Industries and Commerce.

Progress, Volume IV, Issue 5, 1 March 1909, Page 151

Industries and Commerce.

The Minister who holds the portfolio of Industries and Commerce is also the Minister of Tourist and Health Resorts. There is, of course, nothing special to connect these two departments one with the other, except it might be the fact that the two offices were created about the same time. But that is more coincidence than reason. We note that the Minister holding these two portfolios is very busy with the business of the Tourist Department, planning tracks and devising excursions which seem destined to develop into alarms in the Treasury. Which is all well, no doubt, from the Tourist point of view. If it is, this will not be the only occasion on which the Tourist side of the portfolio has received applause. But the other department has not yet been quite so fortunate. What can be clone? In one respect we can see the opening for a good new thing. At present the Dominion is unable to get a thorough survey of its industries until the quinquennial census comes round, the compiling work being part of the general statistical work of the Dominion iv the hands of the Registrar General. Why cannot the In-

dustries and Commerce Department attend to this matter? The Labour Department attends to the factories, giving the public valuable information every year, it is true. But the subject is quite beyond the scope of a Labour Department, the duties of which are to compile the statistics of labour, not of production, or exchange, or export, or dip tribution within the Dominion. We have a Department of Industries, and we have a right to expect from that department the fullest classified information about everything that happens during the year to the industries of the country. The annual returns of this department ought to be as full as are the quinquennial returns of the Registr a r-gener al.