rovince. Nothing
came of it. Sir James Whitney told them that he was not going to
establish RACIAL SCHOOLS in the Province of Ontario, whatever the
meaning of that may be. He sought to make them feel that he looked upon
the use of French in the Ontario schools as introducing racial schools.

Gentlemen, I have to touch on these points very briefly because I know
your time is precious, and I do not want to trespass upon your
indulgence. I might say that such litigation followed. However I do not
propose to go into that as I do not know that much profit could be
derived from it in the time which you have kindly allowed me.

Then this statute was passed last year, of which we are now asking the
disallowance, and I am going to speak of that briefly. I am sure you
have heard something of the petitions which have been circulated, not
only in the Province of Ontario, but also in Quebec, calling upon the
Dominion Government to disallow this statute passed in 1915. The statute
has two effects, the validating of regulation 17, which in the meantime
was being tried in the courts, and the purpose of establishing the
Ottawa Separate School Commission, of which I have no doubt you have
also heard.

The act takes all the powers from the Roman Catholic Separate School
Trustees elected by the Roman Catholic rate-payers and confers them upon
the Commission. This Commission--which I shall not qualify, but which I
shall describe--was composed of three gentlemen, Mr. Denis Murphy, Mr.
D'Arcy McGee, and Mr. Charbonneau. The first two being Irish Catholics,
and the other a French-Canadian Catholic.

The Roman Catholic population of Ottawa is composed of nearly 50,000
people, of whom about 33,000 are French-Canadians and about 17,000 are
Irish Catholics. As I said, the Government appointed two Irish Catholics
and made one of them chairman, the other vice-chairman, and Mr.
Charbonneau simply a member. This commission was vested with all the
powers which the board of elected trustees had the statutory right and
the duty to administer. You can imagine, gentlemen, how efficiently
these schools could be conducted under such conditions and with such a
commission. You can imagine the provocation it was to the
French-Canadian population of Ottawa. I should add that one of the
commissioners--they are all respectable men--but one was in the
unfortunate position of being a license holder under the Government
which appointed him. Mr. Charbonneau, or th