6.
I
37.
I made it quite clear that I had come to Ottawa for exploratory discussions, that I had no negotiating instructions, and that this was therefore merely a proposal that I would ask the Hong Kong Government to consider. was quite unable to say whether it would be accepted. Similarly, I accepted that Howarth could give no guarantee that if we made a counter-proposal on these lines the Canadian Government would accept it.
38.
I told Robin Gray, without giving him the details, that we had agreed on a proposal to be put forward, which offered a hope of dealing with the problem and that I thought it was worthwhile trying to meet the Canadians to preserve good-will.
39.
I am pretty sure that the Canadian letter of 1 April is a Rodney Grey effort (Howarth hinted this when he told me If we he had been away a lot.) We rightly rejected that. agree with Howarth, I think we strengthen his position as against Grey and that that is to our advantage since he is much more reasonable and fair-minded than Grey.
40.
I should add here that Howarth's idea of negotiation/ consultation is that it can be conducted by correspondence. This came out in Ottawa last July but I didn't take much notice at the time. His idea is that, however unreasonable we may think the demandeurs proposal is, we can rep y with a counter-proposal instead of a rejection plus willingness to consult, and that we have to get round the table only if counter-proposal can't be accepted.
Call on the Minister of Finance (Mr. Edgar Benson)
41.
Mr. Benson was not free until 5.15 p.m. and delayed his return home to Kingston for the weekend to receive me.
Mr. Benson was It was a very relaxed and friendly meeting.
We told him clearly not briefed on the particular subject. it was shirts and h e referred to the many closures of shirt manufacturing plants, adding 'quite a lot of them probably ought to close too', to which Howarth said 'That's just what David has been arguing' but this didn't bother Benson, who as we noted in Hong Kong, takes a pretty relaxed and 'realistic view of the whole business: he's a politician, but not a convinced protectionist. ·
42.
Howarth then said something about 'the pace of change' again and this gave me the chance to recall that we had been under restraint for some items since 1962, with less growth in recent years than in the earlier ones : the pace of change seemed pretty slow.
43.
Having looked at the figures again, I referred to Rodney Grey's allegations since I wanted to be sure Benson
and knew he had been making them and that I rejected them said that when Dorward had said (if he did) that he thought the p/p trade was pretty negligible, it was quite true. There had only been a few thousand dozen shipped by the time we had left Hong Kong for Ottawa in July 1968. course had no foreknowledge of the future build-up.
44.%.
We had of
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