(4)
The Hon. Member to show that the Chairman in the discharge of his duty in connection with this Committee of inquiry has not carried out his work in a manner that is satisfactory to the public.
Hon. T. H. WHITEHEAD—Sir, I rise to order. Is the Hon. member in order?
The CHAIRMAN—... the Chinese public, that he did not mean what he had said.
Hon. T. H. WHITEHEAD—The words I used were not understood by Your Excellency in an offensive sense.
The REGISTRAR-GENERAL—Your Excellency, I am simply stating that it took the Hon. member a whole year to give us his explanation.
His EXCELLENCY—I do not think the Hon. member is at all out of order.
The Hon. member says that he did not use those terms in the sense in which they are generally understood. He may not have used them in that sense, but the Chinese community most certainly understood them in that sense, and they again and again told me that they had understood them in that sense, and they also understood that they had been accused of squeezing. With regard to that charge, the Hon. member has explained it in his report.
The REGISTRAR-GENERAL—A Special Committee of inquiry was appointed. As to the results of the inquiry, they have been laid on the table and Hon. members of this Council have had an opportunity of reading them. As regards the general results of the inquiry, all the members of the Committee were agreed. On the main points, there was absolutely no difference of opinion. They did disagree on matters of detail, and it is perhaps that difference that led to three separate reports being drawn up.
Hon. members have had the opportunity of looking into the cases which were brought against the Society, most of them at the instigation of the Hon. member for the Chamber of Commerce.
Every one of these cases was thoroughly investigated, and every one of them proved to have absolutely no foundation. (Applause.) The so-called charges disappeared at the very first meeting of the Committee. I consider that in the matter of these charges, the Po Leung Kuk has been treated most unfairly.
I stated again and again when sitting in Committee that I considered the Society should be told at once that there were no charges against it. I pointed out that it had been stated in the local Press more than once during the sitting of the Committee that grave charges were hanging over the head of this Society.
At the first meeting of the Special Committee of inquiry, I said to the Hon. member for the Chamber of Commerce, who was instrumental at any rate in bringing forward some of those charges—I said to him after he explained that he never made the charges, "I trust that the Hon. member will make his explanation as public as his original statement with regard to the Society has been made." And what was the answer of the Hon. member? He called my remarks "gratuitous and impertinent." Gratuitous they certainly were, for they did not even earn his thanks.
As to being impertinent, the Hon. member recognised their pertinency a year after—a year, mark you—when he did make public the explanation which has been published in the proceedings of the Committee.
I should like to ask the Hon. member what he would think if the Po Leung Kuk had brought charges against the financial institution over which he presides and allowed them to continue unexplained for a whole year. Yet that is exactly what the Hon. member has done.
In April, 1892, in this Council, he described the Society as a "Secret Society," an unfortunate term he now calls it, and it took him more than a year to tell the community, including the Chinese community, that he did not mean what he had said.
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The REGISTRAR-GENERAL—... objects for which the Society was formed, the Society desires that its position and status as laid down in those rules should be altered so as to be in conformity with the form which the Society has gradually assumed, and which practice has proved to be the most effective for carrying on the work of the Society.
That form is laid down in the draft Ordinance incorporating the Society. As the same Committee points out in the report, the chief difference between the rules approved by the Secretary of State and this Ordinance is that under the Ordinance incorporating the Society, the Government is to have a voice in the management of the Society, and there is to be a permanent Committee.
In the Ordinance, there is also provision for the Governor altering, amending, or disallowing the rules and regulations made by the Society, and for the inspection of buildings.
There is also a change with regard to membership. Formerly, a subscription of $10 entitled the subscriber to life membership. Now it is proposed to change the subscription, making it either an annual one or providing for compounding by a certain amount down.
So far as the Special Committee of Inquiry were concerned, they were unanimous as to the advisability of the Government having a voice in the management of the Society. They differed, however, as to how that voice of the Government was to be heard.
The Hon. member for the Chamber of Commerce objects to the working of the Society, and I will quote the opinion of the senior unofficial member on that point.
In his report, he says, "I feel strongly that it is inadvisable that the Registrar-General should be a member of the governing body, though on the other hand, it would be a very good thing if the member representing the Chinese were ex-officio chairman of this body."
The Registrar-General should be outside it as the authority to whom all questions under debate should be submitted, the right of final appeal from his decisions to the Governor in Council being always reserved.
And Mr. Whitehead says: "The Registrar-General must have in all respects the final and decisive word in all dealings by the Society with women and girls entrusted to its care. He should be entirely outside it, and above it, and should not be mixed up in the debates and discussions of the members of Committee."
And again, he says, "It would be an unbecoming position for any high officer of the Government to be placed in a minority and over-ruled by a majority of the Committee of the Society."
I suppose that the Registrar-General ought to feel grateful for the position in which the senior unofficial member and the Hon. member who represents the Chamber of Commerce wish to place him; they evidently wish him to be the dictator of the Chinese community, and his gratitude ought to be especially great to the latter gentleman, seeing that it is only a short time ago that in this Council he was very anxious that the Registrar-General...