CANADA’S WAR FINANCE

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 January 1941, Page 6

CANADA’S WAR FINANCE

PREMIERS’ CONFERENCE. [BY CABLE —PRESS ASSN.—COPYRIGHT.] * OTTAWA, January 14. . The Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), opening the Dominion Provincial Conference, called to consider the report compiled by a Royal Commission under the chairmanship of Dr. Joseph Sirois, said the adoption of many of the recommendations in the' commission’s report would increase the efficiency of Canada’s war

effort and ease, the difficulties of adjustment after' the war. He emphasised that the war created a financial problem which was the crux of the difficulties. The report is designed to relieve the competitive, effort of the Dominion provinces to secure revenues, which was bound to create growing friction and a real threat to national unity and would inevitably hamper the nation’s war e effort and thwart efforts to distribute the burden of war equitably. The Royal Commission re-exam-

inea tne oasis oi relations between the provinces and the Federal Government. The commission recommended that the Federal Government should assume provincial debts, finance unemployment relief, hold exclusive rights to tax corporation incomes and collect succession duties. The provinces would lose-their national subsidies to receive adjustment grants, according to their needs. The report also favoured a merger, first of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and, second, of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Although Mr. Mackenzie King expressed the Government’s willingness to compromise, the Premier of Ontario (Mr. M. Hepburn) and the Premier of Alberta (Mr. W. Aberhart) immediately opposed the recommendations.

S. AFRICAN EXPENDITURE ■ LONDON, January 15. “The Times’s” Johannesburg correspondent says: Mr. Hofmeyer, in a speech here, declared that further provision for South African defence, beyond forty-six million sterling, which had been voted, would be necessary in the current financial year. The war expenditure thus far, had amounted to £51,000,000.