THE RIVAL POLICIES

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 65, 14 September 1926, Page 7

THE RIVAL POLICIES

TARIFF MAIN QUESTION

IBBECONCILABLE INTEBESTS.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

VANCOUVEB, 25th August,

Tho tumult, and shouting in the Canadian General Election are at their height. Personalities have died down, mud is no longer thrown, as was expected when the late Minister of Customs, whose Department was adjudged guilty of permitting smuggling and frauds on the consolidated revenue, passed away ia the first stage of the contest. The opposing camps have now shaken down to a battle of rhetoric as to whether the 1926 Budget of the Mackenzie King administration, with its remission of taxation and reduction of tariff on cheaper motor-cars, will carry him .safely through the shoals, or whether the demand of Mr. Meighen , that the Canadian tariff should be made.equally as high as that of the United States, the highest in tho world.

CANADA NOT HOMOGENEOUS.

The difficulty of securing a policy applicable to all Canada has been enhanced as the contest proceeds. Nova Scotia and the other maritime provinces need economis reconstruction, to save their iron and coal industries. Quebec's problems are mainly political and national, and have been catered' for pore successfully than for a generation by the Mackenzie King Government, if the gift to him of 62 out of 63 s,eats at the election fen months' ago is a guide. Ontario wants a higher tariff, to protect her manufacturing industries. The prairie provinces want the nearest approach to free trade as a modern State goes. British' Columbia wants tho grain of the western portion of the prairies to be shipped through the port of Vancouver to the British and Far East markets. She sees in the continuance of the Australian trade treaty a huge industry built up in paper pulp, and she does not desire any fiscal step which will react on her vast trade with the United States in lum"ber, three-fourths of which is marketed there on the free tariff list.

KING TRIES TO PLEASE ALL.

Mr. Mackenzie King' freely admits the impracticability of an all-Canadian policy, and he continues his policy of the last Parliament, of judicious con-cessions,-compatible with the pledges of Liberalism, old ago pensions, a slaughtered innocent at the last Parliament, will be restored. That will hold the Labour Party, which in the Dominion Parliament, aggregates thm members. A rural credits measure, continued work on tho Hudson's Bay railway, and an assurance that the tariff on agricultural implements will not be disturbed will maintain the allegiance of the prairie members known as the Progressives, who held the balance of power in the last Parliament, whoso members were Liberals, 101; Conservatives, 118; Independents, 3; Progressives, 23; totalling 245.

MEIGHEN WANTS BELT-RELIANT

NATION.

Mr. Meighen will have no thought of alliance for services rendered. He wants a Canadian Party that will set up such a fiscal policy that will make economic conditions in the Dominion more nearly approach those of the United States, -which have attracted young Canadians to the. extent that there are now more Canadian-born living under the Stars and Stripes than are in Canada. 'He has devoted much of his campaign addresses to condemning the Eobb Budget as "an obvious and despicable sham," to use his own words. The much-vaunted reduction in the automobile _ tariff, on which the Liberals base their claim to support as merely the remission of the luxury tax imposed by the Conservatives as a, war measure, which the Conservatives, he said, would have remitted just as surely. Both' parties arc laying claim to the raising from 25 to 50 per cent, of the proportion of workmanship and material in manufactured goods necessary to secure the British preferential tariff.

WHAT MR. MASSEY SID.

As a matter of fact, the person responsible for the increase was the late Mr. Massey, who refused to grant the preferential tariff to American motorcars, which made up the requisite 25 per cent, by having such charges as painting, assembling, packing, and freight incurred in the Dominion, leaving the bulk of workmanship and material to be doiie in the United States. Canada persuaded Mr. Massey and Mr. Downie Stewart to be satisfied with 50 per cent., instead of 75 per cent., as he asked for, and made a similar fiscal arrangement. The result is that, where automobile corporations simply had assembly plants in Canada, now they arc bringing in machinery and erecting plant, sufficient to earn the preferential tariff when tho cars, thus erected, are shipped to New Zealand and Australia. A Liberal caudidato stated that one of the corporations—which, by tho way, does an enormous trade with' New Zealand—made eleven million dollars' profit last year. The New Zealand Government can take a great deal of credit for thus helping in setting up what promises to bo one of tho most important of Canada's manufacturing industries.

The election being held in kte summer, there will bo many voters that will bo disfranchised, owing to there being no absentee or postal ballot. Thus, 50,000 harvest hands on the prairies will not be able to vote. Also, the summer holidays ■will still lie on— schools get three months holiday in summer in Canada—and thousands will be touring in the United States.

LIBERAL PROSPECTS FAVOURED.

The outlook for the 'future, at the time of writing, seems to indicate that tho Mackenzie King Government •will bo returned with sufficient strength, allied with, tho Progressives, to secure a working majority in the Houso of

Representatives, although, perhaps not so large as the estimate made in this review last mail.