Wednesday, Aprll 6, 1967

Honourable M. Lorne Donnell: You are always giving me good advice like I gave to you for the last seven years.

L. George Dewar: But I think you are going to have a serious problem on your hands. You are going to have to decide how much these social welfare cases are supposed to get, and I can envisage the usurious way in which these com- mittees are going to deal with this problem. nder The Mother's Allowance Act a certain amount was stipulated and they got that; but if they could not come under that Mother’s Allowance Act, they were shoved off with a pittance.

Honourable M. Lorne Bonnell: We are not shoving anyone off.

L. George Dewar: I'll wait and see but I know what will happen and I can site one instance. A poor mother up West, she has five small children and of course I will have to admit that she loved well but not wisely. . . .(Laughter) And what does the Minister of Welfare do about it?

What have they ever done about it? Nothing. Honourable M. Lorne Bonnell: Did you give me the name?

L. George Dewar: Oh yes, I have given you her name. I have written letters to you and I have written letters to your predecessor in fact there must be a whole file down there about that thick.

Honourable Robert E. Campbell: Is that the one you gave the money to be- fore. . . .a pension too?

L. George Dewar: The pension? No she couldn’t get a pension, that was the

lamentable part, that she could not get a pension. She couldn't get Mother’s Allow- anee.

Honourable M. Lorne Bonnell: Why couldn’t she get it? Could she get Welfare Assistance of any kind?

L. George Dewar: Well that's what I say. This is a matter for this big-hearted Committee to consider and lo and behold the amount that they came up with wouldn’t be enough to keep half a child let alone five.

Honourable M. Lorne Bonnell: Weren’t you on that Committee?

L. George Dewar: Yes I just said that I was on the Committee. I spoke on her behalf on numerous occasions and I have written the present Minister of Welfare for her. In fact, last summer I went out to see her and she was carrying water. . . .

Honourable M. Lorne Bonnell: Was she washing your hair?

L. George Dewar: .. . .in buckets for a mile, and she was medically disabled at the time, from a spring which was going dry; she had no well.

Honourable Robert E. Campbell: I think they dug her a pump last fall.

L. George Dewar: I wrote to the Minister of Welfare about it and he said he was going to do something about it, but nothing was done, nothing was done, Mr. Speaker, and finally I had to appeal to private philanthropy in order to get her a well. The Welfare Department never paid a cent on it, never paid a cent on it!

Honourable M. Lorne Bonnell: Do you think the Welfare Department should be digging wells?

L. George Dewar: Well they should have given her a little more assistance so the poor woman could afford to get a well dug. This was a serious situation.

Honourable Robert E. Campbell: (Remark inaudible).

L. George Dewar: I am not sure, I am not sure but it could be so, but I hope so anyway. But anyway I went out this winter to see her and she was in the woods

—121—-