1903
Debate on Construction of Grand Trunk Railway
***
Mr Davis (Saskatchewan) [Liberal Member of Parliament]
Now, as to the necessity of this road, as I said before, I do
not think it needs any argument whatever. The people of that
country have farmed on shares, so to speak, with the Canadian
Pacific Railway Company for twenty-three years. Those hon.
gentlemen who make speeches in this House on this question
allude to the grand scheme that was put through by the
Conservative party, and the hon. member for Marquette alluded to
it as the pioneer of progress in that country. Pioneer of
progress! Why, Sir, that scheme has had the effect of keeping
that country back for twenty- three years, and I say here
without fear of contradiction that if the advice of the Liberal
party, when that scheme was put through this House, had been
taken, and the road had been laid out as proposed by the Liberal
party through the northern portion of that country, and built
where this road is going at the present time, in place of the
300,000 people in that country, we would now have two or three
millions; I say that without fear of contradiction. When this
bargain was going through that these gentlemen talk so much
about, the Liberal party then, as they are to-day, were well
seized of the people's needs; and if their advice had been
followed we would have seen a different state of things in the
North-west, and there would not have been such a crying
necessity for this road as there is at the present time.
....
I have pointed out that we pay freight rates twice or three
times as high as the freight rates that are paid in the east.
Now we are getting people into that country and hon. gentlemen
opposite are trying to take credit for it; they say that thanks
to the policy of the Conservative party immigration is coming
into the country. Think of it. For eighteen years, until 1896,
the people there were on the verge of starvation and when we
brought a few people into the country by one railway they dodged
out by another.
...
And to-day they will tell you that they brought about
prosperity that now prevails there. The hon. member for
Marquette (Mr. Roche), for instance, in an eloquent peroration
referred to the buffalo and the red men that once roamed on the
western plains. If these gentlemen had been kept in power
another seven years we would have had the red men back on the
plains -- the buffalo are extinct practically and could not be
got on the plains but the red men would have possession. The
other settlers would have been starved out. The idea of these
gentlemen talking about their having assisted to bring about the
prosperity we enjoy at the present time in western Canada. They
had as much to do with it as they had in creating the
universe...
***
Source: Canada, Parliament, House of Commons, Debates, 28
August 1903, 10023, 10029.
