The Dominion. MONDAY, MAY 20, 1912. THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT CONFERENCE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1444, 20 May 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, MAY 20, 1912. THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT CONFERENCE.

If the Conference which is to consider the Local Government Bill this week reflects truly the general sentiment of the local bodies throughout the country, it will condemn the measure lock, stock, and barrel. Exactly what the Conference is expected to do —whether to go through the Bill as if it were the House of Representatives sitting in Committee, or to pass a series of resolutions about the Bill and about the general question of local government —has not been explained. The whole proceeding has been vague and unsatisfactory, and it is difficult to believe that the Government has any definite ideas on the matter. The delegates, appointed by the various districts in numbers decreed by the Minister, are not delegates at all in any strict sense, for the sectional conferences that appointed them gave them no instructions. This week's Conference, therefore, will be merely a gathering of men who have had some sort of experience on some sorts of local bodies; and the opinions they express can hardly be more than their personal opinions. Their discussion of the Bill will of course have some usefulness, but their conclusions can have no binding effect, nor even any special authority. The holding of the Conference at this juncture is really a waste of time and money. The "Liberal" Administration, of which the present Ministry is the last phase, has for eighteen years professed to have given the most earnest attention to the problem of local government; and one would therefore suppose that such intense and prolonged study would havo made quite unnecessary any general conference of delegates from local bodies. The summoning of the Conference looks very like a pretence of doing something. But at least something might have been done to make the Conference of real use. It should have been the sequel of sectional conferences each of which would have sent forward definite remits for consideration. As it is, the Conference will meet merely to take up the Bill and talk about it. _ It will" probably tear the Bill to pieces, but what will it suggest as a substitute? No alternative proposals have' been suggested bv any local body at all; and we cannot hope that the work of criticism will be constructive at all.

The Bill, as we have said, erects a good principle, in its implication that local affairs should be locally

administered, without the oveilai)ping, looseness, and waste of the present rambling system of all sorts of small local boards and bodies. But, as Dr. Newmax made plain in the interview with him which wo published last week, no attempt tins bnnn rnnde to UP.rn.vßl the intricate reticulation of finance. The dclcKa>

tion to Ptovincinl Councils of the control a'iicl financing of education, hospitals, drainage, etc., in the manner proposed by the Bill might not add to the burdens of any province as a whole, but it can"easily result in cities bearing part of the burdens at present borne by country districts. That might be remedied by practically cutting the cities out of the Bill or making them all into separate-provinces; but that would knock the Bill to pieces. It is the conflict between city interests and rural interests that will probably direct the course of the Conference. Now, those of us who have realised the deficiencies of the existing system of local government have never dreamed of a remedy that would so sharply raise an issue of that kind. If the Conference cannot put before the Minister some alternative suggestions for dealing with the whole question, and wo do not think it can hastily devise any satisfactory plan, it would be far better merely to have the badnesses of the Bill pointed out and drop the whole_ thing for the time. Our own opinion is that Parliament could not do better, as the foundation of a comprehensive settlement,, than do away with the method under which the expenditure out of the public funds on public works_ is allocated. In tho meantime it is difficult not to feel that tho cost of this Conference will be largely a waste of money.