Page:Order in Council PC4458-1941 20-June-1941.djvu/1

 The Committee of the Privy Council have had before them a report, dated June 11th, 1941, from the Minister of National Defence, representing as follows:—

1.By an Order-in-Council dated 9th April, 1941, P.C. 2506, approval was given to the lease from the Province of Alberta of an area comprising about 700 000 acres, to be used as a full-scale Experimental Station for defensive measures against Gas and Chemical Warfare, the same to be financed and operated jointly by Canada and the United Kingdom on the basis that both capital and maintenance costs would be shared equally by the two Governments.

2.The arrangements in brief, as approved by the said Order-in-Council, were that the Province would acquire all patented lands in the area in question, remove all settlers therefrom, and would lease said lands, together with the adjoining Provincial lands, to the Dominion for a term of 99 years at a rental of $1.00 per annum, and that the Dominion would grant to the Province the sum of Six Hundred Thousand Dollars ($600,000) in respect of the cost which the acquisition of the patented lands and the removal of the settlers thereon to a new locations would entail.

3.In a letter dated May 13th, 1941, copy attached, the Premier of Alberta advised that, for the reasons therein stated, the Province felt that it is financially impossible for it to take the responsibility to move the settlers from the lands hereinbefore mentioned, and making their lands available to the Department, and said letter was followed by a telegram from the Minister of National Defence to the Premier of Alberta dated May 16th, a copy of which is attached.

4.In consequence of the foregoing and in view of the urgent need of the development of this Experimental Station, after consultation with the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom in Canada, and after consultation by the representatives of the Department of National Defence with the Government of Alberta, it was decided that, in order to obtain the requisite lands without delay, the whole/