COST OF WORKLESS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 428, 20 November 1930, Page 7

COST OF WORKLESS

CANADA’S BIG VOTE. TWENTY MILLIONS FOR WORKS. VANCOUVER, Oct. 15. A sum of £20,000,000 is to be spent in Canada on works of a useful character, designed to absorb unemployment. The basic appropriation is £4, 000,000 voted by the Federal Government. A similar sum is to be contributed by the provinces. In addition, there will be contributions by local authorities, and finally over £4,000,000 by the

These public subventions are expected to encourage expanded budgetting by industry, that well be productive of indirect benefit.

Programmes of branch line construction art to be expedited, made possible by a Government guarantee of interest on the outlay. Especially is this the case in Western Canada, where railway expansion into such areas as the Peace River- is looked upon as necessary in providing an early outlet to the sea of agricultural and mineral wealth scarcely tapped hitherto. Heavy orders have been placed for steel rails. The Canadian Pacific Railway has given Clyde shipbuilders orders totalling £4,500,000 from this year’s disbursements. The Canadian National Railways has ordered 100,000 tons of coal.

The Trans Canada Highway completion in the Western Ontario-Manitoba section is another ambitious programme into which two provinces and the Gov-

ernment of Canada have embarked fo r immediate construction. The gap round the head of the Great Lakes is now being surveyed by Ontario. In other sectors, on the. Prairie, funds arc being voted for improving existing links in tin* highway. To some purely provincial roads a Fderal subsidy of 40 per cent, of improvement cost is to be made available.

Thu principle that unemployment is a municipal and provincial obligation is being generally conceded, with the reservation that, where the funds of such authorities become strained in a period of depression, such as the present, the obligation becomes national and extends to the Federal authority. A vast amount of money is being put into circulation by these tripartite sub ventions, which is expected to be re fleeted in a general loosening of industrial purse-strings toward the common cause of providing work for the workless.