Tuesday, February 27, 1968

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is anything being done. I don’t know when they are going to get it underway. Our situation, I say, is desperate, we can’t wait for two years, nor a year, it is here with us now. That’s the point I want to put across in this Legislature. Our rural life, our communities, our churches, our schools are dependent upon the retention and the development of what my friend just wonders is an average farm or a family

farm. I think that if these are discouraged we would simply have a lowered pop- ulatlon, a less prosperous heritage.

Hon. Alexander B. Campbell: Another half hour!

Walter R. Shaw: That won’t fix me up! I am not half through telling you fellows what you should know.

Hon. Alexander B. Campbell: This is not another seven-day speech is it?

Walter R. Shaw: Yes, this is a good one, the best is yet to come. I always leave the best to the last.

Hon. Alexander B. Campbell: Carry on, I’ll be right back.

Walter R. Shaw: Don’t go; I might say something that would be of great value to you. Hon. Alexander B. Campbell: I’ll be listening outside.

Walter R. Shaw: I am not going to finish this up tonight; I don’t want to. Hon. Robert E. Campbell: Lots of time.

Walter R. Shaw: Lots of time, I’ll come back tomorrow. I have something to say to you, my Honourable Minister, tomorrow. I want to let you have a good sleep before you get the value of it.

I wonder about this 400,000 acres of land they are going to clear in this Province.

Frank Myers: Hear! hear!

Walter R. Shaw: That was the strangest one I ever heard tell of. L. G. Dewar: They lost the bulldozer.

Walter R. Shaw: Where did they expect to get that 400,000 acres of land? Hon. Robert E. Campbell: Second District of Prince.

Walter R. Shaw: They went up there and they lost the bulldozer. You haven’t been up there, Second District of Prince, that’s up at Black Banks. Where they went up with a squad of bulldozers and they were going to clear the land there, they were going to have it all ready to plant potatoes next spring, and some of it in grain. And they went in on the land that they were clearing out for agricultural purposes and they nearly lost all the machinery that they took up there. Any school-boy, of course it is no use asking this man because he wouldn’t know anyway, but any schoolboy up there would have been able to tell them that it is just a sand bank; water, swampy land, that was never intended in the world for farm purposes. They were going in and they were going to cut good timber down and burn it to clear this out. That comes from themselves, not from you. I told you you didn’t know it. And they were going to cut this lumber down and burn it and clean it up for agricul- tural purposes. They went down East here into a gravel pit where there was sand and gravel and they were cleaning that out for agricultural purposes. Think of it! I wonder where in the world are the 400,000 acres of land, or who are the experts that decided on this. Now we have about 100,000 acres of vacant land in this province. They are going to take this for agricultural uses. We know that only a portion of that land is fit for agriculture, a great many acres of that land should go into forestry, to grow trees. There is a lot of land now that is cleared up to the west of Summerside here and further than that up to the west, Western Prince, that should never have been cleared. Much of it is growing up in scrub. That should be going under forestry. They do not seem to know how many acres of land there is in the Province. I wonder if they ever worked out how much land in this country

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