Nelson Evening Mail FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 1924 CANADIAN UNITY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 15 August 1924, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 1924 CANADIAN UNITY

WHEN Sir Evelyn Cecil, a British Commoner, interviewed at Montreal, the other day, raised the question of Canada’s unity with the Empire, ho was dealing with a problem which is as complex as it is difficult. There is much talk in certain parts of Canada ol secession, not necessarily from the Empire bnt. from the Dominion. There is no doubt that in that country of great distances and divergent commercial interests, whose population is derived from various national stocks, the centralisation of political control in the Federal Government has become unpopular. Broadly speaking the Dominion is divided geographically and racially into four parts—the Maritime Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia ,and Prince Edward's Island, inhabited largely by people of Scotch extraction; Quebec and Ontario, the Provinces of the St. Lawrence basin, inhabited largely by the French Canadians; the Canadian Middle West, the great wheat-growing country, west of the Great Lakes and east of the Rocky Mountains, inhabited by people of British stock stropgly leavened by immigrants from the United States; and British Columbia. It may be said that three of these great divisions of the country have a distinct- grievance against the

fourth. Politically the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario are in much disfavour in Western Canada and in the .Maritime Provinces.

The wheat-growing Provinces, west of the Great Lakes, which are interested above all else in getting their wheat to market—which is Britain —have to depend on railway haulage, over lines controlled by the Central Government, to ports on the St. Lawrence and even further east still. The population of the wheat-growing Provinces clamour for the completion of the Hudson Bay line which, it is .contended, would give them, presumably at. Port Nelson, a point of debarkation whence their cargoes could he conveyed to the European market at a minimum cost. But the Central Government. influenced largely by the interests of Ontario and Quebec, whither all the western trade must proceed en"route to Europe, has steadily neglected to give the . Middle Western wheat.-growers direct access to the sea. The consequence is—ns Brigadier General Paterson, a soldier with n distinguished career, warned the Canadian Government would be I he case, if the Hudson Bay line was

The grievance of British Columbia is somewhat similar —a trouble over rail way freights, 'flic western Province is prosperous by reason of its ocean-borne trade, but it feels it would be more prosperous still if more of the wheat from the Middle West was drawn across the Rocky Mountains to Vancouver. But the system of freight-rates on the railways (which, it must bo emphasised, are all controlled by the Central Government) are so arranged that wheat is carried iVmn Alberta, to Montreal at a lower cost per ton mile Ilian to Vancouver. The railway officials say that the cause oi this anomaly is because of the higher

operating costs of the sections of the rail-roads which cross the Rocky Mountains. This may he so, but the British Columbian opinion is that the authorises a| Ottawa are bent on forcing the

wheat-growers to send their grain east instead of west, to the benefit of Ontario and Quebec . The economic plight, of the Maritime Provinces ot the 1 east.- New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward's Island—is very serious indeed. Their wealth consists of agricultural products, timber, fish, coal and iron. Their principal market was in New England, but recently the Americans have passed the Fordney, McCumber tariff and other measures which have practically killed the trade of the Maritime Provinces of Canada. &o bad is the situation that, emigration has been proceeding at. the rate of something like 15.000 people nor month, chiefly to New England. It is estimated that, duiing the" year 1923. 200.000 people left the .Maritime Provinces to settle in the Unitor! States. The consequence of the scrims commercial depression and t.he alarming exodus, is that talk of secession from the Dominion on the part of the three Maritime Provinces has become rife. Rightly or wrongly the people of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward s lsie are very much of the opinion that they would he more prosperous if their interests were not so prone to be subordinated to tlie interests of the thickly-settled and richer Provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and consequently they advocate secession from the Dominion and the formation of the Maritime Provinces into a separate self-governing State under the Crown, which could nog( tiato, on its own behalf and unencumbered. with the United States. There seems to be room in Canada for a constructive statesman whs> can unite liu* divergent interests of the widely-se-parated portions of the vast Dominion, bv enacting legislation which shall improve the means of transportation in such a manner as to meet the needs oi every section of the population, and which shall create simultaneously a true confederation of States, each invested with fuller self-governing powers, all knit together by common interests, both political and economic, under the Britisi Crown. c wr