whilst
right before him was the other and pertinent part of the constitution which absolutely
did apply ?
3377
MARCH 29, 1905
Now, Sir, I never was a separate school
adherent, I never believed in separate
schools as against national schools. In
1896 I stated my belief, as I state it now;
I knew it was not politically to my advantage, I knew it was not politically to
the advantage of the Liberal-Conservative
party; but, Sir, without thinking of ulterior things, I said to myself: There is
the constitution. there is the pronouncement of the highest judicial tribunal in
this empire, there is the minority coming
with a grievance and having the right to
appeal to the Dominion government and
the Dominion parliament, the only power
that has jurisdiction to right their wrongs;
I said to myself : I believe it is right, I
believe in the policy of attempting to carry
out the constitution. Let me ask this question: If my right hon. friend, in 1896,
had
thrown his forces with the forces that made
for remedial legislation, who can doubt that
we would have carried it in this parliament.
No one can doubt it. And why was it not
carried? The ex-Minister of the Interior
told why when he said here the other day :
The member for North Toronto wished to
restore the schools, but he failed, and he
failed because the right hon. the leader of
this government threw himself across the
way and prevented it.
Why should not the member for Labelle
save some of his argument that he so generously distributed yesterday, and apply it
to his own chief, the right hon. gentleman
who leads the government, and tax him for
two things. When he said that they had
been robbed of their rights in Manitoba and
were suffering from injustice there to-day,
why did he not add: and that, Sir, was
due to the action of the present Prime Minister, my own leader. More than that: when
in clause 16, as brought down on the 21 st of
February, his leader had provided for sectarian education in these provinces for ever
with an endowment from the fund, Why did
he, at the beck and call of the Minister of
the Interior, who was their enemy, looked
upon in that light, who destroyed their
schools system in Manitoba, who prevented
them from obtaining and retaining their
rights there—why did he take out the clause
that gave them something, and substitute
the clause that which according to the Finance Minister. the Minister of Customs and
the ex-Minister of the Interior, gives you
absolutely notihing but the last weary half
hour of instruction at the day's end
and the name of a separate school.
I am carrying out now strictly the
argument of the ex-Minister of the
Interior, acquiesced in by all the members of the government who have spoken;
and no one who has not spoken has deemed
it: necessary to rise and express his dissent
from that argument. If his argument is
correct and his facts are right and they
are assented to by the members opposite—
what. may I ask the member for Labelle.
3378
does the Northwest Bill provide at present,
under those ordinances that are put into
the constitution, and that are to become the
measure and standard for all time to
come? Listen to what Archbishop Taché
says :
Nothing essential now distinguishes the
Catholic schools from the Protestant schools
but the designation, now ironical, of separate
schools.
There is the church authority. Judge
Rouleau says :
If separate schools exist now in name, they
do not exist in fact.
There is the legal side of it.
Mr. FOSTER. No, that is in the Northwest. We have those two, the one representing—shall I mention
the word ?—the
hierarchy. I do not think hierarchy is an
objectionable name ; I think it is an honourable name, and I am quite sure it is an
honoured name, and I venture to use it,
and to use it in that sense. The one the
representative of the hierarchy, the other
the representative of the bench, both of
them strong Catholics, both speaking the
French language, and both on the spot and
able to speak from knowledge, thus express themselves. Now, may I ask the
member for Labelle, if he is absolutely convinced of his theory and if he drives it
to
its logical conclusion, why did he sit 'still
and not open his lips when the malign influence of the Minister of the Interior and
the ex-Minister of the Interior was dragging
out of the Bill clause 16, No. 1, which gave
to the Northwest minority that which they
demand, and which was conclusively demanded by the argument of the member for
Labelle ? Must we again and again come to
the conclusion, that with the member for
Labelle it is the same as with the member
for Brandon—they are both strong in the
enunciation of their principles, but both
very lax in carrying them out. On principle I am with Borden, but when it
comes to a vote, I am with Laurier—
that is the cynical and outspoken declaration of the ex-Minister of the Interior.
Now, let me come back to the Manitoba
case. I was finishing that by saying that
section 93 has two parts, and that the Prime
Minister cannot get out of the obligation of
the constitution by quoting only one part,
in which he is relieved by a judgment of
the Privy Council, and ignoring the other
part, in which he is absolutely bound by
the judgment of the Privy Council in so
far as having a clear came for the action of
this body under its jurisdiction. So much
with reference to that.
One other point might be brought up.
The ex-Minister of the Interior, speaking
of the Manitoba question in 1896, said from
his place in the House the other day:
3379 COMMONS
The member for North Toronto and the cabinet to which he belonged endeavoured to put
back on Manitoba a useless and inefficient and
expensive system of education.
I deny it. All that we proposed to do
was to embody the principle of remedial
legislation to the largest extent to which it
could be embodied ; but never with the idea
that we should make permanent there a system of schools which should not be up-to-
date, well inspected, well grounded and well
carried out. We were not advocates of an
inefficient school, neither do I think that
the gentlemen who represented the cause of
Manitoba were advocates of that kind of a
school. No, it was not that. ' But,' said
the ex-Minister of the Interior, ' when the
commissioners came from Sir Charles Tupper's government, we offered them a compromise,
which they refused to accept.'
'After the 1896 elections were over,' he added, ' we offered to the Laurier government,
the right hon. gentleman's government, the
very same compromise, ipsissima verba '—
the very words he used—' and they accepted it.' What does the First Minister say ?
When fresh from that settlement, of which
there was no written but only a verbal
record, he went down to the city of Montreal,
and, standing up amongst his own people
there, he said :
Yet after we have accepted from the provincial government of Manitoba much more than
the commissioners of the late government asked last spring, we are now to be denounced
none the less in the name of religion as traitors to our race and religion.
There was the statement made by the ex-
Minister of the interior, and here is the
statement made by the right hon. gentleman
himself. Which is true, which is correct ?
—the prime actor in the one case, with
his memory fresh, with all the scars
and all the laurels from the conflict
still fresh upon him, and the Prime Minister of this country, who could not have
gone through those negotiations and that
contest of 1896 without having his memory
also fresh with reference to what had happened. There is what the Prime Minister
says in December, 1896 ; here is what the
Minister of the Interior says in March,
1905 ; which is correct ? Did the theory
that was put forth by the Solicitor General
exercise its malign influence then, and did
a responsible government in Manitoba, with
important interests and grave issues at stake
deliberately make up its mind that it would
not give to a Tory government what it
was prepared to give to a Liberal government ?
Now, Sir, look again at what takes place.
The Prime Minister comes down and makes
his argument absolutely on the constitutional phase of the question. He disclaims
the breeding of strife, the letting loose of
the demon of discord in this great parliament where different races and religions
are
represented. He says: Though I believe
3380
in separate schools, yet I argue this out
on the constitution. His statement, is in
so many words, that the constitution binds
us, compels us, to give to the minority in
these provinces that we are forming in the
Northwest the same rights that are given
under the constitution to Quebec and Ontario minorities. That is his exact statement
; it is in the unrevised 'Hansard ' ; it is in the revised ' Hansard ';
it has been quoted before ; it has not
been denied ; he will not deny it.
Well, Sir, I do not commend that version
of the compact of confederation to this
House, and I do ask the House and the
country to look into that for a little. So
much has been said about toleration in Quebec, so much has been said about the binding
power of the constitution, that, if my
hon. friends opposite will allow me, I want
to reason that out with them for a moment.
I do it in the broadest and kindest spirit.
You say you are tolerant to the Protestant minority in Quebec. I am glad
to hear it. I am not going to stand here
and deny it. But, when you say that
you are tolerant to the minority, I ask
you, ought not you so to be? They are your
fellow-citizens. They are not your wards ;
they contribute to your finances ; they build
up your country ; they live side by side
with your families ; the weal or woe of the
province of Quebec must he shared equally
by them and you. Ought you not to be
tolerant toward them ? But, will the hon.
member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa) allow
me one word to show why he should be a
little self-contained when he makes this
the plea for any extraordinary toleration
for those of his own faith and race
in other provinces. Here is a Protestant child in Quebec. He goes one morning to what
is called the Quebec school. You
may call these your national schools if you
like ; but am I wrong in saying that, from
the time that child enters the school at nine
o'clock in the morning until he leaves it at
four o'clock in the afternoon, he is under
the direct, impressive, constant, inculcatory
spirit and teaching of the Roman Catholic
church ? I am not mistating the facts in
that. For, the hon. member for Labelle,
speaking on behalf of his people, says : We
believe we cannot properly exercise our religion unless we have the right to teach
our
children our religion as and when we please
So, does it not come to this, in all reason—
that your schools in Quebec are not national schools; they are Roman Catholic
schools ? The influence of the church, in
the books, in the teachers, in the adornments
in the positive dogmatic teaching is there
from nine o'clock in the morning until four
o'clock in the afternoon. And the Protestant boy has no other school to go to, unless
you make provision for him. Is it extraordinary tolcration that, having no national
schools, no schools that are undogmatic and unsectarian. if there is a Pro
3381 MARCH 29, 1905
testant minority in the province of Quebec,
you are bound, to make provision for the
Protestant—who is just as honest in allegiance to his creed and maintenance of his
religious belief as is the Catholic—to give to
him a place where he will not be constantly
under the watchful and persuasive power
and teaching of the Catholic Church. I am
not going outside of the record in saying
that. When you talk of toleration, I want
you to think of that. And, now take the
other case. Here is a Protestant child in
Ontario. He goes to the public school. From
the time he enters the school at nine o'clock
in the morning until he goes out of it at
four o'clock in the afternoon, there is no
vestige of denominational or clerical teaching [or] influence. The Catholic child
comes
from the bosom of a Catholic family and
returns to the bosom of that family at night
absolutely unassailed and uninfluenced by
any dogma denominational or clerical which
is against his belief or against the
course of his religious training. That is
to say, in Ontario there are national schools.
Now, the only ground you have to stand
upon in objecting to this system in Ontario,
is that it is the very absence of dogmatical
teaching that you object to. Then, if you
object to that, but not to any direct
teaching or persuasion, that is the limit of
your plea. But you cannot say that the
Catholic child is under perverting influence.
In the province of Quebec it is absolutely
different from what it is in Ontario ; do you
not see that ?—and consequently you must
not stretch this claim of your toleration too
far.
Mr. BOURASSA. I would like to impress
upon the hon. gentleman's (Mr. Foster's) mind
the point of view we take ;—we say that it
is as unjust to compel a Catholic child to
go to a non-sectarian school as it is to compel a Protestant child to go to a Catholic
school. And that has been acknowledged
by the highest Protestant authorities in
England.
Mr. FOSTER. I do not dissent from the
hon. gentleman's (Mr. Bourassa's) statement of the Catholic position. But what I
answer is this : Is it as unjust to have a child
forced by necessity, or by environment, to
go to a national school in the province of
Ontario where he is not perverted, as it
would be if these national schools taught
Methodism or Presbyterianism from morning until night and perverted your child ?
We must take all these things into the consideration.
Now, we go back to the compact. And
I may say that whatever may be the similarity of words, I see a difference between
the compact of confederation and the British North America Act. By whom was the
3382
compact made, and where ? The compact
was made in 1864 by the representatives
of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova
Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. These
representatives met together to form
a confederation. They made what we
call the constitution. In that constitution you find two divisions of powers.
One division puts certain things exclusively under the control of the province, and
the other puts certain things
exclusively under the control of the Dominion. Now, read these over, and do you
find anything in the list of powers given
to the exclusive control of the Dominion
which has the remotest relation to or connection with education ? You cannot find
it. What was the dominant idea in the minds
of all the representatives ? The dominant
idea was that education was a local concern, and the Dominion must keep its
hands off.
And that was Mr. Oliver Mowat's original
resolution, what was afterwards added was
only an incident. Do not let us confuse the
incidental with the essential. One is the
powers themselves. The other comes from
an after thought, viz: Granting those powers, can they be used to prejudice the rights
of the minority? If so, let us put on a check.
That is the incidental, but the other is
the essential. Now the essential thing
is that the province should have exclusive
control of its education. But those wise
men sitting there in Quebec city said : Here
is Ontario and here is Quebec we have
separate schools for Catholics in Ontario
and for Protestants in Quebec, and a suggestion was made by Mr. McGee to this
effect : Yes, we will give the exclusive power, but we will add this rider to it,
' save
and except the minority rights of the two
Canadas.' That is all that was done at
Quebec. That is all to the very letter, and
that was passed by the legislature of
Upper and Lower Canada. There were
present representatives from the maritime provinces and also the representatives
from the two provinces of
Upper and Lower Canada. That was their
compact, and that was all of it. But this
gave no right for anybody to say that, because they saved by that compact the
rights of the minorities in those two provinces, when forty or fifty years later you
make provinces out of the Northwest Territories, you are obliged on account of that
compact, to establish separate schools for
the minorities in those provinces. Not in
the least. This compact in order to become
law went to London. The Protestant minority, voiced by Mr. Galt, said : That compact
does not suit the Protestants in Quebec;
we are peculiarly situated ; we have been
trying to get certain amendments to our
Act to better protect us ; these have been
promised us. but you have not been able
to carry them out ; now we cannot
willingly go into confederation unless we
3383
COMMONS
get those. In the last analysis, it came to
this: The Protestant minority could not get
the legislation until after confederation.
Then Mr. Galt said at London : Very well,
then we must make that promise binding by
the constitution ; we must add that other
clause that not only if at the time of confederation separate schools exist but if
legislation is had after confederation giving
separate school privileges and then that
these should be taken away, and the rights
of the minority thereby be prejudiced, there
will be an appeal to the sovereign power, the
parliament of the colonies. That is the history of it and the whole history of it.
You
may search the whole history of it from
first to last and that is a fair statement of
the case. For New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia, not by compact, but in London, was
this united Upper and Lower Canada saving
clause extended into a saving clause which
applied to all the provinces at the time of
the union. It was generalized, it was the
compact principle extended to the other provinces. That is the Confederation Act.
When you come to the British North America Act, you can get all there is in that Act
and you have a right to get it. But I say
to the right hon. gentleman who contends
that he is bound by the Confederation Act
to give to these Northwest provinces the
same rights that are possessed by Ontario
and Quebec, that he has pushed the contract beyond its absolute and reasonable
meaning, and in the opinion of lawyers
equally as good as himself he has no warrant for saying that he is compelled by the
British North America Act to place into the
constitution of the Northwest Territories
such a principle as he proposes to embalm
in that constitution.
One point more with reference to the
Manitoba case. I have said that the Catholic or any minority in this Dominion never
had a case so clear for remedial legislation
as had the Manitoba minority in 1896. All
the legal difficulties were out of the way,
all the decisions were given, and the path
was absolutely clear between that minority
with its grievance and the power which
had jurisdiction to remedy it, namely, this
parliament. But the right hon. gentleman
threw himself across the way and prevented
it ; and if my hon. friend from Labelle (Mr.
Bourassa) complains that the Manitoba
minority is suffering from injustice today, it is because his leader threw himself
across the path of the Remedial Bill
and prevented its enactment. More has
happened since that. I regret in no single
jot or tittle my act in 1896. Under similar
circumstances, I would do the same thing,
but I do not at all say that I will ever do
the same thing under the circumstances
that may arise after this, Why ? Because there is a power which after all is
mightier than the constitution. We invoked the constitution in 1896. We tried
3384
to give it its full force in a clear case
and we were prevented by the leader of
a great party. After we were prevented,
that leader and his party went to the people in 1896, 1900 and 1904, and the people
declared that they did not want remedial
legislation. In the interests of the 41 per
cent which has been talked about in this
House, in the interests of the province of
Quebec which was specially interested, we
on this side tried to get for the minority
their rights in the only way we possibly
could under the constitution. We were prevented from doing it by the Liberal party,
and during three successive elections the
Liberal party have endorsed the contention that no hands be laid on any province
even though it deprives the minority of that
province of the rights guaranteed it under
the constitution. And I make hold to say
that as long as grass grows and water runs,
I shall not feel disposed to contravene that
will three times expressed by the people of
this country. Aye, Mr. Speaker, three times
expressed, and expressed especially by that
very 41 per cent we hear so much about,
and in the province where it is strong set.
To the man who says that this agitation is
on to-day simply because we are opposed to
a French premier—to the gentleman from
Edmonton (Mr. Oliver) I have no answer to
make. A statement of the case is quite sufficient. To the same gentleman who said
in
another part of his speech that this is on
because it is a party agitation, I have no
answer to make. His statement answers
Itself. We read the newspapers. we scan the
petitions, we know what is going on in this
country, and if this is a party agitation
very suddenly the Tory party must have
greatly enlarged its sphere. Sir, I want
to state one other thing. Whatever may
have been said in 1896, I approached that
question, and the government of which I
was a member approached it, against the
wishes of many of our best friends, not
because we thought we had a political
cinch in prospect, not at all ; but knowing
that in all probability we were going down
to our political death, and doing it because
we thought we were under a constitutional
obligation.
Now, Sir, I had intended to address an
argument to the Minister of the Interior,
but that hon. gentleman is not present ;
perhaps it will be better to keep it for
another time. But there is one point I cannot afford to let pass, because it is a
point
made by the Minister of Finance as well as
by the ex-Minister of the Interior. It used
to be good doctrine, good constitutional doctrine, it is yet—it used to be good Liberal
doctrine, I don't know that it is now—but
it used to be, formerly they coincided,—that
if there was a member of the government
who, on a grave question of principle, did
not agree with his party on a measure involving that principle, he had no other hon
3385 MARCH 29, 1905
ourable course than to go out from the government and voice his opposition to that
measure. Is that a good Liberal principle
to-day ? Is it, or is it not ? That is the
only raison d'ĂŞtre that the Minister of the
Interior had. He has not abjured his principles, he keeps them still. He declares
that
it is with reluctance that he will vote for
the measure. He says, " section 1 is an interference, and he wishes it were not there
;
but on one consideration he will vote for
that interference. Why ? Because it is supplemented by a subsection which declares
that money shall be put behind the interference to make it effective. There is consistency
for you. He hates the plague, he
says it destroys the family, it decimates
society, but if only you support it by a
money vote by which you can scatter the
plague far and wide, then he welcomes it.
That is the argument, that is the reasoning of the Minister of the Interior, if he
has any left at all. He declares that his
principles are not abjured, but he straightway repudiates them by his vote. The man
who cried for freedom from slavery, cried
it from 1890 to 1896, through all the concessions and counties of the west, and of
Ontario, cried for unshackled limbs in the
provinces, comes in to-day, and while declaring that he has not abjured his principles
in the least, he votes to do what he declares
himself shackles and creates an interference
with the free life of two great provinces in
the west, enduring and irrevocable. Time
was when a man who held a principle
as strong as that on so grave an
issue, would not have dared to stand
before the public an instant after having gone back upon his principles. Why
does he do it ? Why ? I am not going to
search for any reasons at all, I am going to
give the reason that he gives—the King's
government must go on. The Finance Minister says, the King's government must go
on. Do they not mean in their heart of
hearts that the Liberal government must
go on ? It is the Liberal government which
must go on, and principle, consistency, constitution, everything must be sacrificed,
but
the King's—to wit, the Liberal—government
must go on. The Minister of Finance used
it as a threat—I never heard a more unworthy argument in this House, and hope
never to hear such an argument again. If
that principle and that method is adopted
what government can be pure and well conducted ; for never, if not in this case, will
men go out because they do not agree in
principle with the legislation which is proposed. Yet the King's government must go
on, that is to say, the party must be kept in
power, principle and constitution may be
thrown to the winds.
But the Minister of the Interior has
wonderful knowledge from his acquaintance
on the street. He has been too much on the
street. Too close a connection with the man
3386
on the street is apt to becloud the moral
sense, is apt to throw a pall over principle,
it is not conducive to the highest and clearest
thought. What is his argument ? The constitution orders this, says the right hon.
premier. The constitution does not compel it,
says the leader of the opposition. So the
ex-Minister of the Interior says that the
man on the street gets confused. He hears
both say that they are correct, sees both
stand on the same rock. The man on the
street says, he cannot understand the constitution, but wants to know what you are
going to enact. But there are men on the
street and men on the street. I can conceive of a man on the street who cultivates
a very valuable farm out in Carleton county.
I go to him and say : My good friend, you
think you own that farm.—Yes.—Well, I
think I own it. Let us sit down now and
let us discuss what is the best method of
cultivating that farm. What does the man
on the street say to me ? The first thing
he says is, Sir, don't you think I had better
know first how the title reads ? If the title
in in me. I wil take your advice, but I will
not take your domination ; if the title is in
you, I may give you advice, but I will not
try to dominate you. My first duty is to ascertain the title of the property. I will
discuss the details of the business afterwards.
So there are men on the street and men on
the street, and it is not the better class of
men on the street from whom the Minister
of the Interior has received his inspiration.
Forty-one per cent of the people of this
country, the Minister of Finance says, bids
us put this article into the constitution.
Forty-one per cent of this country in 1896
seemed to be up in arms against remedial
legislation in the province of Manitoba.
What right has the Minister of Finance to
say that forty-one per cent of the people of
this country demand it ? But does he pay
a compliment to the forty-one per cent of
the intelligent, educated, 1aw-abiding, patriotic Catholics in this country, if, when
a
question comes up and has been fought out
in the high court of parliament, and the
majority is against them, he makes them
say that they will make government impossible in this country
What Catholic says that ? No intelligent, patriotic Catholic says it. Every
patriotic and intelligent Catholic throws
that back in the teeth both of the hon. ex-
Minister of the Interior and the hon. Minister of Finance and that when they want
an excuse for going back on their principles
and their records they should get a better
excuse than to say that 41 per cent of the
citizens of this country, if they cannot get
what they want, will cause anarchy and
revolution. The Minister of Finance ventured something else, and I commend it to
the hon. member for Labelle. He said : Oh
yes, we can afford to be tolerant ; we must
recollect that 41 per cent of the people are
3387 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â COMMONS Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 3388
Catholics. They have some rights and we
must not be too hard hearted. Let the
constitution go ; let us he tolerant ; give
them a large and tolerant measure, and
what is the measure ? All they get up
there is their half-hour of the spent day ;
all they get up there is a decrease in their
separate schools instead of an increase.
Oh, the generosity, the lofty, wide toleration of the Finance Minister ! I did not
blame the hon. member for Labelle at all
yesterday when he put that little quiet
spoke in his wheel and said : Oh yes, Mr.
Finance Minister you are quite tolerant
down there but you were not always so.
You are so now because there is a very respectable number of Catholic votes in your
province. What more right has this parliament to put separate schools under the constitution
in these two great provinces
out there in the interest of the minority
than it has to bid the province of Nova
Scotia, or the province of New Brunswick
or the province of Prince Edward Island
to give separate schools to the Roman
Catholic minority of those provinces ?
When you come down to the essence of the
thing and leave forms aside what more
right has parliament to do it in one case
than in the other ? Would even the hon.
member for Labelle introduce a proposition
looking to an interference with the province
of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island or
New Brunswick, or to force them to give a
legal separate school system to the minority ? No, and why not ? It is more
manly, Sir, to attack a full fledged province
able to defend itself and say to it : We
will make you respect law and justice ; we
will make you respect the rights of the minority and we will put a law in force in
your
province which will compel you to do it
under pains and penalties. You have a man
to fight then. It is a fair battle, but in this
case you take the child, your own ward,
the infant in your arms growing up to his
maturity who will by and by attain a mighty
estate, with powerful, untold possibilities
stretching out into the endless future and
while he is a child in your lap you bind
his limbs with an irrevocable bond, so that
however strong he may grow he never can
get rid of the bond or the badge that
marks him as inferior. The plea for
toleration is a good one, the argument
for separate schools, as strong as it can be
made, may be a good one, but you are
in the wrong court when you come here.
That is the only mistake. How did you get
your separate school privileges in the province of Nova Scotia ? Not by the hard
letter of the law. It was the good, tolerant sense of the majority which gave you
there all you asked. How did you get your
privileges in the province of New Brunswick ? New Brunswick fought the minority, fought
it out in the province, went
to the elections on it, fought it out in the
courts, made no change in jot or tittle,
3387
but when it had ascertained and maintained its full rights the majority turned
around and said to their brethren that lived
in their midst : We are not so intolerant
as you thought, we give you those privileges and to-day, in the city of St. John and
in every portion of New Brunswick, you
have practically better separate schools
than you will have in the Northwest. Why
cannot you trust the Northwest ?
Mr. FOSTER. Not the same kind? I do
not respect very much that judgment,
which, standing on the small pivot of the
present, cannot look out into the future with
its progress, its advancement, its increasing
light and knowledge and its ever growing
generosity and tolerance and be broad
enough to say : Men will be men when I
am dead and gone, with the same generous
impulses in their hearts as those which they
have to-day. Men will treat their brethren
as brethren then as they treat them now.
The argument of the hon. gentleman carried
to its full extent is an argument for tyranny,
and a bondage complete and enduring.
Now, let me reason for a moment with
my friends. You say : We want a separate school system ; we believe in it. Will
you look for a moment at the Protestant
view ? I do not know whether I am able
to speak for all Protestantism or not, but I
think I can fairly and reasonably outline
the view of that Protestantism which stands
behind the national schools. What it it? That
the schools shall be national, shall be free,
shall he non-sectarian, busying themselves
with education alone, not leaving out education in morals and on the general lines
of
right and religious conduct, but absolutely
free from all sectarianism.
Mr. FOSTER. It is not the American
system alone, it is the Canadian system in
every province except Quebec. Where
did the right hon. leader of the government
get his information when he stated in parliament here the other day that in the
schools of Canada religion and religious dogmas were taught from morning
till night ? Has the right hon. gentleman
ever looked into our school systems ? Go
to the province of Ontario, go to the province of Manitoba, go to the province of
New
Brunswick, go to all of them and that is
absolutely the wrong explanation and the
wrong interpretation. These schools are
free, non-sectarian and consequently national. They do not allow dogma to be taught
whether it is dogma of the Methodist, the
Presbyterian, the Anglican or the Roman
Catholic. All are treated alike. Is there
no reasonableness in the proposition, that,
if the great majority of the people of the
country feel that the best kind of a
system is a system as that, so
3389 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
MARCH 29, 1905 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
long as it in no way offends against the
religious belief, the teachings and the dogma of any class or creed, it shall be a
national system to which we shall all contribute ? In that way they declare that the
children meet together and that there are
no distinctions between them. In their
sports, in their studies, in their social growth
they mingle and commingle, they learn to
know each other, they grow up with a common bond and a common interest in their
country and the affairs of their country.
That is their view. It may be wrong or it
may be right. Then they say that by that
system we avoid the divisions into separate
districts with their consequent inefficiency,
and increased cost. Therefore, they say,
we have a more efficient system and we
have also a less costly system. That is
their point of view. Let manners and
morals, let the bases of right conduct be taught in the schools, let those be
inculcated, but no dogma of any sect. Let
each class teach their dogma where they
please ; it may be in the Sunday school, or
in the church, or in some other place, but if
there is any sect, Presbyterian, Methodist,
Church of England or Roman Catholic
which wishes to teach their own belief and
their own religion in any institution governed by themselves, there is no law which
forbids them to do it in this country. There
is no prohibition. These are in broad terms
the distinctive characteristics of the national
school system. Suppose the Presbyterians
were to say : We want dogmatic teaching.
the answer to them would be : Provide for
it as best you may : you have your churches,
you have your Sunday schools, teach religion in them : you can have your colleges
and your seminaries and your institutions
which are entirely under your religious domination, teach religion in them. And the
same answer is given to every body, Protestant sect, Catholic sect, any sect. Where
is the tyranny in that ?
Mr. BOURASSA. Will the hon. gentleman allow me to interrupt?
Mr. BOURASSA. The very agument
which the hon. gentleman now makes was
the argument presented by the government
of Manitoba on the second appeal in the
Barrett case, and the judgment of the Privy
Council was that such a system of national
schools was a glaring injustice to the Roman
Catholics, and the hon. gentleman (Mr.
Foster) was in favour of passing remedial
legislation.
Mr. FOSTER. I would advise my hon.
friends not to applaud before they hear the
answer. The assumption of the hon. gentleman ( Mr. Bourassa) is not correct. There
were other circumstances in that case, and
one was that the Manitoba legislature had
3390
given rights to the minority under their full
powers, that under the same full powers
the Manitoba legislature had revoked these
rights, and it was on account of the prejudicial effect of what has been given being
taken back that the question came before
the federal parliament. That was the principal idea that came into the case and upon
which the decision rested.
Mr. BOURASSA. I simply wish to say
that my interruption was not to discuss the
legal question, but with the object of refuting the argument the hon. gentleman has
made that such a system of national schools
ought to be satisfactory to Catholics.
Mr. FOSTER. I do not suppose we can
see eye to eye about that, but as I wish to
finish before six o'clock I hope my hon.
friend (Mr. Bourassa) will not think me discourteous if I do not follow the point
further. For the few moments that are left me
I wish to take my last point, not to treat
it as fully as it deserves, but simply to
throw out a few thoughts by way of suggestion. I want to ask in the first place
why there should be any attempt to inject
into the constitution of these new provinces
the principle of separate schools, without
authority from them, against the disposition and against the feelings of the people
of the Northwest so far as we can judge ?
Why is this attempt made to cripple
these great provinces? Each of the other
provinces, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
Prince Edward Island, British Columbia,
Manitoba, is absolutely free and sovereign
in so far as such legislation is concerned.
Each one of these provinces of her own good
will may enact a separate school system
and it may also abrogate that law, but if it
does abrogate it it has to show cause before
the jurisdiction of the federal parliament
and with the possible consequence of remedial legislation. And if we can trust all
these other provinces what reason in the
world is there that we should for ever tag
with a badge of inferiority these two great
coming provinces of the Northwest? When
every other province stands clothed in the
majesty of provincial rights, why should we
single out Saskatchewan and Alberta, and
because we happen to be the guardian of
the children put upon them for ever a badge
of inferiority ? Is it not a retrograde
step in thought and in practice to stand
on our small platform of 1905 and to hold
up a statute of limitations for ever in the
face of two provinces, in which, as the centuries roll on changes must inevitably
come,
systems come and systems go, new methods
take the place of old. But the right hon.
gentleman stands up here with his small
statute of limitation and he declares against
the whole possible progress of these great
3391 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
COMMONS Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
parts of Canada with their coming millions
of population, and their conditions in years
and centuries to come, as diverse from this
year and this century as the human mind
can imagine. It is a task which is unwise to
essay ; it is absolutely impossible of successful accomplishment. The right hon. gentleman
may tag on this badge of bondage; he
may put on his restrictions; he may utter
an irrevocable decree of tutelage, but I
tell him that against the free thought and
free will of these two provinces with their
coming millions of people, his statute of
limitation will be as waste paper and his
chains of bondage as weak as thread of
fibre. There is no hand which can fashion
the chain and drive the rivet that will encompass and restrict these young giants
of
the Northwest in years to come. You may
carry your project through and the Finance
Minister may cry peace, peace, but the
moment it is carried through and made irrevocable, that moment begins against it
the warfare of an unwilling people. The
feelings of free men that their right to freedom has been outraged and denied will
not
long lie dormant. Tolerant, if you appeal
to his love of tolerance, the free man will
forswear tolerance if you attempt to force
upon him by superior and to a certain extent foreign and outside force, a measure
which he believes restricts his freedom.
Do not run away with the conclusion that
we here are able to shackle the millions of
the future in the Northwest.
What answer have you in face of the
fact that every other province has this
liberty, and has treated with remarkable
toleration the minority within its boundaries—vaunted and boasted in every part of
this House ? What right have you to say
to the people of the Northwest : We can
trust our fellow-citizens in the other provinces, but we cannot trust you. More illogical
still, the member for Labelle said : We
could trust the people who are there now.
Trust the member for Edmonton (Mr. Oliver), who voted over and over again for
resolutions to destroy the rights of the minority in the Northwest? Trust the member
for Brandon, who has abandoned his
principles for the sake of his party's success, but who, in the very moment that
he abandons them, still plucks up courage
to say, I believe in them still, I am proud
of my allegiance to them ? You can trust
these, but you cannot trust the coming peoples of the Northwest. Never was there a
more retrograde doctrine taught by the
greatest Tory of the ages than is taught
in that sentence by the hon. member for
Labelle.
Mr. BOURASSA. The hon. gentleman is
stating just the contrary of what I said.
Mr. FOSTER. Will the hon. gentleman
say what he said ?
Mr. BOURASSA. I said that even if I
trusted the people at present in the North
3392
west, no one could tell what would happen
in the future, when large numbers of people from the United States and other countries
settled there ; and, so far as the present rulers of the Northwest were concerned,
I said I could not trust them in the
light of their past legislation,
Mr. FOSTER. If the member for Labelle said that, then I misunderstood him,
and my argument does not apply to him.
I want only fair argument. There was an
argument which somewhat cut the ground
from under the feet of the member for Labelle. He said : Put separate schools into
the Northwest and treat the French people
well and the French people will flow into
the Northwest and become your most stable
settlers, lovers of the soil, as the French
people always are, lovers of their home, as
they are wherever they settle. But does the
hon. member recollect that into the country to the south of us, with its Godless
schools, its secular schools, its denial of
the French language and all other rights of
the minority, hundreds of thousands of the
choice youth of the province of Quebec have
gone and go from year to year to make their
homes ? Will the restriction, if you put it
upon the Northwest, in principle unjust
and in practice irksome, be worth the paper
it is written upon ? Under the ordinances
as they are to-day rules are made by the
commissioners. You do not crystallize one
of those regulations into law. You simply
provide that the ordinance shall stand, and
the ordinance with reference to separate
schools is absolutely the same as the provision in the law of 1875. Why is it that
today those schools are not the same as they
were twenty years ago ? Because with the
power to make regulations which the commissioner has under these ordinances, regulations
have been made which have transformed those schools into what they are today. Pass
your ordinance and put it into
the constitution, and if the people of the
Northwest, in their provincial assemblies,
are opposed to the principle, are opposed to
reverting to the old form, they will make
their regulations as they please, and I would
like to know how you propose to stop them.
It is absolutely impossible.
All this discussion, Mr. Speaker, if I may
be allowed to say so, seems out of place in
this House. To discuss the school systems
of the United States, of Spain, of Germany,
of France, of these provinces, to try to
settle which has the greatest merits in all its
principles and details, is something that is
absolutely foreign to this House, and that
never should be brought here—has no place
here legitimately. As I said before, the
plea may be good, but you are in the wrong
court. To the province you should go for
these tolerant privileges, these rights which
you wish to have by law. The province
alone can give them, and, as the ex-Minister of the Interior said the other day :
' I
3393 MARCH 29, 1905
am still strongly of opinion that if the Catholic minority will trust to the legislatures
of the Northwest, in the end they will be
better off thereby.' If that is done, we can
bid farewell to these discussions in this
House, where different races and creeds are
represented, and where the active passions,
good or bad, are always aroused when you
come to questions of religious belief and
dogma. These questions will then no longer
intervene to disquiet and paralyze the business of this country. Let these questions
be fought out in the province, which is the
ultimate tribunal ; and again I plead for
absolute, unrestricted freedom and confidence in the tolerance of the Northwest people,
now and in the future, for fair treatment to all their fellow-citizens.
At six o'clock, House took recess.
PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT IN THE Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â NORTHWEST.Â
House resumed consideration of the motion of Sir Wilfrid Laurier for the second
reading of Bill (No. 69) to establish and provide for the government of the province
of
Alberta, and the amendment of Mr. R. L.
Borden thereto.
Hon. Sir WILLIAM MULOCK (Postmaster General). Mr. Speaker, for three hours
this afternoon the House had the advantage
of hearing the views of the hon. gentleman,
not upon the subject under discussion, but
upon many matters totally foreign to the
measure that the House is now considering. If, this afternoon, a stranger had been
in our galleries, and many there were, and
had not in advance been informed of the
subject under debate, it would have been
impossible for him to have known what the
subject was that was properly in order before the House. For three hours this afternoon
the hon. member for North Toronto
(Mr. Foster) occupied the attention of the
House ostensibly in order to aid by some
useful contribution in the solution of a
very important public question, but instead
of bringing to the aid of his country his
great talents, I think it will be found on a
careful perusal of his words that his efforts
were rather to sow the seeds of discord to
the injury of his country. He began by
giving us, as he has on many occasions and
as he also has given to the public, his views
on the question of political principles and
political morality. It must be extremely
elevating to the people of Canada to take
their inspiration of political morality from
such a source. He entered politics with
principles. He describes the Liberal party
as conveniently packing their principles in
a remote corner of a small valise, and he
states that they are able to get rid of them
as conveniently as they can put them in or
take them out of the valise. What about
the principles of the hon. gentleman ? I
can recall many of his professed principles,
for perhaps his principles are not very deep-
seated, and, like old garments, they are
3401 MARCH 29, 1905
easily disposed of in favour of new ones.
I remember the first principle be advocated
when he entered public life. He came here
with a valise, and I suppose he had his
political principles in the valise. What was
the first principle he had in his valise ?
It was a principle which served a useful
purpose. His great political principle, and
before it all other great questions faded
into insignificance, was prohibition. The
welfare of the country demanded that the
first consideration, higher than that of party,
should be given to the question of prohibition. That was his political capital for
many a year ; that was the only article in
his political valise. He arrived in Ottawa
with his political valise. Perhaps I am
wrong in saying that he had only one principle. He had another stowed away which
did not take up much room and did not
occupy a very long time in that valise, but
he entered this House pledged as an independent Conservative to stand up for all
good measures. Party was a secondary
consideration for him ; his country demanded his first attention. He had these
two principles when he entered public life.
What became of them ? The independent
Conservative principle could not be allowed
to stand, because it stood in the way of preferment, and so the first thing that happened
his little valise was to deprive it of the
presence in it of his principle of political
independence. It stood in the way of his
entering the cabinet. It was thrown overboard and he got a portfolio. But it was
not enough to get a portfolio. It is one
thing to get a portfolio ; it is another thing
to retain a portfolio. He has had some experience in both of these. He had to get
rid
of his other principle, and prohibition was
thrown overboard, and with it his little
valise. As time advanced be deemed it
necessary to avow his being devoutly possessed of another principle. What was that
principle ? He had taken office. He had
become a strict party man. It was essential
to him an apostate now but then a party
man, that he should stand by his party, that
he should be true to the government of
which he was a member and true to the
premier under whom he enlisted. His principle was—and it was a right one ; it was
a principle that he was bound to live up to
—that he should be true and loyal to his
chief.
That is one of the principles he made profession of, but how long did that principle
remain in his valise? It was there until it
suited his purpose to dispose of it, and when
was that? Sir John Macdonald, who first
took him into office, had disappeared, others
had been his chiefs and had disappeared
also, and at last he enlisted under the banner of Sir Mackenzie Bowell. The history
of Canada tells what then became of his
principle of loyalty to his chief; the scenes
that took place in this chamber and in the
ante-rooms and lobbies of this House tell
3402
what he did with that principle. Lastly,
in 1896, on the eve of an election, the hon.
gentleman evidently believing that it was
good politics to stand by the minority, declared his undying allegiance to the cause
of minorities. In 1896 he advocated the
cause of minorities, he talked of respect for
the constitution, but he found it didn't pay
and to-day he seizes the opportunity to
sever himself from the last of his political
principles. No longer has the hon. gentleman any use for a political valise; hereafter
a carpet bag will take its place.
Sir WILLIAM MULOCK. The hon. gentleman spent part of this day attacking
ministers and ex-ministers and in one of his
outbursts he said that he hoped for once
some minister would go out of office for the
sake of principle and would remain out of
office for the sake of principle. The thought
of going out of office and remaining out of
office is a disturbing dream to the hon. gentleman (Mr. Foster). He cannot address
a
public meeting nor can he speak in parliament without talking of ministerial explanations
and the principles of public men.
Let the hon. gentleman be frank and tell
us if he resigned on principle. A few months
ago he told the electors of North Toronto,
if he is reported correctly in his own organs,
that he resigned office on a question of
policy. I was present in this chamber when
he stated to this House the reasons why he
resigned office, and in those reasons there
was no question of principle involved. He
then declared that there was no difference
between himself and his leader on any
question of principle or of policy, but what
is the sequel? That has been told us of
late, and it is an extraordinary explanation.
The hon. gentleman (Mr. Foster) told us in
1896 that he had resigned not from personal
ambition of any kind, but for the good of
the party and of the country. But, a few
weeks ago, the Hon. Sir Mackenzie Bowell,
his late chief and leader, speaking in another chamber, told us why he had resigned.
Perhaps he will now admit or deny the accuracy of Sir Mackenzie Bowell's assertion.
Sir Mackenze Bowell declared that the resignation of the hon. gentleman (Mr. Foster)
was not on account of any difference of
policy or principle, but because of the overweening ambition of the hon. gentleman
to
become Prime Minister of Canada. The
hon. gentleman (Mr. Foster) smiles. I will
make it clear to him. The hon. gentleman
is setting himself up as a standard for the
guidance of the public men of this country.
but let us see whether he is a safe guide.
Sir Mackenzie Bowell said (I quote from
Senate ' Hansard,' 1st March, 1905) :
When he told the people of Toronto at the
last Dominion election that he left the government on account of differences of opinion,
on questions of policy and that His Excellency
3403 COMMONS
the Governor General knowing the facts called
them back into the government.
I do not like to read the words, but here
they are:
He knew he was telling what was not correct.
Sir Mackenzie Bowell continues:
I have in my hand copies of the report of
speeches delivered by him in Toronto during the
last Dominion election as reported by the 'Globe,'
the ' News ' and the ' Mail,' in which I find that
in reply to questions put to him he said amongst
other things, when asked why he left the government, that he did not purpose to answer
the
question that belonged to the Privy Council,
and that his mouth was shut.
We never find it in that condition in this
chamber.
But added that on all points of importance
they must have a union of ideas and that any
one disagreeing must resign. That, he said, was
all they had done. Continuing, he said, ' When
a member of the cabinet or members disagreed
with their leader they had done as they were
bound on their honour to do—resigned.' In
another speech he said : ' The Governor had
been quite satisfied with the reasons for the
resignation of six ministers on a question of
policy, and had shown his confidence in them
by reappointing them later.' That did not
satisfy his hearers, one of whom exclaimed :
' That still leaves the question unanswered.
Why did you resign ? ' To which Mr. Foster
replied ' I don't intend to answer. I am not at
liberty to reveal the secrets of the Privy Council.' An ingenious way of evading an
answer.
The fact is, the reasons given in the House of
Commons for his resigning were never discussed in the Privy Council before he resigned,
therefore, he had no oath to respect in that particular.
Again, speaking in this chamber not very
long ago the hon. gentleman (Mr. Foster)
said:
Am I not to be allowed to leave the government if I differ from it on points of policy
or
principle ?
That was the statement of the hon. gentleman in this House during the present session,
but how does that fit in with the statement he made on the very occasion of his
resignation when he was probably most
likely to give an accurate account. Speaking from his seat in 1896 he said:
I may say in the first place that there is no
disagreement between ourselves and the premier
upon any question of public policy, trade or
constitutional, with regard to which action has
already been taken, or in respect to which attitude has been assumed by the government
under the present premier.
I leave my hon. friend to struggle with
these two conflicting statements. He goes
on to give what he deems to be the reason,
namely, the desire to serve under a gentleman of perhaps greater power. In fact he
3404
describes the cabinet as beyond the control of the First Minister. He was unable
to keep those unruly members in order.
There was disorder in the cabinet, and the
hon. member for North Toronto added to
the disorder by trying to break up the cabinet. Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman
seems to be troubled when any retiring minister returns to the cabinet, and he seems
to be troubled when any retiring minister
remains without the cabinet. He takes exception to Mr. Blair not having returned.
No person can take exception to his conduct in that respect. But when the honourable
member for North Toronto went out of
the cabinet, he took precious good care that
no one should get into his place. He rendered the reconstruction impossible except
by his readmission to the cabinet. Does
the hon. gentleman set up that method as
a standard ? Is that his idea of political
morality ? Is that his conception of what
should be the conduct of hon. gentlemen who
take office to serve their country ? Surely
it is time for him to throw off this hypocritical garb in which he seeks to give moral
lectures as to how public men should be
loyal to their principles.
To-day, running through the whole of
his speech, I thought I was able to discover one distinct line of policy. The Bill
before the House is one to deal with a
very important question concerning the
Northwest. It is a question upon which
the people may he honestly divided in opinion; but it is the bounden duty of every
loyal citizen and of every member of this
House to render such assistance as he can
to bring about a satisfactory settlement of
this question. What was the action of the
hon. gentleman ? If I have correctly read
his policy, if I have discovered the object
he had in his speech, it was not to be a
messenger of peace and harmony, but if
possible to light the incendiary fires of religious and racial discord from one end
of
this Dominion to the other. The hon. gentleman represents North Toronto. In olden
days he came from the east. He stayed
there as long as the people would keep him.
In olden days, Mr. Speaker, I doubt if he
would have professed the principles that
he has professed to-day. But, Sir, he has
rested in another place, and his new principles of to-day are appropriate and fashionable
in North Toronto, and he put them
on, and with a great deal of force throws
off the old discarded ones. What object
had the hon. gentleman in asking the member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa) whether or
not he was content with the amendments
of the government ? The hon. member for
North Toronto, holding up these amendments to the member for Labelle, who is as
we all know a devout son of his church,
said to him in triumph: All the comfort and
consolation you can get from these amendments is that at half-past three o'clock in
3405 MARCH 29, 1905
the afternoon, when practically the school
day is over, a half-hour of religious training will be allowed ; and he asked
the member for Labelle if he was content
with such a meagre provision as that. What
was the object of that ? It was too transparent—perhaps the hon. gentleman thought
no one could see it. The object of that
was to tell the people of Quebec : Sir Wilfrid Laurier is giving you, not bread, but
a stone ; he is not giving you any measure
that will meet the views and feelings and
perhaps the prejudices of the people of
Quebec ; he is deceiving you, and I want to
convince the member for Labelle of that
fact, and I trust to his being a missionary
to disseminate that doctrine in Quebec, and
to stir up the good people of the province
to demand more from Sir Wilfrid Laurier,
and perhaps to embarrass his policy.
When the hon. member for North Toronto
comes to deal with - the Territories, what
does he say ? Â In loud language and in violent terms he says, why bind these young
giants in this way ? And he goes on to
say : If you give this measure to the Territories, Nova Scotia is entitled to the
same,
British Columbia is entitled to it, all the
other provinces that do not enjoy it are
entitled to it. He appeals to the Territories
practically to rise in revolt against this
measure if it becomes law, and, if possible
to make it a great political question ; and
at the same time he appeals to the minorities in the other provinces, saying to them
:
The minority in the new provinces have got
something—you demand it too. He thus
appeals to one class and another—to the
French Catholics of Quebec, to the Irish
Catholics in another province, to the Protestants in another, trusting that by raising
these fires in each of these provinces, he
may at last involve this whole Dominion in
one huge, far-reaching religious conflagration. Mr. Speaker, I recognize that the
hon.
gentleman is here to voice the sentiments
of his constituents. But, Sir, I regard them
as taking a higher view of the duties of
their representative than to demand of him
that he shall play the role of the political
incendiary on the floor of this House.
The hon. gentleman assailed the ex-Minister of the Interior. Whenever, for a moment,
any other line of thought failed him,
he turned to the ex-minister, who seemed
to be the special object of his poisoned
shafts. Mr. Speaker, I have had an opportunity of judging of the services rendered
to this country by the ex-Minister of the
Interior for the last eight years. He assumed the most important portfolio having
regard to the needs of this country, that
we have. Other men before him had held
it. and had failed. For years our great
prairies had remained almost a solitude.
The late government had an opportunity
for eighteen years to make an impression
there, and failed; and when the member for
3406
Brandon (Mr. Sifton) assumed that portfolio, and the Manitoba school question disappeared
from the vexed question of the
day, a complete change came over the conditions of this country. I venture to say,
what I have said before—and I say it without seeking to discredit any person—that
of
all the ministers who have held portfolios
since confederation, none has rendered as
valuable services to Canada as the ex-Minister of the Interior, and his withdrawal
from our cabinet is a national loss. The
hon. member for North Toronto asked me
if I was a member of the sub-committee
that had had to do with considering the
terms of the constitution of these Territories. I was. He asked me if I had discovered
the meaning of section 16, containing
the educational clauses, which he has described as worded in such a subtle way as
really to conceal their true object. Had it
not been, he said. for the disclosure made
by the member for Brandon of the meaning of those clauses. they would have passed
into law, and then this country would
have been for ever under the obligation of
maintaining an enormous endowment for
the Catholic church. I do not admit, nor
does the government, the correctness of the
construction placed upon the original clause
16 by the ex-Minister of the Interior. Lawyers may differ, and according to the hon.
member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) 213
members of this House would have been deceived but for the ex-Minister of the Interior.
Does the hon. gentleman think that
I am more astute to discover the weak points
of the clause than the other 212 men?
Mr. FOSTER. As a matter of fact, I did
not say that. I said that the clause was so
worded that had it not been for the disclosure given of its meaning by the ex-
Minister of'the Interior, it doubtless would
have passed through this House and its
true meaning would have been undetected.
That is what I said.
Sir WILLIAM MULOCK. Well, I do not
pretend to be more astute than, or even as
astute as a very large number of the members of this House, but when the hon. gentleman
admits himself that he would not
have discovered the hidden meaning in this
clause and that all those around him would
not have discovered it, surely he will be
charitable to another weak member of humanity who was likewise not able to discover
it.
Sir WILLIAM MULOCK. I only plead
that if the other 212 members of this House
were as blind as myself, I am in very excellent company. May I not ask, after this
question has been debated for three hours
to-day, the House to come back to the real
issue ?
3407 COMMONS
Sir WILLIAM MULOCK. Yes ; it is
sometimes necessary to go outside the record, but I would ask the House to allow me
to return to the real issue. The hon. gentleman from North Toronto (Mr. Foster) spoke
of the Quebec compact, which is to be found in the British North America Act, and
declared that that compact, crystallized into the Confederation Act, did no more than
secure separate schools to the minorities in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario.
He denied that any other part of this Dominion was entitled to separate schools under
that Act. Let me remind him that he gave the contrary view to this House nine years
ago. Then he was arguing in favour of the constitution. Then everything outside the
constitutional argument was, in his judgement, out of order. When the hon. member
for Wast Grey (Mr. Sproule) ventured to interject something that did not appear to
have any strict bearing on the constitution, he was immediately rebuked by his colleague
from North Toronto. He was immediately told by him that the subject was one solely
of the true construction of the constitution. To-day he tells us that under the British
North America Act, and the compact out of which it grew, no province, except the provinces
of Quebec and Ontario, is entitled to the benefit of the 93rd section of that Act.
Speaking on the 13th March, 1896, in this House, as reported in 'Hansard,' page 3476,
he made use of the following language:
The first question then for me to solve when I approach the consideration of this
subject is this : Is there any compact or agreement arrived at in this country and
embodied in the constitution under which we live which has first to be considered
before we can give our decision upon this question ? the answer is plain and definite.
There is a compact in the constitution of the confederation ; there is a second compact
in the constitution of Manitoba, ratified by the British parliament, and under which
she became a part of the Dominion
Then he proceeded to say, in answer to
an interruption by the late Mr. Wallace :
If the hon. gentlemen will allow me to proceed I will answer that question in due
course, and I will answer it thoroughly. Arising out of long years of sectarian and
religious strife under united Canada, opinions and convictions in reference to this
matter because gradually modified, and when the representatives of the four provinces
came together at Quebec to take up, discuss and settle articles of confederation,
these convictions rapidly and definitely resolved themselves into the determination
that it should be laid down in the constitution of the country that whatever rights
and privileges religious minorities had in the provinces at the time of confederation
should maintain their status quo and shall not be changed. And so the first paragraph
of the educational clauses of the confederation resolutions gave by general consent
to the provinces the power to deal with respect to education ;
Saving the rights and privileges which Catholic or Protestant minorities in both Canadas
3408
may possess as to their denominational schools at the time when the union goes into
operation.
The only change which took place in that clause was this, that instead of its being
confined to both Canadas, it was broadened to include the provinces which entered
confederation.
Mr. Foster. It does not matter very much ; but if the hon. gentleman will pardon an interruption,
I would remind him that what he has just read is exactly what I stated to-day.
Sir William Mulock. In that case, I think that on a perusal of this remarks the hon. gentleman will
find that he did not give expression to the ideas which were in his mind. If the
repeats and affirms what he said in 1896, we start from that ground instead of the
new ground which, I think, he was taking to-day.
Sir WILLIAM MULOCK. However, what is the issue now? Once to-day the hon. gentleman said it was a question
of provincial rights. His leader moved an amendment, and in supporting that amendment
said that the question was not, with him, one of separate schools, but of provincial
rights, and the proposed to take his stand on that ground. And it is argued by some
on that ground. And it is argued by some gentlemen that the proposed legislation
would be a violation of provincial rights. But there can be no violation of a right
until that right is created. First you must show that the province has a right, and
then that the the right which is possesses, is being violated. The first question
in my judgment, therefore, is : What are the rights of a province when it is created
? There we immediately enter upon debatable ground, because there are two conflicting
views as to how a province may derive its constitutional power and rights. If I understand
my hon. friend the leader of the opposition, his contention is that the moment a
territory acquires provincial status, that moment it automatically becomes possessed
of certain rights under the British North America Act, that it inherits these rights
that moment without more being done, without any act on the part of the Dominion parliament
or the Dominion government, and without any imperial legislation—the moment you give
the provincial status to a territory, that moment, according to the leader of the
opposition, it acquires its provincial charter, and its rights are there set forth
or may be found. He takes the literal interpretation and makes that the rock of the
constitution. He would have us believe that the rock of the constitution is the letter
and not the spirit of the British North America Act. Here we see the lawyer—he looks
to what is nominated in the bond. I care not, he
3409 MARCH 29, 1905
says, whether it works well or ill ; I care
not whether it is to the public good or the
public injury—every province has the same
constitutional charter the moment it becomes a province. The opposite view is that
the province does not derive its charter
automatically from the British North America Act, but that the spirit of the British
North America Act must be considered,
and so much of its provisions as may
be reasonably adapted to the provincial
status is given to the new province. The
British North America Act, in conferring
upon the people of Canada certain legislative powers, has set forth in a general way
a scheme for the distribution of
legislative powers to be exercised by the
Dominion or the provinces. It suggests in
a general way that some of these powers,
of which it gives a list, may properly be
given to a province, and the others may
properly be left to the Dominion. But the
British North America Act, according to
those who look at its spirit rather than its
letter, does not in itself contain a model
constitution that automatically attaches,
without the variation of a word or a letter,
to every province the moment it becomes the
province. If the reasoning of the leader of
the opposition is right, there is no reason
why, when a province is establishcd, parliament should trouble itself to declare any
of these powers. And yet, if you trace the
history of the several provinces of Canada
from their creation up to the present, you
will find that, in every instance, the parliament of Canada, or the government of
Canada, or the imperial parliament, has conferred upon each province powers somewhat
different from those that the Confederation
Act would suggest. If each province gets
its constitution automatically from the
British North America Act, we in this House
cannot in any way frame or limit the constitution of the new provinces. But if we
interpret the British North America Act,
not by its letter, but by its spirit and by the
manner in which it has been applied in
the creation of every one of the provinces
from confederation down to the present
time. we fail to find a single instance where
the doctrine of the leader of the opposition
has been adopted, where any province has
been given a constitution exactly in harmony with the general scheme of the British
North America Act. There are no two provinces whose constitutions are the same,
though all derive their constitutions from
the British North America Act. It is
the spirit that suggests how the constitution shall be framed. So, where is the
model ? And how can it be argued that
when a province acquires the provincial
status it acquires immediately certain rights
and powers without any intervention or
exercise of discretion on the part of the Dominion parliament or any other legislative
body? To illustrate what I mean, consider the character of the British North
America Act. Sections 91, 92 and 93 cover
3410
the distribution of powers, some powers to
be exercised by the central parliament and
others by the provincial parliament. Take,
for instance, the important subject of divorce. Under the British North America
Act, divorce is assigned to the exclusive
jurisdiction of the Dominion parliament.
If the literal wording of the British North
America Act is adopted in giving a constitution to another province, you would not
find any province entitled to maintain a
divorce court unless it was so authorized
by this parliament. This parliament has
never established a divorce court in any
province. And yet to-day there are divorce
courts in several provinces—in Nova Scotia,
in New Brunswick and, I think, in British
Columbia. How comes it that the subject
of divorce, which, under the British North
America Act. is assigned to the exclusive
jurisdiction of the Dominion parliament, is
dealt with by several provinces? Simply
because, when it came to the creation of
confederation, certain provinces had at that
time this institution. Nova Scotia had a
divorce court and desired to retain it. The
British North America Act allowed it to be
retained in that province. In that respect
it allowed a departure from the British
North America Act. The province of Quebec had no divorce court, and no divorce
court was given it under the British North
America Act—the Act recognized the status
quo as respects that subject in the province
of Quebec. New Brunswick had a divorce
court and wished to retain it, and the British
North America Act recognized the wish of
that province and allowed it to retain the
divorce court, thus making an exception
from the letter of the Act. Ontario had no
divorce court and was given no divorce court
by the Act. Later on British Columbia
came into confederation. As I understand
it, British Columbia had a divorce court
then, and it was left in the employment of
that institution—the letter of the law was
departed from, but the spirit was observed ;
the general scheme of confederation was
made applicable, but, with exceptions, recognizing local peculiarities and local institutions.
Then—going rapidly over the subjects of special importance to the provinces
—take the subject of languages. This is
an English-speaking country ; and it was
assumed, doubtless, that English would be
the prevailing language throughout the
country. The use of language in the courts
and legislatures of the provinces is a civil
right, and, as such, is under the exclusive
jurisdiction of the province. Yet, turning
to the constitution as affecting the province
of Quebec, you will find that, unlike the
other provinces, Quebec was not left to
determine what languages shall or shall
not be used in its courts and legislature,
but the British North America Act declares
that the English language, along with the
French, shall be lawful in the courts and
legislature of that province.
3411
COMMONS
The letter of the constitution was departed from as to the subject of language in
the province of Quebec, and was made suitable to the local conditions, needs and interests
of that province. Yet if the letter
of the law is to be regarded, you have no
justification for this departure from the constitution which is to be found in the
British
North America Act. Take the subject of
education. At the time of confederation it
was found that the minority in the province
of Quebec had separate schools. the British
North America Act preserved- separate
schools to them; it was found that there
were separate schools in Ontario, and the
British North America Act retained separate schools in Ontario; there were no separate
schools in Nova Scotia, and the status
quo was recognized there; there were no
separate schools in New Brunswick, the
status quo was recognized there. But although the British North America Act in its
general scheme declared that the subject of
education should be under the exclusive
jurisdiction of the provinces, it made two
exceptions in the case of Ontario and Quebec, as my hon. friend admits to-day, and
that exception extends to other provinces as
well. Yet, if you were to adopt the strict
letter of the law, you have no right in a
constitution resting on the bed rock of the
British North America Act to make these
exceptions in the constitution of any province. Take the subject of finance. Although
this is not strictly a constitutional subject,
you will find that whilst the general scheme
is to treat all the provinces alike financially,
in the case of Prince Edward Island there
was a material departure made from the
general scheme of finance. In fact, you do
not find the same corresponding financial
arrangements made in any two provinces.
In fact, there are just two ways of looking
at the British North America Act; you may
look at it from the standpoint of a lawyer,
or you may look at it from the standpoint
of a statesman. It' you look at it from the
standpoint of a lawyer—and I submit that
is the standpoint of the leader of the opposition—you take the letter of the constitution
without regard to its bearings and its application to the time being, and apply it
literally, whether the application tits the
time and occasion or not. But taking the
spirit of the Act on each occasion of creating a new province, you adopt the constitution.
as far as possible, to the new province,
having due regard to the conditions then
prevailing.
Take the case of Manitoba to which my
hon. friend has referred. The province of
Manitoba was established in 1870, prior to
that it had been under the jurisdiction of
the Hudson Bay Company. There were no
laws there except the old common law of
England. There were no schools established by law, but it was thought that there
were some schools established by practice,
3412
and, therefore, when it came to creating the
province'of Manitoba the educational question arose. What was done? They did not
even adhere on that occasion to the language and t0 the provisions of section 93 0f
the British North America Act dealing
with the subject of legislation. The language of the British North America Act dealing
with education reads as follows:
In and for each province the legislature may
exclusively make laws in relation to education,
subject and according to the following provisions:
Nothing in any such law should prejudicially
affect any right or privilege with respect to
denominational schools which any class of persons have by law in the province at the
union.
'Have by law.' The British North America Act only protected the rights of minorities
which they have by law. When it came
to creating a province out of Rupert's Land,
the words 'by law' would have afforded no
protection to the minority, and accordingly
those who were engaged in framing this
legislation sought in some other way to
secure to the minority in Manitoba their
right to whatever schools they alight then
have; and so the words 'by practice' were
introduced, and the province of Manitoba
was secured in its separate schools in these
words:
Nothing in any such law should prejudicially
affect any right or privilege with respect to
denominational schools which any class of
persons have by law or by practice.
Now, the words 'by practice' are a radical departure from the letter of the British
North America Act. Why was that departure ? How do we account for that departure ?
Simply because the strict letter of
the British North America Act would not
have met the case of Manitoba, and it was
necessary to apply it in spirit, and in that
way the legislators of those days felt justified, within the constitution, in so modifying
section 93. Now, what happened after
that? Manitoba was carved out of Rupert's
Land, the Territories we are about to raise
into provinces are part of the remainder of
Rupert's Land. The Manitoba Act was
confirmed by imperial legislation, and that
same imperial legislation which confirmed
the Act creating the province of Manitoba
proceeded to confer upon the Dominion parliament power to grant a constitution to
new provinces. Section 2 of the amendment
to the British North America Act, 1871, is
as follows :
The parliament of Canada may from time to
time establish new provinces in any territories
forming for the time being part of the Dominion of Canada, but not included in any
province thereof, and may, at the time of such
establishment, make provision for the constitution and administration of any such
province, and for the passing of laws for the
peace. order and good government of such
3413 MARCH 29, 1905
province, and for its representation in the
said parliament.
The very same Imperial Act that recognized the change in the words from the
British North America Act to the words
used in the Manitoba Act, gave to this parliament for the first time the power to
give
a constitution to new provinces. Now, what
is the meaning of section 2 of this Act if it
is not to give to this parliament discretionary power as to the kind of a constitution
we may give to a province? If it was intended that this parliament should do no
more than mark out the limits of a province
and declare that it was made a province,
the Act would have said so; but instead of
that the Act proceeds to say that we may
establish a province and make provision for
its constitutional administration, for the
passing of laws, for the peace, order and
good government of such province and its
representation in this parliament.
In mentioning these exceptions to the
general scheme of confederation another instance occurs to my mind, the case of
British Columbia. Under the British North
America Act, representation by population
in this parliament is the general scheme.
The provinces may lose representation if
their population falls, but as far as British
Columbia is concerned its minimum representation is guaranteed by the British North
America Act. No matter what the population of British Columbia may be, its representation
here cannot go below a certain
minimum—another departure from the letter of the Confederation Act. Under the
British North America Act each province
is given a legislature, but as regards the
province of Quebec it is not permitted to
control its own local provincial constitution as far as its parliament is concerned,
for the British North America Act declares
that there shall be two houses and it does not
leave it in the power of the province of
Quebec to alter that portion of its constitution. It does more. Take the matter of
representation of the house of assembly
in the province of Quebec. All the other
provinces have the power themselves to
alter their electoral districts, making boundaries as they see fit, but in the case
of the
province of Quebec it is entirely different.
There are twelve constituencies in the province of Quebec that the legislature cannot
interfere with. In the province of Ontario
our legislature can, if it sees fit, alter the
boundaries of all the electoral districts, and
so it is in all the other provinces of the
Dominion, Quebec alone excepted. Why
was the exception made in the province of
Quebec ?—simply to meet local conditions
and thus we have from ocean to ocean all
these provinces, deriving their constitutions
from the British North America Act, but not
one of them having the same constitution,
all varying in some respects and yet all in
substance formulated in accordance with
3414
the true spirit of the British North America Act. There are seven provinces in this
Dominion. Four of these provinces were created at the same time and created
by the same instrument, the British North
America Act, which declared the constitution of all the provinces. But that very
same instrument, that very same Act of
legislation that gave life to our British
North America Act gave four distinct kinds
of constitution to the four different provinces
that formed the original confederation of
Canada. Yet, we are told that there is
a model to be found within the four corners
of the British North America Act, or in the
constitutions of the different provinces
created under the British North America
Act, which furnishes to us full information
as to what are to be the powers of each
province when it becomes a province. For
forty years parliament has been interpreting
the meaning of the British North America
Act and in no one instance has parliament
taken the view that the hon. leader of the
opposition now presents to this House. In
no one instance has parliament up to this
moment felt that it was bound by the letter
of the constitution, or that it was at no time
to modify according to the local conditions
the general scheme of confederation in applying that constitution to a particular
province. I ask you then, if, up to this present
moment, all who have been engaged in
creating these seven provinces, if all the parliaments either here or in England have
been disposed to look not to the letter but
to the spirit of the law, do you not think
that the bed rock of our constitution is
the spirit and not the mere letter of the
British North America Act. Why, Sir, is it
common sense to suppose that when the
British North America Act was passed forty
years ago the parliament of that day intended that that instrument which for all
time was to form the constitution of this
Dominion, with its changes and with its
future, was literally to be applied, not
having regard to the conditions of new provinces when its application was to be made
but having regard to the dead past ? I can
imagine a hundred years hence some question arising in this country ; perhaps it may
be the question of taking away from a province some of its powers, or it may be a
question of taking away from the Dominion
some of its powers, or it may be a question
in some way or other of rearranging legislative powers, and I can understand that
it
might be thought of vital importance to the
safety of the country that some change
should be made. Under these circumstances
I can almost anticipate a lawyer of that day
rising in his place in parliament and saying :
You propose to alter the constitution for
the public welfare. I admit that the public
welfare may call for a change of the constitution, but I take my stand on the letter
of
the constitution and I interpret it in the light
of 150 or 200 years ago. Is that the spirit
3415
COMMONS
in which laws are to be construed, or should
they be construed as living and moving laws
to be construed so as at all times to meet the
altered conditions of the occasion ? I sympathize with the view of the premier and
I
put him in contrast on this occasion with the
attitude of the leader of the opposition. In
one case, you have an interpretation of
the constitution by a lawyer ; in the
other case, may I be permitted to say, by a
statesman ? Which view is the more likely Â
to be correct? Which view is the more
likely to be in the best interests of the
country? I take this view of it then; I
began by arguing that there could be no infringement of a right until it has been
created. A province possesses no rights
until this parliament has declared what its
rights are. According to the spirit of the
British North America Act and according
to the letter of the amending Act of 1871, it
is in the discretion of this parliament to-day
to say what constitution we shall give to
these two new provinces.
How have we dealt with ediication in the
seven provinces of this Dominion ? We
have left education as we found it when we
came to legislate. Nova Scotia had no
separate schools ; the British North America
Act gave them no separate schools. In New
Brunswick there were no separate schools;
when they joined confederation the Confederation Act gave them no separate
schools. In Quebec at the time of confederation there were separate schools ; the
Confederation Act recognized that condition
of affairs and left them in the enjoyment
of separate schools. In Ontario when it
entered confederation there were separate
schools; the British North America Act
lecognized local conditions and left Ontario
in the enjoyment of her separate schools.
At the time Prince Edward island joined
the union there were no separate schools;
the Orders in Council, ratified by the imperial
government, left Prince Edward Island in
the condition it was in when it entered confederation, without separate schools. When
we came to carve a new province out of the
territory of Ruperts Land, when we came to
establish Manitoba we found a peculiar condition there. They had separate schools
but
these schools did not fall within the language
of the British North America Act. They were
not there by right or law because there were
no laws. The country was almost uninhabited, no constitution had been declared,
it was working under the old law of England,
and the legislators of that day, endeavouring
to recognize the condition of affairs as they
found it, when they were going to make
Manitoba into a province said that although
there are no schools in Manitoba by law
there are some by practice and we will give
you a constitution and allow you to retain
whatever you had by law or practice. So,
they departed from the letter of the law in
the case of Manitoba. In British Columbia
it is the same. There were no separate
3416
schools in British Columbia, but when
British Columbia came into the confederation the Confederation Act recognized the
status quo and did not establish separate
schools.
Thus, in the case of the whole seven provinces that 110w constitute this Dominion,
each province was left either with or without separate schools just as the condition
was at the time of its entering into the
union. But what do we find in the case
of the Territories ? In 1875, thirty years
ago, this parliament passed an Act authorizing the legislature of the Territories
to
establish separate schools. The Act of 1875
did not declare the character of these
schools; they might be under church control or they might be under state control.
I frankly confess that I disapprove of separate schools under church control, and
on
one occasion when I had the opportunity
I recorded my vote against the maintenance
of the status quo of 1875. I object to that
feature of it which admits of a school under
church control, but the Act remained on the
statute-book and it is on the statute-book
today. It is quite common practice in this
House to belittle the jurisdiction of the,
territorial legislature, but within its limits
and as to be subjects in respect of which it
can legislate the territorial legislature is as
supreme as is the legislature of any province. For thirty years the people of the
Territories have been in the enjoyment of
rights under the Act of 1875, and they have
made clear their views on their educational
system in the form of laws passed by their
legislature. The ex-Minister of the Interior
correctly described the educational laws of
the Territories. He pointed out that under
the ordinance, chapter 29, which we propose to accept as the standard, the separate
schools as they are to-day are really national schools; that the teachers must be
qualified equally with the teachers in the
public schools, that the schools must be
organized under the state and not under
the church, that the text books are pres
cribed by the state, that the inspection.
the examination and the whole control of
these schools called separate schools, is
with the state. We have been assailed indeed by people opposed to us because these
schools are not sufficiently under church
control. The existing school system in the
Territories is the outcome of thirty years
of legislation by the people of the Territories. Their educational laws have reached
the present status, and they give supreme
satisfaction I understand throughout the
Territories. Although some gentlemen on
the other side of the House are endeavouring to induce the people to rise in revolt,
we do not find any such hysterical appeals
made by the people of the Territories who
are most directly concerned. I see before
me the minister—I beg his pardon I was
only anticipating a little perhaps—I see before me the member for East Grey (Mr.
3417 Â MARCH 29, 1905
Sproule). He is deeply interested in this
question and from one standpoint is an
authority upon it. I have something here
which may interest him. The hon. gentleman (Mr. Sproule) went to Montreal a year
ago and he was entertained by the Jacques
Cartier Club of which we have heard a
good deal of late in connection with the
sending of petitions gotten up in the province of Quebec. I do not know how intimate
are the relations between my hon.
friend from East Grey and the Jacques
Cartier Club, but let me remind him of a
pleasing incident: a banquet to his leader
and himself. The day after the banquet,
the'Montreal 'Gazette' did itself the honour
of reporting the hon. gentleman's speech,
and I will do him the further honour of
reading the report to the House. I may
observe that on this occasion the member
for East Grey was accompanied by his
leader the member for Carleton. The Montreal 'Gazette' of the 20th of June, 1904,
reports :
Dr. Sproule, M.P., the well known Orange
leader created loud laughter as he called those
present his 'brethren.' He was loudly applauded as he told of his impressions on seeing
Cartier for the first time. He wanted more
French Conservatives at Ottawa to help carry
out Mr. Borden's policy. Ontario, he said, had
no desire to rule this country without the help
of French Canada.
The one province was necessary to the other.
Oh, here is something rather interesting:
He said that the much decried Orange lodge
was nothing more or less than a Conservative
committee room.
Mr. SPROULE. I want to correct the
Postmaster General if he has read that as
he finds it in the paper. There were two
reports out, and I want to say that this is
'an incorrect report. What I said was that
it was allegel by our opponents that it was
nothing more or less than a Conservative
committee room.
Mr. TAYLOR. Will the Postmaster General ask the hon. gentleman who sits immediately behind him
if the member for
East Grey said so.
Mr. FINLAY. I am the only one sitting
immediately behind the Postmaster and I
do not know anything about it.
3418
Sir WILLIAM MULOCK. There is something more that can be contradicted perhaps. At all events this is
What the Montreal ' Gazette ' says :
He said the much decried Orange lodge was
nothing more or less than a Conservative committee room where Catholics and Protestants
met to do the good work of the Conservative
party.
How far is that correctly reported ?
Sir WILLIAM MULOCK. The report
proceeds. Oh. Here is a dreadful threat,
I wonder if it is correct.
Dr. Sproule received another cheer when he
declared that if Quebec did not do better at
the next election he would come down and establish Orange lodges throughout the province.
Sir WILLAM MULOCK. The hon. gentleman says that the 'Gazette' report is
not correct. I have the Montreal 'Star'
here and we will see what it says.
Dr. Sproule replied first for Ontario. He recalled the first time he had seen Cartier
and
the deeds of that distinguished Canadian with
his twin brother Macdonald.
There is internal evidence about the genuineness of that, because the hon. gentleman
(Mr. Sproule) is rather fond of the
subject of twins.
He hoped to see the people of Quebec rally
to Borden, as they had in the past to Macdonald
and Cartier and Tupper and Pope. He asked
them to rally to their Pope.
Sir WILLAM MULOCK. The leader of
the opposition. I can fancy the hon. member for East Grey making his confessions
to the leader of the opposition when he
came back from this gathering so unlike
the gatherings which he is accustomed to
assemble in the west.
Mr. SPROULE. The hon. gentleman is
entirely out in his reference there.
Sir WILLAM MULOCK. Did not the
hon. member for Grey ask them to rally to
their Pope ?
Mr. SPROULE. If the hon. gentleman
will allow me, I will explain. I was facetiously making reference to the fact that
we had in our ranks a Pope, pointing to
the member for Compton, who was near by,
and I said that if they were willing to sup
3419
COMMONS
port their Pope, surely they were willing
to support our Pope.
Sir WILLAM MULOCK. The hon. gentleman has two Popes—his Pope and the
leader of the opposition. It applied to both.
Let me proceed :
The two nationalities were planted here together, and must live side by side, and
work
in harmony to build up a great and lusty
young country. Mr. Borden had the people at
his back, as did Macdonald and Cartier in the
old days.
Yes, a long way behind his back.
The wise men had come from the east, and
of late had saved a Daniel from the lion's den,
Dr. Sproule raised a great shout of laughter—
I wish he would do the same here occasionally—
—when he jokingly referred to the old story
that every Orange lodge in Ontario was a
Conservative committee room. He would not
take the trouble to deal with that theory.
Suffice it to say that in Ontario the Orange and
Green were working together as they had in
the past, for the return to power of the true
party of united Canadians.
A beautiful sentiment.
Sir WILLAM MULOCK. Nothing wrong
at all. Let us see now how they are working together.
Mr. SPROULE. Will you be good enough
to inform the House now what clause of
the Bill that refers to ?
Sir WILLAM MULOCK. Mr. Speaker,
this House is being favoured with petitions. The hon. gentleman says that the
Orange and the Green are working together
for the good of the Conservative party. He
is doing his share in one way, and the Jacques Cartier Club, his host, appears to
be
doing its share in another way ; and thus
the Orange and the Green are getting in
their work. I hold in my hand a copy of a
communication signed by Elie Maurault,
Secretary of the Jacques Cartier Club. I
do not know the gentleman ; but the writer
of this communication does not appear to
share the sentiments of the member for
East Grey. The member for East Grey has
been promoting one line of campaign, while
his club in Quebec has been promoting another line. It is all right if it stirs up
strife,
so long as both get in their work for the
good of the Conservative party ; the Orange
and the Green, as he says, working together ; two fishermen out, he with his hook
baited with the orange, and some one else
with the green. May I ask the member for
East Grey what part he took in getting this
communication and these petitions from the
province of Quebec. Fancy the Conservative party, through the Jacques Cartier Club,
rallying to the support of the premier of Can
3420
ada against the member for East Grey.
This letter is dated Montreal, 8th March,
1905, and it reads as follows :
Dear Sir,—Referring to the important matter
which is at present being discussed in the House
of Commons re the separate schools to be
established in the new provinces in the Northwest, reliable information shows us that
the
opponents of those schools are doing their utmost to prevent justice being done to
our compatriots and co-religionists, and are flooding
parliament with petitions against the school
system which is so dear to us.
Sir WILLAM MULOCK. Since you have
had it before. I will only state the tenor of
it. This is a letter from the Jacques Cartier
Club of Montreal, sent broadcast throughout
the province of Quebec, appealing to all
parties to resist the action of the member
for East Grey. The hon. gentleman may
have had suggestions from the Jacques
Cartier Club that he should put his fighting
forces in order in Ontario, and so the two
forces are working in harmony for the good
of the Conservative party, the member for
East Grey rallying one party and the Jacques Cartier Club rallying the other.
Mr. SPROULE. Might I ask the hon.
gentleman a question ?
Mr. SPROULE. A large number of petitions have been received in favour of this
Bill from Reformers in Quebec. I hold one
in my hand containing twenty-one names
marked Liberals and fourteen marked Conservatives. These Liberals are asking that
the Bill may not pass, while Liberals on
other petitions are asking that it do pass.
Were they working in concert ?
Mr. SPROULE. The gentleman who went
around with the petition. I will pass it
over to the hon. gentleman.
Mr. SPROULE. I take it that it was the
gentleman who went around with the petition.
Sir WILLAM MULOCK. If the hon.
gentleman does not know who marked them,
I do not think the evidence amounts to
much. I would like to show how the work
is being done. The hon. gentleman is making his appeals to passion on the floors of
this House.
Sir WILLAM MULOCK. Yes. He delivered an address in this House a short
time ago, ostensibly on the school question,
but the most of his speech was taken up
with pointing out the infirmities of the
3421 MARCH 29, 1905
Roman Catholic church. What did the hon.
gentleman mean when he said that certain
races, such as the Galicians and the Doukhobors, had come to Canada to escape the
tyranny of their church in the old land.
Sir WILLAM MULOCK. What did the
hon. gentleman mean when he said that we
were seeking to make use of the old cast-off
tattered garments of the church in the old
world as the swaddling clothes of these
young giants in the west? Was that not
an attack on the church and an appeal to
passion ?
Sir WILLAM MULOCK. That was not
the occasion to give us history. It was an
occasion for an appeal to the constitution.
At all events. it is interesting to see the
methods pursued in different parts of this
Dominion.
We have in the province of Ontario a
campaign denouncing these amendments as
being concessions to the hierarchy. 0n the
other hand, in the province of Quebec, the
Liberal party is attacked by the Tory newspapers because the government are doing
nothing for the Roman Catholics. Surely
both these contentions cannot be well founded. Let me read from a couple of the leading
Tory papers published in the city of
Quebec in what terms they speak of what
they declare to be a surrender of the rights
of the minority. In 'L'Evenement' of the
10th March, 1905, which is one of the organs
supporting the opposition in the province
of Quebec. I find the following article:
The Northwest Territory Schools—A deep treason.
The rights of the Catholics of the Northwest
are shamefully sacrificed.
The Liberal press has just received from Ottawa the pass-word and is cleverly preparing
the electorate to accept and approve what Mr.
Laurier and Mr. Fitzpatrick are asking parliament, the shameful sacrifice of the rights
of
our fellow men and co-religionists in the Northwest Territories. Mr. Laurier and Mr.
Fitzpatrick are giving away before fanaticism, and
in a retreat without glory they cowardly
abandon rights which they themselves declared
to be inalienable fifteen days ago. We ask our
readers to read attentively what follows, and
to seriously study the question which we will
treat, and to open their eyes and see the deep
treason of which French Canadians and Roman
Catholics in the Territories are victims.
It is Catholic Laurier and Catholic Fitzpatrick who, for the purpose of retaining
power. do not fear, do not hesitate, powerful
as they are, to crush under the heels of their
boots the French Catholic minority of the new
provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
That is a Tory opinion for consumption
in the province of Quebec, and the article
proceeds in equally violent language to the
3422
end. Another paper ot the same kind, published in the city of Quebec, 'La Verite,'
in
its issue of the 18th March, has the follow—
ing editorial:
Trebly deplorable.
In our article of last week we qualified as
truly deplorable the letter of Sir Wilfrid
Laurier to an old friend of George Brown, the
full text of which we published at the time.
This letter is trebly deplorable. disastrous,
heart-rending, we say, after having re-read this
document calmly.
From a political point of view, a national
point of view, from a religious point 0f view,
it is all that; and it is inconceivable that a.
chief of a party, a. French Canadian and a Roman Catholic could have made up his mind
to
make public such a document.
Then it proceeds to say:
By his cowardice and blindness. Mr. Laurier
is on the way to depriving for ever his co-religionists in the west, of separate schools,
thoroughly Catholic. No, there is no possible
comparison between the work of George Brown
and that of Wilfrid Laurier, as political men
on the educational question. The former has
done for his people a work as durable as granite. The latter, of his own free will,
places his
co-religionists in a position of manifest inferiority. Such was the work of both men
from a
purely political point of view.
Further on the writer says:
The separate schools of the far west will be
so little separate, so little French that the
teaching will be in English.
Lastly, a word as to the religious aspect of
the question; it is clear that Sir Wilfrid
Laurier, as a Catholic statesman, is perfectly
satisfied of practically neutral schools for his
co-religionists. Read over again attentively
the discription which he makes of the so-called
separate schools which exist in the west, which
his Bill proposes to maintain, which our people
must accept, and which the Protestants are
humbly requested to tolerate, and you will see
that they are really neutral or national schools,
because, in the mind of Sir Wilfrid Laurier the
two terms are synonymous.
Where is the separation in these schools from
a religious point of view ? It does not exist
more than it does from the national point at
view. They are institutions which are neutral,
neutral, absolutely neutral.
The famous half hour of religious teaching at
the closing of each class does not change the
essentially national and neutral character of
the class itself. Mr. Laurier proclaims this
with persistency, and he is perfectly right.
Instead of this measure being a surrender
to the Roman Catholic Church, which is the
charge made against it in the west, it is
denounced in the province of Quebec by our
opponents because it simply allows the minority to enjoy what we call national schools.
Both these contentions cannot be true.
Either the contention of my hon. friend
from East Grey (Mr. Sproule), that we are
surrendering to the Roman Catholic minority, is wrong, or the contention of his allies
in Quebec that we are not doing justice to
3423
COMMONS
the Roman Catholic minority is unfounded.
Both cannot be correct. Perhaps my hon.
friend from East Grey. in his supreme desire to do justice, will, in talking the matter
over with his western friends, point out to
them the view which the Quebec Tories take
of this measure as compared with that
which he and his friends take. But what is
the attitude of my hon. friend the leader of
the opposition? He simply takes his stand
on provincial rights. The hon. member for
East Grey does the passion part of the play.
He acts the tragic role and appeals to passion; other members of the party opposite
indulge in melodramatic appeals to sentiment; others attempt more or less skilfully
to excite prejudice, but one and all they
are working to the same end, and that is the
success and glory of the Conservative party,
no matter by what means that may be
secured. But there is one thing which these
gentlemen might well bear in mind. It is
that the welfare of this country depends on
our people living in harmony; and let this
question he once settled in a broad spirit
of tolerant justice and we will continue in
that career of progress in which we have
been advancing for the last eight years.
For several years during the agitation accompanying the Manitoba school question,
the progress of this country was stopped,
and stopped it would be again if the opposition could have their way and succeed in
throwing this question into the arena of
political strife. But the good sense of parliament, I have no doubt, Mr. Speaker,
will
prevail, and the country will breathe a
sigh of relief when this question is settled
for all time, without any sacrifice of principle on either side and in a manner which
will enable all classes to live in harmony.
My hon. friend the leader of the opposition
said that because the Act of 1875 was passed When there were only 500 people in the
Northwest it should now be done away
with when there are 500,000 people in that
country. But it seems to me that if 500,000
people have gone into that country, knowing the law and the conditions which prevailed,
they furnish us, with 500,000 argu
ments in favour of the maintenance of the
status quo. Why should we deal with the
people of the Territories when we make
them a province in a different manner from
that in which we deal with the people in
other provinces when they were brought
into confederation? What we propose now
is in harmony with the unbroken practice
in similar cases, respected in every part of
this broad Dominion. Therefore, I am unable to understand why, when we are raising
these two Territories to the dignity of
provinces this agitation should be excited.
Some time ago, in reading a history of India,
I came across a passage which might
very well be brought to the attention
of this House. Speaking of the treatment
by Great Britain of the many nationalities
throughout her broad empire—races with
3424
out number and creeds without number—
the writer said that he had yet to find an
instance of the mother country haVing ever
oppressed a minority or failed to recognize
the beliefs and feelings and sentiments and
even the prejudices of that minority. And
when at the close of the great mutiny in
India, it was said that the imperial government might interfere with the religious
views of the people, Her Majesty herself
caused a proclamation to be issued to the
people of India in which she pointed out
that she had derived so much comfort and
consolation from her own religion that she
would never allow hands to be laid 011 the
religions or creeds of the various great
tribes that composed her loyal citizens
throughout India.
And, go where you will throughout this
broad empire, with its. four hundred millions of people of different races and different
creeds, you find all left in the enjoyment of those things that they regard as
sacred. It is that policy, that method of
treating the people, that has made Great
Britain's empire, what it is to-day—widespread, powerful and stable, resting upon
the affections of the whole people and holding the people together by the bonds of
affection and not by force 01' coercion. If
our own Dominion is to be held together we
cannot do better than follow the example
of the mother of nations and yield, if need
be, occasionally to prejudices or sentiments
involving no sacrifice of principle in order
to enable the different classes that are coming to our shores to live in peace, in
harmony and in the enjoyment of those institutions to which they attach great importance
and the enjoyment of which by them
makes them more loyal citizens. yet does no
injury to the common welfare.
Mr. E. A. LANCASTER (Lincoln and Niagara). Mr. Speaker, I do not know who is
to apologize, unless I do—for I suppose the
Postmaster General (Sir William Mulock)
will not—for the time that hon. gentleman
has taken up in what was supposed to have
been a discussion of Bill (No. 69) now before the House. I must say that I sympathize
with those gentlemen supporting, or
supposed to be supporting, the Postmaster
General who have been brought back this
evening to hear, as they supposed, a reply
to the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr.
Foster) and who, after trying to listen for
half an hour or so, were obliged to leave
the Chamber because they could not under-r
stand where the Postmaster Genera-1 was
or what subject he was dealing with. I
sympathize with them, because we cannot
blame them for thinking the Postmaster
General would give them some information
or some light—something which they could
take to their constituents and offer as an
apology or plea for forgiveness for their vote
against the contentions of the hon. member
for North Toronto. And what has the Post
3425
MARCH 29, 1905
master General done ? He has occupied
the time of this House from nine o'clock
until twenty minutes to eleven. And evidently he has tried to say something. Several
times he has said : ' What is the question before the House ? ' But he never told
us what that question was. I do not know
whether he was'discussing the Manitoba
remedial legislation of 1896—whether he
was dreaming that he was out in the province of Ontario abusing Sir Charles Tupper
for granting that remedial legislation,—
or whether he was trying to offer some plea
for interfering with the autonomy of the
Northwest. He did say at the opening of
his speech, that there was a Bill before the
House. But he did not read a single section of it. He evidently does not know the
provisions of the British North America
Act. He has never read that Act or he would
not have made the wrong statements about
it that he has made. He has simply wasted
the time of the House for an hour and forty
minutes—I say this with all deference; but
I have as much respect for the members of
this House as I have for the Postmaster
General, and I think that some one ought
to apologize. So, as one of the members
constituting this House, as the Postmaster
General does not apologize for wasting our
time, I can only hope that the House will
accept the apology I offer. The House has
asmuch right to accept my apology as the
Postmaster General has to propose, in the
name of autonomy, a throttling piece of legislation for the Northwest Territories.
This
House has as much and more right to say
that the member for Lincoln and Niagara
(Mr. Lancaster) should apologize for the
Postmaster General as to say that the provincial parliament of the Northwest shall
not control its own affairs. At nine o'clock
the Postmaster General began to address
this House. I have kept track, as well as I
could, of his wanderings about the question
—if it can be said he was so near the question as to be wandering about it—and the
discussion—if you can call it discussion—
that he has inflicted upon the House. He
spent half an hour in abusing the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster.)
Mr. LANCASTER. I have no doubt he
will apologize if somebody makes him do
so, but he Will not apologize out of the goodness of his heart ;—he might to save
a libel
suit if a libel suit could be taken against
him. Then for forty minutes he was supposed to discuss this Bill, if you can call
it
a discussion of the Bill to tell us over and
over again that the British North America
Act had dealt differently with different provinces—and I am in the judgment of the
House when I say that that is all this discussion amounted to. Then, for the next
thirty minutes he gave kind advice to the
hon. member for East Grey (Mr. Sproule)
3426
about his duty in regard to toleration. He
talked about intolerant speeches in this
House and about vehemence. And what
was the other word he used ?—I have a note
of it here ;—some word that, I think, we
hardly understand as coming from the Postmaster General. He spoke once of brotherly
love. He spoke also of inflammatory and impassioned speeches—but he did not tell us
at which side of the House he was directing his lecture. I have been in this House
throughout this debate, and I am not in the
habit of sitting here and not listening. I
have not heard one impassioned sentence in
this debate coming from this side of the
House, and neither has any other hon. member. The Postmaster General seems to
think he has heard that kind of thing from
this side. I heard the Minister of Justice
(Mr. Fitzpatrick), before the Bill was read
the second time, make what I suppose the
Postmaster General would call a speech of
brotherly love. The Minister of Justice
said in effect : If my brothers of the Dominion of Canada will not give me something
to which I have no constitutional
right ; if they will not give me justice and
let me be the judge of what is to be considered justice, there shall be no peace in
this country. That is the style of speech
we get from the King's chosen representative of justice in this House, the occupant
of what ought to be the highest and grandest of cabinet positions. He told us that
forty-one per cent of our people demanded
this legislation. I take issue with him there.
All the Roman Catholics in this country
are not in favour of this legislation.
Mr. LANCASTER. But I tell my young
friend from Montmaguy (Mr. A. Lavergne),
who has interrupted every speaker in this
House since this question began, that he
has got a lot of things to learn yet, and
some things to learn about his own race in
the province of Quebec. I will tell my
young friend that if he wants to get any
standing in this House, if he wants anybody to listen to him, he must be more
tolerant, he must not take his lessons of
tolerance from the Postmaster General and
he must make less inflammatory speeches,
and exercise more courtesy to hon. gentlemen who have just as much right to their
opinions as he has.
Now, Sir, I say to all these gentlemen that
in the county of Lincoln, which I have the
honour to represent, I do not believe there
is a single Roman Catholic who wants any
thing done that is unconstitutional or contrary to the spirit of the constitution.
When
the Minister of Finance spoke on this question he sneered at the constitution. The
Minister of Finance, acknowledging, I suppose, that the constitution was dead against
him, tried to make out that the constitutional aspect of this legislation was of no
3427
consequence. What did he say ? I am
going to read it from the 'Hansard' lest
I make any mistake:
I do not propose to go into that constitutional question, not because I say it should
not
receive any consideration, but because I say it
is not the great question involved, and I prefer to go on and deal with the practical
questions which are before us. If it is a constitutional question above all others,
then perhaps
the best thing we can do will be to request
the legal members of this House to adjourn
to the Railway Committee room and thresh it
out, while we who have not the good fortune
to belong to that learned profession will stay
down here and discuss the practical question
involved, or proceed with the ordinary business of the House.
And further on:
Now the first question is whether or not
the time has come when we should give a
provincial constitution to these new Territories
in the west.
But before saying that. and having been
interrupted by the leader of the opposition.
to whom he was apparently speaking, he
said :
I believe the people of the Dominion to-day
are not going to have their minds engaged
with an elaborate analysis of constitutional
questions which nine out of ten will never read,
and which the whole ten will fail to understand. I believe that the people of Canada,
since this unpleasant question is brought before
us, will expect us to meet it plainly and openly,
and discuss it with the hope of finding a happy
solution.
Now, on behalf of the Catholic citizens of
the garden county of Lincoln. I tell the Minister of Finance, who is now in his place,
that they will resent as much as the Protestants will resent any such imputation on
their fairness. They do not want things to
be done that-are unconstitutional. No true
citizen of this country, be he Catholic or
Protestant, wants legislation to be put
through this House on the ground that it
may be wise and practical, if it is not constitutional. If it is not constitutional,
it
cannot be either wise or practical. In saying this, I speak for three or four thousand
Roman Catholic inhabitants in the fair
county of Lincoln, and I speak for the Protestants as well. The Minister of Finance
thinks that this educational section of the
Bill cannot be supported on constitutional
ground. He thinks, according to his speech,
that the law is also against the government
if they undertake to force this legislation
through, for he says: I will not discuss it,
I will let the lawyers discuss it. But does
he say he will leave it to the new provinces
to do as they like ? Oh, no ; but he says:
I will butt in and take the provinces by the
throat, while the lawyers may study the
legal question. I think he ought to wait
until the jury comes in; I think he ought
to keep his hands off these provinces until
3428
he finds out whether he had a right to put
his hands on them. Now, let me suggest
to the Minister of Finance, to the Minister
of Customs, and to all those gentlemen who
have spoken on this question: Supposing
you do not interfere with the power of these
provinces to deal with the educational question, are you doing a wrong thing or not?
The lawyers say there is a doubt whether
we have a right to interfere with the provinces, but nobody says there is a doubt
about the provinces having a right to deal
with this question of separate schools. Now.
if separate schools can be dealt with. as it
is admitted they can be, by the provinces,
why not let them deal with it? Nobody
suggests on either side of this House that
these new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan cannot deal with the question of
separate schools as soon as this Act is passed in any way that they like; the whole
dispute is as to whether there is power in
the Dominion parliament to deal with the
subject. But there is no question about the
fact that the provinces can do it if the Dominion parliament does not interfere. Now,
have hon. gentlemen made a good case for
separate schools or have they not? I am
not going to discuss that question. I believe
in provincial rights. If this question was
up in the province of Ontario I would claim
the right to record my vote upon it. and in
the same manner I do not wish to take
away the right of the people of the North
west Territories to record their votes on the
subject if they want to. I am willing to give
my fellow-countrymen in the Northwest Ter
ritories the same right to do their own voting on this school question that I claim
for
myself. So in regard to every other question, they should be treated in the same
way. Can it be suggested that if this was
not an educational and, incidentally, a religions question, there would be any wrenching
of the constitution to interfere with the
provinces ? Everybody knows the answer.
Everybody knows that if this was not a question that affected education and, incidentally,
religion, nobody would dare to suggest
that we should wrench the constitution of
those provinces, that we should undertake to
throttle them in regard to their right to say
What system of education they shall have.
Of course, if we are going to give provincial autonomy to the Northwest Territories.
let us give them something that will be
autonomy, and not a mere pretense.
Why are the government dealing with this
question of provincial autonomy ? Does the
Prime Minister believe that these provinces
have reached the stage where they are entitled to have autonomy? If he says they
are entitled now to have autonomy on all
the subjects mentioned in the British North
America Act, then are they not entitled to
exercise the same judgment with regard to
education ? If they have brains and intelligence enough, if they are far enough
advanced to deal with all the other subjects
3429 MARCH 29, 1905
that are assigned to the provincial legislatures under section 92 of the British North
America Act, surely they are intelligent
enough and far enough advanced to deal
with the subject of education? That section
gives the provincial legislature exclusive
jurisdiction to deal with the subjects of
direct taxation, borrowing money on the
credit of the province, management and
sale of public lands, the establishment, maintenance and management of reformatories
and prisons. establishment and maintenance of hospitals and asylums, licenses, local
public works, marriage, property and civil
rights, administration of justice, and generally all matters of a merely local nature
in the province. Now. if the Prime Minister thinks that the people of those Territories
are sufliciently advanced to deal
with all these subjects I have mentioned,
surely he must believe that they are sufficiently advanced to deal with the subject
of education.
It is idle for the right hon. Prime Minister
or any person else to pretend that there
is any other reason for excluding education
from the operation of this Act or taking
the question of education away from these
provinces except it be on the religious
ground. I say this and 1 say it forcibly because it is necessary as we are drifting
away
back into the dark ages. When we are
dealing with this Bill this question ought to
be dealt with exactly on its merits, the same
as any other question would be, and if there
is no meritorious reason for butting in the
question of religion, or for sticking it in
the Bill at all, if there is no logical, sound,
businesslike reason for putting it in, there
is no excuse for putting it there any more
than there would be for putting in any other
question that had no business to be there ?
Are we not sufiiciently intelligent to deal
with this question of education calmly, deliberately and as business men? Can we not
ask ourselves the same question in regard
to this question as in regard to any othe'r
question? Cannot we say: Does this properly come within the subject of this Bill,
is
it proper that we should deal with this question any more than that we should deal
with
any other question ? There is not an hon.
gentleman on the other side of the House
who has made up his mind to record his vote
for the government on this question. but will
admit or will conscientiously say to himself
that a judgment of this kind should not be
forced upon him more in respect to the religious question than it would be in regard
to any other question. I venture to say
that if the British North America Act were
attacked in regard to some other of its
features. if it were proposed, for instance,
to give the Northwest Territories control of
post oihces instead of leaving it to the Dominion parliament the hon. Postmaster General
would say : No. that is unconstitutional: that is one of the subjects that the
British North America Act exclusively
3430
leaves to the Dominion parliament to deal
with. and you cannot change the British
North America Act in that respect. But.
the Postmaster General does not mind taking from the provinces the right to deal with
the subject of education although it is exclusively assigned to the provinces except
in
the cases that he has mentioned to-night.
If a province after it was a provinée, being
of age and able to do it. deliberately knowing what it was doing, inflicted upon itself
a system of separate schools it could not
abolish that system upon joining the union.
There is no warrant whatever for dealing
with this question except upon the lines of
the British North America Act. And section
92. containing an enumeration of the different classes of cases which I have mentioned,
lays it down that these cases are to be dealt
with exclusively by the provinces.
Mr. LANCASTER. Not in that section.
Section 92 which I have just read says, and
I have used that for a purpose, that :
In each province the legislature may exclusively make laws in relation to matters
coming within the classes of subjects next
hereinafter enumerated.
And so on. Section 93 says that the
'legislature may exclusively make laws in
relation to education.' These provisions are exactly the same in the operative parts
of
these two sections. Section 92 dealing with
matters which neither the Prime Minister
nor any one else has dared to interfere with,
which are subjects which are admitted to be exclusively within the jurisdiction of
the
province and which are always to be dealt
with by the province, contains exactly the
same phraseology as section 93 does in regard to education:
In each province the legislature may exclusively make laws in relation to matters
coming within the classes of subjects next
hereinafter enumerated.
Is one section, and
In and for each province the legislature may exclusively make laws in relation to
education.
Is the other section. Exactly the same
operative words are used in both sections.
The province may make laws exclusively in
relation to education
Subject and according to the following provisions. '
Exception No. 1 no one but the premier
pretends has anything to do with this case;
exception No. 2 no one pretends has anything to do with this case. Exception No.
1, is as follows :—
Nothing in any such law shall prejudicially
affect any right or privilege with respect to
denominational schools which any class of persons have by law in the province at the
union.
3431
COMMONS
In the province at the union ! In the province at the time that it joined the union,
as
for instance, Ontario and Quebec as the hon.
Postmaster General admitted to-night. He
said we have these schools here because we
had them when we came into the union, and
he then proves our case further by saying
that Nova Scotia and New Brunswick do not
have these schools because they did not
have them when they came into the union,
and that British Columbia did not have them
when they came into the union. That was
the reason why they did not have them.
Now, here is where I begin to disagree with
him. He says it is fair to say to the people
in the Northwest : You are not a province,
we are about to make you a province for the
first time, we do not know whether you will
establish separate schools or not but we will
take you by the throat and make you do it.
That is great logic. That is a wonderful
argument to come from a statesman like the
hon. Postmaster General, as he called himself two or three times to-night, although
nobody applauded him when he did it. That
was the logic that came from this would be
statesman. If we apply his logic it means
this : Here are people twenty-one years of
age having the right to vote who have voted
for a certain thing, being fully enfranchised
and entitled to vote on the question, while
on the other hand we are going to enfranchise another man who has not now a vote
and make him vote what we direct all his
life. That is a fair interpretation of the
argument which the Postmaster General has
made. We are going to say because we are
creating a province that you shall do exactly
what Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince
Edward Island and British Columbia did
not have to do. Although British Columbia
did not have to adopt a separate school system we say to these new provinces that
if
you come in you must establish a separate
school system because they have one in
Ontario and Quebec. No such thing was
said to British Columbia. Prince Edward
Island did not have to adopt the separate
school system, but in regard to these new
provinces we say : You have not a system
of separate schools but we are going to
make it certain you must have one because
you cannot come into the union if you do not
have separate schools as they have them in
Ontario and Quebec. These other provinces
were allowed to do as they liked. They were
provinces that were fully enfranchised and
entitled to make their own bargains. The
hon. Postmaster General, the hon. Minister
of Finance and the hon. Minister of Customs cannot see any distinction between enfranchising
a man and letting him do as he
likes after you have enfranchised him and
taking a man by the throat and saying :
You must do so and so or we will not enfranchise you at all. Both of these hon.
gentlemen who are sitting beside each other
at this moment and who spoke upon this
question said that in effect. They did not
3432
want to bother with the legal aspect of this
question. The hon. Minister of Customs
was very anxious to get away from the legal
question. He said that Christopher Robinson's opinion was not quite the same as that
of the hon. leader of the oppostion, that they
were both excellent lawyers—he spoke correctly about that—that the hon. the Minister
of Justice disagreed with the legal opinion
of these gentlemen and that he was a good
lawyer. But I have not seen the opinion of
the hon. Minister of Justice yet. The hon.
Minister of Customs may know quietly, or
through some secret channel of the cabinet,
what the opinion of the hon. Minister of
Justice is, but I do not know what it is.
But, we will assume that it was contradictory of and different from the opinion of
my hon. friend the leader of the opposition.
What was the wise solution of the Minister
of Customs ? What was the advice that he
gave us in his great wisdom ? He says that
as these lawyers differ about the question as
to whether the Dominion of Canada has the
power to go on and settle that question we
should take the power.
The argument of the Minister of Customs
was, that as the lawyers differed as to
whether Canada has the power to enact
this legislation, the wise thing to do to
settle the question was for this parliament
to take the power. It is an easy thing for
the Minister of Customs to get away from
the legal and constitutional aspect of the
question, but it never occurred to him that
there was a still more common sense solution, and that is that provinces could grant
separate schools if they wanted to and nobody disputes that the provinces have the
power—and that being so, it would be a
wise thing to let the new provinces do as
they like on the question of education.
There is no dispute that the provinces have
the power to legislate on education the
whole dispute is whether the Dominion
government has the right to force a particular system of education upon them.
The Minister of Customs could not see that
the easiest solution of the difficulty was for
us to say : as there is a great difference of
opinion as to whether we have the right
to do this or not, and as there is no difference as to the right of the province to
do
it, then let us trust the province. And so
these gentlemen opposite believing they have
a good case for separate schools on the
merits, should have no reason to fear. But
that solution did not occur to the champions of provincial rights. Sir, in that
beautiful garden city of St. Catharines in
my fair county, early in the month of June,
1896, I heard the Rt. Hon. Sir Wilfrid
Laurier appeal to return Mr. Gibson (now
Senator Gibson) to this House, and Mr.
Gibson was returned by a majority of nearly
500. On that occasion I heard the Prime Minister of Canada declare, that when it came
to the question of coercing a province even
at the instance of people who belonged to
3433
MARCH 29, 1905
his own religion, he was a Canadian and a
provincial rights man first and he would
not interfere with the province even at the
risk of being accused of disloyalty to his
own religion. That argument prevailed
with the people of the county I have the
honour to represent, but the people soon
discovered their mistake. Mr. Gibson who
came to this House backed up by that
pledge of his leader, four years afterwards
in the same constituency was defeated by
so weak and humble an individual as myself
by a majority which represented a change
of several hundred votes compared with
the previous election. The people of Canada want public men to keep their political
pledges. They do not want the Prime
Minister to be in favour of provincial rights
one day and against provincial rights another day when it suits his purpose. They
want public questions to be dealt with on
their merits whether these be religious questions or any other questions.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I shall not do as the
Postmaster General did and talk for two
hours without dealing with the legal and
constitutional aspect of the question except
in so far as mere personal assertion is concerned. I shall quote the rest of the British
North America Act which deals with the
question, and leave it to the common sense
of the members of this House and the common sense of the people of Canada to say
Whether the policy of the leader of the
opposition as announced in his amendment,
or the policy laid down in the redrafted Bill,
is the correct one for us to pursue. The
Bill undertakes to do something that is considered to be statesmanlike by the Postmaster
General, but which unfortunately
is not sufliciently statesmanlike to be constitutional. In the clause relating to
education the Bill undertakes practically to
amend the British North America Act, for
it says :
Where the expression ' by law ' is employed
in subsection 3 of the said section 93 it shall
be held to mean the law as set out in said
chapters 29 and 30, and when the expression
' at the union ' is employed in said subsection
3 it shall be held to mean the date at which
the Act comes into force.
Now, the British North America says
exactly the contrary to this, and we have
therefore the sad spectacle that these gentlemen opposite who were once so loud in
their pledges to protect provincial rights,
now in their efforts to assail provincial
rights not only jump clean over the autonomy of the provinces. but undertake to
amend a law of the imperial parliament into
the bargain. Well, I suppose they have just
as much right to do one thing as the other ;
they have just as much right to amend an
Imperial Act as to deprive the provinces
of Canada of their constitutional powers.
To listen to these gentlemen opposite one
would sometimes think we were in the imperial House of Commons creating a new
3434
British North America Act, and at another
time that we were assembled in the legislature of the new provinces debating as to
whether the provinces should have separate
schools or not. I notice that every gentleman on the other side of the House who
spoke in this debate took good care to stop
short of discussing the question as to whether the Dominion or the province should
pass educational laws. Some of them ventured to deal with the question whether or
not we have the power, but none of them
attempted to give a reason why, even if
we had that power, we could exercise it any
more sensibly than could the provinces
themselves. They tell us that separate
schools are good here and good there
and good somewhere else, but they
have no business to draw the deduction that separate schools would be
good in Alberta and Saskatchewan. If this
parliament is going to decide whether separate schools should or should not exist
in
Alberta, then we are going to do exactly
the opposite to what occurred in relation
to the same matter in the case of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Separate
schools exist to-day in Ontario and Quebec
because the people of these provinces administering their own local affairs, deem
it wise that they should have separate
schools. We are here dictating to the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta what
they shall do in this regard, but the Dominion parliament never inflicted separate
schools on Ontario or on Quebec or on British
Columbia or on Nova Scotia or on Prince Edward Island. The hon. gentleman who for
the time being is Postmaster General of
Canada—we do not know how soon he will
resign when he gets to understand this
educational clause ; he does not understand
it yet. The Postmaster General told us
that none of the statutes admitting new
provinces into the confederation were alike.
He told us that Ontario and Quebec had
separate schools, but that in the case of New
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward
Island and British Columbia separate schools
were not established by law. I have here
the statute under which Prince Edward
Island was admitted into the Dominion, and
that statute is silent on the question of
separate schools. But the Postmaster General
did not tell us why it is silent. If there is
anything in the argument of the government
it must be : that the province of Prince
Edward Island was not entitled to
have separate schools unless the Act
gave power to establish such schools in that
province. The logical result of the argument of the government is, that the Prince
Edward Island Act being silent on the question of separate schools the question can
not be dealt with at all in the case of that
province.
They argue that the Bill now before us
would be incomplete if section 16 were not
there. It has never occurred to any of them
3435 COMMONS
that you could leave out the whole of section 16 and the result would be that section
93 of the British North America Act would
apply, and the power of the province to
deal with the question of schools would be
absolute. It is so in the provinces of British
Columbia and Prince Edward Island. In
the constitutions of these provinces there
is not a word about education or separate
schools, and therefore, according to the argument of these hon. gentlemen, the logical
conclusion would be that these provinces
could not deal with education at all. That
is where their argument would land them.
Now, what does it all mean? It means
simply this—and everybody of common
sense can see it—that if the Dominion parliament, in constituting a province, does
not deal with the question of education,
then the question can be dealt with by the
province. Nobody can get away from that
conclusion with the intelligent electorate
of any province of this Dominion.
They will say: Why did you not, as a
government of the Dominion. leave that
matter in the hands of these new
provinces as you did all other local questions, giving them provincial autonomy in
every respect? Is the case for separate
schools in those provincse good or not? If
I were going to-morrow to live in the province of Alberta, and made up my mind that
I wanted separate schools there, I would
condemn the leader of this government for
the manner in which he brought this question into this House and spoiled my chance
of getting them. If he is honestly in favour
of separate schools, and is not simply playing the game of politics, if he is really
sincere in his appeals to keep racial and religious questions out of this House, why
does he bring them in? If this Bill were
passed without section 16, everybody knows
that the provinces would have the power to
deal with education, and this question would
not have been brought into this House.
Does the premier understand that the new
provinces are not going to give separate
schools? Then, if he thinks they are wrong
on that question he should not give them
autonomy. But if he thinks the provinces
have a right to decide the question, then he
should leave clause 16 out of the Bill, be
cause they have the power-without mentioning it in the Bill. Does he think, on the
merits of the question, having in view the
future welfare of those provinces, that the
majority will not be in favour of separate
schools? If he thinks they have no right
to that opinion, then, as an honest man, he
should say, I will not give them autonomy
for ten years yet, because I do not think
they are sufficiently educated to deal with
the subject of education. But that is not his
position. He knows that the people of the
Northwest are entitled to autonomy. and he
practically says, I am afraid that in exercising their right they will or may not
3436
establish separate schools, and, therefore,
I will not leave them free to decide the
question. No sensible man, applying his
common sense to this question as would a
jury, no matter how he votes, can easily feel
in his heart of hearts that the premier really
wants separate schools out there peaceably
or else he would leave the provinces to deal
with the question. I am not saying that I
would or would not be in favour of separate
schools if I lived in the province of
Alberta. Without living there for two
or three years I could not say whether I would be in favour of them or
not. For that same reason I ought not to
be asked to vote upon this question; for that
same reason the supporters of hon. gentlemen opposite ought not to be asked to vote
upon this question; for that same reason
the premier ought not to have brought this
question into the House; for that same reason every man of us, whether he is in favour
of separate schools or not, ought to vote
against the Bill. It is a matter entirely of
local concern which you are only in a position to decide after you have lived out
there and understand all the conditions. You
do not want to take newspaper reports, letters from friends, sketches or literature
of
any kind; you have actually to live in a
community before you know how to deal
with the educational system in that community. It may be that if I lived in Alberta
two or three years, I would be a
strong advocate of separate schools there,
or it may be that I would think separate
schools were not good things for that province; but for that very reason every hon.
member of this House should vote against
this Bill, except perhaps the premier, who
introduced it, and who, perhaps as a matter of consistency, should stick to it.
The hon. Postmaster General, in the
course of his remarks, said that if you trace
the history of the constitutions of other
provinces and the various changes in them,
you will find that no two of them are exactly alike, and he instanced the divorce
courts
which he seemed to think were a wonderful instance of that fact. But he gave the
whole thing away by saying that it was because the provinces with divorce courts had
established them before those provinces
came into the union. Although the British
North America Act assigned divorce to the
Dominion, yet it provided that those provinces should continue to have them. That
is the constitution, and therefore there is
no straining of the constitution in that provision. Yet here is the Postmaster General,
a self-styled statesman, objecting to this being done on legal grounds. If I did not
know otherwise. I might suppose that the
Postmaster General had never been near a
law office or had never seen a statute. I
am told that he is a lawyer, though he does
not want to be called a lawyer, and I understand why. Because lawyers are men of
3437 MARCH 29, 1905
common sense, if you leave them alone and
do not put them into grit cabinets or on
pedestals where no one can reach them.
The Minister of Finance wants it to be
known that when he talks about this matter he discusses it from the point of view
of common sense. But the Postmaster General takes a higher ground. He sets himself
up on the pedestal of a statesman and
tells us that he looks at this matter from
a statesmanlike point of view and wants
to have the question settled in a statesmanlike way and not in a legal way. He evidently
does not believe that legality and
statesmanship ought to go hand in hand in
any properly constituted country, but he
will no doubt find that if the people can
only have a chance to see that their wishes
are fulfilled, these two essentials will be
joined together and not divorced from one
another as the Postmaster General thinks
they ought to be. Well, this statesmanlike
Postmaster General or postmaster-general-
like statesman—you can put it either way
you like—says that because the British North
America Act, which is our constitution
—but which he does not seem to understand
is our constitution—makes a difference between different provinces, therefore the
Dominion parliament has the right to
change that Act as it pleases. I am not
quite sure whether the Postmaster General
is not labouring under the delusion that he
is really in London, England, to-day, and
not in Ottawa, because he does not seem
able to distinguish between the powers of
the Dominion parliament and the imperial
parliament. But he cannot produce, nor
can the Prime Minister nor the Minister of
Justice, nor the Solicitor General—lawyers
though they be—produce any Act of the
Dominion which has ever undertaken to say
that the British North America Act shall
mean something different to what it really
does say in its own language. No, this
Bill new before us is the first measure in
which any attempt was ever made
by the Dominion parliament to change
the wording and the meaning of an Imperial Act. Not a single Act of a Dominion
parliament has even been drawn which. has
undertaken to say that the British North
America Act shall be read as containing
language different from what it really does
contain. Surely the First Minister must
have known that the British North America Act did not give him the right to impose
these restrictions on these provinces about
to be created, or else he would never have
undertaken by this measure to amend the
Act of Confederation. No hon. gentleman
will pretend to say that anybody ever before undertook to resort to the very doubtful
and suspicious expedient of having this
tribunal alter the Act of another tribunal,
or having this parliament declaring that an
Act passed by the British parliament shall
be taken to contain a different wording to
what it really does contain.
3488
Mr. SCOTT. Does my hon. friend not
know that very thing was done in the case
of Manitoba ?
Mr. LANCASTER. Can the hon. gentleman show me any Act with regard to Manitoba which has the words
that are used
here ? I am referring to this substituted
section. I am not referring to the section
that lost the vote of the Minister of the
Interior, but to the section which has
brought him into line and which the
other Northwest members supporting
him are swallowing. This is the language
of that section :
Where the expression by-law is employed in
subsection 3 of section 93, it shall be held to
mean the law as set out in chapters 29 and 30
of the ordinances of the Northwest Territories.
There we have it set down that where
the expression by-law is used in an Act of
the British parliament passed in 1867, it
shall be held to mean certain chapters of
the ordinances of the Northwest Territories
which were not passed until 25 or 30 years
later.
Mr. SCOTT. I understand the hon. gentleman to argue that it was impossible for
this parliament to vary the terms of the
British North America Act, and I was undertaking to remind him that that was done
in the case of Manitoba.
Mr. LANCASTER. I dispute that statement. That was not done at all in the
case of the province of Manitoba. That
province had, as a province, established separate schools, and it afterwards repealed
the
law establishing those schools.
Mr. SCOTT. The hon. gentleman is attempting to get away from the point.
Mr. LANCASTER. I am not attempting
to get away from anything. My hon. friend
says the same thing was done in the province of Manitoba Act. He will find no such
expression in that Act or no expression that
could be taken to mean the same thing. He
cannot find anything in that Act declaring
that certain words in the British North
America Act shall be taken to mean other
words or something else different entirely
from what they express. When we find
the First Minister declaring that what he
is about to do, he could only do under the
authority given him by the British North
America Act, and then resorting to the
expedient of changing the language of that
very Act which gives him the authority,
his case is a very doubtful one indeed. It
really amounts to this that he is interfering
with the document which the other man
signed. One man gives another a power
of attorney. The question then comes up
whether that power of attorney gives the
right to do certain things, and in order to
remove any doubt or difiiculty the attorney
says : I will take my pen and change the
language of the document, and then I will
3439
have the right to do what I propose doing.
That is the position in which the right hon.
gentleman has put this government.
Mr. SCOTT. That was what parliament
did in 1870 in the case of Manitoba.
Mr. LANCASTER. I say it was not at
all what parliament did in the case of Manitoba. My hon. friend had better read the
statute.
Mr. SCOTT. I will give you the very
clause if you will permit me.
Mr. LANCASTER. I have read it as
often as the hon. gentleman has. I am not
a candidate for a cabinet position, I am not
anxious to take the job of my former leader,
I am not trying to make myself a champion
of what I do not believe, I am not trying
to show that I am able to swallow a section
which it gave the ex-Minister of the Interior a good deal of trouble to swallow, but
which, when he did make up his mind to
take the dose, he did swallow with more
gusto and less of a wry face than my hon.
friend. Here is the enactment we are asked
to pass as a Dominion parliament :
Where the expression ' by-law ' is employed
in subsection 3 of the said section 93, it shall
be held to mean the law as set out in said
chapters 29 and 30—
Chapters 29 and 30 are ordinances of the
Northwest Territories, which did not come
into existence until years after the British
North America Act was passed. And it
will hardly be contended that that Act could
have meant to apply to things that did not
exist until years after it itself had come
into existence.
—and where the expression ' at the union '
is employed in said subsection 3—
That is, subsection 3 of section 93 of the
British North America Act.
—it shall be held to mean the date at which
this Act comes into force.
In other words, the date of the passage
of this British North America Act by the
imperial parliament shall, by the great
power which this Dominion of Canada possesses under so-called Reform rule, and by
a declaration such as it never undertook to
make before, be carried forward until next
July.
Mr. LEMIEUX. Will the hon. gentleman
(Mr. Lancaster) allow me a word ?
Mr. LANCASTER. I would like to deal
with this subject in consecutive fashion. I
do not wish to be discourteous to the Solicitor General (Mr. Lemieux), and I am sure
that he knows that I would not show him
any discourtesy. If he will allow me to
finish the point that I am now dealing with,
I shall be glad to have him put to me any
question he wishes. I want to keep myself
right with the hon. member for East Assiniboia (Mr. Scott). He has interjected the
3440
statement that I will find the same section
in regard to the Manitoba school laws.
Mr. LANCASTER. Then what could the
hon. gentleman have meant by his interruption ? What does he want to take back
now ? He said I would find the same in
respect to Manitoba—
Mr. LANCASTER. Then he had no right
to interrupt me and cause me to waste five
or ten minutes of the time of the House
in proving to him that he was mistaken.
He had better have another conference with
the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Sifton)
to find out where they stand on this question.
Mr. SCOTT. Will the hon. gentleman
(Mr. Lancaster) allow me to explain ?
Mr. LANCASTER. I think it is not fair
for a gentleman addressing you, Mr. Speaker, to be interrupted even by an hon. member
from the Northwest Territories, as I
have been interrupted. The hon. gentleman
(Mr. Scott) had better have the local responsibility in this matter—for he is not
yet elected for the provincial legislature—
before he undertakes to have an opinion
about it. Even a gentleman with cabinet
aspirations ought not to stand up in this
House, after the exhibition the Postmaster
General (Sir William Mulock) made of himself, and undertake to tell an hon. member
reading plain English that there was the
same provision in the law relating to Manitoba schools, and, when it was proved up
to
the hilt that he was mistaken, explain that
that is not what he meant. It is wasting the
time of the House as the Postmaster General wasted it—not quite so completely.
perhaps, but very near even that limit. I
have been wondering, Mr. Speaker—and I
am sorry that your mouth is closed and that
you cannot give me the information—having
seen what I have since eight o'clock, I have
been wondering whether there is another
cabinet crisis, and whether that is the reason why thc cabinet is wasting the time
of
the House. The Postmaster General took
up nearly two hours, and proved only one
thing, and that is that a man could talk that
long and say nothing. And now an aspirant
to the cabinet takes up more time in the
fashion I have shown. Now, the Solicitor
General wished to ask me a question.
Mr. LEMIEUX. Listening to the hon.
gentleman's very able argument, I understood him to say that we could not alter
the terms of the British North America Act,
nor give any meaning to the clauses of the
Act under such a statute as that now before us.
3441 MARCH 29, 1905
Mr. LEMIEUX. Last year the Privy
Council gave judgment in the representation cases, with which my hon. friend (Mr.
Lancaster) is familiar. Section 5 of the
British North America Act says:
Canada shall be divided into four provinces,
named Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick.
As my hon. friend knows, Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick took exception to the
representation of these provinces as had
been fixed by parliament and contended,
with some appearance of reason, that the
aggregate population of Canada as mentioned in section 51 was the population of
the four original provinces. But the Privy
Council decided that the word 'Canada'
mentioned in section 5 was a variable term,
which, at the beginning of our history,
meant four provinces, but later meant five,
six and seven provinces, thus explaining that
the British North America Act was quite an
elastic instrument, which should be interpreted according to the sound principles
of
the law.
Mr. LANCASTER. The Solicitor General
(Mr. Lemieux) does not seem to realize that
there is a difference between the British
North America Act being construed by the
courts and this parliament undertaking to
throttle the construction by an Act of its
own. With all his legal knowledge, he cannot understand the common sense difference
between a judge construing the language of
this Act of the British parliament and this
parliament undertaking to throttle the court
and prevent any interpretation except that
which the Prime Minister sees fit to give.
I do not wonder that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) wanted common sense
in this matter. I do not wonder that the
Postmaster General has assumed so much
with regard to the law. I do not wonder
that the Minister of Customs (Mr. Paterson),
having in view the advice that the Minister
of Justice (Mr. Fitzpatrick) would give on
this question, desired to look at it in a
common sense way. I am glad that I am
a man of common sense, and not down in
the cellar of the law, where I cannot see the
daylight. I am willing to leave the matter
to the common sense of the common people
of this country. The ordinary man whom
you meet on the streets, or on the farm, and
who needs no lawyer to tell him what the
constitution of Canada is, but knows it as
well as we do ; he will say : Do not talk
to me only of law or of what the judges
have said ; the constitution of Canada was
made in Britain, and the courts have decided
that it means something. If the Prime
Minister of this country thinks it should be
decided to mean something else, why not
let them decide it and not throttle the courts
3442
by an Act that he has no power to pass—
for he is not the imperial parliament.
Now, a great deal was said by the Postmaster General (Sir William Mulock) with
regard to the petitions sent him through the
action of the hon. member for East Grey
(Mr. Sproule). The Postmaster General insinuated that the hon. member for East
Grey was getting up petitions on the one
side for the other of this question. He
undertook to say the petitions had been
sent in here from Orange lodges. Now, let
me be understood. I am not an Orangeman.
I am not a Roman Catholic. But I am a
Canadian, British born ; and I believe that
the Orangemen and the Roman Catholics,
taken one with another, are equally good
citizens and equally loyal to the country.
The petition the hon. member for Grey is
sneered at for bringing into this House is
a petition that every Roman Catholic could
sign, and the signing of which he could
justify to his priest. That petition is as
follows :
We, the undersigned electors of the electoral
division of         do pray that in granting
provincial autonomy to the Northwest Territories the Dominion parliament will not
by
any enactment or otherwise withhold from the
newly created provinces full and unrestricted
freedom of action in all matters affecting the
establishment, maintenance and administration
of schools.
This is spoken of as a partisan petition.
Yet it is a petition that every citizen could
properly sign. It says in effect : Render to
Caesar the things that are Caesar's; render
to Alberta the things that are Alberta's,
and don't take away from the little fellow
what belongs to him at the dictation of
Quebec, which has no right to butt in at
all. There is nothing here either in favour
of or against the principle of separate
schools ; it is simply an humble request,
put in perfectly constitutional form. It is
such a petition as we were asked to vote
for four years ago by the Prime Minister,
at the instigation originally of the hon.
member for Victoria, N.B. (Mr. Costigan).
It was moved that this parliament should
exercise its right of petition, should go to
the foot of the throne and ask that the
Coronation Declaration made by the King
should be amended so that it would not be
offensive to His Majesty's Roman Catholic
liege subjects in the country and throughout
the empire.
These people, I care not whether they be
Orange lodges or Roman Catholics, have
the same right to petition, and their petition
is equally sensible, equally just, equally correct, equally constitutional, and that
is the
petition that my hon. friend from East Grey
(Mr. 'Sproule) is sneered at for bringing in
here. I presented a lot of them myself, they
were sent to me and I presented them ; and
it they petitioned this parliament against
provincial autonomy to the Northwest Territories, I would present the petition, though
3443
COMMONS
I would vote against the prayer of the petition, because I would think it was not
right,
and the people could turn me out when l
sought re-election at their hands. That is the
petition that so much has been said about,
and I thought it wise to put that petition
upon record. That is the petition that is
called by the Postmaster General, one side
of the question; a petition that asks separate
schools to be established is called the other
side of the question. Could anything be
more unfair? There are no petitions coming from Orange lodges asking us to throttle
the little province and prevent it from
establishing separate schools. I call the
attention of the statesmanlike Postmaster
General—I will assume that he is a statesman, although he is self-appointed, self-
adjusted and self—labelled as a statesman.
Mr. LANCASTER. Well, perhaps not
union labelled, and not so labelled by the
people of Canada. The hon. gentleman who
is so statesmanlike, the hon. gentleman who
is at present running the Post Office Department of this country, undertakes to call
that
petition which I have read, one side
of the separate school question ; and
a petition which asks this House to
throttle a province is the other side
of the separate school question. What would
a gentleman from Quebec who advocates
separate schools in the Northwest Territories, say if we attempted in this House,
ten years or five years from now, supposing
the country got incensed at Quebec butting
in on these matters concerning the Northwest, supposing the country got aggravated,
annoyed and disgusted, and say we will
insist for a certain term in doing what the
Finance Minister says is so deplorable, we
will put some people in power who will
settle this school question for ever in Quebec,
just as these gentlemen want this government to settle the school question in the
Northwest Territories, and we will abolish
separate schools in the province of Quebec
and Ontario. Now what would they say to
that ? In principle what is the difference ?
What is the difference between taking away
a man's right and preventing him from
exercising the right ? In common sense, what
is the difference between the two propositions? Am I doing a greater wrong if I
go into a man's barnyard and steal his horse
than if I said to him, although you have got
a horse I will not allow you to use it, I
will control it so that you shall never have
the use of it? To be practical, what is
the difierence '? He cannot use that which
is his own in either case. He cannot deal
with that which is his own, and which he
has a right to deal with. There may be a
difference in the way it may strike one man
or another in the application, but on the
moral principle—and we heard something
even from the Postmaster General about
3444
morals to-night—on the moral principle what
is the difference between your saying to the
province of Quebec ; although you have
yourselves established a right to your
schools in the provinces of Quebec and
Ontario ; you shall not have them any longer,
because we think it was a mistake when you
established them—what would be the difference between saying that and saying to the
Northwest provinces, you shall not exercise
your right to declare whether you want
separate schools or not, we will tie you up
so that you shall never make a declaration
either way ? There is no difference in principle, no man can pretend there is.
Now I want to put on record the statements of some of the friends of hon. gentlemen
opposite. In 1891 Sir Louis Davies
spoke on this question of education in the
Northwest Territories. That gentleman is
now a judge of the Supreme Court. He was
one of. the gentlemen who came into power
on the cry that we should not coerce Manitoba. This is what Sir Louis Davies said
in 1891 :
My opinion is now, and has been for years,
that when that time comes (the time to erect
the Territories into provinces) you cannot withhold from the provinces so erected
the right
to determine for themselves the question of
education in one way or the other. I would
be the last to favour this parliament imposing
upon the people there any system of education,
either free or separate. I only claim that when
a. Bill is introduced to erect those Territories
into provinces that Bill should contain a provision enabling the people of the different
provinces so created to decide what system of
education they will have.
The Hon. David Mills, in the same year,
spoke, not about separate schools in Quebec
or Ontario, not about the British North
America Act, but in regard to the Northwest Territories, the very part of this Dominion
which this parliament is now dealing
with. The Hon. David Mills was recognized
as an authority on constitutional law by
the Reformers of this country, and I think
by a good many Conservatives. In fact, he
was held up by hon. gentlemen opposite
as the great constitutional model of this
Dominion, and this is what he says :
When the people of the Territories, or any
portion of the Territories, are sufficiently
numerous to constitute a province—when, in
fact, they attain their majority in regard to
local matters and when they propose to set
up for themselves—this parliament has no right
to exercise control over them. It can give good
advice, but it has no right to give commands.
When the Territories have a sufficient population to entitle them to become a province,
they
must decide for themselves whether they will
have separate schools or not.
I have my view as to what will be the best
decision for them to arrive at, but I must not
impose on them my view as to how they should
be governed after they have attained their
majority.
3445 MARCH 29, 1905
Now then the ' Globe ' newspaper came out
very lately. I know people lately have said,
the ' Globe ' is going wrong. I do not know,
everybody seems to be going wrong who
does not agree to throttle the new provinces.
Everybody except hon. gentlemen opposite
is agreed that this House should leave questions of sectionalism alone and attend
to the
business of the House. The ' Globe ' newspaper has been talking about this question,
and the ' Globe ' of March 11 said this :
The only settlement of the disturbing Northwest school question that will be just
or safe
or permanent is that settlement most strictly
in accord with the spirit and letter of the
constitution.
The hon. Postmaster General wanted the
spirit of the constitution and not the letter.
The ' Globe ' wants both, and I think I
have shown that the hon. Postmaster General's opinion of that kind of spirit is not
a very good one. I do not pretend to be
a judge of any kind of spirit than that, but
I think that I am as good a judge of that
kind of spirit as the hon. Postmaster General is and he has said that he wants nothing
but the spirit and not the letter. The
' Globe ' says :
The only settlement of the disturbing Northwest school question that will be just
or safe
or permanent is that settlement most strictly
in accord with the spirit and letter of the constitution. Anything that swerves from
that
straight course, squinting in the direction of
any faction or creed or race, is charged with
dynamite—
These are the people that are raising the
religious question in this House—the 'Globe'
newspaper. I do not know whether the
hon. Minister of Customs makes the 'Globe'
pay duty on this dynamite or on these dynamite articles or whether hon. gentlemen
opposite are now using the dynamite as well
as the pistol and medicine that my hon.
friend from North Toronto (Mr. Foster)
spoke about this afternoon.
—and sooner or later may work havoc in the
provinces, if not in the Dominion. The personal
opinions of individuals or the preferences of
classes or communities are not sufficiently certain and substantial to form a sure
foundation
for the institutions of the country. In the
present instance, political safety, social progress and national peace can be found
nowhere
but in standing by the constitution.
Now, it goes on to discuss the question
at some length and I will not trouble the
House with it, but it reaches this conclusion :
Provincial autonomy under the constitution
carries with it for the new provinces, unless
expressly prohibited by the constitution, autonomy in education.
It was necessary for the ' Globe ' newspaper to tell the premier of this country
that autonomy meant autonomy, that it did
not mean something else. It was necessary
3446
for the ' Globe ' to try and pull a line on
the Prime Minister as the organ of the
party in the city of Toronto. I presume
that the ' Globe ' would say that it was the
chief organ of the party in the whole Dominion. I cannot pronounce upon that point,
but certainly it is one of the principal organs
in the Dominion, and before this Bill could
be read a second time, in the hope that some
other policy would be adopted, the ' Globe '
gave the advice that provincial autonomy
under the constitution means autonomy in
education. Is it any wonder that my hon.
friend who leads the opposition here is
obliged to put on record an amendment to
this Bill to say so ? The ' Globe ' said that
it was necessary to tell the Prime Minister that autonomy meant autonomy in education
as well as in anything else, and for
fear that some people would think that the
government could say that my hon. friend
the leader of the opposition did not agree
with the ' Globe ' I would point out that, as
it happened on these two occasions these
two gentlemen—I think the gentleman who
wrote this article was an honest man, and I
know there is no more honourable man in the
Dominion of Canada than my hon. friend
the leader of the opposition—came forward
and took the same view as the whole Dominion of Canada will if it gets a chance. If
the government went to the country upon
this question to-day, the government know
very well that the whole Dominion, whether Grits or Tories heretofore, would unite
by their votes in saying that the ' Globe '
was right on this occasion. Then, the
' Globe ' proceeds :
To this doctrine we can ask all classes and
creeds to subscribe.
The ' Globe ' thinks, as I do, that all
classes and creeds ought to subscribe to the
constitution or else get off the earth as far
as Canada is concerned. If they stay in
Canada and get the benefit of our constitution which we all say affords the greatest
freedom that exists anywhere they should
subscribe to and support that constitution.
To this doctrine we can ask all classes and
creeds to subscribe. In so far as they appreciate and approve the principles of responsible
self government, all citizens should here be in
agreement. The question of the value of
separate schools is not primarily involved.
And it is not.
It is not the primary question. It may be
forced to the front by the Orangemen of
Ontario and the Ultramontanes of Quebec, but,
in so far as the problem is one for the Dominion parliament to solve, the question
of
separate schools is not the real issue. To
make it the real issue is to misplace the
emphasis and to engender strife.
Who misplaced the emphasis and who engendered strife ? The right hon. leader of
the government, when he brought in this
Bill. The ' Globe ' is not a perjured wit
3447 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â COMMONS Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
ness ; it is not even a retiring member of
the government. It did not go out for principle, because it never was in.
The issue before parliament is this: In
giving provincial status to the Northwest Territory is parliament under obligation
to make the
maintenance of separate schools a permanent
responsibility of the new provinces? In dealing
with this vexed question parliament should go
not one hair's breadth beyond its indisputable
constitutional obligation. Leave everything
provincial to the provinces. Any other course
will lead to inextricable confusion, and put a
new root of bitterness into the fertile soil of
our national life.
Who has put the root of bitterness into
the fertile soil of our national life ?—The
right hon. Prime Minister who cannot pass
his Autonomy Bill without dragging that
question into parliament that the 'Globe'
tells him should be left to the provinces.
The ' Globe' has evidently been found
fault with by somebody, some man on the
street that we have heard about, has been
to see the ' Globe,' but the ' Globe' thinks
it has done right to have its own opinion.
The 'Globe' on March 11 said what I have
just read, but I have also here the 'Globe'
of March 21, just ten days later. Somebody
has been after the ' Globe ' in the meantime
with this result that the ' Globe' says that
what we said before we believe and we are
still more of that opinion than we were at
the time you found fault with us. That is
our argument, and the more hon. gentlemen
opposite argue, the more we are satisfied
they are all wrong. The more they are
finding fault with the 'Globe' the more
the ' Globe ' feels convinced that it is right
and it repeats what it said before only that
it says it in stronger terms : This is what
the ' Globe ' says on March 21 :
1. The 'Globe' stands for the provincial
rights of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Those
rights are created and secured by and under
the British North America Act. The 'terms
and conditions' of their provincial autonomy
must be ' subject to the provisions of this Act.'
They can have no rights as provinces that are
not expressed or implied in the British North
America Act, 1867 to 1886. They can be deprived of no rights to which they are entitled
under that constitution.
2. The ' Globe ' holds, as has been argued in
these columns again and again, that the new
provinces now to be created do not come under
the separate school obligation of section 93,
clause 1, of the British North America Act,
and, therefore, they are free under the constitution exclusively to make laws in relation
to education, to continue their present system,
to modify it or to substitute another for it,
as their legislatures shall decide. Our reasons
for holding to this view were stated yesterday,
and in several earlier articles, and at the very
opening of the discussion.
3. The ' Globe ' is persuaded, by its first-hand
knowledge of western conditions and by the
assurances of representative western men, that
had the education question been left without
3448
direction or trammel to the legislatures, the
present system would have been enacted, and all the privileges possible under any
obligatory federal clause would have been secured to the Catholic minorities without
dispute or acrimonious debate.
4. The 'Globe' holds that the educational
clauses in the first draft of the Autonomy Bills
are ultra vires of the federal parliament,
especially the third clause which is held to
contravene the Dominion Lands Act and to
interfere with the provincial control of the
details of school administration.
5. The 'Globe,' as a logical consequence of
the foregoing, holds to be ultra vires of parliament and an infringement, in theory
if not
in practice, of the rights of the provinces under
the constitution, any legislation based on
the assumption that in the meaning of
the British North America Act there is
no difference between the creation of a
province out of territory for thirty-five
years a part of Canada and under federal
supervision, and the union to the Canadian
confederation of an independent, self-governing, autonymous province or colony such
as
British Columbia was prior to 1871 or as Newfoundland is to-day. A territory is not
a
province, and the constitutional obligations of
a province cannot rest upon a territory until it
becomes a province.
That is the 'Globe's' statement and that
is my idea of what is right. I do not say it
is right because the 'Globe' says so, but I
do say that when the 'Globe,'which is not
going out of its way to injure the government says so, it means a great majority of
the people of this country, Liberals as well
as Conservatives, the independent thinking
people on both sides of politics, are of the
opinion that the government is doing wrong.
But, says the government, we are in for five
years anyway and what matters it ? Well,
I say to them that the five years will go by.
They may hold themselves in power for five
years, but when the election comes the people of Canada will do as the people of Lincoln
county did four years after the
pledge of the Prime Minister was broken
and on which pledge they returned a supporter of his to this House. The chief whip
of the Reform party held the constituency
of Lincoln by a majority of nearly 500, but
the government broke its pledges as to provincial rights, as on every other question,
and the people of the county of Lincoln
punished the government because of its
broken pledges, and a man of no greater
ability than your humble servant was elected and the chief whip of the Reform party
was left at home. As the people of Lincoln
county did in that instance, so shall the
people of the Dominion do when they get
the opportunity. It may be that the Prime
Minister will retire from office before an
appeal is again made to the electorate; it
may be that the Minister of Finance or the
statesmanlike Postmaster General will make
himself or get some one to make him Prime
Minister, but whoever be the Liberal Prime
Minister who appeals to the people of Can
3449 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â MARCH 30, 1905 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
ada he will find that the people of this Dominion will not stand for interference
with
the autonomy of the provinces, will not
stand for broken pledges, will not stand for
the shackling of these great provinces of
the Northwest with onerous restrictions as
to education and the administration of their
public lands. Why have we no Minister of
the Interior to-day? Why is the government afraid to appoint a Minister of the
Interior and send him for election to the
people of the west? I have not the assurance which some gentlemen on the other
side have to say that they speak for the
people of the Northwest Territories when
they have no mandate to speak on this question ; I do not pretend to speak for the
people of the Northwest Territories except to
say that they want to be left alone to attend to their own business, but I do believe
that the people of the Northwest Territories
will treat this government as it deserves to
be treated for interfering with their provincial rights. The government does not
dare to appoint a Minister of the Interior
because they know that the people of the
Northwest would reject him by an overwhelming vote. The Prime Minister is not
here to-night, but in times past he has
learned something from this side of the
House, and I invite the Minister of Customs and the Minister of Finance who are
now present to tell the Prime Minister that
it is his duty to appoint a Minister of the
Interior and to test the feelings of the people of the west on this question. That
is
the constitutional way to proceed, but these
gentlemen do not want things done constitutionally. They had not much respect for
the constitution when, the Minister of Finance being absent in England, they introduced
without his knowledge this Bill which
deals with great financial issues seriously
affecting the Dominion. They had not much
respect for the constitution when in the
absence of their Minister of the Interior,
who is specially charged with matters pertaining to the west, they drafted and proposed
in parliament this measure which
vitally concerns the people whose interest
he was specially charged to guard. Let
them appoint their Minister of the Interior
and they can soon find out whether we are
right or they are right. Sir, as a man trying to do the honourable thing and representing
an honourable constituency, I have
no course left to me but to vote for the
amendment of the leader of the opposition.
In doing so, I believe I am voicing the opinions of the Reformers as well as the Conservatives,
of the respectable Roman Catholics as well as the respectable Protestants
of my county. If I do that I am doing my
whole duty, and, Sir, if the members of this
cabinet would study more what the people
want and not what may suit the political
exigencies of the moment they would be
representing the people of Canada better
than they are to-day.
3450
Motion agreed to.
On motion of Mr. Fielding, House adjourned at 12.15 a.m. Thursday.
This individual participated in:
