Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the motion of the hon. member for Regina-Qu'Appelle concerning the 1935 "On to Ottawa" trek and the Regina riot.
The hon. member's motion recalls a time and place far removed from the Canada of today. It was the time of the Great Depression, a time of staggering unemployment, prolonged and terrible drought and the near collapse of national economies. There were shrinking markets and falling prices, all of which contributed to human misery and hardship on a scale seldom seen before in North America.
This was a time when a woman working in a textile factory in Quebec could work a 60-hour week and earn only $5. The millions of acres of prairie wheat fields were turned into dust bowls and farmers walked away from family farms they had worked all their lives.
In 1929 when the depression began there were 107,000 unemployed in Canada. By 1933, the worst year of the depression, there were 646,000 unemployed, approximately one-quarter of the Canadian work force at that time.
The response of the Bennett government to the depression for younger men was to organize work camps. These work camps were organized under the Department of National Defence. The workers within them were paid 20 cents a day. This was an early and very harsh form of workfare.
Conditions in the camps were well described by the member for Qu'Appelle. They were camps in which work was done for the sake of doing work. "We are playing at highway building", reported the striker in his diary. "What a joke we are. We make a ditch one day and then change the plans and find that it is in the wrong place". A public servant for the Conservative government: "Not one cent of public money has been spent on reading material and recreational equipment".
The member has performed a service in drawing to our attention the consequences of this kind of attitude toward the unemployed and the consequences of using work camps, workfare or whatever to deal with the unemployed.
One of the workers wrote at the time: "It is really the fact that we are getting nowhere in the plan of life that moves us forward to march to Ottawa. We are truly a lost legion of youth rotting away for want of being offered a sane outlet for our energies".
The work camps were organized in B.C., it must be said, largely by communist workers. The workers organized for the trek to Ottawa and by the time they got to Regina in June of 1935 there were 12,000 workers. The Liberal premier of the province, Premier Gardiner, protested that the government of the day had decided to stop the workers there. Prime Minister Bennett met with the workers. The reply he gave them was very harsh and indeed he would not even let them talk.
On July 1 unfolded the tragedy that has been described by the member opposite. One policeman died and we mourn his memory. Dozens of policemen and others, workers obviously, were injured. It is a black mark in the history of the depression. It is a black mark in the history of the city of Regina as well.
The hon. member's motion suggests that the Conservative government of the day bears much of the responsibility for what took place in Regina and the judgment of history. The judgment of history in this case does largely bear out the hon. member's claim. I might add that during the depression solutions were not easy. Many kinds of solutions were made in various countries. The new deal in the United States was a very successful response to the depression but one that was thought to be authoritarian by many others.
There were responses. In Italy Mussolini responded by making the trains run on time but also causing wars in places as far away as Abyssinia and responses in Germany where public works projects did create jobs.
The party that the hon. member represents, the CCF, was formed during the 1930s and it sought solutions too. I quote from the Regina manifesto which called for complete social ownership and public management of the Canadian economy. It stated: "All financial machinery, transportation, communications, electric power and all other industry and services essential to social planning should be nationalized and operated by the state; furthermore there be no compensation for bankrupt private concerns for the benefit of promoters and for stock and bond holders".
That is not the stand of his party today obviously. I mention this only because we have to give credit to people's views and their times and not to support R.B. Bennett's decision on that day in this particular case. However we can recognize that for us to judge today what they thought then reflects the judgment of a later day. We cannot, except in exceptional circumstances, apologize for history. The only people who can apologize for what took place in Regina, July 1, 1935 are the people who made the fateful decisions that precipitated the riot and they are dead.
To apologize for the actions of a government in 1935 would be a well meant but futile gesture. If we cannot change history we can learn from it and we can look at the past wrongs through actions today.
If you look at the demands of the strikers in 1935, you can see that the men who marched on Ottawa have in many ways had their wishes come true.
The Canadian people tossed the Bennett government out of office in Ottawa in October 1935 and the Liberal government, which took office under Mackenzie King, righted many of the wrongs against which the strikers protested. For example, section 98 of the Criminal Code, which had been used for arbitrary arrest of strikers and others, was abolished.
By 1940 we had unemployment insurance in this country. After 1940, we built a social system that offered a kind of minimum that the strikers and the people in the depression did not have.
The best monument to the memory to the strikers of 1935 is the Canada we live in today. It is in our health care system which was created about 25 years afterward. It is in our system of unemployment insurance. It is in our comprehensive social services and it is in our fair hiring practices which was central to the protest made by the workers in Regina in 1935.
Look around and ask, could the "On to Ottawa" trek and the Regina riot happen in Canada today? I think the answer is an unequivocal no. The hon. member has done a service to the people by placing the motion before the House, but while I cannot agree with this call for an official apology, I can applaud the sentiment that inspired this motion expressing profound regret that this government, indeed, all Canadians feel for what happened to Canadians during the Great Depression.
It would be more fitting to honour the memory by taking the opportunity presented by this motion to re-dedicate ourselves to the principles of social justice that were lacking in Canada in 1935.
Let us then work together to build a country where there is social equality and equal opportunity for all. It seems wrong to look at our own times and compare them to the 1930s and suggest that the conditions today, in any way, resemble those of the 1930s. The pay for the young men in the work camps was 20 cents a day. There was no unemployment insurance. There was no health insurance. There was no social system. There were no easy answers as well.
Today, for whatever problems our economy faces, we have an unemployment rate that is probably one-third of what it was in the depression. We have protection for people who have lost their jobs. We have a government that is committed to creating jobs and work for Canadians and to maintaining a social system that protects the interests of all Canadians.
I hope members will agree, including the member for Regina-Qu'Appelle, that what we have accomplished since 1935 is itself the best memorial to the strikers in Regina in July 1935.