GRAFT ALLEGED

Taranaki Daily News, 12 May 1934, Page 7

GRAFT ALLEGED

DONATION TO PARTY FUND CANADIAN CABINET CHARGED REDUCTION OF EXCISE TAX “TIP” TO TOBACCO COMPANY INVESTIGATION BEING HELD By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Rec. 5.5 p.m. Ottawa, May 10. Mr. Walter M. Stewart, president of the W% C. McDonald Tobacco Company, Montreal, informed the Parliamentary mass .buying committee that the McDonald Company was asked to donate money to the Conservative campaign fund in the 1930 Federal election. Naming Mr, Ward Pitfield, Montreal, whom he described as a man close to the present Prime Minister (Rt. Hon. R. B. Bennett), as the solicitor, Mr. Stewart said he was left with an impression that the contribution would be interpreted as meaning that he wanted the excise duties on cigarettes reduced. It was inferred, he said, that other manufacturers had donated but he refused to “chip in.” At least one of his competitors, he said, had advance information when the excise tax was to be reduced from six dollars to four dollars in 1932 and stopped manufacturing cigarettes in anticipation. This, he said, was the Pucket factory at Hamilton, Ontario, a subsidiary of the Imperial Tobacco Company.

Mr. Stewart at the start of his evidence wanted to call three unnamed members of the Government and ask them questions. When he was told by the Minister for Trade and Commerce (Hon. H. H. Stevens), chairman of the committee, that the task of the committee was to investigate the tobacco industry, Mr. Stewart replied: “What I am trying to talk about is buying the Government.”

Two or three times he wanted to direct questions to Cabinet Ministers on how his competitors could have obtained advance information on excise reduction, but the committee took no formal recognition of the questions.