A DILEMMA FOR CANADA.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1098, 10 April 1911, Page 5

A DILEMMA FOR CANADA.

RECIPROCITY AGREEMENT.

TWELVE NATIONS MUST SHARE IN ALL BENEFITS.

LORD SELBORNE'S CONTENTION.

By Telccraph—P(ess Association-CopyriElil (Ree. April 9, 5.5 p.m.) London, April 8. Lord Selborne, in a speech at an Imperial preference meeting, referred to the Reciprocity Agreement, and declared that according to the niost-favoural-nation clauses in British tariff treaties twelve countries wero entitled- to receive from Canada the same treatment as that which it was proposed should be conceded to America. The United States would doubtless bo surprised if it had to share the concessions with twelve other countries. Canada might ask Great Britain to denounce tht treaties. He believed that a remedy for the difficulty lay in that suggested by Mr. Deakin at the Imperial Conference of 1907, by a joint system of Imperipl negotiation in the arranging of foreign .treaties. OPPOSITION TO RECIPROCITY. " CANADIAN CONSERVATIVE CAUCUS. Ottawa, April 7. A mucus of the Conservative party lias passed a resolution endorsing Mr. R. L. Borden's leadership of the party .in the Canadian House of Commons. It also decided to press to the utmost limit the party's opposition to the Reciprocity Agreement between Canada and tho United States. At the Imperial Conference of 1907, according to tho , official report, Mr. Deakin drev; attention to the resolution of the 1902 conference: "That so far as may I be consistent with the confidential negotiations on treaties with Foreign Powers, the views of tho colonies affected should ba obtained in order that they may bo in a better position to give adhesion to such treaties." After discussing this resolution, Mr. Deakin moved a resolution, which the conference adopted: That: the Imperial Government be requested to prepare for the information of colonial Governments statements showing the privileges conferred, and the obligations imposed, on the colonies by existing commercial treaties, and that inquiries lie instituted to ascertain how far it is possible to make those obligations and benefit uniform throughout the Empire."