EMIGRATION TO CANADA [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
have been an interested backstage admirer of Sir Henry Page Croft's enthusiasm and sincerity in promoting a scheme for placing to,000 British families on the land in British Columbia. The motive is excellent and well-intentioned, but as a. British Columbian of some thirty years' standing find it impracticable and too idealistic. Also it is pretty hard on the British taxpayer out of whose pockets comes the wherewithal. • The scheme he sets forth is basically unsound. First, because of the phrase " selected " emigration. On what grounds will emigrants be selected ? And who will do the selecting ? If on the basis of physical .fitness, it may be that England cannot afford to lose her best blood ; then again, below-par applicants might develop perfect physique under the influence of a new open-air life and plenteous food. No one could possibly tell. If on a character basis, it is asking too much. of any human being that he shall say what traits go to the making of a useful pioneer and which applicants possess the same. If emigrants are to be selected on a basis of farming knowledge, again I would say that England must not lose good farmers ; also I say that good English farmers do not necessarily make good Canadian farmers, much less pioneers. Conditions are so different that frequently an Englishman must unlearn his home experience before he is of much Use on a Canadian farm.
Secondly, the scheme is unsound because of the promise to keep the families for two years, and then if all is not to their liking in their new life a passage home will be provided. In other words, certain fortunate families are invited to go to British Columbia for a two-year change of air, all expenses found and return passage paid, at the expense of the long- suffering British taxpayer. This clause belongs rather in a charity benefit for providing holidays rather than in an emigra- dm. scheme. It hints that pioneering blood is non-existent now in Britain, that the old stock that made Empire is dead and gone, and so the new stock must be fed dole and kept in apron-strings. But this is a hard country and needs a sturdier breed than that. A man who has to be kept—even a man who consents to being kept—while making his way in a new country is not the type of man we want out here. Free land should surely be dole enough? The very knowledge that his return passage was in the offing would be a canker eating up his powers of resistance. Why should he worry about over- coming obstacles and difficulties and dig himself in ? After a couple of years he could throw it all up and go home to mother ! In all the history of the Empire there has been no spoon-fed emigrant scheme that has proved successful.- A sound country can only be built on the policy of the open door, let come who will, and the strongest will survive.
Whatever is to be done, it should be done without further delay. Too long Canada has hogged a vast country that she refuses to populate, and a timorous Britain dare not say her nay. There are other and sturdy nations whose lands are getting overcrowded, who will not wait to formulate schemes for padded emigration, and who are quite likely to bring more than one battleship when they arrive—to stay. The pluto- cratic bureaucracy that is Canada's form of government has completely failed to provide any form of material defence.—
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