Since its coming into office, the Laurier administration has been called upon to deal with many questions of Canadian as well as imperial concern. One of its first measures--to refer first to those of Canadian importance--was the repeal of the franchise act of 1885, which had been found so expensive in its operation that the Conservative government had for years taken no steps to prepare new electoral lists for the Dominion under its own law, but had allowed elections to be held on old lists which necessarily left out large numbers of persons entitled to vote. In accordance with the policy to which they had always pledged themselves as a party, the Liberal majority in parliament passed an act which returned to the electoral lists of the provinces. An attempt was also made in 1899 and 1900 to amend the redistribution acts of 1882 and 1892, and to restore so far as practicable the old county lines which had been deranged by those measures. The bill was noteworthy for the feature, novel in Canada, of leaving to the determination of a judicial commission the rearrangement of electoral divisions, but it was rejected in the senate on the ground that the British North America act provides only for the readjustment of the representation after the taking of each Decennial census, and that it is "a violation of the spirit of the act" to deal with the question until 1901, when the official figures of the whole population will be before parliament. The government was also called upon to arrange the details of a provisional government for the great arctic region of the Yukon, where remarkable gold discoveries were attracting a considerable population from all parts of the world. An attempt to build a short railway to facilitate communication with that wild and distant country was defeated in the senate by a large majority. The department of the interior has had necessarily to encounter many difficulties in the administration of the affairs of a country so many thousand miles distant. These difficulties have formed the subject of protracted debates in the house of commons and have led to involved political controversies which it would not be possible to explain satisfactorily within the limits of this chapter.