A GREATER CANADA

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6631, 9 June 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

A GREATER CANADA

NEWFOUNDLAND’S DESTINY. DISCUSSION or PROBLEMS. ( TORONTO, April 21. Repeated demonstrations of the importance of Newfoundland in transatlantic aviation are making Canadians seriously consider the feasibility of arriving at an agreement under which the ancient colony would enter the Confederation. Oddly enough, Greenly Island, the dot in the Straits of Belle Isle on which the Bremen alighted, is, by some freak of the boundary makers, in Canadian territory, but it is hundreds of miles from Canadian civilisation. Other cast to west flights are supposed to have ended in the interior of Newfoundland or of Labrador, the greater area of the mainland administered by the island. Undoubtedly there will be others. If Newfoundland and Labrador became part of the Confederation, it is likely the Canadian Government would increase patrols and police posts beyond the service which now seems possible. Much more important, but with less appeal to popular imagination, is the fact that there would also be a much more rapid development of Newfoundland’s and Labrador’s pulp, power and mineral resources than is now proceeding. A merger with Newfoundland has long been a matter of indifference to Canadians, and with Newfoundland actively hostile to the very suggestion of the idea the subject has been allowed to lie dormant with scarcely a public reference for 30 years. Now there is a considerable body of Canadian sentiment in favour of rounding out the Confederation in the way the map indicates as logical. What the reaction in Newfoundland is remains to bo seen.

Other matchmakers seek to link up Canada with groups of islands in the British West Indies, and an even more suhprising proposal was recently put forward in England advocating that British Guiana in South America should join the Canadian Confederation. With regard to all such proposals, the attitude of Canada is definite. It is that trade relation with these sister British possessions should bo developed into as close an alliance as possible, but that any change from existing political relations would involve complications that should be entered upon only after careful consideration. In the case of Newfoundland such complications are foreseen. The problems of geography, race and economics are the same for Newfoundland as for Canada. ,