You will recall that in the October 3 draft? of our submission to Cabinet on this subject, we recommended the following contributions (the figures in brackets are the increases over our 1956 contributions):

On October 12 we had a meeting with Finance Department officials (Mr. Plumptre and two others) to discuss this draft submission.

At that meeting Mr. Plumptre noted that Mr. Harris has no great enthusiasm for this sort of programme, though he recognizes that some increases are necessary. Mr. Plumptre then told us what Mr. Harris' reaction in Cabinet on Thursday, October 18, is likely to be, but he emphasized that the views he gave us were not necessarily binding on Mr. Harris.

(1) ETAP and UNICEF: Our draft submission of October 3 recommends a total increase of $300,000 for these two. Mr. Plumptre said Mr. Harris was inclined to think that a total increase of $200,000 was enough. This total could be given either to ETAP, or split up evenly with $100,000 to each one.

We have not changed our submission on these two programmes as a result of our discussions with Finance Department, and are continuing to ask for $200,000 more for ETAP and $100,000 more for UNICEF. With regard to the UNICEF increase, I think you know that Mrs. Sinclair has asked for no increase at all, but wants to be sure that we give no less than in 1956, which was $650,000. In fact, Mrs. Sinclair does not know (since she is away from the office because of illness) that you wished us to increase our contribution. We suggest, therefore, that if money has to be saved somewhere, we take the $100,000 off UNICEF rather than off UNRWA.

(2) UNRWA: Mr. Plumptre said that Finance Department would like us to give $400,000, that is a cut of $100,000 from the 1956 contribution. We are somewhat loath to suggest that this is the fund where we could save money. Also, it could be that the Arabs, remembering Canada's recent decision to send planes to Israel, would look on our saving $100,000 at the expense of Arab refugees as a very definite and unmistakable sign that we were on the side of Israel. We rather doubt if the saving of this much money would be worth the possible unhappy repercussions from the Arabs. Hence our suggestion, as mentioned in (1) above, is that, since UNICEF would be quite satisfied and content with no increase, that we save money there rather than in the UNRWA programme. We have therefore kept our original recommendation for a contribution of $500,000.

(3) UNREF: Finance Department will go along with our recommendation for $200,000 but they want to attach two conditions (a) that we strongly urge other countries to make a similar increase and (b) that we tell the High Commissioner that we will contribute at the rate of $200,000 for the last two years of his four-year (1955-58) programme and then stop. We pointed out to Finance Department that it was unlikely the problem of the hard core of camp refugees would be wound up in four years, and it was improbable that the present shortfall of over $3 million could be recouped in the last two years of the 1955-58 programme. We were able to quote from very recent figures put out by the High Commissioner's Office that if Canada were to contribute at the U.N. scale we would be giving considerably more than $200,000.

The general feeling at the end of the discussion with Finance Department was that we should increase our contribution to about $240,000 for 1957 (with the 1958 contribution at about $250,000) on the understanding that at the end of the four year (1955-58) programme, the problem would be virtually wiped out.

After thinking this problem over, much as we would like to get $240,000 in 1957 and $250,000 in 1958 for UNREF, we are rather chary of taking this windfall because we fear that there may be many thousands of refugees under the High Commissioner's mandate at the end of 1958. If there are, we might then have serious difficulty with the Department of Finance if we wanted to get a contribution for 1959. We rather think it would be better to get the smaller amount ($200,000) with some informal understanding that the matter could be re-examined near the end of 1958 to see if the problem were by then really a manageable one so that the programme could be wound up. It seems unlikely to us that the four-year (1955-58) programme will clear up the refugee problem and we do not want Finance Department to get any false impression that it will be all over by 1958. We have therefore kept to our original recommendation of a contribution of $200,000 to UNREF.

We attach, for your consideration, the October 16 draft? of our Submission to Cabinet at its meeting on October 18. We should like your views so that we can put it in final form.

J. L[ÉGER]