FEDERAL SYSTEMS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 58, 10 March 1938, Page 10

FEDERAL SYSTEMS

■DR. BRUENING'S VIEWS

CANADA IMPRESSED

THE GERMANY OF YESTERDAY

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, February 16.

Dr. Heinrich Bruening, former Chancellor of Germany, who is lecturing at Harvard on federal systems, and who will repeat the course presently at Oxford, was invited by the Dominion Government to give evidence before a Royal Commission that is investigating the relations between the Dominion and the Provinces: under Confederation, with a view to amending the Brii tish North America Act, to bring it into line with modern conditions. In his testimony, it was noted that Dr. Bruening's detachment from German politics was almost complete. He made a profound 'impression on the Commission, with his courtly deference and his studious approach to the subject. His English was fluent and scholarly, although occasionally he had recourse to German for such terms as "contributary unemployment insurance."

The Gorman Federal State ran into the same difficulties as those now troubling the Dominion. Poorer' sections of the country in South Germany, like the Canadian Prairies, were unable to balance Budgets, while the richer territories of the north were able to maintain an even economic keel. It was a mandatory phase of German policy, he said, that wealth should be redistributed to compensate less privileged portions of the / country; for example, the collection of duties on inheritances was purely a Federal function. The Central Government collected income tax, and distributed' it in accordance with fiscal need on a budgetary plan, imposed on all the States, which, must conform to national standards for local taxation before they could claim FederaTsubvention. Germany concentrated power in Berlin to a degree that would shock those iri British Dominions who espoused the rights of the province or State. The Weimar Constitution gave certain powers to the Central Government, exclusively; in the remainder of its functions, the, States and Berlin had concurrent jurisdiction. When the Reich legislated, State laws on the same subject had no effect; The Reich had the power of disallowance of State legislation. .

It became manifest, as Dr. Bruening, proceeded, that he favoured the Federalist State. A problem in Canada, and in the Dominions generally, arose, he said, out of the accident of politics imposing the major burden of local taxes on land. Municipalities became land owners, on a large scale. A Federal decree, in Germany settled this difficulty "by stipulating that municipal land taxes could not be increased unless other taxes were increased proportionately—a ukase that assured that the economic views of any local government could not impose discriminatory class taxation. >He made the piquant observation that trade unions were the most efficient administrators of unemployment relief, because employed working men were the last, on earth to tolerate the malingering which had grown up under Government administration.

Dr. Bruening's evidence was acclaim-,, ed as the most intellectually stimulating testimony vthe Commission had heard. He was, it is true, describing a Constitution that had been^scrapped by/the Hitler regime, but he made it clear that the reason for the scrapping was the absence, in present-day Germany, of the democratic tradition that is the keystone of th» arch of responsible , government of' the British pattern. "•'■■.'.■ ■ ' ■■