10 



Pelee Island, there are only some 00 pound- 

 nets on one side and on the other side 

 of the lake about 2,CX)0 pound-nets, over one- 

 half of which is almost immediately oppo- 

 site, shows tliat our people are comparatively i 

 idle and have not been permitted to parti- 

 cipate in the advantage of the vast and ; 

 profitable trade which has been carried on ' 

 many years by the American people. j 



Now, this is an important question, i 

 If hon. gentlemen would look into , 

 the figures in connection with our fish- 1 

 eries I am satisfied— although, of course, i 

 we cannot get back what we have ' 

 lost— that this stringent and ruinous : 

 policy would not be continued. The same i 

 thing will happen in Lake Superior which j 

 has happened in Lake Erie, if this policy j 

 prevails. The Americans will go and fish | 

 out Lake Superior. I ask what argument : 

 there can be for a policy of this kind, unless : 

 it can be shown that it develops the fisheries ' 

 on the Canadian side. The very statements ; 

 of the hon. gentleman, in the speech which ! 

 he distributed among the fishermen of the I 

 w^est, answer themselver The fish are not i 

 there. He admits that ; but he talks of ! 

 great onslaughts on the fisheries ! There \ 

 have been no such onslaughts. The fish 

 have been taken by the American fishermen i 

 because the Departmeftit of Marine and ! 

 Fisheries have prevented our fishermen 1 

 from using the amount of netting and the I 

 amount of pound-nets which they could use i 

 to advantage. There is just one other mat- \ 

 ter to which I wish to refer before con- : 

 eluding. I allude to the state of disorgani- j 

 zation that existed in the fishery district i 

 of Essex and Kent, comprising about half of j 

 Lake Erie. I read some papers in C3nnec- ' 

 lion with this matter last session, in a ! 

 hurried manner, because it was six o'clock, i 

 The hon. Minister said he had not gone j 

 fully into the subject ; he had not made an | 

 exhaustive review, but that my statements 

 were meagre and all that sort of thing. \ 

 There is nothing very profound about this j 

 subject, nothing that requires, as the hon. i 

 gentleman intimates, scientific knowledge, i 

 The fact simply is that the American peo- ' 

 pie have been getting, through the conni- ! 

 vauce and sanction of the department, an \ 

 immense advantage over our Canadian j 

 people. The statistics prove that ; and j 

 when the hon. gentleman talks about people i 

 requiring scientific knowledge in order to ■ 

 discuss this policy, and the presumption of ! 

 people who have not looked into the ! 

 authorities and relying on a little hoi'se sense ' 

 doing so, it is enough to make the angels i 

 weej). Th hon, gentleman alluded to papers j 

 that were brought down in relation to the j 

 dismissal of Mr. Prosser, and he said in 

 reference to that matter : 



1 greatly regret, owing to the importance of the 

 subject, and notwithstanding the time at which ! 

 it has been brought to the attention of the House, i 

 that it wil) be necessary for me to ask the indul- \ 

 gence of the House for some time while I refer i 



to the points that have been raised hy the hon. 

 member for South Essex (Mr. Allen), and par- 

 ticularly to the question upon which he only 

 briefly touched. I know that it is contrary to 

 the rules of the House, and very properly so, to 

 impute motives to hon. gentlemen who ask ttie 

 attention of this body to any public question ; 

 but I was considerably surprised, knowing, as I 

 have reason to know, the very great important;e 

 of the preservation of the fisheries of the great 

 lakes of this court'-y, to observe this afternoon 

 the extravagant language which that hon. gentle- 

 man indulged in, accompanied, as it was, by the 

 most superficial statements that could possibly be 

 made on such a question. Time and again I 

 heard the hon. gentleman, when speaking of the 

 policy that I am carrying out, refer to it as, " a 

 policy of oppression and tyranny " ; he spoke of 

 " great ouc^ages " ; he stated that our Canadian 

 fishermen on those lakes were practically idle to- 

 day ; and declared that there was no explanation 

 or defence in reply to an attack of great moment, 

 which, apparently, had already been made this 

 session, and which the hon. gentleman deemed it 

 necessary on his part to follow up with his fiisi- 

 lade of this afternoon. These were extraordin- 

 ary expressions, Mr. Speaker, and expressions 

 v/hich, if they had really a true support, would 

 have excited a great deal more attention than 

 the hon. gentleman was able to command on 

 either side of the House, which would have at- 

 ti acted a great deal of attention this evening, and 

 would have demanded the most serious consider- 

 ation that we could give to them. But, instead 

 of the hon. gentleman supporting those statements 

 by argunicnts, or by an exhaustive review of 

 what the policy of the department really was, I 

 discovered a little later on in his remarks that • 

 his real object was to attack, not a policy, but a 

 man ; not to criticise a minister of the depart- 

 ment or the Government of the day, but to at- 

 tack, in what I consider a most unfair manner, a 

 Mr. Prosser, who, apparently, lives in the district 

 from which the hon. member for South Essex 

 comes ; and, although I have no knowledge of 

 Mr. Prosser, apart from the fact that he was once 

 an officer of my department and was dismissed, 

 and that some years ago, yet, from what the hou. 

 gentleman said, I have no doubt whatever that 

 he is, whether rightly or wrongly, a strong man 

 iu that district, and a man who is politically op- / 

 posed to the hon. gentleman. I can conceive of no 

 other reason why the hon. gentleman should have 

 spent the greater part of his time in driving 

 I'ome and repeating again and again the charges 

 against this man, which were investigated as far 

 back as 1891, and which brought about his ulti- 

 mate dismissal. What does the hon, gentleman 

 want to do with Mr, Prosser ? Why does he 

 drag him up before this House in this year of 

 Our Lord 1894, and insist at a rather late period 

 of the session in pounding him in the fashion he 

 did ? 



It seems to me that I brought important 

 papers before the House relating to the 

 management of the Fisheries Department, 

 It happened that Mr. Prosser was the 

 fishery overseer in that district and was dis- 

 missed, and the hon. gentleman tried in 

 this way to draw a line across the scent. 

 He hoped by talking about Mr. Prosser to 

 escape any 'other responsibility for this 

 whole affair. Why, the return brought 

 do\vn was simply a disgraceful exhibition 

 of the way the business of the Fish- 

 eries Department has been carried on 



