CANADA EXPLAINS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 455, 10 September 1928, Page 9

CANADA EXPLAINS

DISCONTENT WITH WAGES MEN NOT SUITED (Australian and X.Z. Press Association) (United Service) OTTAWA, Saturday. The Department of Immigration and Colonisation has issued a statement to the effect that 328 British harvesters left Winnipeg on Wednesday to return to England. Some of the men are going back because of their organised opposition to accepting employment at the rate of about 17s a day. not owing to a lack of -work. Others are not fitted for harvesting work. The Immigration Department and the Dominion police are investigating the report of an organised attempt on the part of Communists to discredit the movement of the harvesters from Britain. Complete categorical denial is given to the charges made by a London paper that the British miners sent out as harvesters are being used as strike-breakers in Canada, and that one of them committed suicide. Viscount Peel said that as far as he could learn the great majority of the harvesters were securing work at fair wages and were satisfied with their experience so far. It must be expected that there would be some unfitted to the work. The leader of the British Labour Party, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, said the movement of British harvesters to Canada was an experiment and Canada and Britain should be prepared for some measure of failure.