PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. I3I 



least beyond controversy that in competition there can be found no satisfactory 

 solution of the railway probleni, and we must look for the present to regulation 



by commission,,,('and finally to public ownership and operation. 



XVI. 



A question of perhaps greater importance to the west than even the regula- 

 tion of railways is the taxation of corporation lands. As the Minister of the 

 Interior told Parliament the other day, we have 67,000,000 acres of land in Manitoba 

 and the Northwest Territories reserved from settlement. " On that 67,000,000 of 

 acres," said Mr. Si^ton, " I, as the Minister of the Interior to-day, cannot give a 

 man a homestead entry. Nor can I sell a single acre of it, although there are 

 millions of acres of that land that never have been and never will be nor can be 

 earned by any railway company. But they are reserved by order in Council, the 

 good faith of the Dominion is pledged to that for ever, and no Government can 

 interfere with that reserve until the bond is literally fulfilled to the last letter." 

 Much of this land is held by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, but there are 

 also several millions of acres held by other railway corporations, and these laaids, 

 while not exempt from taxation by deliberate enactment, are not immediately tax- 

 able, because patents are not issued until the land is paid for by the purchaser from 

 the railway. The clause in the Canadian Pacific charter under which its lands are 

 exempt from Dominion, Provincial and municipal taxation, reads: — "The lands 

 of the company in the North-West Territories^ until they are either sold or occupied, 

 shall also be free from such taxation for twenty years after the grant thereof from 

 the Crown." The charter is dated February, 1881, and makes provision also for 

 the granting of alternate sections of land on each side of the railway. Whether 

 this exemption extends from the time the surveys are made and the lands become 

 the property of the company, or from the issuing of the patents by the Govern- 

 ment, is a point of first-rate importance. If the twenty-year exemption extends 

 from the time the lands become the property of the company, the bulk of the 

 railway reserve will soon becoine subject to taxation. If the exemption extends 

 from the issue of the patents, it is, under existing conditions, perpetual. The 

 company has its land secured and will take out the patents only as the land is 

 bought by the settler. Under this interpretation the clause has the same effect as 

 if it had simply declared the land free from taxation until sold or occupied. It is 

 perhaps not too much to say that when the charter was granted to the syndicate 

 the popular impression was that the exemption from taxation was to run for only 

 twenty years, but a popular impression and the technical meaning of a railway 

 statute are likely to bear a very different significance in the final analysis. One 

 would think that it would be wise policy for the western railways to put their 

 rates down to the very lowest figures that would yield a living revenue and thereby 

 increase the value of their great landed estates. There is no doubt that low freight 

 charges would do more than any other conceivable influence to promote settlement, 

 and as settlement grows, as roads are made, schools opened, villages and towns 

 established, the alternate blocks held by the railways rise in value, and the corpora- 

 tion grows steadily richer and richer through the sweat and toil of the settlers. 

 The farmer who may have the ambition to acquire an adjoining railway section will 

 feel that for every dollar of additional value his improvements give to his own 

 property he adds to the value of the adjoining land which he aims to acquire, while 

 he and his neighbors are refused even the privilege of imposing legitimate Provin- 

 cial and municipal taxation upon these vacant spaces. 



XVII. 



This means practically a railway sovereignty and a subject population in the 

 west, and there is no escape for the people from this unhappy condition except 



