p-nr-KIIFIIITIUH '

Sounders Administration [Triéd and Found Wanting

Full Text of the Speech

Year.

- The following speech on the Bud- get was delivered in the Legislature last week by the Hon. J. D. Stewart, leader b: the Opposition. Mr. Stew- art, began his address on Wednesday evening, April are, following Prem- jer Saunders on the motion to go into supply!

Mr. Speaker: I must confess that 1 and myself. as it were, between two horns of a dilemma. I must either break a fundamental rule of debate, or I must leave the budget gpccch of thefleader of the House unanswered. The hon. gentleman proposed a resolution to the House that :51; House do resolve itself into Committee for-the purpose of con- sidering Supply. Unfortunately he waited until the motion was put, and carried and now we are in thLfpo- sltion, that we have no motion be- mrs thy House to speak to. I do not gupposfl a legislative body ever found itself in a position such as we are in at-this moment. I have been criticised on other occasions because, with the very best intentions, I have attempted ‘to point out occasional errors in procedure, and in that way to discharge my duly. I have been Lrittcired because I have been “hold-

Ving up the proceedings"; and var- ious other criticisms have been made with respect to my actions. Howev- er. I ahail take v. chance in ‘Dollll- ing out this further error to the House. '

At this late hour I shall not at- tempt.‘ to go‘ into the various matters dealt with in the budget speech..I would not. think oi wearying the House at this hour with an array of figures, Is will be necessary before I um through, however. to deal with these matters somewhat in detail, to follow my hon. friend through his meanderirigs: and I can assure you that; 1 shall not agree with everything ‘that he has said. 1 shall attempt to point out to you some fallacies and some errors which h! has made during the course of his speech.

,‘ non, Mr, Lea’: Illness

I rIgret very much the illness oi my hon. friend the Minister of AK- riculture. I am sorry that- he is Ml here, because I believe he would have availed himself b: his rlsht and privilege of delivering the budget speech on this occasion. I think it would‘ have been s. fortunate thing, because it is l. lost cause at hesi- iind it requires all the tact and abil- ity that can be brought to bell’ i0 put a good face-on it; and I am ‘tum sure the Minister of Agrloiiltlllfl would have done that. I believe he would have dealt with the budget as it is dealt with in other parlia- ments: that. he would have made a clear and concise statement of the finances of the Province and con- tented himself with that. I d0 I109 believe he would have plundered all over creation. giving us experiment- al; lbctures and advice on man.’ things that perhaps _many oi the members sitting here are more ful- ly acquainted with than the Prem- ier himself. i Unfortunately, however, he was not able gs pe present. It is cheering to learn that he is recov- ering, and we hope to see him fully restored tohis “outed health and strength. . , ‘ l ,

‘Phc leader of the House has coin- ptained of iii usage at‘ the hands oi the Opposition, and he prefixed his remarks with the rather remarkable

statement that he hated to talk lbflilbllimloilnll that is true. MP- snrmr. liais- given himself. a m- mcudein "amount of punishment durfitiia ‘i two hours ma, a, inu- (La tirMI-Ie has given us many Cilriftti_ stalls of his ‘biography. Ind. has us all the nllty will" that havr been said about him frotn this side of that-louse. We seem to have; iiiadsquiia a martyr o! hill" Ltlaugiiter). '

m told us, at the very liarlnnlnl- ihtt Government ha! 81"" l“ bait public service ever givenln "l! balm of the Province. ms was flu‘ bu» brief that over was preval- Ihgsieiild bl ind. 011.0"! illlm at Ot-ta__ "His i-reaentatlofl tlie cap viii regard to the aw car (my fag agporuibic ‘for iii!

’ ' ’ tieu In Paul», i l vn weuldgntvr

htllllls _ . throughout the Ihotlth of Jalltllf).

____-_____-

_ _ on the Budget by the Hon. J. D. Stewart, Con- servative Leader, Whose Review of the Political Situation Laid Bare the Weakness and Incompetence of the Government i-n Every Pepartment of Public Service and Constituted la Sweep- in: Illllwtlllellt 0f the Bungling Administration of the Past‘ |

‘ii-..-

exerted himself so~ strenuously on 011M’. 00685100. All {h9g3 things he has done-so he tells us. Ii he hates talking about , himself, I certainly believe he loves himself! (Applause).

The Public Debt.

As I said before, I do not propose at this late hour to discuss the fin- ances in detail. Perhaps I might re- fer for a moment. however, to one m’ tw° "M1188 by the way. My hon. friend was very wroth that certain lWWllDB-Dérs had made statements with regard to the public debt with which he did not agree. He under- took fo distinguish between debt and liability. I mil! be dense, Mr. Speak- er, but I must confess that I was absolutely unable to follow him in this matter. I would like, however, to direct his attention to the report of the Provincial Auditor, which he says i: true from cover to cover. If he will refer to the very early pages of that report of 1928 he will find that in 1927 the debt of the Pro- vines-not the “liability" but the debt—was increased in that year by the sum of $159,000. If he refers to his own external audit. the last of his, apparently, that will ever ap- poar-the outside audit of Messrs. Poole and Scarth-he will flnd that when he took office in August 1921, there was a surplus in the treasury. Therefore I do not think it lies in his mouth now to say that he i; not responsible for that increase in debt of $159,000. (Applause).

If he refers to tlie statement of the liabilities of the Province “in the last provincial audit, he will find that the debt was increased in 1928 by some $196000. So that out of the mouth of his llkovincial Auditor, by whom he swears, and his own ex- ternal auditors whom he appointed last year. he has increased the debt by some $350,000 since coming into power. (Applause). And yet he is being "maligned" by The Guardian because they say he went in debt.’ I shall not follow that any further at present; I shall deal with it a iii‘- tle later on, and somewhat more ex- tensively.

That is the condition, and it is bad enough. But there is another phase oi it that perhaps is evpn worse. That is the ieelingbf unclu- tatnty the questioning that arises‘? our minds, whether ‘or not, eve. - thing is disclosed even then. i How much is there that. is not shown here by this audit? We know the great desire oi Liberal Governments to show surpluses. It does not mat- lei- about the debt, about the liabil- ity; that can all be oililltillled BWBY- but you must not have a deficit! Un- fortunately, my hon. friend has had one this year; though l suppose his contention is that because he budg- eted for a large deficit and had a small one therefore he has none at alt-that he actually. has a surplus, in fact. Because they~must find a surplus, in some way.

Making surpluses

There are many ways of maklns surpluses. so fal- as my hon. friends are concerned it depends a great deal on where you draw the linc through the accounts; whore you commence your addition and where you stop. Onaway cf making a sur- plus for the yogi‘ l! i0 8WD peylhs bills. Take in all your revenue. and don't pay all your bills, and then on- 1y put in what you have paid during the year, and you will have a sur- plus. New how are we to ascertain how many bills are unpaid? We have no record here, none whatever; but therexare indications that there may be some. We hear very many rumors u-shstsjndications. We have been sndggvoging, throughout the two weeks more of this session so far to getdnformatlon on this 901M- sopsems got; though it was of very little use to us on account of the way in which the questions were answer- ed. Other information we did not get at all. The questions have been on he Order Paper for almost two meta and we have been pressing for trim continually, put so iar without shy success. 7 '

We did hear, however. of large flo- ' of uovefliiuent ch01!"

i have heard that row" m" I'M‘

are" i’ t" “ti”?!

..,,....,.:..- . . -

ebeutlall nan-s mndiocnat

:i~nr.-unARi.o'r'rs-l~riw~ ousiiomlsrm '

OPPOSITION LEADER A AL ES THE B

DGE

“it

Y

parts of the Province. We haverin- Iormation, too, of some very large“ individual amounts that remained unpaid aftrr the end of December.

Take again the evidence furnished by the Public Accounts. $20,000 was borrowed iurrt year for the purpose of building a ‘ferry boat for Cardi- gen ferry. $14,500 of that was spent. The rest, apparently. went into cur- rent rcvcnue. we do not know how much is left over; wc do not know how much the extras cost. I under- stand that the boat was completed before the end of December, and we have no exact accounting of this item at all. That is the situation with respect to other inattcrs as well, and it is a situation that will cause disquictude and suspicion in the minds of the p20pi0 of this Province. They will question, not the accuracy on the face of the Provin- cial Auditor's report, but whether or not the Provincial Auditor has been furnished with all the data. that is necessary to present the public ac- counts arid give a. correct nnd com- plete statement for the year.

No External Audit

HOW Cull that situation be cor- iecied? How can the minds of the people be pu; at rcsi, with regard to this important matter? The answer is, by-the External Audit; tlie very thins that my hon. friend has (tis- pensed with as a “useless expendit- ure." It must have been ivorryliiig him a great; deal. because it ivas the very met thing that lie attempted tovclear out of the way when he be- gan his budgetvspeecli.

I Bin not going to follow my hon.

friend in his rambling discussion on the merits of an External Audit ili other Provinces. I am not going to say whether it is used in other Prov- inces or not; but I will say this, that under our systeln of accounting it serves a very useful and, as I see ll. 8K1 llldisliollsflble purpose, because it shows to the satisfaction of the Legislature and the public the num- ber of bills that were left unpaid at the end of the year and were paid subsequently throughout tlie early months 0i’ tlie new your; and-there. fore it shows the actual amount of expenditures where they arc 'not shown in the report of the Provin- cial Auditor. At the prescift time there may be $100,000 of unpaid bills. There is no means of ascertaining; this House has not tho information. With an outside auditor we have an independent and experienced ac- countant in the arson of a bank manager coming in and going over these things carefully: a man who understands accounting, who cannot be fooled. and who gets that infor- mation and places it bcforc llie peo- ple in the External Audit. Our system of external ailditiiig 118s been in vogue iii this Province for many years, It was inaugurated at the some time as the present Aud- it Act and the system under which the present auditor works; and it has caused an improvement all around in our system of Govern- ment accounting.‘

Saving at The Wrong End

My hon. friend boasts of the sav- ing he has effected by dispensing with the external audit. Why did he not make his saving last year? An audit was made by the outgoing Government up io the time they went out. of power; an audit. per- formed by men of unblemished re- putation and undoubted ability- Yet my hon. friend brought in two aud- ltors, one a partisan, to go over that very same work, ,and paid thcni $660. The audit which we performed before we went out cost $300 and the external audit of the year before $75.00. My hon. friend paid for one audit just twice as much as the pro- vious Government paid for two, and now he ts preaching about extran- gance. He is saving money now, he says, but In doing so he is depriving the people of a statement with re- gal-d to the public accounts. It does not worry him. apparently, to spend two or three thousand dollars in ex- pensive furnishings for this bulld- ing, It doeanot worry him a bit to spend a hundred thousand; dollars without any consideration or con-

cccnomtcai f

he is doing away with a very neccss , and proper srrvice,_arirl saving a. couple of hun- dred dollars a year by it.

Continuing the debate on Thurs- day afternoon, April 4th, Mr. Stew- art said -

when the debate was adjourned I had been discussing the decision of the Government m cease putting out an external audit. I had shown that such a decision on the part of the Government was not in the public interest. More than that, that it was an act that might be viewed with a great deal of suspicion for the reas- D118 which I gave. The Leader of the Government made the announce- ment last night-an announcement which had been preceded by some rather hectic editorials in the party press, of his reasons why the publi- cation of the external audit should be discontinued. To say the least. none of these reasons are very con- vincing, The ao-called precedents mentioned in the Liberal press and by my hon. friend are not precedents at all, because all the different pro- vinces, and especially the Federal Government, have different, methods of keeping accounts, and what might be very necessary in one province might not be at all necessary in an- other. As I said last evening, this system of putting out an external liuclit was established in this Pro- vince many years ago. It came in simultaneously with our present Audit Act and cur present Provinc- ial Ailditor, and it has been carried on by both political parties ever since. But my hon. friend deems himself a Solomon; he iecls that the external audit is an unnoceseary and useless expenditure, and therefore lie does away with it. That is the os- tcnciblc reason, but we submit that the real reason is far otherwise. The discontinuance of this audit prevents the public from knowing how many bills that should have been charged up against the revenues [of 1928 are carried over ‘this: another year. That is one oi the reasons-and there are a. number of othcrslcqually valid- u-hy the publication of an external audit docs not suit my hon. friend at at the present time. "

The Teachers’ Strike

I believe it was on Tuesday last lliat I ivas coming ili through the corridors of this Chamber and I was attracted by a number of Liberal ii lends offering congratulations to the srnioi‘ member for West River. (H011. B. W. LcPage) which lie was receiving ivitli his usual modesty and bashfulnccs. I was rather interested ll‘. the circumstances; I wondered what caused it; I thought perhaps my lion. friend had had a birthday, cr that tlio rule regarding titles had been silspcndcd aiid that he had rc- ceived a knighthood, But finally I was told the reason. My hon. friend had stopped the teachers.‘ strike, and so he was receiving congratulations.

In as much as the leader of the Government has seen fit to deal with this matter on the floor of the House. it_is perhaps only proper that I should make some reference to it. I refrained from doing so at the til-lie, for the reason that I felt it was a delicate situation, a situation in which many public interests were seriously "involved. It was a. matter of policy on the part of the Gov- eminent and of the Government's dealings with a large body of our citizens. I reflccied that it was not ndvisablc to make any reference l0 it ivlicn such reference mlflllli Callie some difficulty or prevent a settle- mclit of a. very important matter. Nolv, however, that the motto!‘ is ll least temporarily settled, I would like to make one or two observations ivlth ii-egard to it.

Our educational system needs all the care and attention that Call b8 given to it. My hon. friend the lead- er of ,,the Government waxed elo- quent 188C night with regard w this matter. He said that previous sov- crnments had been asleep on tho job, and that he was coins to do I great many things in the way of consolidation of schools. and so forth. It is time enough, I submit, for my hon. friend to boast of his strength and the strength oi his Government when they accomplish something in that line. The work is all before them, and they should be reserving their energy for that work rather than boasting in advance.

A Serious Matter

However, this strike has been a serious matter. It has given this Province some very unfavorable ad- vertising all over Canada and be- yond Canada. We have seen the press of other Provinces carrying headl'nes with regard to that strike which certainly were not calculated toplace this Province in a favorable light so far as our educational syl- tem is concerned.

Although the strike has been tern-

tract.‘ for machinery, and mny other

Jlllillaelvtnvw lie hymilflll"!

porarily settled. my conviction is that many of the teachers will so

back to their work more dissatisfied than ever. and with leu inclination to put their‘ belt efforts into their work. There are many other things In connection with the strike that will be detrimental to the cause of education for many years toimme; and I want to aayfliat so far as t am concerned I place all the blame and responsibility upon the Govern- ment of this Province.

My hon. friends came into power with full knowledge of the financial conditions. They knew just what tn- crease of revenue had been made, and they knew the expenditures that had to be made out of the revenue from all sources. They were inter- viewed by the teachers’ organiza- tion, and they knew what the teach- ?" Were "questing. We have heard the statement of the leader of the Government on many occasions last year in the House, in which he ex- pressed great sympathy for the teachers and the hope of doing something for them. The teachers were encouraged in every posible way to expect that something would be done; and they went out from the interview satisfied to wait anoher year.

My submission is that during this It!!!‘ not-hing at all was done. No at- tempt was made to implement the assurance given on that. occasion. I will deal with that a little later on, after I have reviewed the events which followed. The year passed and the teachers came back. Their ex- ecutive interviewcd the Govern- ment again. They naturally had be- come more insistent. They urged more strongly their demands, u 111;- tle more militantly. perhaps, than lhe year before.

Buugling Tactics _

Rumor has it that. they were not so kindly treated on this occas- ion; that they were told many things to 1:0 to the Opposition, to see what I would do for them. They were ac- cused of talking party poliiics. They lwlkn then to sec what mariner of men they were dealing with. Their

organizing a strike.

If ordinary diplomacy and com- man sense had been used in tlie treatment of these teachers, Mr, Speaker, there is not any question in my mind that the throat d! a, strike would nevcr have occurrfld. .

Then we had some pronouncement on tlie floor of this House, and scmc letters in the press. Let me just draw your atteihion to this: that ini- mediately following this confzrsnce i" Febfllflly between tlie Govern- ment and the committee from the Teachers’ Federation the Liberal press of tliisprovince began to curry all sorts of correspondence con- demning the teachers. Many of those letters-some of them signed. seine of them anonymout-uirged that the teachers were already receiving enough pay. A campaign was at once started against them in the Liberal press. That was the situation until the next conference was held, and the appointment. of a commission was proposed. ~

The reports we have of that con- ference are to the effect that the delegation from the Teachers’ Fed- eration demanded an independent commission, and were refused. My hon. friend stated last night that there was a misunderstanding, that they did not understand one anoth- er. At any rate. they went away with- out the promise of an independent commimion. So that delegation fail- ed in its object and the order went out for the strike to go on. ‘Thosg are the facts, as the public have them.