182 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



we blindly assume infallibility for any system that happens to prevail 

 at the moment, even when it has attained a measure of success. 



The form of surveying and planning which has existed in this 

 country since it was borrowed from the United States has had its 

 day, and whatever merit it may possess has been fully exploited. 

 Now we are face to face with certain facts and conditions that show 

 the need for modification or extension of that system. To carry out 

 effective reforms may require some additions to administrative 

 machinery — in the Federal as well as in the Provincial Governments. 



As already stated, the Federal Government is not only a govern- 

 ment in the ordinary acceptation of that term : it is the owner of vast 

 possessions in real estate and national resources. Towards that 

 estate and these resources it has a double responsibility; first, that of 

 managing and planning them to the best advantage as an owner 

 and, second, that of controlling their development and use in the 

 interests of the people as a whole. Is the character and efficiency 

 of the organization we now possess adequate to enable the Federal 

 Government to control and influence that development to the best 

 advantage? To fully answer that question would involve going into 

 details of the administrative methods and machinery now existing, 

 a task which is outside the scope and purpose of this report. What 

 may be done is to repeat the contention that there does not appear 

 to be any national task so important, so complex, and requiring such 

 skilled organization, in Canada, at the present time, as that of the 

 proper management and development of the human and land resources 

 of the country. Further, we may make the suggestion that to ade- 

 quately perform that task, in respect of land and other resources, 

 and in respect of immigration, probably means that one department 

 of the Federal Government, with the assistance of such provincial 

 and municipal boards or commissions as may be needed to deal with 

 such vast areas, should concentrate entire attention upon it. Only 

 after such a department — or a branch connected with the exist- 

 ing Department of the Interior — was at work for some years could 

 the ground work be prepared to secure a proper system of planning, 

 settling and developing land. 



While it is perhaps beyond the power of any one to promulgate 

 the details of the kind of system to be followed, with the information 

 now available, that does not mean that there are no obvious steps 

 which cannot be taken at once to make experiments along lines that 

 experience has shown to be sounder than those that have hitherto 

 been in operation; it does not mean that every effort should not now 



