NOTES FROM CANADA

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 155, 29 December 1936, Page 10

NOTES FROM CANADA

THE C.N.R. LOSSES

OTTAWA'S CHILD MORTALITY

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, December 2.

Christmasis the time set by William Aberhart for the payment of the Social Credit dividend in Alberta. As the time approaches, it appears unlikely that any provision will be made immediately for the. dividend. In fact, as. we write, the Chambers of Commerce'and Boards' of1 Trade of the four largest Alberta cities have jointly petitioned Mr. Aberhart to abolish his scrip money, which they describe as a failure. An expert from the Greenshirts, an English Social Credit group, Mr. • Halliday- Thompson, travelled to Alberta to offer his services, free of charge,- to the Premier for two months, to enable him to devise means of paying the dividend. After granting the visitor an interview with the Cabinet, Mr. • Aberhart declined the offer. Mr. Thompson retaliated by publicly declaring that the Aberhart Government would not last- three months. He addied that there were three schools of Social Credit; ■ the group • headed' by Major Douglas, the founder of the world sheme; Mr. Aberhart, and the Greenshirts. The last-named was the only one on the right track, according to Mr. Thompson.

The perennial question of the loss on the Canadian National Railway, amounting to nearly a million dollars a week, is brought into the arena of practical politics by the announcement of the Federal Minister of Transport, Mr. Howe, that he is strongly in favour of writing down the capital of the railway by £300,000,000. Mr. Howe says that a loan granted to the defunct Grand Trunk Railway before 1867, the year of Confederation, is still carried on by the C.N.R., and that interest on the loan continues to appear in the financial statement. "When a company shows an operating loss at the end of a year, its shareholders do not," he says, "add that amount to capitalisation, but tliis, in effect, is what has been done with the Canadian National."

Residents of Ottawa are gravely concerned at the high infantile mortality of the capital city. For every thousand live births in Ottawa, 94 infants die before reaching the age of ,one year; in Montreal the rate is 87; Toronto, 51; Winnipeg, 46; Vancouver, 28. The only places in Canada where the Ottawa rate is exceeded are Glace Bay, a Nova Scotia mining town, and a few towns in Quebec. Vancouver owes its satisfactory record to its adoption, many years ago, of the methods of maternal and infant care instituted by Sir Truby King, and perpetuated by the Plunket Nursing Homes he established in New. Zealand.