BEFOGGED CANADIAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 8, 31 March 1927, Page 1

BEFOGGED CANADIAN

DOMINION STATUS DEBATE IN HOUSE DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS By Cable. — Press Association.—Copyright OTTAWA, Wednesday. The Prime Minister, Mr. W. L. Mackenzie King, gave an account of the proceedings at the last Imperial Conference in the House of Commons yesterday. He said Imperial control had now given place to equality of status and to wholehearted co-operation between the different parts of the Empire and Great Britain. In respect to defence no commitments were made, nor were there anv requests in that connection. Each Dominion had been left to determine

what its defence should be and the extent to which it would co - operate with Britain and the sister Dominions. As regards constitutional status there were greater <lifficulties between the views of the various Dominions than between those “'of Canada and the Motherland. The »- Dominions started out in a position of colonial subordina-

tion. but a change had come about, and now that conception of things no longer obtained. Mr. Hugh Guthrie. Leader of the Conservative Opposition, moved an amendment to the effect that it was not desirable for the House to be deemed tacitly to have acquiesced in the recommendations and declarations of the Imperial Conference, and that they should not be binding on the Parliament of Canada until they had been approved by a formal resolution of the House of Commons, also that until then the Government should not be deemed to have been authorised to carry into effect the recommendations contained in the report of the Committee on Inter-Imperial Relations. Mr. Guthrie said this t opened the door to possibilities which might end in serious disaster. So varied and diversified had been the statements of those who took part in the conference as to what was actually done that the public was not clear what really was accomplished. The speaker referred to statements made by Mr. S. M. Bruce. Prime Minister of Australia, by Mr. King in Canada, and by General Hertzog, Prime Minister of South Africa. Mr. King said the conference had not made an effort to discover points of difference, but points of agreement. —A. and N.Z.—Sun.