PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O. 885
20 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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and the Department are satisfied that it is not possible, in a case of deportation, for any material fact to escape their notice.
The question of giving notice to the deported man has been repeatedly con- sidered, but it has always been held that the balance of advantage is against doing SO. It would always be possible for a man with a family to abscond and leave his wife and children on the hands of the authorities, who would be put to no end of trouble in catching him again. For the unmarried man it would be even more easy for him to make off. The objects of giving notice, viz., to allow time for the full consideration of the case and for the disposal of such effects as the deported man may have, are, in the opinion of the Department, fully secured by the close attention which they give to every case and by the latitude which the officer detailed to effect the deportation gives the man when he once has him in custody. Nor is there any need for a statutory right of appeal. Such a right would certainly be abused by those of whose liability to be deported there could be no doubt, and it is unneces- sary in any case, as the Central Department is bound to satisfy itself of all the facts before issuing the order. If any new material fact comes to light subsequently, it is communicated to the Department by the officer charged with the deportation, and the order may, for good cause shown, be suspended or set aside.
The specific ground of deportation is stated at every turn. The local authority must be quite definite on this point in applying for deportation, and the Immigra tion Department must be equally definite in issuing the order and notifying it to all concerned. In no case, Mr. Fortier assured me, is there a mere quotation of, or reference to, the Act under which deportation is effected. I quoted the one case of which we had heard at the Emigrants' Information Office in which it was alleged that, owing to the quotation of the section, a man had been classed alternatively as a criminal. Mr. Fortier found it impossible to believe that this had happened in an official document. He was certain that it could only happen by mistake unless the ground of criminality actually existed.
It so happened that Mr. Blake Robertson was personally concerned in the Oshawa and Deseronto cases. When the trouble arose in those towns in 1908, he went down, opened an office on the spot, and had all the unemployed men brought before him. He offered each one personally his choice between work on a farm and work on railway construction, and undertook in either case to provide free railway transport to their destination. Some of the men refused either kind of employment. Some took farm work, some railway construction. The latter Mr. Robertson conducted personally to the railway station nearest the construc- tion work. After that a walk of ten miles was necessary. Most of the men deserted after two miles of the walk, the rest soon abandoned work. Similarly many of those who went to farms shortly threw up their jobs and drifted back to the towns. Naturally those who refused work or threw it up immediately were deported without more ado.
Deportations are now individual; there are no more cases of deportation in bulk like those of Oshawa, Deseronto, and Chatham. The circumstances in those cases were exceptional, and were, in the opinion of the Department, due to injudi- cious flooding of the district by certain emigration societies. Such cases are not likely to occur again, and it is hoped that next year it will be possible to detect a clear reduction in the stream of deportations.
I referred to the case of Charlton, who was deported alone, his wife and family being left behind. Mr. Fortier said that the cases in which a husband had been deported without his family in the last 15 years could probably be counted on the fingers of two hands. He admitted that such a proceeding was opposed to the national sentiment about family life. But he held that, in exceptional cases such as that of Charlton, it was justifiable on every ground. It was only fair to the woman, if she was able and willing to support herself and her family without her husband; it was fair to Canada, who did not wish to lose a good worker merely because she had to deport a bad one; and it was better for England, as the man would be less of a burden there alone than if he were returned with a wife and family attached to him.
I then brought the conversation round to the medical expenses of immigrants detained in hospital on entry, as illustrated by the case of John Driscoll, who had to pay a bill of $125 on behalf of his family. Mr. Fortier explained that the Government had nothing to do with charging the immigrant in a case like this. Their affair is with the shipping company. If an immigrant arrives in a state of health which makes him liable to exclusion, the obvious thing is to require the
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steamship company to take him back again. But if the disease is not serious and there is a chance of his getting well the Government inform the steamship company that they have the option of having the immigrant treated in the Government Hospital, provided that the company make themselves liable for all charges. This happened in the Driscoll case. The Government charged the company the usual
fees (75 cents a day for the invalid, and 50 cents a day for the others) for Mrs. Driscoll and her family, and it was the steamship company that dunned Driscoll for the money, under threat of immediately sending his wife and family back to England. The charge for X-ray treatment ($42) was not a Government matter at all. This was separate and special treatment arranged by the steamship company outside the Government Hospital, no doubt in the hope of shortening the period of detention and diminishing their own liability in the matter.
In the matter of the Government Hospital fees, Mr. Fortier said that the present scale did not pay, and that, so far from reducing them, it was proposed shortly to raise them to $1.25 for the invalid, and 75 cents for those accompanying him.
I referred also to the question of endorsed letters of invitation from settlers in Canada to friends or relatives in the United Kingdom. Letters of invitation are often sent direct to persons in this country. Such letters have no weight with the Assistant Superintendent of Emigration in London, or with the Immigration Authorities at the port of landing in Canada, unless they are endorsed by the Immigration Department in Ottawa. They have therefore to be returned to Ottawa for endorsement, and the Department refuses to endorse them until careful enquiry has been made as to the demand for labour in the district in question and the capacity of the writer to fulfil any promises which he may have made. This leads to apparent delay in dealing with the letters, but it is a reasonable requirement which the Department are not prepared to forgo. Much time would be saved if settlers understood that such letters must be referred to Ottawa before they are of any use, and that it is therefore desirable that they should be sent to Ottawa in the first instance. It might be worth while to insert some statement to this effect in the " Canada Circular and Handbook."
To my great regret Mr. Bogue Smart and both of his assistants were out on inspection duties. Mr. Fortier, however, has a good general knowledge of the questions connected with child emigration to Canada, and I had a helpful talk with him on the subject. He was not disposed to think that there was much in Mrs. Close's idea that children are at present brought out too old, and he quoted in support of this opinion the excellence of the work done by Dr. Barnardo's Homes. who brought out children up to 16 years of age. The receiving homes to which the children are taken on arrival are inspected periodically by the Government. He pointed out that, in the matter of the inspection of Poor Law children placed out with employers or families, the inspection was carried out very thoroughly once a year, and that this was the period fixed by the Imperial Government itself. I spoke of the allegation that the reports of these inspections generally took a very long time to reach the Guardians or emigration society concerned. He explained that the reports were kept in the Department till a batch of 350 or so had been collected, and that they were then made into a volume and sent over to the Local Government Board. This might account for a part of the delay. On the subject generally Mr. Fortier said that child emigration from the United Kingdom to Canada had shown itself to be a very great success, and that the prejudice against it which had existed in Canada in the early days had entirely disappeared. The demand for children was now many times greater than the supply. He said that some years ago the allegation had been made that the child immigrants helped largely to swell the criminal classes of Canada. A careful enquiry was instituted, and it was found that they contributed to the criminal classes in very much less than their proper numerical proportion.
Mr. Blake Robertson discussed with me the bonus question. He admitted that serious exception had been taken to the giving of bonuses in certain quarters, and that there was a good deal to be said on both sides. But he held that it gave
the Government a decided grip upon the booking agents, and he showed me, by taking me through files of papers taken haphazard, precisely how the system is worked, and what a close check is kept on the operations of these agents. The Government have no hesitation in removing from their bonus list any agent who offends by encouraging the wrong classes of emigrants, or in any other way. If this does not suffice, it is generally possible to freeze him out by putting pressure on the steamship companies to cease to employ him as an agent, or to refuse to book passages applied for by him.
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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O. 885
20 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
18
In the absence of Mr. Cory, the Deputy Minister of the Interior, I called on Mr. Cote, the Assistant Deputy Minister. I secured as local correspondents-
Mr. John Gray,
Immigration Employment Officer,
Canadian Building, Slater Street,
Ottawa,
(who is, however, forbidden by the Government to make any statement about the demand for mechanics or any other workers in trades) and Mr. Cecil Bethune,
Secretary to the Board of Trade,
Ottawa.
In the afternoon Mr. Robertson drove me out to the Central Experimental Farm maintained by the Dominion Government a few miles outside Ottawa. Our guide round the farm was one of the staff, Mr. MacMurray, whose mother tongue, to my astonishment, I found to be French. He is the son of a Scotch settler in Quebec, who, after some years, adopted the language of his neighbours.
On Tuesday, the 10th of August, I called on Colonel Jarvis, the Assistant Deputy Minister of Agriculture. He kindly arranged to supply the Emigrants' Information Office with all the publications issued by the Department in the future, and provided me with introductions to all the officers in charge of the Dominion Government Experi- mental Farms I was likely to come across during my visit. He said that the work
of the farms was now keenly appreciated by the farmers generally, particularly that part of it which dealt with the examination of seed for sowing. A farmer could send to the Central Farm, post free, a sample of the seed which he intended to sow, and could get back within a few days an analysis of it and an authoritative opinion on its quality and capabilities. This small amount of trouble would often save a farmer his whole crop. The Department is also doing very valuable work in pub- lishing very beautifully illustrated volumes dealing with weeds and diseases and methods of combating them. These volumes are too expensive to distribute gratis to individuals, but they are supplied free to the Farmers' Institutes throughout the country, so that no farmer need be debarred from access to them. In the afternoon I called on Mr. Cory, who had by this time returned to town. With him I had a most interesting talk on questions of policy, which ran very much on the fines of that which I had with Mr. Oliver shortly before I left London. remarks were conviction of the necessity of the restrictions on immigration and of the The keynotes of his deportation law, and determination to maintain and use them reasonably in order to get for Canada, and maintain there, only people of the kind which could be expected to succeed. He said that they were not bringing in an appreciable number from Eastern Europe at present. He mentioned Scandinavians and French peasants as particularly good classes of immigrants. He spoke at some length (as Mr. Oliver had done) of the trouble experienced in the Eastern Provinces with undesirable immigrants from the States, and dwelt on the determination of the Dominion Govern- ment to keep pace with the United States law as to deportation and with the elaborate organisation maintained by the States along the boundary line in order to keep out or deport undesirables. Mr. Cory admitted that, so far as adult emigration from the United Kingdom on any considerable scale was concerned, we seemed to have come to something of a deadlock. The classes that Canada wanted England could not spare in any numbers. The classes that England could spare Canada did not want. He had great hopes, however, of a successful issue from child emi- gration. He spoke warmly of the great measure of success already attained in this direction, and evidently hoped much from efforts on the same lines in the future.
TORONTO.
I left Ottawa on the night of the 10th of August, and got to Toronto early in the morning of the 11th. I first called on Mr. Stewart, the Dominion Immigration Agent. He said that the supply of farm hands in Ontario was very far below the demand. In his opinion, farm hands ought not to get out later than the beginning of August, if they were to have any chance of getting a permanent job which would carry them over the winter. Later than that they might get temporary employment
at harvesting; but the farmer would not be likely to take on men new to the country just before closing down for the winter. mechanics or artisans, and could with difficulty he got to talk about them.
Mr. Stewart will, of course, not touch
He spoke