the Minister in introducing his railway | entertained the year before. They bespeech in another place. He adverts to lieved that the lands in the North-West Mr. Fleming, and says :— were going to produce even more than "When I remind the House that the land was at first anticipated · that it was alone, according to the authority of the right wise and prudent for the Government to hon. Minister of the Interior, upon the calcu- continue building that road under the lations which he believes to be sound, within Act of 1874 and authority was given the next ten years will give us $38,000,000 in hand, and $32,000,000 to receive on mortgages to the ministers to carry it on as a public within the following ten years, or a total sum work; and so Parliament rose under of $70,000,000, it will be seen that we incur that impression - that it was to be carno risk." ried on as a public work, and in the interests of the people of this country. Well, what was the next step? We were astounded and surprised on hearing that the Government were making arrangements last summer, in England, for the building of the Pacific Railway under a new proposition endeavoring to induce a syndicate to take up the work, and build it as a company work. It was discussed, of course, in the papers, and I am not going to advert to that, but a provisional contract was made. The terms of that provisional contract were kept entirely secret. The people were not informed until Parliament met what that proposition was, or in what way it Now, after the mature reflection of twelve months after these resolutions are passed, the Minister is still of the opinion those lands will yield that very handsome revenue. As time passes, I think that opinion is confirmed. Certainly, the lands have a higher value now than they had in 1880, and a higher value in 1880 than in 1879, because things look much better in the North-West than they did even two years ago. He goes on: "I have no hesitation in saying that the whole sentiment of the country has changed on this question. I am not at all ashamed to say that my own opinions have completely changed in relation to the character of this great work. I remember well that when the then First Minister brought in his Act in 1874, for the construction of this as a Government work, I felt that we were incurring too great a responsibility. I believed, at that time, it was an unsafe and unsound policy for the Government of this country to undertake the construction of this great national work from end to end as a Government work, and I'did not hesitate to express my opinions as freely and forcibly as I could on the occasion of the passage of that measure. But the whole condition of Canada has changed since then." It just confirms what I said yesterday. "There is not an intelligent man in this country who does not look upon the prospect of the settlement and development of the North-West with entirely different feelings from those that were then entertained." The Minister goes on to speak in the same glowing terms of the vast advantages of building this railway as a public work. Now, hon. gentlemen, at the time Parliament rose last year we were led to believe that the Government policy was still unchanged. In fact, they had more confidence in the wisdom and prudence of that policy then than they was we going to affect the country. Not until the 10th December last with acquainted the were details of this contract. Ι do not hesitate to say it was with considerable surprise that the people of this country learned the terms of that agreement, so different from what they would have anticipated - so different from what they had a right to believe a prudent Government would have entered upon, considering the changed aspect of affairs alluded to by the Minister of Railways in the preceding session. We have this contract now before us, and I have endeavored, though feebly, to discuss some features of the propositions yesterday and to-day. very few remarks, call attention to another proposition that has been made since this one has been submitted to Parliament. We are informed that the proposal is only provisional — that the Government are free to accept it or not as they may be directed by the wisdom of Parliament. The Government do not intend to tie the hands of Parliament, and we are free to sanction or reject it. While this contract was under discussion, so great and excessive are thought to be its terms by the people of this I will now, in a country, that a new proposal has been any possibility of the road being assumed made by another company a company by the people, the Government had the composed entirely of Canadians- who right to purchase it at a fair valuation. offered to do this work on terms consid- The omission of that in this contract is a erably more beneficial to the people of very serious blemish. We know, as a Canada. I shall briefly draw attention to matter of fact, in many cases railways the points of difference between the are now owned by Governments. We two. In the first place, there is know there is a very wide-spread opinion a difference of $3,000,000 in the money in the United States that the great trunk consideration a very considerable lines ought to be owned by the Governitem. In the appropriation of land ment that the evil consequences of the there is also a difference of 3,000,000 monopolies that trunk lines have establishacres. If we take the land at the figure ed have been so marked and distinct that it fixed by the Government, I think the has created a belief in the minds of the peodifference in these two items alone would ple that the Government ought to own at be over $12,000,000 the land being least the trunk lines of the country. In valued at the rate fixed by the regulations this great work, which up, at all events of the late Government, three dollars to a recent period, even the present Govand some cents per acre; and in ad-ernment thought was one that ought to dition to this large item, the terms be owned and run by the Government, throughout the new contract, as compared it does seem to me a very marked omis with the old, are very much more in the interests of the people of Canada. They fairly apportion the building of the prairie section, as was provided under the Allan contract, taking the correct amount rate ably for that; then, after, the more difficult sections. They also expressed their willingness to pay duty on any imports they might make. They ask for no monopoly of the railway, leaving it perfectly free to the Parliament of the Dominion and the legislatures of the provinces to charter any other or rival lines if they please. They ask for no exemptions in the way of taxes, and for no release from the ordinary land taxes. They also insert a provision which is, to my mind, an extremely important one, and one which I would like to see in this contract very much that is, the right of the Government of this country, if they deem it wise, at some future time, to re-purchase this road. That proposal is in the new, and not in the old offer. While on that subject, I think it is a very grave blemish on the proposition before Parliament, that we are asked to give subsidies to such a large extent to a company, while we are to be debarred in the future from acquiring the property which has been made almost exclusively by our own money. I do not think you can point to any precedent for this in the legislation of the country. I can show, where railways have been aided largely, by the Crown, an almost invariable practice has been, where there was sion that this clause is not included in the contract. I take it from the observations made by members of this Government in another place, in introducing the resolutions to which I have referred, under which they propose to build this road, their intention was not to hand it over to a company. It would have been to my mind a very excellent scheme, which would have carried out the idea so many of us often dreamt of — of the people of this country owning and controlling an all rail route from ocean to ocean. We have it in the East in the Intercolonial Railway. I doubt if our friends of the Maritime Provinces would like to see that road handed over to a company. I know there has been a protest when any such proposition has been spoken of. If I chose to go on and read the opinions of people weil entitled to be heard on this subject, I could show that it is their belief that the Pacific Railway- at least those sections now open and which will be completed in a couple of years - will be a paying concern. We know the Pembina Branch has paid a large percentage over and above the working expenses from the very first. The Thunder Bay section will only be run during the summer season, when boats are plying between the ports of Ontario and Thunder Bay, and that section will pay during the summer season, no doubt. from the first. Nobody doubts it, and I should like to ask the opinion of my Hon. Mr. SMITH put up the money? Where did they hon. friends from Manitoba whether | men individually, and they are men of they agree with me that the prairie sec- very large means, who have made their tion, built with reasonable rapidity, will money by their own industry. They are also pay? Those are all sections of the not great capitalists who made their road that are cheaply run. We have money in stocks, but sound, substantial ourselves built the road between Selkirk men. It is not proper for me to draw a and Thunder Bay as a very superior comparison, but they are undoubtedly line. The grades have been kept down good for ten, fifteen, or twenty times the very low. Going east, especially, they are amount of the capital they propose to no heavier than the grades on the Grand subscribe. I know several of them myTrunk Railway. I have the statement self, and they rank among Canadian of the Minister charged with that branch millionaires. One or two of them live in of the public service that he believes the the vicinity of Ottawa, and I can at all one hundred miles to be opened next year events speak for them. They are pruwould be a paying road, and I think he dent, cautious men, who would not have is quite right. I think when the section put up their money unless they were in British Columbia is finished, it will prepared to embark in the enterprise. not be a paying road at first; but, At all events they give the best possible not being a through railway, it will proof of it; they put up a million and not have to be run at a high rate a half of dollars, and they say we will of speed, and will, therefore, probably | forfeit that if we decline to sign a conearn its working expenses. Another tract based on the proposition we have feature in the new proposition is the submitted." allotment of stock. That is entirely different from the allotment as proposed in the Syndicate. It will be free for any one to take stock who wishes to enter his name on the stock book. The tolls are to be placed under the supervision of the Government. Then there are offers for the Parliament ΟΙ Government, should they desire it, to suspend the building of the eastern section, and substitute for it, at a greatly reduced rate, the Sault Ste. Marie line, and that road could be utilized within the next three years. Now, I think this is a proposal which ought rot to be lightly passed over a proposition that would save the people of this country a sum of $10,000,000 or $12,000,000 directly, besides the immense savings in other ways, in exemptions from customs duties and taxation, and freedom from monopoly. Moreover, the new Syndicate actually paid up in bank $1,400,000, as an earnest that they were prepared to sign the contract with the Government on the basis of their proposition. Now, if we are not perpetrating a huge farce, if we are really seriously considering what is best to be done in the building of this railway, it does seem to me that we cannot ignore that proposition which has been submitted to us by gentlemen of whose capacity none of us can have the slightest doubt. We know many of these gentle - Hon. Mr. SCOTT They put it up in several banks of the country, and communicated the fact either to the Minister of Railways or the Minister of Finance. It was announced in another place that the money was forthcoming, and I am not aware that the ground was taken by the Government or their supporters that it was not there. Hon. Mr. SMITH - Was it put into the hands of the Receiver-General? Hon. Mr. SCOIT It was put into the banks of this country, and the Government were notified by letter from those banks that they held that money as security that the gentlemen who deposited it were prepared to enter into a contract such as that contained in their proposal to the Government. I do not think my hon. friend will dare to cast any reflection on the honesty of the gentlemen who compose that Syndicate, or to say that they in any way attempted a sham on the people of this country. I think he knows some of those gentlemen personally, and he knows that they would scorn to lend themselves to any trick; at all events it is very easy to test their sincerity. It is not a point on which hon. gentlemen can escape or by which they can relieve themselves from the position they are in of voting away fifteen millions of the people's money by saying that these men are not in earnest. I have seen myself the published letters from the bank managers, stating that they held the money, and that it was a forfeit to the Government of Canada if these gentlemen failed to put up their security and sign a contract in the terms contained in their proposal to the ministry. These facts cannot be contradicted, and if this House feels that it is important to save twelve or fifteen millions of dollars to the people of Canada, we ought to hesitate to accept the proposition of the Government in view of this second tender. This House has hitherto very properly taken a warm interest in keeping the public expenditure within proper bounds. I know that in past years, when I sat on the other side of this Chamber, the Government, of which I was a member, was very keenly criticized when it was supposed that the public expenditure was not conducted with due regard to economy, and we had days and days of debate about some contract for the carriage not for the articles themselves of nuts and bolts, in which it was alleged that some few hundreds of dollars might have been saved to this country if some man, who had no appliances, in Montreal, had received the contract, and I think the House acted very properly in exercising a keen supervision over the expenditure of the public money. This House is independent of the political excitement of the hour; its members are not sent to the country for re-election if the Government is forced into a position it does not choose to take. The Senate has often assumed to itself, and has frequently declared, that it was truly the guardian of the interests of the people of this country. Now is the opportunity to prove the truth of that assumption; here is the opportunity for the Senate, if they please to exercise their functions, to save to the country an enormous sum of money by accepting the offer of the second Syndicate. My hon. friend (Sir Alex. Campbell) smiles. I deny that he, or any hon. gentleman, can rise in his place and say that that proposition is a sham or a fraud. He knows that the gentlemen who are connected with that offer would not lend themselves to a trick of that kind. It is very easily proved, however. Say to these gentlemen, "Put up your money, put it under our control, and we will award you the contract." Twenty-four hours would not roll over before the challenge would be accepted, and if they would not take it up, others would, and on very much better terms for the country than are offered by them. I believe that very much more favorable terms could be ob tained if it were thrown open to public competition. As the Minister himself says, the whole condition of things is altered. It is in the interest of the people of Canada that they should have that road for themselves to own the lands and own the finest railway in the world. In fact, no such opportunity was afforded to the people of any country to own the finest highway in the world, a highway stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, owned and controlled by the Government, in which any deficits that may occur in the working of it in the east will be compensated for by the millions of acres of fertile lands in the west. Although our railways in the east are not profitable public works, none of us are forcing the Government to get rid of them. The tide is now in the west, and these rich prairie lands, now held at such comparatively low figures, would vastly increase in value were they opened up by an all rail route, owned and controlled by the Government, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This House ought not to hesitate if they think it is in the best interests of the country to reject the proposition now before them. Did they not interfere with the policy of another Government on a former occasion? Did they not interfere with that policy though it had been ratified and approved by a member of the Imperial Government, who assumed to himself, as between the Dominion and the weaker province, the position of arbitrator? When the late Government accepted that arbitrament and brought in their measure for the construction of the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Branch, we know how this House dealt with it. They threw it out. I do not hesitate to say that the Senate acted properly in throwing it out. Governments sometimes make mistakes just as 1880, and had not been induced, from some cause or other, to enter into a contract that, in my judgment, is rash, is hasty, and is not conceived in the best interests of the people of the Dominion. At this point, Hon. Mr. Scorт moved the adjournment of the debate. The motion was agreed to. individuals make mistakes, as I believe | money to keep the people alive in that this Government to-day is making a very country after the grasshopper plague, and grave mistake, but I believe governments afterwards to supply them with seed, and ought to rise superior to the feelings of to meet the great expense of the Mennonthe hour and to stand corrected when ite and Icelandic settlements, ever anthey are shown that their policy is ticipated that we should have any such wrong. I have never hesitated, person- return for it. I believe, however, that ally, in private life, or publicly, in my the embarrassments, clouds and difficulacts of administration, if I found that ties that have hung over the settlement I had made a mistake, to take it back. of that country during those fearful In the accumulated light that we years have entirely passed away never to have gathered the last few years I return again. I think, therefore, in the believe that the Senate acted wisely, and changed condition of things, that the in the interests of the people of this gentlemen who are charged with the country when they rejected the Esqui- government of this country would have malt and Nanaimo Bill, and, if it is still acted wisely and prudently had they contrue to the interests of the people, it tinued of the opinion that they enterwill exercise the same wise discrimina-tained at the time Parliament rose in tion in regard to the Bill now before the House. It is here that we may carefully consider and reflect as to what is wisest and best. It is the largest and gravest measure ever submitted to the Parliament of Canada; a measure involving an amount equal to the whole debt of this country at the time of Confederation. If we should debate it for weeks and months, we could not say that we had given undue time for its consideration, so vast and so far reaching is it in its details and as a whole; and, before hon. gentlemen seek to protect themselves by alleging that the second Syndicate is a sham, they should test it in a sensible way by asking these gentlemen to put their money under the control of the Receiver General. Let them do it, and I undertake to say that they will not hesitate to come forward and give the Government the most substantial and satisfactory proof of the sincerity of their offer to build the Pacific Railway under the contract they have proposed. I agree with the Minister of Railways in in his utterances of last year, which I think were wise and statesmanlike, and where he acknowledged that the view he took in 1874 was not a correct one. But the gathered experience of four years had changed his mind, and, as he so forcibly put it, the whole condition of things had changed, the North-West had sprung up into a country of vast importance; our interests there were not tenfold bat a hundredfold greater than the most visionary of us had ever dreamed of in such a limited time. None of us in 1874 or 1875, when we were asked to vote . THE SENATE, Monday, February 7th, 1881. The Speaker took the chair at three p.m. Prayers and routine proceedings. THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY. A CORRECTION. Hon. Sir ALEX. CAMPBELL rose to correct a mis-statement he had made in moving the second reading of the Bill respecting the Canadian Pacific Railway. [The corrections are made in the previous reports.] ST. PETER'S CANAL CONTRACT. Hon. Mr. MILLER moved : "That an humble Address be presented to His Excellency the Governor General, praying that His Excellency will cause to be laid before this House all correspondence between the Government and any persons whomsoever, in reference to the unpaid liabilities for labor and materials of S. P. Tuck as contractor for |