1969-04-25

[Stage Direction]
Sixth report of Standing Committee on Transport and Communications, in French and in English-Mr. H.-Pit Lessard (LaSalle).
[Editor's Note: The text of the foregoing report appears in today's Votes and Proceedings.]


Hon. Jack Davis (Minister of Fisheries):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to announce, in broad outline, the nature of the deficiency payment program which the government is establishing for salt cod fishermen in 1969. The object of this plan is to ensure that our salt cod fishermen will receive a price for their product which is comparable to that which they received in 1966 and 1967.
As hon. members are aware, devaluation of a number of foreign currencies together with an oversupply of salt fish in world markets resulted in a sharp price decline in 1968. The return to the average Canadian fishermen was down about 25 per cent as compared to 1967. Incomes, particularly in Newfoundland, were also depressed. These developments, together with increased costs of equipment, fuel and other supplies have resulted in severe hardship in many Atlantic communities.
While export prices in 1969 may increase, this is by no means certain. The government has therefore decided to make deficiency payments to salt cod fishermen this fall. These supplementary payments will bring the total price they receive up to a level which is more in line with the price which they received for their fish in 1967. These deficiency payments will be made directly to the
fishermen after the fishing season is over and after the salted cod has been sold to the exporters. Payments will be made only on certain grades. Those of a high or medium quality will qualify for assistance. Ungraded fish and fish falling into the lowest grades will not. This selective approach is being followed in order to encourage the production of better quality fish. Inquiries in our traditional export markets also confirm the view that success in our salt cod industry lies in the direction of quality improvement. Our longterm plan therefore is to assist our fishermen to produce a better product.
In consultation with fishermen's representatives and the fish trade, my department has prepared a list of "target" prices for these select grades of salted cod. The prices may not be achieved in 1969. For this reason the government is prepared to supplement the prices which the fishermen actually negotiate with the buyers and exporters to an extent that will bring them reasonably close to the "target" price levels which we believe will be achieved in the early 1970's. More specifically, the government will pay directly to individual fishermen an amount in dollars equal to half the difference between our published "target" prices and the amounts actually received by the fishermen from the fish buyers. If, for example, the "target" price for a quintal of prime light salted fish is $28 and the buyer negotiates a price to the fishermen of $20, then the government will pay the fishermen an additional $4 in the fall. The end price will vary, of course, depending on size, quality and grade. But the 50 per cent support formula will be the same in all cases.
I wish to stress the fact, Mr. Speaker, that this deficiency payment program is intended to compensate the salt cod fishermen for the decline in prices which has taken place since 1967. Other measures, such as the establishment of a Salt Fish Development Corporation which will assist in the reorganization of the industry in 1970 and subsequent years will be announced shortly. An advisory committee, representing fishermen and the salt codfish trade, is being appointed to assist me in the administration of this new program and to assess its impact on the incomes of fishermen
April 25, 1969
7952	COMMONS
Salt Cod Deficiency Payment Program in Newfoundland, Quebec and the maritime provinces1.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, when the government announced the end of the salt rebate program last year it was supposed to be the end of the interim programs to deal with various crises facing the fishing industry. In the words of the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Jamieson) it was to be the end of the band aid philosophy. Yet here we have another interim program, another band aid. The problems facing the salt cod industry are unique, complex and stem from two factors. They are, a lack of quality control in production and the necessity for control of marketing. There is no question but that this is hurting us in our principal market in the West Indies. In my view this situation can only be coped with adequately by the establishment of a marketing board. The minister in his statement of February 20 said there was an examination into "the possible advantages of a salt cod marketing board", yet instead of an announcement in respect of this marketing board, today we have another band aid interim program. I agree that this program was necessary to correct the very serious situation that existed in 1968, when the prices were so low that the very survival of the industry was threatened, not to mention the very important aspects' in relation to the hardships imposed on the fishermen, because it is the fishermen who suffer.
[DOT] (11:10 a.m.)
In this regard, in the preparation of what we hope will be the government's policy on this matter, it is necessary that steps be taken to eliminate the archaic barter system whereby a fisherman is outfitted by the merchant and repays the merchant at the end of the season from the returns from his catch. This imposes very severe hardships on the fisherman, and I hope the government will take steps to alleviate this archaic barter system, which amounts to a yoke on the fisherman, who is the producer. He has to bring in the fish and he depends on his catch for his livelihood.
In my view we should be taking greater advantage of our position to produce a top quality product, in view of the fact the fish is practically cured on the day it is caught. This gives a great advantage to Canada. Consideration should also be given to the packaging of


the product for retail merchandising, thereby eliminating some of the middlemen.
Most important, Mr. Speaker, we must end the cut-throat competition that is doing so much to hurt us in respect of our principal markets. In the final analysis of course this is hurting the fishermen as well. In my view this can only be accomplished by the establishment of a marketing board. I also believe, and I think the minister shares my view, that this marketing board can be set up adequately under the Fisheries Prices Support Board by taking advantage of provincial agencies.
This important industry is today in a state of suspended animation, yet we are stuck with another interim program and faced with the prospect of having to go through the same thing next year. I have just about concluded; but on a final note I should like to state that I am very pleased to note that the government will be paying deficiency payments under this program on the basis of a target price system, thereby insuring that the minimum does not become the maximum and that the fishermen will benefit from the advantages of improved marketing conditions.



CANADA PENSION PLAN


Mr. Max Saltsman (Waterloo) moved: for leave to introduce Bill No. C-190, to amend the Canada Pension Plan.


Some hon. Members:: Explain.


Max Saltsman: Mr. Speaker, in the years to come, the value of government programs like the Canada Pension Plan will receive increasing support and recognition.
Although the effectiveness of such programs depends upon universal coverage and contribution, care must be taken that adequate opportunity is given to groups who, for reasons of religious beliefs cannot accept the benefits and whose non-participation in the program would not jeopardize its success, if they were to exclude themselves therefrom.
The Old Order Mennonites of Waterloo County is such a group and this bill seeks to recognize their right on religious grounds to make payments into an alternate fund equal to the amount of their Canada Pension Plan premium.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the first time and ordered to be printed.
April 25, 1969


Hon. Robert L. Stanfield (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the Minister of Finance whether, in view of the expressed determination of the President of the United States to reduce the burden of taxation on the lower income groups in his country, the minister is reconsidering his unfortunate proposal to increase the burden on the same groups in this country; and in particular, is this perhaps the reason for the delay in his bringing forward the legislation to implement the so-called social development tax?


Hon. E. J. Benson (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I believe the Leader of the Opposition is talking about the tax reform proposals in the United States being put forward by the President. As the house knows, our tax reform proposals will be presented in the form of a white paper, hopefully by the end of June. With respect to the tax measures contained in the budget, I am hoping to introduce the bill on Tuesday next.



THE CANADIAN ECONOMY


Robert Lorne Stanfield: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. In view of the fact that yesterday the Minister of Finance indirectly received honourable mention in the resignation statement of his colleague, the Minister of Transport, when he referred to the delay in dealing with inflation, is it the position of the government of Canada that constitutional problems are responsible for the continuing increase in the cost of living in this country?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I would not think the question is in order.



HOUSING


Mr. W. B. Nesbitt (Oxford):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Finance. Is the minister now giving consideration to removing the 11 per cent sales tax on buildi-ing materials?


Edgar John Benson: Not at the present time, Mr. Speaker.
Inquiries of the Ministry INDIAN AFFAIRS



CONSULTATIVE CONFERENCE-DISCUSSIONS AS TO CLAIMS COMMISSION, WESTERN REPRESENTATION AND LEGALITY OF TREATIES

Mr. T. C. Douglas (Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the1 Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. In view of the fact that the Indian consultative conference is to begin Monday next, and to be continued until May 5, is it the intention of the minister to divulge to that conference the terms that will be included in any legislation dealing with the establishment of an Indian claims commission, in order that the native Indians who are attending the conference may have an opportunity of discussing this matter?


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, I have no intention of limiting the discussion on any subject with the Indians next week. They themselves' took the initiative of preparing the agenda, and if they wish to put before me their opinions about the Indian Claims Commisson, I will readily listen to them. But I do not intend to disclose the government's policy in that field, as all its aspects will be known in the weeks following the last conference with the Indians.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Since the minister is not going to divulge to the Indian consultative conference the terms and conditions of any bill to establish an Indian claims commission, when is it the ministers' intention to give that information to the House of Commons', and when does he propose to introduce the legislation? Will it be this session?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I propose to inform the house before the adjournment in June on all aspects of our Indian policy, including the government's attitude regarding the Indian Claims Commission.


Hon. W. G. Dinsdale (Brandon-Souris):: supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Has the minister heard from representatives of the western delegates attending the conference to the effect that they will not be joining

April 25. 1969
Inquiries of the Ministry in discussions with the representatives of the Department of Indian Affairs; and if so, how will this affect the terms of reference of the conference? I believe the point they raise is precisely the point raised by the leader of the New Democratic party.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I spoke with the President of the Canadian Indian Federation, Mr. Deiter, and we agreed that the Federation would prepare the agenda of the conference. The Minister without Portfolio in charge of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and myself, will be present when the Indians express the desire to meet us, and the same thing goes for the officials of my department.


Mr. Robert Simpson (Churchill):: I have a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Would the minister be prepared to discuss fully with the Indian people at the meetings next week the legality of the treaties as they presently exist?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Of course, Mr. Speaker, it is our intention to discuss all matters that may be of interest to the Indians and I am sure this point will be raised.



PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY IN LANGUAGE OF AMENDING MEASURE

Mr. G. W. Baldwin (Peace River):: I have a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. In view of the fact that I detected a faint touch of ambiguity in the minister's reply to the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands, and since he told us the other day that the new Indian Act would be couched in clear and simple terms which everybody, including members of parliament, would understand, is the minister prepared to say specifically now that members of parliament will have a chance to judge for themselves before the end of the session just how clear and simple the language of the act is. In other words, will he introduce the Indian Act-not legislation on the Indian claims commission- or amendments to the act before the end of the session?


An hon. Member:: He said so.
[Mr. Dinsdale.l


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, the house will certainly have an opportunity to realize that our Indian Affairs policy is quite clear and that the Indian Act will be particularly clear, if there is one.


Gerald William Baldwin: I have a further supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. I did not ask the minister whether or not the act was clear. What I asked was whether the new Indian Act or amendments to it will be introduced to the house before the end of the session.


Mr. Woolliams:: That is simple enough.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I said that I would advise the house, before the month of June, of the government policy with respect to Indian Affairs.


Gerald William Baldwin: Answer the question. HOUSING



PRESENCE OF RESPONSIBLE MINISTER DURING DEBATE

Hon. George Hees (Prince Edward-Haslings):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister advise the house whether the minister responsible for housing will be in the house today at two o'clock when the debate dealing with this important matter begins?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Mr. Richardson, who is the Acting Minister of Housing, is in the house this morning.


George Harris Hees: I have a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. It is known that the minister who is still responsible for housing is in Ottawa and in the parliament buildings today. Can the Prime Minister give us any good reason why the minister is not in the house today when such an important matter is coming up for discussion?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Since this is a purely argumentative question, it is not acceptable.


George Harris Hees: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. When a matter'of such importance comes up for discussion in the house and the minister responsible is in Ottawa but is not
April 25, 1969

present in the house, I think it is a matter of great importance.


Mr. Speaker:: Many matters of great importance do not qualify for questions under the rules.


Mr. Donald Maclnnis (Cape Breion-Easi Richmond):: I have a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Assuming that the rules have been changed, I would ask Mr. Richardson if he is not-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The rules have not been changed. The hon. member must realize that the Prime Minister referred to the Minister without Portfolio by name in order to identify him. We all know that this is not regular, but when there is more than one Minister without Portfolio sometimes this practice is resorted to.


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: They are hard to find.


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the hon. member for Calgary North would like to make a ruling for the Chair.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Speaker:: The rule has not been
changed.


Malcolm MacInnis: I wish to ask the Minister without Portfolio from Winnipeg South whether he submitted his resignation to the Prime Minister.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.



THE CANADIAN ECONOMY


Mrs. Grace Maclnnis (Vancouver-Kings-*way):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct my question to the Prime Minister. In view of the warning given yesterday by the vice chairman of the Economic Council of Canada that failure to deal with poverty in a purposeful way may well result in violence in Canadian cities, will the government give this matter the priority that it so urgently demands? Many people would like an answer to that question.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The answer is yes, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Ed Schreyer (Selkirk):: My supplementary question arises from the fact that since the war on poverty was declared five years
Inquiries of the Ministry ago, the only sound of that has been the crackle of the press release from the Liberal backbenchers, I should like to ask the Prime Minister-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member cannot make a speech; he has to ask a question.


Edward Richard Schreyer: I should like to ask the Prime Minister or anyone representing the Minister of Regional and Economic Expansion if he can assure the house, in the light of mounting concern about this problem, that before the end of this session the government will submit to parliament concrete measures relative to poverty in Canada.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The minister has already announced his intention to introduce for first reading a bill concerned with this aspect of regional economic development.


Mr. David Lewis (York Souih):: I address this question to the Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker. In view of the fact that the findings in all the analyses of poverty in Canada, including that made by the Economic Council, show that poverty is by no means limited to the disadvantaged regions of Canada but that it also exists in the large urban areas-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The hon. member should ask the question.


David Lewis: I was just coming to that, Mr. Speaker. Would the Prime Minister tell us what organization has been set up inside or outside the cabinet to deal with the question of poverty, not only in the disadvantaged areas but elsewhere in the country?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I answered this question two days ago, Mr. Speaker.



RESEARCH


Hon. D. S. Harkness (Calgary Centre):: This question is directed to the Prime Minister. What procedure does the government intend to follow to deal with the wide-ranging recommendations of the Macdonald Report on scientific research?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The President of the Treasury Board will deal with this question when he is in the house.

April 25, 1969
Inquiries of the Ministry OIL



REQUEST FOR REPORT ON CANADA-U.S. CONTINENTAL POLICY

Eldon Mattison Woolliams: should like to direct a question to the Prime Minister or to the Acting Minister for Energy, Mines and Resources. Has the task force finished its report as far as the petroleum industry is concerned and, if so, is the government prepared to make a report to the house with reference to the consultations between Canada and the United States?


Hon. Otto E. Lang (Acting Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: I am not quite sure which report the hon. member has in mind. It seems to me he is dealing with two different things. The task force concerned with northern development, in particular, has made an interim report, and this is being considered. With regard to the other matter referred to, continual reports are being received but no specific report has been made.


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: Perhaps I was a little ambiguous, Mr. Speaker. I was wondering whether the group concerned with the subject has returned from Washington, and made any deal affecting Canada and the United States as far as petroleum is concerned in connection with a new continental oil policy.


Otto Emil Lang: The discussions in Washington dealt with some narrow and specific matters as well as with some general issues of great importance. Talks with regard to all these aspects are continuing. There are no conclusions to report to the house at this time.


Mr. Rod Thomson (Baitleford-Kindersley):: I wonder whether the federal government and the task force in their studies of the marketing of northern oil have consulted the Alberta government, and the possible conflict of interest in connection with oil sales there.



HOUSING


Mr. Harold E. Winch (Vancouver East):: May I be privileged to direct a question to the acting minister responsible for housing? Can we be advised whether any or all of the proposed public housing projects in Vancouver are presently being processed, or whether all such projects are stalled pending the announcement of new government policies on low rent housing?


Hon. James Richardson (Acting Minister of Housing):: Mr. Speaker, all public housing projects are not being stalled.


Harold Edward Winch: I asked the minister specifically with regard to the situation in Vancouver- projects which have been in process for many months. Have they been stalled? May I have an answer with regard to Vancouver, please?


James Armstrong Richardson: The Minister of Transport was in Vancouver-


An hon. Member:: Who is the minister in charge of housing?


James Armstrong Richardson: The resignation of the Minister of Transport is effective the 30th of this month. He has visited Vancouver with particular concern for the public housing development in that city. He has made no final recommendation concerning it since his return only a few days ago.



TIMING OF PUBLICATION OF GUIDELINES

Mr. Robert McCleave (Halifax-East Hants):: My supplementary question concerns the promise made by the Minister of Transport that the guidelines for public housing would be out not later than today. Can we be told when these guidelines will be made available?


James Armstrong Richardson: As soon as possible, Mr. Speaker, but I cannot give an exact date.



INQUIRY AS TO GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT IN URBAN RENEWAL

Mr. Lincoln M. Alexander (Hamilton West):: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I was going to ask about the guideline, but my colleague from Halifax-East Hants asked that question. And now we get into the area of urban housing about which we had a lot of dialogue from the former Minister of Transport. Can the acting minister advise this house when and if this government intends to make a statement as to whether it intends to be involved with urban renewal? If so, to what extent?


James Armstrong Richardson: Mr. Speaker, the recommendations of the task force on housing have been stated many times. Many of those recommendations were brought forward by the Minister of Transport and presented to the cabinet and studied by cabinet committees. Many have been approved and legislation is in an advanced stage of drafting. This legislation will be brought forward in the very near future and will answer all questions of that kind.
April 25, 1969


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: I have a supplementary-question, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I wonder whether the hon. member does not feel we are anticipating to some extent the very important debate which will take place later today? Perhaps we should not have too many supplementary questions on this subject.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I think with all due respect to Your Honour that this is a very important question. I know I am perhaps treading on ground that will be discussed a little later on. If Your Honour would allow me one further question: Would the minister advise this house now whether in fact all trips that were required have now been taken? Is the acting minister in a position to give the guidelines and commitments with respect to urban renewal? Trips have been made to Vancouver and Calgary. Are there any further trips contemplated? We cannot talk about Hamilton all the time. We also have to talk about the rest of the country.


Max Saltsman: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the Prime Minister. It has to do with urban renewal. A few weeks ago the Minister of Transport was in Kitchener and while there indicated that he would announce in the house the new guidelines for urban renewal. In view of the uncertainty that may prevail because of the resignation of the Minister of Transport, will the Prime Minister assure the house that a new minister will be appointed very quickly and that those guidelines will be introduced in this house as soon as possible.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Again it seems this is an admirable subject for a speech the hon. member might want to make this afternoon or evening.



OFFICIAL LANGUAGES


Mr. Robert Muir (Cape Brelon-The Sydneys):: My question is directed to the Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker. Can the right hon. gentleman state whether any discussions were held with provincial officials during the Easter adjournment or since on the question of language recognition from coast to coast? Also are any changes contemplated in the bill as a result of any such discussions?
Inquiries of the Ministry


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Some meetings have been held, Mr. Speaker. I cannot vouch as to the date, but they were held by the Minister of Justice with some provincial officials and premiers. The minister would have to be asked as to the dates of these meetings, Mr. Speaker.


Robert Muir: supplementary question. Have any discussions been held with authorities of the province of Quebec with regard to language legislation in that province involving possible conflict with the proposed federal language bill?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Yes. The Minister of Justice has also been meeting with the Premier of Quebec and some of his ministers on this very subject.


Mr. H. Russell MacEwan (Central Nova):: supplementary to the Prime Minister. I ask the Prime Minister if the Minister of Justice has as yet put any amendments to the language bill before the cabinet?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Surely the house would not want me to break my Privy Councillor's oath, Mr. Speaker.



CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS


Wallace Bickford (Wally) Nesbitt: I wish to direct a question to the Acting Minister of Transport which is related to a question asked earlier this week by my colleague, the hon. member for Wellington-Grey. Has the minister taken any steps to make certain that further acts of sabotage resulting in death will not take place on the railroads? Has he given any instructions in this regard?


James Armstrong Richardson: Mr. Speaker, as has been reported to the house, the train derailment which was thought to be sabotage is being investigated not only by the railway, but by the police. Every step will be taken to see that there are no opportunities to repeat acts of this kind, but you cannot stop sabotage if someone is determined to be destructive. I do not know what steps can be taken, other than the ones which are being taken by the police force.


Wallace Bickford (Wally) Nesbitt: I wish to ask the minister if additional special precautions have been taken since this incident? As we all know, sometimes these incidents evoke others.

April 25, 1969
Inquiries of the Ministry TRANSPORT



FENCING OF RIGHTS-OF-WAY

Mr. John L. Skoberg (Moose Jaw):: A supplementary to the Minister without Portfolio. Is the government considering amending Section 277 of the Railway Act to compel the railways to fence rights-of-way in densely populated areas?


James Armstrong Richardson: Mr. Speaker, this is a matter that has been given careful consideration, but there is no plan at the present time to change the act in that respect.



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE


Mr. Thomas M. Bell (Saint John-Lancaster):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Solicitor General. When the minister said the other night that there were no more in jail in Canada in the last five years, did he mean because there were fewer crimes or because there were more criminals getting away?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I suggest to the hon. member the question should not be asked.


Thomas Miller Bell: May I rephrase my question and ask the Prime Minister in thiis regard if he noticed in the paper at some time that the Solicitor General, after for 30 years threatening to retire, stated that he definitely would not be retiring? If so, what is the Prime Minister going to do about this?



AGRICULTURE


Mr. George Muir (Lisgar):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Agriculture. I have been wanting to ask the minister this question for a number of days, but because of the roster system I have not been able to do so. In view of the widespread dissatisfaction with the new quality premium being paid on hogs, was there any discussion between the federal government and the Canadian Swine Council before the recently announced alterations in policy on hog quality premiums were made?


Hon. H. A. Olson (Minister of Agriculture):: I would like to advise the hon. member that I

was in the house yesterday and he could have asked the question then. I would also like to advise him there was a great deal of discussion with the Canadian Swine Council and other people who were interested in the new grading system for hogs. Obviously the government has to assume the responsibility for the amount and level of subsidies paid on hogs or for any other purpose. While there was consultation with regard to changing the incentives paid through the marketplace respecting hogs, and this grading system, we have to accept the responsibility for the level paid out of the treasury.


George Robson Muir: A supplementary quesi-tion, Mr. Speaker. I have a statement from the Canadian Swine Council which states they never had any discussions-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member should ask the question.


George Robson Muir: In view of the fact the Canadian Swine Council stated that no prior discussions' took place, has there been any discussion with that body since the new policy was announced?


Horace Andrew (Bud) Olson: Yes, Mr. Speaker.


George Harris Hees: I have a supplementary question. Is the minister not aware that the removal of this quality premium will greatly reduce the production of first quality hogs in Canada? This will also very adversely affect our export trade.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.



TRAIL, B.C.-ACTION TO CONTROL EMERGENCY SITUATION

Mr. Randolph Harding (Koolenay West):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Prime Minister. In view of the major flood disaster at the City of Trail which resulted in several million dollars worth of damage to municipal and private property and) in view of the establishment of the joint disaster fund to assist in rehabilitating the damaged area, will the Prime Minister indicate to the house what assistance the government will contribute to this joint disaster fund, and on what basis?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Okanagan Boundary asked a similar question yesterday.
April 25, 1969

The answer is that I received a telegram late last night from the mayor-no-from the Premier of British Columbia.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: It is in connection with the floods at Trail. I am sending him an answer today.



THE CANADIAN ECONOMY


Mr. J. Edward Broadbenl (Oshawa-Whif-by):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. Replying to a question asked this morning by the hon. member for York South, the Prime Minister said he had answered the question two days ago. The original question was whether the government was planning to introduce legislation to deal with aspects of poverty other than those associated with regional poverty. The Prime Minister, as reported at page 7857 of Hansard-


Mr. Speaker:: Order please. There is no question of privilege. Perhaps the hon. member might be allowed to ask the question again.


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, I will try to ask a specific question along the lines of the one the hon. member for York South raised. Does the government intend during the present session of parliament to introduce legislation dealing with urban poverty?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Thus far, Mr. Speaker, our efforts have been largely consumed in resisting the reckless economic demands of the New Democratic party.



HOUSING


Robert Simpson: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister without Portfolio from Winnipeg South in his capacity as minister in charge of housing. Prior to the Easter recess the former Minister of Transport assured me he intended to make C.M.H.C. mortgage money available for purposes of highrise apartment construction in Thompson, Manitoba. Will the minister look into this matter and tell us how it stands, in order that he may be able to report on it during the debate this afternoon?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member has made his submission to the minister which we must assume has been taken into account.
Inquiries of the Ministry GRAIN



FUNDS FOR PLANTING OPERATIONS

Mr. H. W. Danforth (Kenl-Essex):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Agriculture. Since the minister must now be aware that it is mechanically impossible, owing to the tremendous volume of work, for the Standing Committee on Agriculture to report to parliament for some weeks, is the government contemplating any immediate measures to provide western grain growers with emergency operating capital prior to their planting season?


Horace Andrew (Bud) Olson: Mr. Speaker, I cannot agree that it will take several weeks or an undue length of time for the committee to make its recommendations or findings. Although I am not a member of the committee I have spoken to several members who have indicated that they intend to have a report ready very soon.


Harold Warren Danforth: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Is the minister of the opinion that no action will be taken prior to the time this standing committee makes its report?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member is asking for an expression of opinion, which is contrary to the rules.


Mr. R. E. McKinley (Huron):: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. When the committee makes its report will the minister take action on the recommendations of the committee, resulting from its tour of western Canada?


Horace Andrew (Bud) Olson: Mr. Speaker, we will be very interested in what the committee has to say as a result of its tour of western Canada.



WHEAT-SUGGESTED EXPANSION OF SALES PROMOTION ACTIVITIES

Edward Richard Schreyer: Mr. Speaker, may I address a supplementary question either to the Minister of Agriculture or to the Minister from Saskatoon-Humboldt. Since the chairman of the Canadian Wheat Board indicated to the members of our agricultural committee only a few days ago that it would be useful if the sales Promotion staff of the Canadian Wheat Board could be supplemented by trade department personnel, may I ask whether the government has given active consideration to that proposition?

April 25, 1969
Inquiries of the Ministry


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I have not seen the transcript of the proceedings referred to, but I understand that press reports of those proceedings are not completely accurate. The government of course is always considering the magnitude, strength and proper distribution of our trade force abroad; this matter is under constant review.


Edward Richard Schreyer: Mr. Speaker, on a question of privilege-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I point out to hon. members that we are short of time.


Edward Richard Schreyer: Mr. Speaker, I feel I have a valid point of privilege.


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the hon. member might be allowed to ask a supplementary question.


Edward Richard Schreyer: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The minister from Saskatoon-Humboldt has indicated that press reports in this connection may not be accurate. I attended the hearings and heard the Chairman of the Wheat Board make certain pronouncements. Therefore, the minister's observations about press reports are irrelevant. I ask the minister again, is the government taking under active consideration the specific proposition I referred to?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I must bring to the attention of the hon. member that in my view in some of the questions which have been asked there seems to be a reference to the work of the committee, which has not yet reported. It is contrary to the rules to discuss evidence taken before a committee before that committee has reported.



FISHERIES


James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Fisheries and arises from a statement he made in the house earlier today. Since payments under the deficiency payments program announced by the minister will not be available to fishermen until the end of the season, will the government make operating capital available to fishermen at the beginning of the season so that they will not have to enter into barter agreements with buyers.


John (Jack) Davis: The answer is no, Mr. Speaker.
(Mr. Schreyer.]
However, I know the hon. member is aware of the loans which have been made available to a number of other fish processing companies in his province and elsewhere.


Mr. Jack Marshall (Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe):: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. I view of the financial crisis of 1968 it will be impossible for fishermen to go to the fishing grounds unless they receive interim financing. I do not see why that cannot be worked out.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. That is not a question.



IMPLEMENTATION OF 12 MILE EXCLUSIVE ZONE

Harold Edward Winch: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Fisheries. Since the matter is of great importance to the B.C. fishing industry may I ask the minister whether, before the house adjourns for the summer, amending legislation will be introduced affecting the established twelve mile limit extending from headland to headland in order to protect B.C. fishermen in waters off the Queen Charlotte Islands and in the Queen Charlotte Sound.


John (Jack) Davis: Mr. Speaker, legislation to that effect is under consideration.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask a question supplementary to that asked by my colleague from Vancouver East, and directed to the Minister of Fisheries. In view of the fact that a few weeks ago the minister announced that he planned to have the 12-mile fishing limit delineated from headland to headland, I ask him when will this be implemented? Secondly, does he intend to introduce the legislation dealing with the Queen Charlotte Islands prior to the summer adjournment?


John (Jack) Davis: Mr. Speaker, it is my hope that the co-ordinates, in other words, the latitudes and longitudes defining the base lines along most of Canada's coast, will be published within the next two weeks. There are several gaps left, such as the gap at Queen Charlotte Sound, and it will be necessary to amend the existing legislation to deal with that particular matter. This is a matter of scheduling legislation and I must defer to the House Leader in this connection.
April 25. 1969


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: As a further supplementary is it the intention of the minister to introduce such legislation at the present session?


John (Jack) Davis: I cannot answer that question definitely, Mr. Speaker.


James Aloysius McGrath: Before he releases the maps showing the coordinates, would the minister take the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Forestry into his confidence, perhaps at an in camera session, so that a discussion can take place on this very important matter?


John (Jack) Davis: I will certainly consider that, Mr. Speaker, but I think that the co-ordinates will be obvious to the hon. member as ones which are defined by our geography, and they are not a matter for dispute from a policy point of view.


Mr. David MacDonald (Egmonl):: In view of the importance of this matter and its acceptance internationally, what steps is the government taking to have another Law of the Sea Conference convened in order to obtain some agreement with regard to these measures?


John (Jack) Davis: Mr. Speaker, I would prefer if this question were directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs.



TRANSPORT


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Acting Minister of Transport which relates to an answer the former Minister of Transport gave on Wednesday. I refer to the government's decision that, in principle, it will support an increase in ferry rates for Canadian National Ferries crossing to Prince Edward Island. Can the Minister inform the house whether there has been consultation with the government of Prince Edward Island on this matter and whether that government agreed to such a potential increase in the ferry rates?


James Armstrong Richardson: Mr. Speaker, as the minister stated recently in the house, the decision has been taken in principle to increase the rates, but the detail of the rate structure has not yet been determined. There has been consultation.
Inquiries of the Ministry


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Before a final decision is taken will the minister assure the house that interested parties will have an opportunity to make representations on this vital matter affecting transportation to and from Prince Edward Island?


James Armstrong Richardson: There have been many representations, Mr. Speaker, and there has been that opportunity.


Mr. Heath Macquarrie (Hillsborough):: Mr. Speaker, I also wish to direct a question to the Acting Minister of Transport with reference to the dismal decision regarding the ferry rates in Prince Edward Island. If the rates have not been determined, can he advise the house what time the new impost will become effective?


James Armstrong Richardson: No, Mr. Speaker. Both the actual rate structure and the timing of its implementation are being considered.



INCOME TAX


Mr. Steven E. Paproski (Edmonton Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Revenue. Will allowance be made for the late filing of income tax returns owing to the deterioration of postal service?



FARM MACHINERY


Mr. A. P. Gleave (Saskatoon-Biggar):: Mr. Speaker, I direct my question to the Minister of Agriculture. Has he asked the royal commission on farm machinery to look into the circumstances under which a major farm machinery company offered in an advertisement to cut tractor prices for a limited period, in order to meet the lower cost of tractors being imported from England? Will he initiate an investigation into the possibility of the existence of price fixing in the farm machinery industry?


Horace Andrew (Bud) Olson: Mr. Speaker, I am sure that Dr. Barber has already taken this into account. However, I will undertake to make sure that the hon. member's representations are conveyed to the chairman of the commission.

April 25, 1969
Inquiries of the Ministry
CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS	[English]
REDUCTION IN OTTAWA-MONTREAL SERVICE	GOVERNMENT ORDERS


John Leroy Skoberg: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Minister without Portfolio in charge of transportation. In view of the fact that at the end of this week, the C.N.R. is reducing its passenger train service on trains Nos. 35 and 38 to one or two days a week, between Ottawa and Montreal, can the minister say whether the government condones the negation of existing government policy-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. This is obviously not a question that can be accepted.



NATIONAL DEFENCE


George Harris Hees: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of National Defence. Has he information that he could pass along to the house regarding an adequate replacement for Camp Picton which, as he knows, the government has phased out of military operations?


Hon. Leo Cadieux (Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. member will soon agree with me that the future of Camp Picton has never been brighter.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.



MARKETING OF PRODUCTION FROM YUKON AND NORTHWEST TERRITORIES

Roderick J. (Rod) Thomson: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Has the minister consulted the governments of Saskatchewan and Alberta regarding future markets for oil and gas from the Yukon and the Northwest Territories?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I am taking notice of this question, although I do not quite understand the purpose of it.



CRIMINAL CODE


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed, from Tuesday, April
22,	consideration of Bill C-150, an act to amend the Criminal Code, the Parole Act, the Penitentiary Act, the Prisons and Reformatories Act and to make certain consequential amendments to the Combines Investigation Act, the Customs Tariff and the National Defence Act, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.
Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Before resuming consideration of Bill C-150 it has been suggested that the Chair might indicate what its views are in connection with amendments Nos. 12 to 41 which will be the next group to be considered by the house. If hon. members are in agreement with my suggestion I might indicate to them which of these amendments appear to be doubtful from a procedural standpoint.
I shall run through these amendments from No. 12 to No. 41 in a brief manner, and then we might return to each one individually, to hear whatever arguments hon. members might want to submit for the consideration of the Chair before a final determination is made from a procedural standpoint.
I would like to suggest to hon. members that amendments Nos. 12, 14, 16 and 25 might very well be out of order on the grounds that they are in the nature of substantive motions of a kind that are normally considered on second reading of a bill. Then it would appear that amendments Nos. 17, 18, 20 and 32 should not be accepted by the Chair and put to the house because they would appear to go beyond the scope of Bill C-150-


Gerald William Baldwin: On a question of clarification, Your Honour, did you say Nos. 17, 18, 20 and 32?


Mr. Speaker:: I said amendments Nos. 17, 18, 20 and 32. My suggestion would be that consideration of amendment No. 19 should be deferred until amendment 37 has been disposed of, and I would also like to suggest to hon. members that amendments Nos. 21, 22,
23,	31, 39, 40 and 41 are in effect the same question, that they represent essentially the same question. I would like to suggest to hon. members that amendment No. 21 might be
April 25, 1969



selected in accordance with Standing Order 75 (10), and that consideration of amendment No. 21 would effectively dispose of amendments Nos. 22, 23, 31, 39, 40 and 41. In other words, the suggestion is that these amendments are in order but they are essentially the same, and in accordance with the provisions of the Standing Order I suggest to hon. members that they should be marshalled and considered as one. Amendment No. 21 only should be put to the house, and the disposition of it eventually would apply to the others, Nos. 22, 23, 31, 39, 40 and 41.
Again, amendments Nos. 26 and 36 are identical. I suggest that No. 26 be selected for consideration, and that consideration of this amendment No. 26 should dispose of amendment No. 36. We now go to No. 28.
[DOT] (12 noon)

Amendment No. 28 appears unacceptable in its present form because, if it were adopted, it would give two different definitions to the words "accredited hospital" as used in the bill. However, as this is merely a technical error, the house would no doubt allow the horn, member for Abitibi (Mr. Laprise) to change his amendment by deleting therefrom the words "or approved". Then, the amendment would remain the same in substance and this technical difficulty would disappear.
If the hon. member so wishes, I could ask the house to give unanimous consent to this minor change to the amendment. If this is done, the house could take the amendment into consideration when it is called.


Mr. Gerard Laprise (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, the suggestion is agreeable to me.


Mr. Speaker:: Is the house in agreement that the amendment be amended in this way?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: It is suggested that the consideration of amendment No. 38 precede the consideration of amendment No. 37. As previously suggested, amendment No. 19 would follow amendment No. 37.
Perhaps hon. members would wish the Chair to return to the suggestion made to the house concerning amendments 12, 14, 16 and 25. I have serious doubts about these amendments because to my way of thinking they are substantive amendments which should not be moved at this time. However, I shall hear arguments or opinions of hon. members who
Criminal Code
may not be in agreement with the Chair on this point.


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: May I speak to the point of order. Mr. Speaker. As I understood it, I thought you questioned amendment No. 20. Yet you considered amendment No. 13 to be in order and permitted it. Am I correct in that regard?


Mr. Speaker:: That is correct.


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: My argument may be
premature, but I am prepared to submit that it is impossible to accept amendment No. 13 if amendment No. 20 is not accepted. These amendments should be read together. I am prepared to make that submission at the convenience of the Chair. My suggestion is that it would be illegal and impossible to allow amendment 13 to stand without amendment 20; they must be read together.


Mr. Speaker:: I would think the hon. member is right on this point. Of course the decision of the Chair is only on procedural points and procedurally amendment 13 stands. The argument of the hon. member is that if amendment 20 is not put to the house amendment 13 does not make sense and may not be put to the house. Perhaps that should be considered. It is an interesting and important point. However, I would think we might start with the four amendments to which I have just referred, that is, amendments 12, 14, 16 and 25 which, as I suggested to the house a moment ago, would appear to be in the form of reasoned amendments. If there is no argument I think this should be the decision of the Chair.
I have not stretched a point at all in reaching this decision. Clearly in my view these are reasoned amendments declaratory of a principle. They are the type of amendment which ought to be moved normally on second reading but certainly not at this stage. Now we go to amendments 17, 18, 20 and 32 which in the view of the Chair would appear to go beyond the scope of the amending legislation now before the house. Again I would be pleased to hear the views of hon. members for the guidance of the Chair. I will, of course, take into account the arguments which may be submitted with regard to these four amendments.


David Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I should like to speak mainly to amendments 17 and 18. I say immediately that I find it difficult to argue against your suggestion with regard to amendment No. 17

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Criminal Code
because it makes reference to sections which are not in the bill at all. I submit to you, sir, that that is not the case in respect of amendment 18. I imagine the same would be true with regard to a later amendment but at this stage I limit myself to amendment 18.
The fact is that clause 18 of the bill starts out by saying that section 237 of the said act is amended in a certain way. I suggest to you that if the section is to be amended by the bill it is not going beyond the scope of the bill to say that the section it is proposed to amend in a certain way be repealed. This is what the proposed amendment does. Indeed, in looking at the clause in the bill and the proposed amendment of my colleague the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mrs. Maclnnis), it occurred to me that she could, I suppose, have worded her proposed amendment in this way; she could have said that clause 18 be amended by deleting all the words after the first line thereof and substituting therefor the word "repealed". I hope I am making myself clear. She could have left the first line of clause 18 entirely alone. Perhaps that might be better than the language she has used.
The hon. member could have put her amendment in the following form:	That
clause 18 be amended by deleting everything after the first line thereof and substituting therefor the word "repealed". This is precisely what her amendment does. I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that it would clearly be an amendment of the proposed amendment if she had used that language. In effect, this is exactly what her amendment proposes. It is an amendment to clause 18. Clause 18 proposes certain amendments to section 237 of the Criminal Code. My colleague says that is not the amendment which is desired and that the desired amendment is that section 237 be repealed.
I do not know whether I have persuaded Your Honour as I have been persuaded, but I should like to put to Your Honour with force the general suggestion, which I believe was made earlier in the debate, that there are four approaches to the particular problem with which we are dealing in regard to this list of amendments. There is the approach that what the Criminal Code now says should be left alone. There is the approach that what the Minister of Justice (Mr. Turner) has proposed is a good way to deal with this subject. There is the approach put by some hon. members that there ought to be no leeway at all in respect of abortion, and then

there is the approach represented by the amendment of my colleague the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway which is to the effect that the problem of abortion has no place in the Criminal law at all. I submit that all these are valid approaches to the problem from the legislative point of view and that the approach of the hon. lady that this matter has no place in the Criminal Code, which by the way I happen to support strongly, is an approach which ought to be placed before the members of this house for a vote so that they can declare themselves on that approach to the problem.
[DOT] (12:10 p.m.)
The first reason why I believe her amendment is valid is that it does not go beyond the scope of the bill because the bill does deal with section 237, and we could have worded the amendment in the way I have suggested. Had I known about it earlier I might have made the suggestion earlier, and then it would clearly be an amendment to the language of the proposed clause. The second reason is that it deals with a subject which ought to be considered by this house. Therefore I would urge Your Honour to reconsider your suggestion in respect of the wording of amendment No. 18.
As 1 have said, I can see no valid argument I might make in respect of amendment No. 17 inasmuch as it does include references to sections of the code not referred to in the amending bill.


Winona Grace MacInnis: Mr. Speaker, in view of the legal arguments that have been set forth so ably and clearly by my colleague, the hon. member for York South (Mr. Lewis), there are just one or two points I wish to emphasize. Before submitting amendment No. 17 I drafted two other versions in an attempt to put it in language which would be acceptable. On one previous occasion I made an attempt to put an amendment in language that might be acceptable. On this occasion I would be glad if the suggestion made by the hon. member for York South were accepted and the necessary changes were made to put this amendment into acceptable form.
It is very important that hon. members have an opportunity to express themselves as to the appropriate manner of dealing with this subject. Such an opportunity is not provided by any of the other amendments. One other matter that was before the house was handled by removing it from the Criminal
April 25, 1969

Code in order that we might deal with it in another way. If that is legitimate, I should like to follow the same procedure in respect of this contentious matter. It should be dealt with at this time and perhaps it might be considered by removing it from the Code.
Amendment No. 18 is worded in language which I believe is acceptable, and I feel we should be able to deal with the subject of abortion under this amendment in that it seeks to amend the amendment now before us.
At an earlier stage of the proceedings mention was made of the fact that this amendment might possibly be in order as a result of an arrangement which was not agreed upon by the four parties in the house. At that time it was suggested we allow an interval of time to discuss this amendment which deals with the legislation now before us. It was proposed that during that time those who wished to remove this matter entirely from the code could speak on the subject. In this way we would be dealing with any consequential amendments. There seemed to be a disposition on the part of members to follow that course in dealing with that issue.
Apart from the legal arguments, I should like Your Honour to consider seriously the fact that many hon. members feel this is a logical alternative, and that we should deal with this matter in this way because the opportunity to do so is not provided in any other amendment. Perhaps Your Honour might suggest a method of re-wording amendment No. 18 so it would be acceptable. I have in mind something similar to the suggestion that this matter be removed entirely from the Criminal Code.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, I should like to speak briefly in support of this amendment. By the very nature of the change in our rules we find that the majority of members have not had an opportunity to deal with the subject in this fashion. Now that the clause by clause study by the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs has taken place, the only opportunity for hon. members to discuss this matter and clearly express their opinions would be during the consideration of an amendment such as the one proposed. Therefore I support the argument that we deal with this matter under this proposed amendment in order that all members can express themselves.


Hon. John N. Turner (Minister of Justice):: Mr. Speaker, when we were dealing with
Criminal Code
amendments concerning gross indecency a problem arose in respect of procedure. Your Honour decided that if a proposed amendment went beyond the scope of the particular clause to which it purported to relate, it was out of order. I do not wish to repeat the citations I put to Your Honour at that time as they have been judicially noted and accepted by you. I do want to broaden that argument to show that in my opinion an amendment at the report stage is out of order not only if it goes beyond the scope of the clause to which it relates but also if it goes beyond the scope of the bill itself and in fact introduces a new clause in the bill.
At that time I referred Your Honour to citations from Beauchesne and the historic source of those citations, which I assumed to be from May, seventeenth edition page 549, where it states under the heading, "Inadmissible amendments".
An amendment is out of order if it is irrelevant to the subject matter or beyond the scope of the bill, or if it is irrelevant to the subject matter or beyond the scope of the clause under consideration.
At page 558 of the same edition of May it is stated that a new clause is out of order for many of the same reasons applicable to an amendment, and will not be entertained if it goes beyond the scope of the bill.
I believe it is evident in the cases we are now discussing that the purpose of the bill to amend the Criminal Code does not consist of an entire revision and consolidation of the Criminal Code, but deals rather with certain parts of the bill being brought up to date in accordance with government policy. That part of an amendment which attempts to introduce a new clause by repealing an existing section in the Code, not just an existing clause in the bill, goes beyond the scope of the policy dictated in the bill and is out of order. If the amendment proposes a new clause by way of deleting an existing section of the Criminal Code, it goes beyond the scope of the bill.
Let me turn now to the four amendments under consideration. Amendment No. 17 attempts to repeal sections 209, 237, 238 and 150 of the Criminal Code. The hon. member for York South (Mr. Lewis) has admitted that sections 238 and 150 are in no way mentioned in the bill. All the bill purports to do in respect of section 209 is to clarify it by the addition of some clarifying words, namely the words "at the time of birth". In this way we are attempting to make perfectly clear the point of time to which a deliberate act within section 209 relates.
79S6
Criminal Code

April 25, 1969
[DOT] (12:20 p.m.)
Section 237, which is the section relating to abortion, is found in the Criminal Code. Clause 18 of the bill merely says:
Section 237 of the said act is amended by adding thereto the following subsections:
"(4) Subsections (1) and (2) do not apply to"-
Then it refers to a very specific situation, where you have a qualified medical practitioner, supported by a committee of doctors, in an accredited or approved hospital, and the therapeutic abortion is carried out where the life or health of the mother is in danger. Within those restricted circumstances, subsections 1 and 2 of existing section 237 of the Criminal Code do not apply.
This is a deliberate policy amendment dealing with a specifically defined situation. It withdraws the application of two subsections of section 237 from that specific situation. What the hon. member attempts to do in amendment No. 17 is to eliminate that section completely. I suggest that is a policy decision on her part which goes well beyond the policy contained in the amendment and is therefore beyond the scope of the bill. I suggest it is as much beyond the scope of the bill as if the hon. lady had introduced a new clause.
In amendment 18 the hon. lady says that she wants section 237 of the act repealed. She does not refer to the bill; she goes back to the original Criminal Code. She is, in effect, introducing a new policy decision; she is introducing a new clause in the bill. The hon. member is not interested in attacking the bill by repealing one of its clauses; she wants to repeal the whole section of the original act. I suggest, therefore, that her amendment goes beyond the scope of the bill and introduces her own policy quotient into the original section, to which the bill relates in only a very restrictive way.
Turning to amendment No. 20, what the amendment does, in effect, is to repeal section 237, subsection 1, of the Criminal Code. It does not relate to clause 18, which has to do with a specific amendment to section 237 of the Criminal Code. The amendment of the hon. member goes well beyond that and eliminates a subsection of the original code. In other words, what the amendment purports to do is to exempt any female person from aborting herself; it would eliminate that section from the code. It would also eliminate the section relating to modality, the administration of a drug or other noxious thing, the use of an instrument, and manipulation of

any kind. So the amendment goes well beyond the scope of clause 18 and goes back to the code. It is, in effect, a separate policy decision and repeals a subsection of the code to which the amendment contained in clause 18 in no way relates.
The same objection applies to amendment No. 32. The effect of this amendment is to repeal section 237(3)(a) of the Criminal Code. The amendment does not relate to clause 18 by way of a clarification, amendment, rejection or deletion; it goes back to the code itself and introduces a separate policy decision beyond the scope of the policy contained in the bill. It thereby goes beyond the scope of the bill.


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: Mr. Speaker, do you want to make a decision on the other amendments before I deal with No. 20?


Mr. Speaker:: Obviously the Chair would have to make a decision on amendment No. 20 also, because in my view it would appear to be in the same category as the amendments to which hon. members have already referred.


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: I appreciate that the
amendment has to be within the scope of the bill. I ask Your Honour to look at clause 18, which provides as follows:
Section 237 of the said act is amended by adding thereto the following subsections:-
Then clause 18 sets up a new law so far as abortion is concerned; it adds subsections to the code. My first submission is that clause 18 changes the law and practice of today; therefore the bill does amend section 237. A small change was made to my amendment, but I make nothing of that because I think the wording used by the officers of the law branch is better than the wording I used. However, the procedure is the same. What I could have done, rather than asking that section 237 be repealed, is add the word "unlawfully". I think the amendment is in order because it is within the scope of the bill and is part of the purpose of the bill.
Let us consider the law as it stands at the present time. Two sections of the Criminal Code are very important and must be read together in order that they not be ambiguous. I refer the house to page 348, volume No. 10 of the proceedings of the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs. Professor Mew-ett was explaining to the committee what
April 25, 1969

the law is now and what it will be when these amendments take effect. I asked the professor this question:
May I ask you to pause there, so that this is on record? You are dealing with the Canadian section 209. I think it should be read in at this time. Then I will ask you the next question which is dealing right with the point you are on, if I might, Mr. Chairman.
"209. (1) Every one who causes the death of a child that has not become a human being, in such a manner that, if the child were a human being, he would be guilty of murder, is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for life.
(2) This section does not apply to a person who, by means that, in good faith, he considers necessary to preserve the life of the mother of a child that has not become a human being, causes the death of the child."
Section 209 of the code makes it illegal to cause the death of a child that has not become a human being; it is an offence to do this. Subsection 2 of section 209 provides that the section does not apply to a person who, in good faith-this, basically, has always been a doctor-causes a miscarriage in order to preserve the life of the mother. The House of Lords ruled that this section, properly interpreted, means not only the life of the mother but her health, that is, if she would otherwise become an emotional or physical wreck. I continued my question to the professor in these words:
And I take it from conversations I had with you this morning, that you feel that the Bourne case principle that interprets the preservation of the life has been applied in Ontario, and I believe It has been applied elsewhere in Canada. It does not mean to save her from violent death, but it means to preserve her life, in a case where she might otherwise be left impaired physically or emotionally. Then of course the doctor in good faith who performs such a therapeutic abortion would fall into the saving and exception clause of section 209. What you are really saying is, with the strength of section 209 and considering proposed section 237, if the word "unlawfully" were put in you would be obtaining the same result basically of what the bill is trying to do at the present time.
[DOT] (12:30 p.m.)
I emphasize those words. If the word "unlawfully" were included we would obtain the same result, basically, as that sought by clause 18 of the bill. Actually, from a legal point of view you are not in fact really changing the statute law of Canada very much. To this the professor answered that this was his view. So my first point is that by taking out the words "in the act of birth" from section 209 and adding the word "unlawfully" in section 237, according to the professor of criminal law from the University 29180-504
Criminal Code
of Toronto you are doing the same thing as does the wording of the bill.
Someone might ask, why bring it in at all? I will tell you why, sir. This amendment will make one small change to clause 18 of the bill. Mr. Speaker, I wonder whether the hon. members over there could hold their meeting outside because I am trying to explain a very technical matter.
I was going to explain the reason for this change. Under clause 18 of the bill a committee of doctors must be set up and the operation can only be performed in an accredited hospital if the doctors say that an abortion is necessary in their view to preserve the life and health of the mother. That is the only difference between my amendment and clause 18, leaving section 209 as it is in the code except for the words "in the act of birth" and amending section 237 to make it clear that there is no onus on the doctor and he cannot be penalized. This same change was suggested by the former minister of justice, Mr. Garson, when the code was changed in 1953, so that the only change I suggest is that a committee of doctors or an accredited hospital not be made a requirement in the bill.
Let me explain briefly why I wish to make the change and why it was recommended by the professor. In remote parts of Canada far away from urban centres it is difficult or impossible to get a committee of doctors or to reach an accredited hospital. So this bill would be discriminating, by procedure only and not by law, against people who live in these areas. For instance, Tisdale or Melfort is 160 miles from Saskatoon where there are enough doctors and accredited hospitals. This is an example only. So, as I said, by amending section 209 by taking out the words "in the act of birth", and by inserting the word "unlawfully" in section 237, we will be achieving the same thing as is achieved in the bill as presented by the minister. That is what was said by the professor from Toronto, and I submit he is correct. May I say, with the greatest respect, that the decision was arrived at with the aid of advisers, and this is a very technical point in the law.
As defence counsel I have pleaded many cases dealing with abortion. I think I understand the law and I understand what the professor is saying. My main argument in favour of this amendment is that if we delete clause 18 from the bill, as proposed in amendment No. 20, we must also make the proposed deletion in clause 15, as set out in amendment No. 13, because if either of them

April 25, 1969
Criminal Code
were left in the bill without the other the law would be bad.
I. ask why the words "in the act of birth" were inserted in section 209. Under clause 18 of the bill, in the normal course of events a committee of doctors would have to be called and an accredited hospital used, but when a woman is on the delivery table it is too late to call a committee of doctors to make a decision to preserve her life or health. A doctor must make his decision immediately and perform the operation without consulting the committee. Under the law as it is proposed in the bill, the doctor would have to make his decision without the advice of a committee and without an accredited hospital to save the life and preserve the health of the mother; otherwise, as my good friend says, the mother may bleed to death. The doctor would have to make a decision at that moment and would not be able to call a committee.
Section 209 (2) reads as follows:
This section does not apply to a person who, by means that, in good faith, he considers necessary to preserve the life of the mother of a child, causes the death of such child.
Crankshaw's Criminal Code at page 333 says the following:
The words "preserving the life of the mother" are to be construed in a reasonable sense. They are not limited to the case of saving the mother from violent death; they include the case where continuance of the pregnancy would make her a physical or mental wreck.
In other words, it is illegal today to perform certain abortions under certain circumstances except, as stated in section 209, when a doctor decides in good faith to do this operation for two reasons: (a) to preserve the life of the mother or (b), to preserve her health so that she does not become a physical or mental wreck.
Taking out the words "in the act of birth" will permit a doctor to perform such an abortion under these circumstances regardless of whether or not the mother is in labour pains. If she comes to see the doctor in his office and, after he has examined her, he comes to the conclusion that she will either likely lose her life or that her health will be endangered, he can, in good faith, send her to a hospital and perform the operation. This is what my amendment seeks to achieve when I propose the addition of the word "unlawfully" in section 237. Clause 18 of the bill reads:
Section 237 of the said Act is amended by adding thereto the following subsections:-

In my amendment I propose to repeal subsection (1), and to add the word "unlawfully" to section 237, so that it would not be unlawful for a doctor to perform an abortion in good faith to preserve the life and health of the mother, provided it is done in good faith, and the onus is on the Crown to prove that this is not so. The doctor does not have to wait for the act of birth.
I hope that this amendment will be accepted by the house because if it is not there would be serious consequences. I should like to quote from the Criminal Law Quarterly where the following is stated at page 385 by Professor Mewett:
Under s. 209 of the code (with the proposed amendment) -
Meaning the bill itself.
-causing the death of a child that has not become a human being in the act of birth is not illegal if the person causing the death considers it necessary in good faith to preserve the life of the mother. The Bourne principle clearly applies, allowing the medical practitioner to exercise his own judgment in the act of birth. If, however, the pregnancy is to be terminated prior to the act of birth, apparently totally different, incredibly complex and dubiously constitutional provisions apply.
Procuring a miscarriage (or, to be precise, using any means with that intent) will be lawful if a therapeutic abortion committee, by a majority, certifies that in its opinion the continuation of the pregnancy would be likely to endanger the mother's life or health. Apparently the miscarriage is lawful with or without the consent of the mother, though sub-s. (8) states "Nothing in subsection (4) shall be construed as making unnecessary the obtaining of any ... consent that... may be required otherwise than under this Act..." I assume that that means, if it means anything at all, which I doubt, that the doctor is guilty of assault but not of procuring a miscarriage. This hardly scratches the surface of the abortion problem, and probably makes no difference to the present situation (apart from complicating it) in which most doctors will already perform therapeutic abortions, on the understanding that the Bourne principle applies not only to s.209 but also to s.237.
The Bourne principle stretches it not only to the preservation of life but to the preservation of the mother's health. With respect to the provision concerning abortion in the act of birth, he did not like the bill. He said: Take section 209, and take out the words "in the act of birth", which give the doctor the right to do what this bill prescribes, and put the word "unlawful" in section 237 to make sure a doctor cannot do it illegally. Then, he says, you arrive at the intention of the bill.
[DOT] (12:40 p.m.)
I agree I am speaking at some length on this subject but it is an extremely technical'
April 25, 1969



one. This is a difficult point to get across because it is so involved. One has to study it as a lawyer, but the procedure is basically that of the bill itself. The amendment seeks to do away with the rigmarole of the committee and the hospital but the procedure is really identical. That is the way I have drafted it. I have changed two sections which must be read together but I am not changing the substance of the bill; I am merely changing the procedure for the protection of the public generally.
One advantage of my proposal is that the bill will no longer discriminate against Canadians who do not live in urban centres. The purpose is the same and the protection, basically, is the same. But the provision will be fairer in places where there are not enough doctors or enough committees or enough hospitals for the people who live in those areas. That is the only difference.
I say, with great respect to you, Mr. Speaker, and to your advisers, that this is not something one can understand in a few minutes or half an hour. The professor says that this amendment does not change the law but merely changes the procedure. Surely, then, the amendment to this clause as we have drawn it is acceptable. I submit it is correct in law. The sections concerned are both changed by the new bill. I am changing them a little differently. Now that I have explained it, I hope Your Honour will allow the amendment to stand. If it does not, and if the amendment to section 209 carries, the situation would be very bad indeed. It would be a travesty of justice. We should not have law like that in Canada.
If you disallow amendment 20, Mr. Speaker, you must then say that amendment 13 is out. I hope you will not make your ruling today. I want you to think well about this. If I were arguing this point before the Supreme Court of Canada I could not be more sincere. It is difficult to understand just how involved the procedure is. To quote the professor again, the amendment does not change the law as drafted in the bill. It does away with the necessity for the committee and the hospital and would prevent ruthless doctors waiting until a woman started to have labour pains and then killing a live infant or foetus. That, to me, would be murder in the hospitals. I do not believe the doctors of this nation would ever want to get into that position; I have great respect for the profession. But let 29i80-5C4J
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us not leave the law in such a state that it could happen.


John Napier Turner: With the greatest respect, I feel the hon. member went well beyond the procedural argument to introduce matters of substance also. We discussed Professor Mewett's opinion in the committee, and we introduced contrary legal opinion. I am of the view, given to me by the law officers of the Crown and by the profession generally, that there is not too much validity in Professor Mewett's argument.
In any event, what the hon. member has done is to suggest that because Your Honour has allowed amendment 13 dealing with section 209 you should allow his amendment 20 which, he says, fits in with it. If you look at the code you will see that sections 209 and 237, those to which the amendments relate, deal with entirely different factual circumstances. Section 237 deals with miscarriage or abortion, the killing of the foetus before the natural moment of birth. Section 209 relates to any killing at the time of birth. These are two different factual situations, two different offences under the code. For the hon. member to try to link the admissibility of amendment 20 to that of amendment 13 is an argument which does not hold water either procedurally or in substance.


Mr. Speaker:: I thank hon. members for their enlightening comments and I shall try to make a ruling which I hope will be acceptable to all.
So far as amendment 17 is concerned, no real case has been made by the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway or by the hon. member for York South. I believe they agree that this proposed amendment, identified as No. 17, does go beyond the scope of the bill.
I am afraid amendment No. 18 falls in the same category. I think I should say, in a general way, that this ruling is applicable also to the amendment put forward by the hon. member for Calgary North. I was most impressed by his argumentation. I think I might have been moved by it more if I were a member of the Supreme Court of Canada rather than Speaker of the House of Commons. He put forward a complex and able legal argument. My feeling, however, is that the Chair should not be placed in a position where the Speaker has to rule on legal points. The tradition and background of the position of the Chair is that the Speaker should rule only on procedural matters. This has been established on many occasions when arguments

April 25, 1969
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are made in the house by learned counsel who happen to have gone astray and have become Members of Parliament. They present to the Chair constitutional arguments-whether legislative proposals, for example, should be accepted or put to the house, on the grounds that they may not be constitutional or legally acceptable. In our parliament, the Chair has always taken the position that it cannot make ruling on such a basis-that this has to be done by the lawyers and the courts, and that the Chair should not take on its shoulders responsibility for ruling on legal arguments. This is why much of the argument put forth by the hon. member for Calgary North and by the Minister of Justice goes beyond the scope of my responsibility in looking at this amendment.
Amendment No. 18, in my view, attempts to introduce a new legislative proposal by way of an amendment. It clearly goes beyond what we have before us. The legislation introduced by the government is limited in scope; it is not the whole of the Criminal Code that is before the house, only certain sections and subsections of the code, and clearly an amendment proposed at this time cannot go beyond the bill which is before us. We cannot reach behind this bill to amend in some way the basic legislation, in this case, the Criminal Code.
If we look at section 237, with its three subsections, we find that they are not, as I understand it, before the house at the present time except in a very indirect way and I cannot see how, by an amendment, the hon. member can attempt to alter or amend them. This is why with much regret I have to reach that decision in connection with Nos. 17 and 18.
[DOT] (12:50 p.m.)
The hon. member for Calgary North has made it very difficult for the Chair to confirm the opinions expressed when I first brought my doubts as to amendment 20 to the attention of the house. I can assure the hon. member for Calgary North that I have been giving the most serious consideration to all these amendments for many days now. I have spent many hours looking at them from a procedural standpoint. It is not easy for the Chair to refuse an amendment such as this which of course is based on the most laudable motives. It is obvious the hon. member for Calgary North is attempting to achieve a highly laudable purpose by this amendment. However, it

seems from a procedural standpoint this cannot be done by way of the suggested amendment.
Whether because this amendment is not accepted No. 13 falls I cannot say, because this is not a procedural point. All the Chair can do is look at amendment 13 as it stands by itself and say that from a procedural standpoint this amendment seems to be in order, that it has to go before the house unless the hon. member wants to withdraw the amendment or amend it in some other way. I would not think that because another amendment would be affected from a substantive point of view the Chair could refuse to apply the procedural rules which in this case apply to amendment 20 in the same way as they apply to amendments 17, 18 and 32.
The last one, of course, is amendment 32. I have the impression, if I remember the arguments which have been advanced by hon. members, that not much has been said about this one.

It would seem that the proposed amendment goes beyond the scope of the bill now before the house, and that it attempts to repeal subsection (3)(a) of section 237 of the Criminal Code.
By attempting to repeal part of that section of the Criminal Code, the amendment constitutes, in fact, a new legislative proposal and, on that basis, has nothing to do with Bill C-150.
Hon. members will recognize that this argument also applies to amendments Nos. 17, 18 and 20. For that reason, I feel that I cannot accept the proposed amendment.

I apologize to hon. members if I appear to be a little harsh in making these rulings. I wish all these amendments could have been accepted and put to the house. It would have been much easier for the Chair to rule in this way. At the same time I believe it is my responsibility to look at these amendments as closely as I can, consistent with my responsibility to the house, and to make a ruling in accordance with my conscience. Therefore I have to make the ruling that these particular amendments cannot be accepted.
We go on to the following point which is a consideration of amendment No. 19. My suggestion was that it be deferred until amendment No. 37 has been disposed of. I trust there will be no objection to this on the part of hon. members.
April 25, 1969

My subsequent proposal to hon. members was that amendments 21, 22, 23, 31, 39, 40 and 41 were in effect the same question and the proposal was that No. 21 be selected for discussion in accordance with section 10 of Standing Order 75, without suggesting in any way that the other amendments are not in order. They are all in order. For the purpose of an orderly discussion, this one would be selected and the disposition by the house of amendment No. 21 would apply to the other amendments to which I have just referred. Is this agreed?


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I have listened to Your Honour's decision, which I know has been made very conscientiously, and I certainly accept it. I just wish to make this one point. I think it is necessary for me, according to my conscience, to withdraw amendment 13. In amendment 13 I am deleting words. In amendment 20 I am merely adding the word "unlawful".
I abide graciously by Your Honour's decision. If Your Honour rules amendment 20 out of order, according to my conscience I could not let amendment 13 remain before the house. If I did so, a doctor would not be able to bring about a miscarriage in order to preserve the life and health of a woman who was in the delivery room. Those two sections must be read together. If amendment 13 were to carry, it would place the doctor in a horrible position. At that stage a doctor cannot call on a committee. Inasmuch as Your Honour has ruled amendment 20 out of order I ask that I be permitted to withdraw amendment 13. If one falls they must both fall, or we would have the kind of law no one could accept.


Mr. Speaker:: I wonder whether we might dispose of the point raised by the hon. member for Calgary North. His point is well taken. He knows what the intention is behind amendment 13 better than any other member. If it is his wish in the circumstances to withdraw his amendment, I am sure the house would agree to this. Is it agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Harold Edward Winch: A point of order, Mr. Speaker, before you leave the chair for the adjournment. Many of us are being asked a question which we cannot answer, and I can only ask Your Honour about it on a point of order. Would Your Honour be kind enough to
Criminal Code
explain what the situation will be this afternoon? Does the house adjourn automatically at five o'clock, or what happens?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. On the point raised by the hon. member, the house does not adjourn automatically at five o'clock. The debate continues automatically at five o'clock. I wonder whether the house would not be disposed to try to settle all these procedural questions because otherwise we would have to continue them at two o'clock. I wonder how long it would delay the debate which it has been agreed will commence at two o'clock.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: I think we have got over the most difficult hurdles, amendments 17, 18, 20 and 32 which were the subject of long debate. I think the others might be disposed of quickly.


Gerald William Baldwin: In that regard, Mr. Speaker, has the request by the hon. member for Calgary North to secure unanimous approval been accepted?


Mr. Speaker:: Yes, that has been accepted. It has been so ordered.


Gerald William Baldwin: I felt he need have no fear because of the attitude of the government. He need have no fear the amendment would ever be carried in any event. A question arises, Mr. Speaker, with regard to the amendments that Your Honour in my opinion properly combined. Can we then take it for the purpose of the discussion and the debate which will take place commencing Monday-I would hope in an orderly way-that with regard to the first group Your Honour combined commencing with No. 21 speakers should have every right to direct their attention to and participate in the debate on No. 21, and when the house has come to a decision on that amendment we would then be governed by Your Honour's decision, which I assume is made pursuant to Standing Order 75, and there would be no further debate on the subsequent combined clauses?
Unfortunately a number of members are unable to be here this morning to listen to these arguments. Their other duties may prohibit them from hearing the decision made today. So that there may be an orderly disposition, I ask Your Honour for direction on that point. Also, would it be possible to put in

April 25, 1969
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Routine Proceedings the numbers of the amendments which will be dealt with so that we will have this information before us when we start on Monday?
[DOT] (1:00 p.m.)


Mr. Speaker:: On the last point referred to by the hon. member, this was considered and we propose to put out a separate notice paper which hon. members should have ready on their desks for reference. It will indicate exactly what has happened to the amendments. So it will be much easier at the beginning of next week for hon. members to know which amendments have been accepted, which amendments will be discussed and what will be the disposition of them from a procedural standpoint. I wish to confirm the statement of the hon. member for Peace River that amendments Nos. 21, 22, 23, 31, 39, 40 and 41, in accordance with section 10 of Standing Order 75, are marshalled and combined, so that a vote on the first one will dispose of all those other amendments. We could now go to No. 26.


Mr. Burton:: Mr. Speaker, I wish to deal with the amendments you have just mentioned. They all deal with the obligations of hospitals as institutions and with the obligations of medical practitioners, staff and other personnel who may be involved with abortions. No individual amendment deals with all three categories. I wish to refer particularly to the amendment that you are proposing to place before the house for discussion, which deals with the question of hospitals as institutions, and with the situation of medical practitioners. It seems to me that there is no objection to proceeding with that amendment as a basis for debate so long as an amendment may be moved that would deal with the position of hospital staff and other personnel.


Mr. Speaker:: Of course, this will have to be considered when the hon. member suggests these changes to the house. It may be possible to move subamendments provided that they are in order.


Gérard Laprise: Mr. Speaker, I have only one question to put, to clarify something. I should like to know how we will go about the votes next week, should there be any?


Mr. Speaker:: We will come back to that in a moment.
I studied that difficulty, and as soon as we have decided, in the light of the procedure, whether the proposed amendments are in order or not, I shall suggest how they could be put to the vote.

I now refer to amendments Nos. 26 and 36, which are identical. May I suggest that the question be put on amendment No. 26. The disposition of amendment No. 26 would also apply to amendment No. 36.

With regard to amendment No. 28, the house accepted the change in wording a moment ago; it poses no problem and it can be dealt with normally by the house in due course.

It is suggested that consideration of amendment No. 38 should precede consideration of amendment No. 37, as previously suggested, and that consideration of amendment No. 19 should follow consideration of amendment No. 37.

A moment ago, the hon. member for Abiti-bi (Mr. Laprise) brought up the matter of the votes.

This matter has been studied and I should like to suggest to the house the following. Since amendments No. 21, 22, 23, 31, 39, 40 and 41 are essentially similar, and since amendment No. 21 has been selected for discussion, it is suggested that the division on those amendments should take place after consideration of proposed amendment No. 21.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: Also, there would be a division on amendment No. 15. So we would have two divisions at that point, the division on amendment No. 21, which would cover the amendments I have referred to, and the division on amendment No. 15.
The second divisions would take place in connection with amendments No. 24, 26, 27, and 28. These all relate to the same parts of clause 18. It is suggested that the divisions on
April 25, 1969

Housing


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

these amendments should take place after consideration of amendment No. 28. This would give us four divisions. There would be four divisions on amendments No. 24, 26, 27 and 28, which would take place at the same time.
Third, as amendments Nos. 29 and 30 are similar it is suggested that divisions take place on those amendments after consideration of amendment No. 30. At this point the Clerk Assistant would be called upon to serve for two divisions.
Lastly, with regard to amendments Nos. 33, 34, 35, 38, 37 and 19, which also relate to Clause 18 of Bill C-150, perhaps the division on those amendments might take place after the consideration of amendment No. 19. In this instance there would be six divisions.
Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: Is this agreed? I should be pleased to hear the views of hon. members on these proposals.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, you referred to six divisions. Do you mean that the bells will be rung on six separate occasions?


Mr. Speaker:: I am suggesting that there will be one voting exercise. There will be, of course, six different votes. The bells may be rung six times or once only, depending on the desire of the house at that moment. But there would be, of course, six individual divisions, marshalled together and held at the same time. Hon. members will have a fair idea, through their party advisers, when these divisions will be held. But these six different amendments relating to Clause 18 of Bill C-150 would be disposed of at the same time.
Is it agreed that consideration of the report stage of Bill C-150 be adjourned?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


John Napier Turner: That takes us up to amendment No. 41 inclusive, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: I understand that these matters all cover the subject of abortion. If and when we dispose of this subject we may go to other subjects and to other amendments to the omnibus bill.
At one o'clock the house took recess.
The house resumed at 2 p.m.



MOTION TO ADJOURN UNDER S.O. 26 HOUSING RESIGNATION OF MINISTER AND FAILURE OF GOVERNMENT TO PROVIDE ADEQUATE ACCOMMODATION-MOTION TO ADJOURN UNDER STANDING ORDER 26

Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. Pursuant to Standing Order 26 the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands, seconded by the hon. member for York South, moves that the house do now adjourn.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Mr. Speaker, the announcement yesterday by the Minister of Transport (Mr. Hellyer) that he is resigning from the cabinet brings to a head the worsening situation with respect to housing in this country. Ever since the end of world war II the steady movement of population to the urban centres has aggravated the housing situation to the point where massive government action is imperative.
Successive governments have followed policies of stalling and procrastination with the result that the situation has grown increasingly desperate. In 1966 the Hon. J. R, Nicholson, then Minister of Labour, was given the task of dealing with housing and staged a series of housing conferences across the country, culminating in a national housing conference in Ottawa a year ago last January. All the data that was collected, all the work that was done, resulted in no announcement of any government policy. Instead, last summer the government appointed another group, a task force on housing headed by the Minister of Transport, to review the matter again.
In recent months that task force tabled a report. We in this party criticized that report. We felt that it failed to come to grips with the realities of the situation. But there were some significant recommendations in it, and the Minister of Transport is not to be blamed when he feels humiliated that his colleagues immediately proceeded to veto the only recommendation that really had a great deal of merit. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Benson) immediately made it clear that the government had no intention of removing the 11 per cent sales tax on building materials.

April 25, 1969
Housing
Last week the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) made it clear that he had no intention of setting up a separate ministry of housing and urban affairs. If reports can be believed, the proposal for financial assistance to municipalities to enable them to establish land banks has also been turned down by the cabinet. Certainly we will know better when the legislation is brought down whether or not this recommendation is going to be accepted.
All of this has brought us to the place where the minister responsible for housing has submitted his resignation to the Prime Minister, and I submit, Mr. Speaker, that this resignation deals with something much more fundamental than housing. It deals with the whole question of the lack of government initiative in dealing with the most pressing national problems confronting the country.
I read from the report in yesterday's Ottawa Journal containing statements made by the Minister of Transport at his press conference yesterday morning:
The country, he related, "expected me to do something about these things, housing, urban affairs, pollution. But in the Prime Minister's conception of federalism, these are provincial responsibilities. The Prime Minister's constitutional theories sound fine in the classroom-the trouble is they just won't work.
People expect the federal government to provide full employment-without this insidious inflation- to take action on clean air and clean water. These are the bread and butter issues. But these are the issues the Prime Minister says must be left to the provinces while he sorts out the constitutional priorities."
May I also refer to the minister's letter of resignation dated April 24 in which he says in part:
Having spent much of my adult life in the parliament and government of our country, I need hardly tell you how difficult a decision this has been for me. As we have discussed, however, I find myself increasingly disturbed with the directions and policies being followed by the government. I feel there is a lack of initiative in using federal powers to deal with issues such as housing, pollution, inflation and urban development which are so vital to the needs of ordinary people in our modern, industrialized society.
Given these circumstances and after the most thoughtful consideration on my part, I feel I have no alternative but to resign from the cabinet.
I submit that the Minister of Transport has put his finger on the basic reason for the government's lack of initiative, namely, the fact that the Prime Minister's conception of our federal system, as the Minister of Transport said yesterday, is to have ten strong

provincial governments headed by a weak federal government.
[DOT] (2:10 p.m.)
Last year in the course of the federal election the Prime Minister fooled a lot of people by talking of one Canada and national unity. What he failed to tell them was that his concept of national unity consisted of a 19th century interpretation of the constitution of Canada. He held that the only important change required in the British North America Act was to guarantee language rights, and that a reallocation of federal and provincial responsibilities was relatively unimportant and unnecessary. Mr. Speaker, we reject that viewpoint. We believe the constitution is not sacrosanct. We believe the constitution was made for man, not man for the constitution. After all, what is a constitution? A constitution is the legal framework within which a nation lives, moves and has its being. It is not the law of Moses handed down from Mount Sinai. A constitution must be a living organism that grows to meet expanding social needs and adjusts to meet changing conditions and changing circumstances.
I contend that the Prime Minister's concept of the constitution will bring about in this country stagnation, regional discord and national disunity. I submit it is unworkable for three reasons. First of all, it fails to recognize that the provinces and municipalities do not have the sources of revenue necessary to discharge the responsibilities assigned them under the British North America Act. Education, health, welfare and resource development were relatively unimportant areas in 1867, but in 1969 they are beyond the capacity of the provincial and municipal governments under their present taxing powers.
Second, I would point out that the present division of powers can only result in wider regional disparities. Affluent provinces will be able to enjoy fairly reasonable standards of services while the people of the poorer provinces, even when taxed to the hilt, will be required to content themselves with a lower standard of living.
Liberal governments in the past have paid lip service to the basic premise of the Rowell-Sirois report which said that all Canadians, irrespective of where they live, should be able to enjoy minimum standards of education, health and welfare. It is the failure to deal with this problem which is the real threat to national unity. Nothing will do more to tear this country apart than to have some
April 25. 1969

parts of Canada feel, as they do now, that they are the Cinderellas of Confederation, that they are ignored and overlooked.
Third, I would point out that the status quo concept of the constitution fails to take cognizance of the fact that new problems have arisen which were never envisaged by the framers of the British North America Act. Urban renewal, housing, urban transportation, pollution, manpower training, higher education and the need to cope with inflation cannot be resolved on the basis of the 1887 division of powers and responsibilities as between the three levels of government.


Mr, Baldwin:: Don't forget the present Prime Minister.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: It is not good enough for the Prime Minister to hide behind the constitution and say that these problems are the responsibility of the provincial authorities. The federal government alone has access to all the taxing fields. The federal government alone has control of the monetary and fiscal policies of the country. The federal government alone can redress the imbalance which exists between the various regions of Canada.
The Prime Minister is seeking to put Canada into a constitutional strait-jacket. He poses as the man of the future. He speaks eloquently of breaking with the past and meeting the challenge of the future. Meanwhile he is tying around the necks of the Canadian people the albatross of an outmoded concept of Canada's constitution. I suggest that the Prime Minister's rigidity in his conception of the constitution can do irreparable damage to this country, and the resignation of the Minister of Transport yesterday indicates that at least one of his colleagues has become aware of that fact.
We in this party believe the constitution must be used to serve the needs of the Canadian people in a modern technological age. There is much that can be done by the federal government, even under the constitution as it now stands, if the government is prepared to provide imaginative leadership. The federal government can make grants and loans available to the provinces and through them to the municipalities either on a conditional or unconditional basis. Instead, the present government has been withdrawing from cost-sharing arrangements and has been leaving the provinces to their own resources. Tax abatements help the wealthier provinces
Housing
but have little value for those provinces with a negligible tax base. The federal government could establish joint federal-provincial programs to deal with housing, pollution and urban renewal. It can supply the necessary funds and expertise while leaving to the provinces the on the spot administration and supervision.
We believe that in the long run the federal government should press for a constitutional formula which will provide for a delegation of legislative powers to enable the provinces to delegate whatever authority is necessary to the government of Canada to meet some of our most pressing problems. It could also include a formula to provide for concurrent powers as has been done in many other federal systems.
During the election campaign last year the New Democratic party advocated such an approach. We recognized, however, that the province of Quebec in its desire to safeguard its language and culture might be reluctant to agree to certain transfers of authority. Therefore we took the position that those provinces which did not wish to delegate certain powers should not be permitted to prevent the federal government and the other provinces from dealing effectively with some of these more pressing problems.
It was for this reason we suggested that Quebec be allowed particular status as was done in the case of the Canada Pension Plan where nine provinces and the government of Canada proceeded with a very desirable piece of social legislation and arranged for Quebec to have a plan which would be portable and reciprocal. Has this hurt Confederation? Not at all. It has certainly demonstrated that flexibility within a living constitution can meet the needs of the people. That, primarily, is what a constitution is for. If Quebec desires to do so there is no reason that she could not operate her own programs in some of these fields and receive an equivalent financial contribution from Ottawa.
[DOT] (2:20 p.m.)
The Prime Minister has accused us of favouring two Canadas. I want to point out that we are seeking to establish one Canada with a constitution sufficiently flexible to enable this country to cope effectively with problems whose solutions we dare not longer neglect. I want to say to the Prime Minister that yesterday's resignation is the first sign of growing disenchantment and disillusionment

April 25. 1969
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with his interpretation of Canada's constitution. I want to say that the public will no longer condone weaseling and waffling and that the public knows there are problems facing this country which must be dealt with effectively. The public will not be satisfied with being told that the government is hiding behind the constitution.
Just the other day the Canadian Federation of Mayors and Muncipalities presented a brief to the Prime Minister and his government. In point No. 7 they said this, and I think it is significant:
Federal authorities can, of course, shrug their shoulders, point to Head 92 (Section 8) of the B.N.A. Act and remind the federation that municipal institutions are the creatures of provincial governments... (a more accurate term is that recently used by a distinguished Canadian urban planner, who described municipalities as the "orphans" of provincial governments) ... but this kind of constitutional argument is not meaningful: in the first place, the problems of the municipalities are provincial problems, and vice-versa; secondly, with over 50 per cent of Canada's population accounted for by 18 urban areas, the federal government cannot take the view that the spectrum of urban frustration suffered by these Canadians has no constitutional relevance to federal jurisdictions.
Unless the government is prepared to recognize that such problems of housing, urban renewal, pollution, manpower training and inflation are being placed at its doorstep by the people of Canada, until it recognizes that the people of Canada will not allow it to take refuge in constitutional interpretation, I believe that this country will continue to wallow in what the Minister of Transport referred to as a lack of initiative.
The Prime Minister has had his first warning. This resignation is symptomatic of a malaise in our society, of a discontent with the government's failure to take the initiative and the government's failure to act. If the government continues to neglect these responsibilities which it quite properly has, then I submit there will be a growing disparity between different areas and that there will be growing disunity in Canada.
The Prime Minister has a great opportunity, if he avails, himself of this warning and if he grasps the nettle and tackles these problems, using the constitution as it is, and asks for the co-operation of the provinces for a delegation of power and provision for concurrent jurisdiction to deal with any problems which cannot be dealt with under present jurisdiction. If he accepts' this opportunity he will have the support of the people of Canada

and he will have taken a first step on the road to enable Canada to reach that great destiny of which it is capable.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the proposition we are now con-' sidering asks for the adjournment of the house-
-for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter requiring urgent consideration-

and solving the housing crisis now prevailing in Canada.
I was hoping that the mover of this motion would take the floor about the housing crisis, Mr. Speaker. He did not say a word about it, except in very general terms, right at the start, that is-

"the worsening of the housing situation in this country,"

But no statistics or figures.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The leader of the New Democratic party has taken advantage of this to talk about the constitution while we believed we were here to discuss housing.
We are listening to comments on the constitution. Indeed, I shall be glad to talk about it myself, if I am allowed the time to do so. I would just like to tell the leader of the New Democratic party that he does not fare any better in constitutional matters than in housing.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: We are very glad to take part in this debate. I mainly want to put statistics before the house and the country to stop all that talk about the housing crisis and its seriousness, in the light of the other priorities.


An hon. Member:: Do you expect anybody to believe that?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I certainly cannot believe that and I could not deduce that from what the leader of the N.D.P. said, because there was not one word which indicated what was the crisis in housing. His whole speech was about the constitution of Canada. I welcome such a debate and we will have one whenever the ministers on this side and the leaders of
April 25, 1969

the opposition agree on a date. We have had one constitutional debate and we could have others.
We thought we were going to hear about housing today. I know why the leader of the N.D.P. did not talk about that. He could not substantiate his assertions that there is a housing crisis.
Let me begin with a brief quotation from the first paragraph of the report of the federal task force in housing and urban development which was tabled in this house on January 29, 1969. That paragraph in part states: "Canadians can rightfully claim to be among the best housed people in the world." This does not mean we think there should not be improvement. This does not mean we are not improving the situation. This does mean that it would be a mistake to say, as the leader of the N.D.P. said, that housing is the most pressing national problem facing this country. Let me ask members of the opposition whether, if they were to establish a list of priorities of an urgent nature in this country, they could honestly say that housing was the top priority? Does it come ahead of education, ahead of financial progress and development and ahead of equalization of opportunity for all Canadians? Does it come ahead of correcting regional disparity? Apparently it does.
Housing is a crisis area. Let us consider some of the facts as they are known to the country but apparently not known to members of the N.D.P. The Economic Council of Canada made some projections on housing units required in Canada. This is what the council said. It is clear that at the current rate of construe!ion, with 197,000 units having been started in 1968 and 210,000 forecast for this year, the council's target will be met for the 1965-70 period.
The Financial Post of tomorrow's date has a lead article on the first page headed "Housing Off To A Strong Start". The article begins as follows:
Houses are being built at a frantic pace in Canada this spring despite a tight, expensive mortgage market.
If the growth of the first three months is kept up, it will take the housebuilding industry to the limit of its capacity in 1969.
[DOT] (2:30 p.m.)


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Housing starts for the first three months are up 47 per cent from the same period, in 1968.
Housing
This situation did not come about of its own accord. In 1966 and 1967 there was a shortfall in housing in this country. In order to improve the situation, this government last year and this year has done many things which have produced this greatly improving trend. In order to improve the flow of mortgage funds and to stimulate home-building in Canada, a number of legislative and policy actions were taken by the government in the housing field in the past two years. Among such steps I mention the automatic adjustment, after September, 1967, of the National Housing Act rate relative to the general interest structure, the Bank Act changes in 1967 which resulted in the re-entry of the banks into mortgage lending on a substantial scale, the increasing of the ratio for home ownership loans on new housing in March, 1968, and the raising of the maximum loan for apartment units for $12,000 to $18,000 in the previous month. In addition, Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation was authorized last October to reallocate to direct home ownership loans $170 million and to make
6,000	loans to merchant builders.
A direct consequence of these government measures was a large expansion in the mortgage funds provided by the institutional lenders. This expansion may be somewhat surprising in that it occurred against a background of steadily rising interest rates throughout most of the year, due in part to world-wide financial and monetary problems, in part to a resurgence of inflationary expectations which necessitated greater restraint on the part of the monetary authorities, and also because of strong competing demands for capital market funds. Despite such adverse conditions, the private institutional lenders increased their mortgage approvals by 27.2 per cent, from $2.1 billion in 1967 to $2.7 billion last year. In this total, the increased concentration on National Housing Act lending by the financial institutions showed the effectiveness of the new formula in stimulating National Housing Act lending; for all the approved lenders the increase was from $356 million, or 16.8 per cent of total lending in 1967, to $832 million or 30.8 per cent of total lending in 1968.
Government policies have increased the flow of mortgage money and this has meant a very substantial improvement in residential construction. Thus house-building reached a new peak in 1968, when nearly 197,000 dwellings were started, an increase of 20 per cent over the 164,000 starts in 1967. Housing starts exceeded completions, and the inventory of

April 25, 1969
Housing
127.000	dwellings under construction at the year end was 24,000 higher than at the end of
1967.	Residential construction last year represented an investment of $2.8 billion, 18 per cent more than in 1967. In addition, National Housing Act loans were provided to finance construction of some 14,000 new hostel beds for elderly persons and students, compared with 6,000 beds two years earlier. While all types of dwellings contributed to the increase in starts in 1968, apartments and row houses, with a 36.5 per cent growth, accounted for most of last year's performance.
All regions and most metropolitan areas shared in the residential construction boom in
1968,	the Atlantic provinces together showing the largest relative gain of 31.7 per cent. This was followed by the prairies, with an increase of 27.1 per cent, while Quebec had an increase of 23.2 per cent. A somewhat smaller but still significant increase occurred in Ontario where a year to year gain of 18 per cent was recorded. This year the exceptional performance in housing has continued and new starts in urban areas increased at a record annual rate of 227,000 units in the first quarter of 1969, up from the previous high of
196.000	units in the fourth quarter of 1968.
For all areas these rates imply that the
good results of 1968 will be substantially exceeded this year, and it is evident that 1969 will again be a record year for residential construction in Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Gerald William Baldwin: Except for the people who need houses.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: On the question of long-run national requirements, the report of the tacV force on housing and urban development suggested the need for a housing program of one million new housing units over the next five years, or 200,000 units a year. It is clear on the basis of performance to date that the current rate of construction is well ahead of meeting this target. With the implementation of many of the key proposals of the task force, an even greater part of our resources will undoubtedly be channelled into providing shelter for Canadians in all parts of the country.
It is important that a substantial proportion of those resources be invested in housing for low income families. The government is actively concerned in stimulating this kind of construction. Although different people can reasonably come to different conclusions about how much should be done and how

long it should take to do it, it is nevertheless quite evident that the priority given by the federal government to its housing policy is now, as in the past, showing good results. So much for the present facts about housing in Canada. It is these facts which I ask the opposition and the country to test against their expressions of crisis.


An hon. Member:: Why have a task force?


Wallace Bickford (Wally) Nesbitt: Then why did Paul Hellyer resign?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Presumably, according to the leader of the New Democratic party, because of the constitution, not because of the housing crisis.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Let me talk a little about the current policies of the government, because the implication of the motion before the house is that the government is not dealing expeditiously with new housing proposals.


An hon. Member:: Why don't you read your letters?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The present housing record, as I have indicated, is a good one, but it is good because of policy decisions the government has taken in the past. We are equally determined to press ahead as rapidly as possible with new policy decisions to ensure that the future housing record is even better. Hon. members will recognize that it is not appropriate for me to speak in any detail of the process of cabinet consideration of housing policies-


An hon. Member:: Or possible.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Well, you will see them. As I was saying, Mr. Speaker, hon. members will recognize that it is not appropriate for me to speak in any detail of the process of cabinet consideration of housing policies, but in broad terms the issues which must be examined in the light of the report of the task force can easily be deduced. Hon. members will see if there have been any decisions.
Extensive consideration has been given to these issues since the receipt of the task force report. Federal housing policy inevitably touches upon many areas of government policy. It involves financial policy because of the level of interest rates and the provision of mortgage money, and because housing is one of the federal government's largest spending
April 25. 1969

programs and is consequently one of its highest priorities. It includes social policy because federal money helps to finance public housing for the poor, and for the clearing of slums. It involves research policy because federal money and expertise are being used to study the problems of urban development and low-cost housing.
[DOT] (2:40 p.m.)
Because the task force proposed many innovations, its report had to be examined thoroughly and thoughtfully by many ministers, who needed to know the implications of these initiatives for their own areas of responsibility. For example, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Benson) had to know how much these measures would cost. The Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Munro) had to consider how the proposals on public housing would affect his welfare programs. I am describing, of course, the normal procedures of cabinet government: a minister puts his proposals to his colleagues and hears their views and comments. This is the only way to achieve sound and comprehensive policies which take into account differing points of view, regional considerations and the implications of particular proposals for other government policies and initiatives. It does take time, but I think it is time well spent.
Since receiving the task force report we have covered a lot of ground. The examination of the substance of the proposed amendments to the National Housing Act was virtually completed by the beginning of this month and since then the actual drafting of the amendments has been completed by the Department of Justice. The government will introduce these amendments into the house in the very near future. Indeed, Mr. Speaker, I believe that these amendments will be ready for placing on the order paper at the beginning of next week.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The amendments which will be offered at that time will, of course, deal with those matters which are essentially under federal jurisdiction.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Among the amendments will be:
Provisions to increase the flow of mortgage funds from private lenders;
Housing
Provisions to permit loan value ratios and limits to be established from time to time by the Governor in Council;
Provisions to extend the maximum amortization from 35 to 40 years;
Provisions to extend to existing housing generally the same terms as apply to new construction, except that the maximum loan on existing housing would be $18,000;
Provisions to amend the national housing loan regulations to establish the maximum loans for home ownership or rental at $25,000 and, for loans on existing housing at $18,000;
Provisions to approve a form of mortgage with a five year roll-over, but with monthly payments calculated on an amortization of at least 25 years;
Provisions to reduce the rate of mortgage insurance fees by 50 per cent.
There will also be measures to increase the activity of limited dividend housing companies and non-profit housing companies in meeting the needs of low income families and elderly citizens. It is proposed to amend the present provisions of the act, (a) to increase the loan levels on projects constructed by such organizations from the present 90 per cent of value to 95 per cent of value and, (b), to permit limited dividend companies to construct projects in hostel or dormitory form as well as the self-contained accommodation to which the present provisions of the act restrict them.
Legislation on other important housing questions requires further consultation with the provinces. This introduces another aspect of housing policy which is every bit as important as the details of the amendments to the National Housing Act, that is, the way in which the federal government deals with the provinces and municipalities in housing matters. Housing policy is a subject which does not divide neatly into three compartments corresponding to the various levels of government. Progressive, imaginative and sound housing policy and urban development require the co-operation and energetic enthusiasm of all three levels of government. It is absolutely essential that the federal government, before it launches into programs which could have important implications for matters within provincial jurisdiction, should consider these implications and consult closely with the provinces.
Housing

April 25, 1969


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bechard):: I am
sorry to interrupt the Prime Minister, but his time has expired.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, may I request that the Prime Minister carry on? There is plenty of time for everyone and we would be glad to have the Prime Minister speak as long as he wishes.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I thank hon. members for the permission they have given me to carry on. I will stop at any point you say, Mr. Speaker. I think I may need another five minutes to get to the end of the facts and figures which I wish to give to the house.
As hon. members will have appreciated, the task force report contained a number of recommendations, at least 16, which have a bearing on the responsibilities of the provinces or municipalities. Some of these recommendations were entirely outside the responsibilities of the federal government, but certain others affected the responsibilities of both the federal and provincial governments. It is this latter category which has had to be considered in working out a new federal policy.
There is the very important and basic question, for example, of whether the federal government should lend money for housing, for land banking or other purposes directly to the municipalities, or whether this should be done through the provincial governments. Because municipalities are within provincial jurisdiction, many provincial governments feel strongly that their priorities might be upset if the federal government dealt directly with the municipalities. Let me say for the record that this does not only apply to only one province. A high proportion of the provinces made such objections. I do not know whether the constitutional theories of the New Democratic party would give this kind of special status to only half the provinces and not to the others. It may be that that party is not prepared to grant special status to those provinces which never have had and will never elect a member of the New Democratic party, but this may be true of an increasing number of provinces.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Gerald William Baldwin: How about electing people who voted for the New Democratic party once?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: If, on the other hand, money is lent to provincial governments, is it not desirable and necessary to ensure that reasonable conditions are established for the use of that money, and that the ultimate beneficiary has some idea of the source of the money? And can these reasonable conditions be established without reasonable consultation?
On these and other related matters the government has already held important discussions with the provinces. Further discussions will be needed on other aspects of housing policy which affect substantially the priorities and objectives of provincial and municipal governments. We must do all we can to work together at all levels of government to achieve the basic goal which is and must be the provision of reasonable housing for every Canadian.
I have described the way in which we are dealing with a practical problem in a field
where responsibility is shared among the different levels of government and which therefore requires close and continuing co-operation among them. This is our approach to federalism.
There is, I know, another point of view concerning Canadian federalism which is genuinely and sincerely felt by some Canadians. It goes something like this. There are times when problems which are largely within provincial jurisdiction, such as housing and urban development, become so serious and so widespread that they seem to be, or do indeed become, national problems. This may be because of neglect on the part of the provinces of their responsibilities, it may be because technological change has made something which once was local in character a truly nation-wide question, or it may be that something which is and ought to be within provincial jurisdiction can only be solved by joint federal-provincial action. Whatever the cause, this view of federalism runs, once a problem has become nation-wide in scope, once it has become a national problem, parliament ought to be able to act, to legislate, to spend, to lend, to start shared-cost programs, regardless of what the constitution says about provincial jurisdiction and regardless of the reaction of provincial governments. Why? Because parliament is the only body which represents the nation as a whole and is therefore the only body which can deal with problems on a national basis.
[DOT] (2:50 p.m.)
I can understand this point of view, although I do not share it I can understand it,
April 25. 1969

and I can sympathize with the desire of the people who share it to get on with the problems as they see them without regard to the constitution. But what this really amounts to is the view that parliament ought to be able to transfer matters from provincial jurisdiction into federal jurisdiction whenever parliament, in its judgment, decides that a problem within provincial jurisdiction has become national in scope. And it means that parliament ought to be able to make this transfer of jurisdiction on its own initiative and by its single-handed action. If one wanted to be harsh one would say that this view amounts to saying that parliament ought to be able to amend the constitution unilaterally, without reference to the provinces whose jurisdiction is being changed.
The trouble with this view is that it is not really federalism. In many ways it is much more consistent with the operation of a unitary state. And a unitary state simply will not work in Canada. Theoretically-and I suggest that this is the view which is theoretical, not mine-a unitary state enables a country to deal with problems more quickly, more directly, more simply, as they arise. But if it means breaking up the country, what kind of efficiency is that?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Surely we have learned that society and government must play the game according to the rules of the game. If we do not, then everyone will make up his own rules as he goes along. Some of them may be better rules, but if we have two sets of rules, or eleven sets of rules, we will have first suspicion, then friction, then disruption of the social order, and finally anarchy.


An hon. Member:: Revolution.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: You are always afraid of revolution. We hear a lot of talk from the other side-


An hon. Member:: You alarm me.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I can see that you play by many sets' of rules.
Federalism has its advantages but it also has its costs, as does everything in life. The cost to the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield) is having such members as that in his party.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Bigg:: We were looking for you in 1942.
Housing


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Federalism gives us a country, it gives us a rich and diverse society, it gives us a degree of freedom which is to be found in pluralistic communities. But it does mean two orders of government; it means working together in solving some problems, and sometimes it means we have to change the constitution to keep it up to date and give to the federal government and to the provincial governments the new roles which are called for in this society.
I am afraid I shall not have time to go into the details of this debate, some of which were mentioned by the leader of the New Democratic party. All I can say is that the constitutional conferences which began in February of last year are going on as rapidly as the provincial governments and the federal government can make them go on. If the leader of the New Democratic party accuses me of hiding behind the constitution, let me remind him and this house that his was the party which for some years goaded the government side into dealing quickly and urgently with the constitution. At that time he felt this was the most urgent problem. Today it may be some other crisis. They go from crisis to crisis over there.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I need only a few more minutes in which to finish, Mr. Speaker. I do not wish to abuse the indulgence of the house.
This view of federalism does not imply a lack of federal leadership. Federalism means strong provincial governments and a strong federal government each in their respective fields.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: It does not mean a federal government which asks the permission of provincial premiers every time it wants to act, nor which capitulates in the face of provincial demands, whether fiscal or otherwise. It means broad enough constitutional jurisdiction for parliament to enable the government of Canada to act in the interests of the country. On the other hand, this view of federalism does not mean subordinating provincial governments to the will of the government of Canada, whenever, or even if, it would seem to be more efficient to do so. Nor does this view of federalism mean some fuzzy two-nation theory under which two unitary states Canada and Quebec, would somehow heal the wounds of separation and reconcile both old and new-found differences in an

April 25. 1969
Housing
effort to create the appearance of a single association.
The demands of leadership in Canada are made more difficult because we live in a federal state. Leadership is required both in solving the nation's current problems and in making sure that the constitution and the machinery of federal-provincial relations are in good working order. Unless we pursue both objectives we shall not be able to deal with housing, pollution and so many other matters which affect the daily lives of all Canadians.
Every federal government and every federal prime minister in Canada's history has been called upon to provide that kind of leadership. That is the kind of leadership which this government intends to give the people of Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, despite the good will, even the sympathy, that I feel, I have to say that it is becoming almost impossible to take the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) of this country seriously.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: He rises in this house on an occasion such as this and pretends there is a need on the part of the opposition parties to document the existence of the housing crisis although the occasion of this debate is the resignation of the minister in charge of housing, the deputy prime minister of the country, the man in the best position to know the extent of the crisis and the weakness of the government's proposals to deal with it.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Do members opposite expect us to regard the deputy prime minister of the country as a man of so little intelligence as we are led to believe by virtue of the attitude the Prime Minister adopted here this afternoon? As to the discussion of the constitution, the constitution comes into the matter because of the effect the government's attitude toward it has upon its poor housing performance, and the view of the Minister of Transport (Mr. Hellyer) who has resigned.
I find it increasingly difficult to take the Prime Minister seriously. He talks about unitary government. Talk about red herrings! Who has proposed unitary government in this country, Mr. Speaker? The Prime Minister

sets up a man of straw to knock down. He goes out west on one trip and slaps down the wheat growers, and to prove he is prepared to give equal treatment to all he makes another trip and insults the oil industry. When he thinks the time has come to regain the yards lost out there, he does what any red-blooded leader would do-he attacks the premier of Quebec. After all, it worked pretty well in the election of last June.
[DOT] (3:00 p.m.)
Yesterday he lost his seatmate and colleague, the Minister of Transport. That minister attacked the Prime Minister's concept of federalism and its bearing on the ability of the government to meet the many problems of the country. The minister resigned, so the Prime Minister went out into the corridors and attacked the opposition. If the Prime Minister had a wife and if he quarrelled with her he would go out and kick the cat. Ministers have resigned before, although I doubt that a resignation on principle has ever come so soon after a Prime Minister has been elected to power. The Minister of Transport says in effect that the government is not dealing with the bread and butter issues; it lacks initiatives in housing, pollution, inflation and urban development. What is left, Mr. Speaker? Agriculture? External Affairs? Defence policy? The Post Office Department? Are they doing anything right, Mr. Speaker? Are they doing anything at all? In fairness, they are working overtime to establish a study group to advise them as to what they should do about inflation.
The Minister of Transport indicated at his press conference that the Prime Minister has trouble in "comprehending fully the real problems of people in their day-to-day living". What greater charges of unsuitability could be brought against a Prime Minister in a participatory democracy? The report of the task force on housing was presented to this house on January 29. The recommendations were hardly earth-shattering. They did not involve quite as much as we were led to expect, but with the exception of two or three recommendations we endorsed the report of the task force as it held out some hope for material progress.
We said then, as we recommended during the election campaign, that a task force on housing should have had provincial involvement. Leaving this aside, there are recommendations in the report of the task force that the federal government can implement.
April 25. 1969

Many of them involve provincial consultation, but there are those that could be implemented directly.
The future of this country in terms of the quality of our life, Mr. Speaker, will be determined largely in the urban centres where 75 per cent of our people live. We have been reminded forcefully by the Economic Council of Canada of the appalling extent of urban poverty, yet we have in this house today a Prime Minister of Canada making what must surely be one of the most complacent speeches to the people of Canada regarding housing that it has ever been the misfortune of a Prime Minister to make. We know of housing conditions and the housing shortage. From time to time, the Prime Minister himself has acknowledged the danger of protest unsatisfied that builds into violence.
If the Prime Minister and the government cannot be convinced that these problems affect the heart and soul of the nation, that they are problems requiring federal action, then there is unfortunately very strong reason for pessimism.
During the election campaign last spring, the Prime Minister promised to establish in co-operation with provincial governments a program of national priorities for our cities. He promised to establish urban research centres in selected urban universities. He also promised to introduce a co-ordinated program to advance the techniques of urban mass transport. The time has long passed to honour those pledges. Certainly, it is time to bring in the legislation based on the report of the task force where it relates to the federal jurisdiction. Furthermore, this government should consult with the provinces as quickly as possible to see the extent to which, through cooperation, the other recommendations can be implemented and to what extent federal help may be required.
There has been no action on housing and urban problems because for the Prime Minister, according to the Minister of Transport, the constitution has become the great hang-up, the straitjacket, the impediment to progress. Yesterday, in his letter to the Minister of Transport accepting the latter's resignation, the Prime Minister said, and I quote:
The platform on which our government was elected was clearly and emphatically a one nation platform, and it has not changed.
There he goes again, Mr. Speaker. It is that fellow Faribault who is not building the houses!
Housing
The Prime Minister might have been able to get away with that kind of political garbage during the election campaign, but it is a sorry way to try to meet the problems of governing this country. Now, we know how this "one nation platform" works in practice. We know because the Minister of Transport has given us the inside information.
The Minister of Transport confirmed what was apparent as long ago as February 14, when the Prime Minister said in this house, speaking of urban renewal, housing and urban transport:
Until the constitution is brought into the 20th century in some of these respects, governments are to a large degree powerless to solve the problems either by acting alone or in co-operation with other levels of government.
I want you to contrast these two statements, Mr. Speaker. I want to call attention to the extent to which this statement constitutes a rationalization for doing nothing, that is to suggest under our existing constitution the governments of Canada are largely powerless to deal with problems such as housing, urban renewal and urban transport. If the federal and provincial governments over the years had taken that position, there would never have been any progress in this country. I repeat what the Prime Minister said a month or so ago:
Until the constitution is brought into the 20th century in some of these respects, governments are to a large degree powerless to solve the problems either by acting alone or in co-operation with other levels of government.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister said in the corridor, "most of the fundamental issues in this country could be settled under the present constitution through co-operation between the federal government and the provinces." How can a Prime Minister who makes contradictory statements like these be taken seriously? A month or so ago the Prime Minister said it was virtually impossible to solve these problems under the existing constitution. Yesterday, he said most of the fundamental issues could be settled under the present constitution through co-operation. If the Prime Minister believed what he said yesterday, Mr. Speaker, and if the Minister of Transport believed that the Prime Minister believed it, he would not have submitted his resignation. The Minister of Transport resigned because, as he put it, the Prime Minister has a theory of federalism, "of ten. virtually autonomous provinces held together by strings of a fairly weak government with its responsibilities largely confined to tariffs and customs and

April 25, 1969
Housing
the things that are enumerated under section 91".
So much for the one nation platform, Mr. Speaker, of which the Prime Minister spoke so much and which, as the Minister of Transport said, is not what the Canadian people had been led to believe it would be. The British North America Act will be with us for some time yet. Ways have been found for over 100 years to attack problems under the present constitution through federal-provincial cooperation. It is time for the Prime Minister to come back to earth. The country cannot stand still. Problems will not wait for the constitution to be reviewed or revised.
[DOT] (3:10 p.m.)
The constitution of this country has always created difficulties. But it has never been an impossible stumbling block and it is not one now if the Prime Minister will seek to cooperate with the provinces. There is more at stake here than the willingness of the government to act on housing, urgent and important though housing is. What is at issue here is the willingness1 of the government to act at all to meet urgent and emerging problems such as those referred to by the Minister of Transport which include problems of pollution and inflation.
Let us be perfectly clear, Mr. Speaker. The Minister of Transport is saying, in effect, that the reason we have not had an adequate housing policy in Canada-and he resigned because of this-is that the concept of confederation the Prime Minister has imposed on the cabinet does not allow the federal government to deal effectively with the modern problems facing this country.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Presumably, that concept of the federal system is too rigid and too narrow to allow Ottawa to act effectively to solve problems of pollution, inflation or other similar problems. We had known that there had not been action, but we were told that action would come. Now, the man who sat in the house as the principal lieutenant of the Prime Minister, and who was the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, suggest that the inaction of the government is not due to delay but, instead, to design. He has suggested that the government has no intention of acting.
The Minister's resignation raises serious doubts about the plans of the government for the country. We have been told that long

range plans are being launched and developed in the Privy Council office and that we are hovering at the very edge of an exciting time of action. We might almost call it phase two, Mr. Speaker. The myth has been spread that there is a united and modern government plotting a new course for Canada. If that myth has not been exploded it has at least been badly shell shocked.
I want to end by saying that the minister who has resigned has a record of service in government. He had the courage and the ability to translate ideas and concepts into reality. While hon. members on this side of the house sometimes, indeed frequently, disagreed fundamentally with his concepts, nevertheless there was never any lack of admiration for his energy and for the ability he applied to the programs he was attempting to implement.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: He served honourably and faithfully in the governments of three prime ministers. He entered public life as a young man, and he is a young man still. Whether he is in politics or out of politics, I sincerely hope that our country will continue to benefit from his dedication and service. His resignation at this time brings discredit to this government, which is the poorer for it.


Mr. Real Caouelle (Temiscamingue):: Mr. Speaker, we listened carefully to the remarks of the leader of the New Democratic party (Mr. Douglas), of the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield).
This sub-amendment moved by the New Democratic party is to the effect that, and I shall have to quote it in English because I was only given the English version of the motion:

-for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter requiring urgent consideration, namely the resignation of the Minister of Transport because of the failure of the government to agree to take action to increase the housing supply in Canada,-

As was so well said by the Prime Minister, the leader of the New Democratic party talked about a lot of things, except housing. The Prime Minister blamed the leader of the New Democratic party for not quoting figures. I intend to provide the Prime Minister with figures which speak for themselves and
April 25. 1969

which do not come from us but from conclusion resulting from serious studies of the housing crisis.
The Prime Minister told us earlier that he was not aware of any housing crisis in Canada while the Minister of Transport (Mr. Hell-yer) resigned because of the housing crisis which the Prime Minister refused to cope with and which the members of the cabinet did not want to be concerned about.
These statements are therefore contradictory. If the Prime Minister is convinced of what he says then I invite him to come along with me.
I shall take him to places all across Canada where there is at the moment a housing crisis.
The Prime Minister may very well say that we have built 200,000 houses, 197,000 houses, and so on, but the fact remains that in Canada we have 5,500,000 housing units while we have 5,700,000 families. This means that at the moment, we are short 200,000 housing units. Furthermore, there are 500,000 dwellings which are nothing more than sheds in which families, human beings, have to live.
We could tour the whole country, we could visit various parts of Montreal where we would see people who literally live in sheds that we would not consider suitable for dogs. Children are almost devoured by rats and the Prime Minister rises in the house to tell us very seriously that there is no housing crisis in Canada. When the Prime Minister makes such a statement, he acts like a joker. I could say something else, but I will leave it at that.
Mr. Speaker, there are 500,000 defective homes. For 10 years, there has been talk of replacing slums by decent homes for men, women and children. Families of 10 or 12 people have to live in three rooms. And that not in Egypt, China or in the constituency of Mont Royal, but in the cities of Montreal and Hull.
As a matter of fact, let us talk about the city of Hull, Mr. Speaker. One has only to look at the other side of the Ottawa river to see what people put up with over there. The hon. member for Hull (Mr. Isabelle) left the house when he heard about his city.
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister just said there is no housing crisis in Canada.
A thorough study on housing was made by the Canadian Conference on housing, which went through the report submitted by the Federal Task Force on Housing. Now, on
Housing
January 30, the following was published by the Canadian Conference, and I quote:
[DOT] (3:20 p.m.)

The federal task force on housing report offers nothing concrete for the housing needs of the more than one million Canadian families with incomes below $5,500-
That was well established by the Canadian Conference on Housing.

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has probably not seen that report.
I go on with the quotation:

-the first concern of government must be the people of low income whose housing needs are greatest.

The Prime Minister has taken no notice of this report.
If he has only read the report of the architects of the town of Mount Royal, in Montreal, he must have noticed that these people do not earn $5,500 a year. Consequently, he could not learn that there was a housing problem. Yet, this problem does certainly exist whether he admits it or not.
Now, what were the recommendations of this commission? I have here a statement made after all these studies by Mr. Albert Gagnon, a former president of the Association of housing contractors of the district of Montreal. What did that man who knows about construction and housing say? He said, among other things, that an increase of 1 per cent in the interest rate on a small $15,000 house during a period of 25 years would increase the payments by $9 a month, that is an increase of $108 a year.
Then, the construction of a family dwelling is practically impossible for the time being, because the worker who earns $5,000 cannot buy his own house.
Mr. Speaker, with due respect to the constitution of the Prime Minister and the competence of the governments, what did Mr. Gagnon recommend? Here it is:
Immediate decrease of the interest rate for the loans granted by the C.M.H.C. to people whose income is $10,000 or less a year;
Decrease of the interest rate. I read further:
Removal of the 11 per cent sales tax on the building materials that are used for housing;
A capital gains tax on profits from the sale of land in order to discourage speculation;

April 25, 1969
Housing
Repayment period of mortgage to be extended from 25 to 40 years;
I do not quite agree with Mr. Gagnon on the last point. I continue quoting:
Income tax legislation to be amended to allow small owners to deduct municipal and school taxes from their taxable income.
It is logical. If $5,000 worth of materials are needed to build a house, the federal government receives $550 which increases the cost of construction. Then the Quebec government levies an 8 per cent tax on the increased cost. We have reached the point where taxes are taxed, and then we have the nerve to ask why there is a housing crisis. There is no end to the taxes we have to pay.
The Prime Minister knows full well that to build a house costing $5,000 in material, the buyer would have to spend $994 to pay the 11 per cent federal tax and the 8 per cent provincial tax.
Mr. Gagnon also made recommendations to the provincial government. But I shall leave it to the premier of Quebec, Mr. Bertrand, to deal with the taxes in that province. Let us take care of those for which Ottawa is responsible.
Mr. Speaker, Controller Allan Lamport, a former mayor of Toronto, a fairly competent man, I believe, said this on January 9th, and I quote:

Transport Minister Paul Hellyer's study group on housing is the "biggest whitewash I've ever seen" Toronto Controller Allan Lamport said yesterday.

Mr. Lamport added, and I quote:

The banks were given special treatment-

There is opposition to granting special treatment to the workers, to paying them such salaries as would enable them to own something, but-

The banks were given special treatment with the ceiling lifted from 6 per cent to unlimited, but the mortgage rate soon will be 9 or 10 per cent.

That was in January. It is now 10 per cent.
Mr. Speaker, that is what Mr. Lamport had to say about interest rates that keep people from building a house. This increase in interest rate was allowed under the pretext

that it would check inflation, when in fact it spurs it on directly.
When you reduce the purchasing power of the Canadian citizen, it is clear that you contribute to inflation. That is exactly what the government is doing, for instance, by allowing chartered banks to increase their interest rates to excessively high levels, thereby keeping the ordinary Canadian citizen from owning something and feeling at home in his own country, Canada.
Mr. Speaker, here is a testimony from the C.N.T.U. The minister who, at one time, was president of the C.N.T.U. in the province of Quebec, should remember the days when he was the defender of the working class, the defender of the small wage earner, the defender of the humble Canadian people. Here is what the C.N.T.U. has to say in an article entitled: "One word to qualify the Hel-lyer report on housing", and I quote:
Were your government to enforce its recommendations, it would only serve to strengthen the foundations of this unjust society of ours: no suggestion likely to solve the housing problems of the low and even medium income range of citizens, encouragement given to lifelong indebtedness (a suggestion tending to extend the repayment period) -
As the Prune Minister just told us, we will now give 40 years, instead of 35, to repay loans.
[DOT] (3:30 p.m.)
Let us imagine a 45 year-old Canadian, a worker from the Canadair plants in Montreal, Brantford, Toronto or Regina. He buys himself a nice little house-under the plan suggested not so long ago by the Prime Minister-incidentally, we should see it in the White Paper, next week-intending to pay it over a period of 40 years. When he finally owns a house, in his own country, he will be 85 years old.
The Prime Minister tells us that his government treats the Canadian workers generously. His government, as well as the previous one, has always treated foreign countries more generously than Canadians who have built Canada at the sweat of their brows and who are still able to do so.
This does not mean that we object to helping others but it isi high time, I believe, that we should think of our own people here, of those who are still willing to work in order to develop Canada.
April 25, 1969

Mr. Speaker, the C.N.T.U. brief added and I quote:
-praise for the efficiency of private enterprise in a sector where social needs are overwhelming and where private enterprise has failed-
May I point out to the C.N.T.U. that private enterprise has not failed; it is the government that has failed miserably, to build, housing for the Canadian people.
Private entreprise exists, but the Prime Minister does not wonder whether there are nails, wood, contractors, carpenters, architects and engineers ready to build dwellings in Canada. No. He wonders if we have any money.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: No, but there is a constitutional authority!


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I agree with the views stated a while ago by the Leader of the Opposition: when the people's interests are at stake, should we always stumble over constitutional terms? If we have all the requisites for construction, should we remain inactive, because the constitution has not yet been amended?
For the last fifteen years, we have heard about the constitution and we have seen men of good will fight blindly.
During the last electoral campaign, the Leader of the Opposition came to Quebec to talk about the "two-nation concept", thus creating discord among Canadians.
The leader of the New Democratic party also came to Quebec to declare "You poor Frenchmen, you need a special status".
Mr. Speaker, I am a Canadian from the province of Quebec. I speak French. It is my mother tongue. I want it to be respected all across Canada. I say that Quebec is like all the other Canadian provinces, even though our needs are different.
I was in Calgary last week-one week after the Prime Minister was thrown a few tomatoes. I visited Alberta and British Columbia, two neighbouring provinces where existing problems are not similar. In fact, every province has its own particular problems and one certainly cannot say that Saskatchewan and Alberta are faced with the same problems. Wheat sales are indeed a common problem, but as far as political ideologies are concerned, it is an entirely different matter.
My hon. friend from the New Democratic party was prime minister of the socialist province of Saskatchewan for 17 years. There
Housing
were federal-provincial conferences at that time when the Right Hon. Mackenzie King was prime minister of Canada. Some took place during prime minister St. Laurent's time.
What did the former premier of Saskatchewan achieve in regard to federal-provincial conferences or federal-provincial problems?
He has done almost nothing. And yet, he was premier of Saskatchewan for 17 years. His province was different from Manitoba. Manitoba is not like Ontario. Ontario is different from Quebec. All provinces are different.
In Newfoundland, the problems are different from those in New Brunswick, where farmers have to deal with the marketing of their potatoes.
As the Prime Minister says, we must establish in Canada a constitution which will respect the identity peculiar to each of those provinces.
The Canadian constitution must be improved in such a way that an economic context could be developed in which each province could have its own way. In doing so, the identity of each province would be respected, for we do not need two nations, special status, this or that.
We sincerely believe that the huge country we live in can serve the whole nation. That is why, Mr. Speaker, the Ralliement Creditiste suggests that the Prime Minister make the funds of the Bank of Canada available to the provinces and let them assume their responsibilities in the field of housing.
This would not go against the constitution, and the Prime Minister does not have to change it in any way for that purpose. Nothing prevents the government from putting a branch of the Bank of Canada at the disposed of the provinces, so as to enable them to build more houses for Canadians.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I must interrupt the hon. member, as his time has expired. Unless he gets unanimous consent from the house, he cannot proceed with his remarks.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for allowing me to go on with my remarks. I do not want to abuse of their generosity, but in concluding my remarks, I want to call the Prime Minister's attention to the recommendations made some time ago in Belgium by a well known economist, Mr. COMMONS DEBATES
April 25. 1969
Housing
Gaston Bardet, dean of studies at the Higher International Institute of Applied Town Planning, in Brussels.
Here is what Mr. Bardet had to say:
As a result of outside financing by the banks, which issue advanced scrip money, operations and production soar at a rate exceeding the real purchasing power, which is now ignored. As a result, there is a productive hysteria, with the alternatives of unemployment or war, for the destruction of the goods that glut the market.
Therefore, there exist for financing two entirely different solutions: one through savings and the other, through projections, the self-regulation of which should come from supply, from existing surplusses, in the first case, from demand, from essential needs in the second case.
Bank financing is altogether appropriate for construction and capital equipment, beneficial to the entire country. For, in that case, no overproduction is to be feared.
It is really demand which determines the issue; it is the need for housing, roads, bridges, hospitals, schools which now become the regulator of advanced scrip money, so dangerous in its anticipations, the machinery of which must now be set forth. How are we to build annually the 200,000 houses that people are clamouring for?
Their problem is the same as ours. They also need 200,000 houses. The quotation goes on:
Let us resort to the machinery used by the bankers themselves-
He indeed refers to the bankers themselves and not to the floor sweepers or those who empty the spittoons. Let us ask them.
What does a bank do when it wants to erect a building? Does it borrow from another bank? Certainly not.
It credits an amount to a current account in its own name, on which, needless to say, it pays no interest. It purchases the land, pays the builders with cheques that are guaranteed ... by the building itself. It thens collects rents and, after some thirty years, the money paid in balances the initial amount credited.
[DOT] (3:40 p.m.)
The Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Cote), who is talking with his neighbour, does not understand anything about these matters. It would perhaps be wiser for him to listen, because his electors understand the problem and this might be dangerous for him in the next election.


Mr. Cote (Longueuil):: That no longer exists in my district because Social Credit is dead.


David Réal Caouette: 
David Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I should first like to say, if I may in the absence of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), that I have not seen him so animated since he became Prime Minister as he was today. Apparently, the crisis created by the resignation of the Minister of Transport (Mr. April 25, 1969



Hellyer) hit him a great deal harder than he appeared to suggest. I was very pleased to see him so animated. I listened to him with more attention, even though I did not agree with him to any greater extent.
The first point I want to make is that all of us in this house other than the Prime Minister, and I hope he is alone in his party in this respect, knew that there was a housing crisis; not because we created it but because every description of the housing situation in Canada today from the Economic Council of Canada to the task force report in January emphasized this housing crisis. The Prime Minister was the only person who did not know about it.
Because the Prime Minister did not know about this situation he did with statistics what is often done with them. However, he was no more revealing in his use of these statistics than some of the rest of us who do this kind of thing. During the course of his speech he emphasized quite rightly that 1966 and 1967 were years during which there was a real shortfall in housing. 1 do not have his text before me, but I am confident that is what he said. He then proceeded to compare the results of 1968 with those two years during which there had been a shortfall. That is the kind of statistical legerdemain I suppose all of us in politics practice, but it really does not enlighten or illuminate the situation.
The fact is that if there was an improvement in 1968 in housing starts, as there was, it was only because the performance in 1966 and 1967 was so dismal. If you start with a very low rate then, of course, your rate of increase is very high no matter what the performance. What is much more important and what I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, is indicative of the lack of concern of this government and of this Prime Minister is that his comparison of the number of housing starts had no conscience at all as to the kind of housing being started, about the price of homes being built, about rents being paid for apartments, about the cost of building houses or about the simple fact that a large proportion of those houses started in 1968 and 1969 were available to only 5 per cent of the population. That is sheer lack of social conscience, and I make no apology for putting it this way, on the part of the Prime Minister who rose in this chamber to say he was not aware of a housing crisis and then quoted figures which in no way touched upon the real problems and the real needs of 95 per cent of the Canadian people.
Housing
What are some of the facts about the situation, Mr. Speaker? If the Prime Minister were a little more humble and a little more concerned about the welfare of the people, he would have admitted these facts. He then might have argued that he was trying to do his best. To refuse to admit them is to me disgustingly shameful on the part of a leader of a country such as Canada.
The facts are that the Economic Council of Canada said we should have a minimum of
200,000	housing units; that in 1965, we had
165.000,	35,000 short; that in 1966 we had 134,000, 66,000 short; that in 1967 we had 164,000, another 36,000 short and that in 1968 we came near the 200,000 mark. Even in those four years from 1965, there was a shortfall of roughly 150,000 units. Those are the facts we have to face.
What are the other facts? As the hon. member for Temiscamingue (Mr. Caouette) pointed out, there are 500,000 substandard housing units in Canada. He pointed out that there are homes, and I do not like being maudlin about these things, in which children sleep in beds which are not fit for animals. They are being bitten by rats during the night. Stories of this kind of thing appear in newspapers all across the country. There are homes in this country which accommodate 8, 10, 15 people which are not fit for animals and should not accommodate, in any event, more than two people. There are homes in this country in large numbers-tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands-which do not have modern plumbing, which do not have electricity, and some of which do not have many of the other amenities of modern living.
There are 400,000 families in Canada today sharing accommodation, and in the cases where this happens the accommodation is not adequate for one family. There are 100,000 families across Canada on the waiting lists for public housing. In the metropolitan Toronto area alone, there is a waiting list of over
16.000.	These are the facts. I repeat to the right hon. Prime Minister, he can make a defence if he likes, but he has no right to mislead himself and the Canadian people about the sorry state of the housing situation in Canada today.
What are some of the other relevant facts? It is a fact that the cost of housing in Canada since 1964 has increased annually at a rate of about 10 per cent. It is a fact that land prices have gone up from 200 per cent to 500 per cent in a short number of years. It is a fact that rents have skyrocketed and there is not a

April 25, 1969
Housing
family in any apartment dwelling in my constituency, with the exception of those very fancy families in fancy apartments, which does not feel the increase in rates eating into the available funds for food, clothing and the bringing up of children. These are the facts.
The fact is that in respect of public housing in Canada there are only 40,000 units, about | of 1 per cent of total housing starts in Canada. Those are the facts the Prime Minister and the government have to face. Those are the facts the Prime Minister did not mention. Instead of that, he cited figures which are literally irrelevant to the situation in respect of a large part of the Canadian people, although they may be relevant to the total situation.
The Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation issued its report for 1968 and at page XIV we find a statement I should like to draw to the attention of this house with the hope that the Prime Minister will read it, if he has not already had it drawn to his attention. This report says, at the page I have mentioned:
[DOT] (3:50 p.m.)
However, the likelihood is that a program as high even as 250,000 units per year would not create a sufficient stock within five years to bring an end to over-crowding, doubling up, and the continued use of deficient dwellings.
Even 250,000 units per year would not really touch the housing crisis of this country. The price of homes and the high level of rents is a problem that remains even if the total housing stock is increased. It is with this knowledge of the crisis, the knowledge of these relevant facts, relevant to the lives of Canada's people, of Canada's old, Canada's young and Canada's new families, that my leader dealt with the constitutional problem. No matter how many words the Prime Minister may use here or elsewhere, he has encased himself in a constitutional strait-jacket. Since he is the leader of the country he has, therefore, encased the country in a constitutional strait-jacket. Like every rigidity of this sort which is imposed upon a dynamic and flowing situation within a country or a society, it is inconsistent; it just is not so. Whatever the Prime Minister has said is contradicted by something else that has happened.
For example, even today he made a great point, if I understood him correctly, about the question of making funds available for the assembly of land by the municipalities. Says he, do we do it directly with the

municipalities or do we do it through the provinces? Heavens above, what is he talking about? The fact is that in section 35 of the National Housing Act we have provision for public housing and in another section we have provision for urban renewal. The plan has to be arrived at in consultation. The federal department has to approve of it or it will not be put into effect. Of course the provincial government enters the picture in channelling the funds and paying its 10 per cent, in most cases, or 25 per cent, whatever it may be, of the balance that has to be paid after the federal funds have been allotted.
I cannot think of a more picayune attitude-I say this as a person who has great respect for the Prime Minister's intellect even though I have not for his concern for the welfare of Canada-than to raise the constitutional problem on this point. Who, in heaven's name, cares whether the funds go through Queen's Park to Toronto or directly to Toronto? I do not. If it makes Mr. Robarts happier, I do not care if it is done that way, as long as the people who want public housing and want to be able to buy land at a relatively decent, honest price, instead of the usurious prices which they have to pay now, are able to do so.
It does not matter how the federal funds get to the party assembling the land. If the Prime Minister, by stating that example, is trying to tell members of this house that this is so great and tremendously difficult a problem that he has been unable to persuade the provinces to agree where the cheque is to go or how the funds are to be funnelled to the municipalities, I simply do not accept that statement; I would have to think that every provincial premier is devoid of any intelligence at all. I do not think they are the most brilliant men in Canada, any more than I am or anyone else is, but, by gad, they are not unintelligent.
I cannot believe that the Prime Minister, making an honest and conscientious effort to solve that picayune problem, would not have succeeded by now. To attempt to tell us that is the problem is to throw sand in our eyes and throw an argument into the conversation that is not there.
The words of the Prime Minister with regard to the constitution, I say to hon. members and to anyone else who is interested, even though today, he used words very carefully to indicate that he was not thinking of less federal-provincial co-operation, made me shudder for the future of our country. He
April 25. 1969

emphasized in several places that it is impossible for the federal government to do anything unless-I am not quoting him, but this is what it meant to me-it has the unanimous consent of all the provinces in Canada. This is what the Prime Minister implied by his words.
If that were true, we would not have unemployment insurance in Canada; we would not have hospital insurance in Canada, there would not be a medicare plan on the statute books of Canada; there would be no Canada Assistance Plan; there would be no old age pensions in Canada. This is the fear we have. This is what we are talking about. We are saying to the Prime Minister that the constitutional strait-jacket in which he has put himself, this attitude that the division of powers in the British North America Act means that you must not step over the line even though you may do it constitutionally- no one is suggesting it be done unconstitutionally-immobilizes the federal government, immobilize this parliament and renders Canada weak.
The kind of federal government for which the Prime Minister stands-I said this a year ago; my party said it a year ago-is a weak central government which merely presides over conferences and meetings. It passes some laws if it gets the unanimous consent of the provinces, but takes little initiative; says "please", "maybe" from time to time, and if the provinces frown, runs away. That is not leadership in this country on the issues that require leadership. In the whole discussion by the Prime Minister of the constitution he is constantly speaking in legalistic terms about the division of powers. I have never heard him talk about the responsibilities of the various legislatures. I, who am a federalist, who believe in Canadian federalism, who believe that Canada cannot possibly be a unitary state, that it is stupid to talk of one, say without any qualification or hesitation that this parliament is nothing if it is not the expression of the needs and the will of all the Canadian people. The federal government is nothing if it does not accept the authority and power to act for all the Canadian people.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


David Lewis: That means precisely, to use the Prime Minister's words, that when a local problem has by the passage of time become a national problem, it becomes the responsibility of the federal parliament and the federal government to act. Since housing, pollution,
Housing
urban transportation and all the total complex of urban life in Canada are now national problems, it has become the duty and responsibility of this government and this parliament to act on them.


Harold Edward Winch: For the general good of
Canada.


David Lewis: Yes, for the general good of Canada. No one suggests that the federal government take action on housing without consultation with the provinces. No one in this house or outside this house who knows anything about the subject is that stupid. No one suggests that the federal government have a program that is not arrived at after constant consultation with the provinces. I remember suggesting a year ago at a meeting of the New Democratic party where a colleague of mine, Mr. Douglas Fisher, was nominated for the last election, that there ought to be a permanent secretariat, as I called it, or a permanent national urban council, as we have since called it, on which there would be representatives of federal, provincial and municipal governments. In this way there would be constant and continuing co-ordination of plans and programs, not only in the making of them but in their implementation.
[DOT] (4:00 p.m.)
No one is suggesting that the provinces should not be consulted. No one is suggesting that the federal government go over the heads of the provinces. What we are saying is that the federal government must take the initiative to start solving national problems. Some of them it must solve because it is the duty of this parliament to act, whether or not all the provinces agree, and some of them it must solve when most of the provinces agree and one or two provinces decide to stay out. That is what we are saying in the New Democratic party.
The Prime Minister's fallacy is that he always speaks about this legalistic division of powers and never about the responsibility of the federal parliament and the federal government. It would be impossible for the Prime Minister to persuade me, or even to persuade a member of the Liberal party, that the Minister of Transport resigned from the government because housing in Canada was doing so well that his efforts were no longer needed in this position. No one can persuade me or anyone else in the house that the resignation of a man from such an important office, of a man who held the office of Acting

April 25, 1969
Housing
Prime Minister, was not caused by frustration and failure to carry out what he felt had to be done in the field in which he was given responsibility. I do not happen to be a great follower of the Minister of Transport, and I do not happen to think very highly of the task force report which he produced. I do not agree with his totally free enterprise approach. I do not admire Mr. Hellyer, as a house builder, being so chummy with that less desirable element in housing. I do not happen to be an admirer of his, but that is irrelevant to the strange situation that the relatively conservative Minister of Transport could no longer accept the conservatism of the present Prime Minister of Canada.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member but his time has expired. Is there unanimous consent to allow the hon. member to continue?


Some hon. Members:: Continue.


David Lewis: I thank the hon. members for allowing me to continue. I only have a few more sentences to complete what I wanted to say, and this is the only reason I am taking advantage of the kindness of the house.
My leader dealt with the constitutional problem mainly because this was the reason the Minister of Transport gave for his resignation. Indeed, our motion emphasizes the resignation of the minister. We are not merely debating the question of housing, important though that subject is in this debate, but we are also discussing the government and the inaction of this government. It is a debate about the constitutional immobilisation of this country by the Prime Minister. That is what the debate is about. It is a debate about the lack of initiative and leardership of this government in the entire urban problem. I do not have to remind this house about the importance of this problem. Some 50 per cent of Canadians now live in about 18 municipal urban areas of this country. Over 70 per cent of the Canadian people now live in urban areas, the smaller as well as the larger ones. In about five years, our statisticians tell us, over 80 per cent of our people will be urbanized, and in about 20 years 85 per cent to 90 per cent will be urbanized. These housing problems, these transportation problems and these pollution problems will multiply as the growth of our cities and towns continues. If the government of Canada does not now have the leadership, the courage and the wisdom to start tackling these problems with energy, they will get out of hand and our country will

be faced with the kind of violence on the street with which the country to the south of us is faced. This is why we take this problem so seriously. This is why we say there is a housing and urban crisis in Canada, not only because of the number of housing units now needed but because of the growing problem of urbanization in Canada, because of the growing threat to the quality of life of the vast majority of our people. If this problem is not tackled now, it will get out of hand to the point where there will be no evolutionary democratic solution to it.


The Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member for Don Valley.


George Harris Hees: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. I should like to point out that so far two members of the New Democratic party have spoken but only one member of the official opposition has had the chance to speak. I should like to ask for your permission to allow a member of our party to speak at the present time.


The Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I
appreciate the point which the hon. member raised but there has been one speaker on the government side and, according to my list, four on the opposition side. Therefore, I think it in only fair that I recognize the hon. member for Don Valley.


Mr. Robert P. Kaplan (Don Valley):: Mr. Speaker, I am afraid that in the discussion of federal responsibility for housing and urban affairs resulting from the resignation of the Minister of Transport (Mr. Hellyer) the country is losing sight of the fact that the primary responsibility for our cities still rests with the provinces. I hope this situation will change and that the federal government will be able to obtain, with the co-operation of all provinces, some direct access to our cities. This is a priority subject for federal-provincial constitutional discussions.
In the meanwhile, I should like to look at the provincial role in housing to assess the responsibility of the federal government. One major aspect of the housing crisis, the urban crisis if I can put it more broadly, is the status of the tenant. Whatever solution emerges to the housing shortage, there will be a growing number of tenants in Canada.
It is a shocking fact that until recently some municipalities in my riding and elsewhere denied tenants the right to vote in local elections. Not only was their civil status
April 25. 1969

downgraded, but their contractual status with their landlord is a genuine relic of feudal times. With the past shortage of accommodation, they have lacked any real bargaining power. Large security deposits are demanded and often no interest is paid on them. Children and pets are often forbidden. Landlords reserve the right to enter and inspect premises at all times. Tenancies are forfeited for minor infractions. Tenants have no voice in the formulating of rules which apply to the common: areas. Most critical, there is no right for the tenant to withhold rent against breaches of covenant by the landlord. Fortunately, tenants' associations are forming. There are some which, to the credit of many landlords, have obtained great co-operation, even to the point where landlords are presenting statements of profit and loss.
But not all landlords are co-operative. The solution to this injustice and frustration in our urban centres is legislation, but not federal legislation. This is a provincial responsibility. You can imagine the frustration of those inhabitants of our big cities who want better and cheaper housing when they see thousands of acres of land lying idle around our cities awaiting development. Some in Canada may be led to believe that the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) is responsible for this situation. But the fact is that only the provinces have the power to open these lands for urban development. This is not a simple question of money. As it is, there is a very substantial federal contribution to education and to municipal services. The whole provincial share of municipal development can easily be taken from the pockets of the speculators by proper provincial legislation. It is a question of legislation by the provincial governments. Yet, in Ontario, in the township of Pickering for example, which adjoins the city of Toronto and which contains 80,000 acres of land suitable for development, the latest policy of the provincial government expressed through the Ontario municipal board is that only 100 residential building permits per year are to be issued.
[DOT] (4:10 p.m.)
Let me pursue this theme to show what, in my view, are the errors in provincial policies which have created this crisis. Local municipalities are run by the people who live in them in their own interests. Under present provincial law the ratepayers bear heavy burdens in connection with services; that is, sewers, water and roads, and in connection
Housing
with educational costs. A substantial part of such costs are borne in the municipal tax rate. Residential assessment alone can never raise the tax revenue required to pay for the services which a municipality provides for its residents. The solution adopted by the municipalities is to resist residential development-and who can blame them, under the present provincial legislation? But look at the problem from the point of view of the provincial government. The school children who are excluded from a particular municipality because of a ban against new housing, still have to be educated. Somewhere in the adjoining crowded city, each extra student has a desk and a teacher. So, in a broader geographic perspective, no money is saved by keeping children confined within old neighbourhoods.
What is obviously required is that the cost of education be borne above the municipal level and that ratepayers be freed from the education tax. Such a policy would permit municipalities to accept residential development without regard to the education consequences. As to the cost of services, it would be a relatively easy, if unpopular, matter for legislation to be introduced to permit the financing of such projects through assessment of the landowners whose properties would increase in value from the services to be provided. And at least in Ontario, there is no such legislation.
I would like to say a word about land banks, which have been proposed by the task force on housing. In some areas, if land can be bought at agricultural prices, land banks may have some utility. In built-up areas surrounding the big cities, where land is currently being held for development, I suggest that land banks are futile and a drain on the taxpayers. The acquisition by the government of land for development in such areas would only involve the transfer of huge sums of money from the treasury to private pockets without bringing the land purchased any closer to development. Far better to see the tax money spent on schools and services so that the land can be developed more quickly for housing. Unserviced land itself has no cost of production. Those who own land are obliged to sell at the market price, whether it cost them more or less. Yet land represents one of the greatest factors in the high cost of housing. If sensible fiscal arrangements were to be made by the provinces with their municipalities, as I have suggested, I believe that so

April 25. 1969
Housing
much, land would be opened up that prices of raw land would fall as the demand was met.
I would like to deal with another factor in the high cost Of housing, one which is again the responsibility of the municipalities and again the result of outdated and counterproductive fiscal arrangements between the provinces and municipalities. I am referring to the high standards set for new homes. Considering the urgent demand for housing, municipalities should be prepared to permit smaller lots and smaller houses, so that homes can be built which people can afford to buy. At the present time the zoning requirements of municipalities are so high that there is no new housing, as it were, in the Volkswagen category. People who would like to buy a Volkswagen house and can afford one, are offered only Cadillacs which they often do not want and cannot afford.
The municipalities' high standards are partly an aesthetic consideration based on the desire of existing residents to see their communities upgraded at the expense of newcomers; partly it is a measure designed to reduce the amount of new development and to assure high assessment and higher taxes from newcomers. Much leadership in this respect can be provided and, in fact, has been provided by the federal government. More should be forthcoming.
The standards imposed by the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation for new housing are lower than the standards of any municipality in Toronto as to lot frontage and house size. But leadership can carry the matter only so far. The ultimate and direct solution is legislation, and again, Mr. Speaker, not federal legislation but provincial legislation.
On the subject of high costs of construction, I would like to say a word about the sales tax on construction materials. I believe that this tax should not have been introduced. However, it presently represents an important source of revenue which cannot easily be replaced. I would, therefore, urge the government to consider not the total repeal of the 11 per cent sales tax on construction materials, but at least the repeal of he cost of construction materials used in a house whose selling price, excluding land, is less than, say, $18,000. A similar provision could apply to apartment buildings which could be demonstrated to have been built for those with low incomes.


Mr. Gilberl:: Does the Minister of Finance (Mr. Benson) agree with that?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: I have put it to him.
Such a reform could be administered by applications for refunds after the construction of the residence on production of evidence of its selling price, or of the rent to be charged in the case of apartments.
The third element in the high cost of housing is the increased and growing cost of money, that is, the interest charge. This is an area in which the federal government has some responsibility through C.M.H.C. and through its general control of the economy. Nobody is happy about the high cost of money today. I would like to look for a moment at the problem of inflation in perspective and then to suggest an approach to a solution not referred to in the task force report on housing.
There are many people who blame the federal government for inflation and who criticize it for its lack of restraint. Let me refer to some figures produced by the International Financial Statistics Service of the World Bank to illustrate how Canada compares with other nations in controlling inflation. Twenty-seven countries are included in the comparison, most of them free economy industrial countries, reflecting the change in the cost of living from 1958 to 1966, that is, over an eight year period. The figures show that over the period mentioned Canada is second only to the United States in controlling its price levels.
In that eight-year period, United States prices increased 14 per cent and Canadian prices increased 16 per cent. In Germany, whose economy is often praised for its stability, prices increased by 22 per cent; in the United Kingdom the increase was 27 per cent; in Sweden a socialist country much admired by some, the increase in prices was 34 per cent and in Japan, land of the modern economic miracle, the increase was 50 per cent. It will be seen that relatively speaking Canada's record has been very good.
In judging our performance, it must be borne in mind that Canada is tied very closely economically to international supplies of capital, of markets and of resources. We are not sufficiently isolated to have an economic policy radically different from those of our neighbours; hon. members will see that inflation is really an international problem which Canada is fighting off relatively well.
If, as I have suggested, inflation is an international phenomenon, this does not mean every effort should not be made to control it
April 25, 1969

to the greatest extent possible. The government is recognizing its responsibility in the matter of inflation and an effort is being made to curb the expansion of the public sector and to keep government expenditures more in line with government revenues. Inflation has an important bearing on the cost of money. As investors lose confidence in the power of the economy to control inflation, they are less and less inclined to make fixed yield investments in mortgages, even at high rates. Investment in equities provides dividend income which more or less constitutes a hedge against inflation. Mortgages, as an investment, are unpopular for another reason. Our tax policies tend to discriminate against interest income. The investor who chooses an equity investment, such as a stock, enjoys two sorts of tax benefit. If the stock increases in value, the profit he earns on its sale is classed as a capital gain and is generally tax-free; the dividends he earns while waiting are subject to a dividend tax credit which also provides tax relief. The investor in a mortgage, on the other hand, not only pays income tax on the full yield at the highest rates, but is unprotected against inflation. It is partly for this reason, namely, to obtain a hedge against inflation, that interest rates have risen as they have.
[DOT] (4:20 p.m.)
To save the time of hon. members, I will merely refer to Private Members' Notice of Motion No. 61 which proposes a tax measure to encourage lending. In summary, Mr. Speaker, while there are measures that the federal government can and should adopt in the interests of providing more housing, the actions of the Minister of Transport fail to focus attention where it primarily belongs, that is on the provinces and municipalities.


George Harris Hees: Mr. Speaker, the housing crisis which exists in Canada today has been very adequately described to the house by my leader, the leader of the New Democratic Party and his deputy leader. I intend this afternoon to deal with some of the other reasons, in addition to the frustration with the government's refusal to deal adequately with this problem, which caused the Minister of Transport (Mr. Hellyer) to hand in his resignation yesterday morning.
I want to take a look at the kind of man he is to see if he is the kind of person who through pique and for picayune reasons
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would suddenly make a decision of this magnitude for himself and for the country. I also want to examine the other reasons why he found it necessary to take this important step yesterday.
Those of us who have known him in this house for 20 years, look upon him as a very deliberate man, one not given to hasty decisions or making unreasonable moves. In fact, most often he has been criticized for just the reverse. He is not an ordinary member of parliament or an ordinary member of this government. He is a man who has served in three governments under three prime ministers. He has served in this house for 20 years.
The Minister of Transport also serves as Deputy Prime Minister, a post assigned to him by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) because obviously the Prime Minister considered that he was the man most able to direct the affairs of this country while he, the Prime Minister, was absent. We must remember that not only we who know him from the other side of the house consider him a thoughtful, reasonable and reliable man, but also the members of the government and the Prime Minister. I, as well as others, know that to resign from the government is the most difficult decision a man in public life can ever make. It is only taken after a very great deal of consideration and heart-searching and with great reluctance. It is, therefore, obvious that the Deputy Prime Minister in taking this step took it as a thoughtful, deliberate, reasonable man, held in high regard by those with whom he works and those on the other side of the house.
What are the differences between the Deputy Prime Minister and the government which caused him to take this step yesterday morning? We have his own words to explain the reason for this decision. The Deputy Prime Minister, at a press conference yesterday morning, stated that the greatest difference between himself and the government that prompted him to take this most important step was the Prime Minister's attitude toward government itself. He described it, and I quote his words, "as the Prime Minister's classroom brand of federalism which is hobbling progress in the country in four important areas." He mentioned them as being housing, pollution, urban development and control of inflation.
I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that we look back for a few minutes to the election of last June and remember what the Prime Minister promised in these four specific fields. In the

April 25. 1969
Housing
field of housing, the country was to have adequate housing at reasonable prices that people with moderate incomes could afford to buy. The Deputy Prime Minister has told us that, in his opinion, his program which was worked out with great care after his trip across the country, at quite some expense to the taxpayers of Canada, examining housing questions in all parts of Canada, has very little chance of ever coming before the house for decision. These are the words of the man in charge of this program, not the words of the opposition. They are the words of the Deputy Prime Minister who is in charge of this housing program.
When the Prime Minister spoke this afternoon, he glibly quoted figures regarding the housing situation today, mentioning only numbers of houses being built. It seems to be of no concern to this Prime Minister what people have to pay for the houses they buy or rent. It is of no importance to him if you have to pay several thousand dollars more this year than last year, and several thousand dollars more the year after. This is of no consequence to the Prime Minister. He is in the very fortunate position of not having to worry about these things and he seems to believe that other people find themselves in that same fortunate position. Your Honour and I both know, as well as other hon. members of this house, that there are very few people in this country who find themselves in that position.
A few weeks ago in Montreal the Prime Minister made an attempt to visit a housing development in order to find out what the people who live in that kind of housing think about the government's program. He received a rather inhospitable welcome. What did he do? Did he stand there, face it out and discuss the question with these people? No. He turned tail and ran. The Prime Minister cannot take criticism. He does not want to hear people saying unkind things to him. This is why he turned on his heels, left and never went back. That is the last contact he has had with people in this country who cannot afford the housing they need. Yet, he glibly says today everything is all right in this country under a Liberal government, there is all the housing that people need. The Prime Minister implied that, like himself, everyone has all the money they need to buy whatever house is offered to them at whatever price the landlord chooses to charge. We can see what has happened to that glib promise.

The people of this country were promised there would be some action on the problem of pollution. The people of this country were told they deserve and would get clean air and clean water. Yesterday, at his press conference, the man who knows more about what is or what is not going on in the government stated flatly that the government had no program; that nothing had been started to deal with these matters and that there appeared to him no likelihood that anything would be started to deal with these problems. So much for the Prime Minister's glib promise to the people in the shopping plazas that under this new Liberal government they would now get clean air and clear water.
The Prime Minister promised a new and better life for those who live in the urban communities of this country. Yesterday, the Deputy Prime Minister said once again there is no government program to improve urban life. He stated there is nothing even in the planning stage. Those are his words, not mine. They appeared in the newspapers. Newspapermen attending that conference know exactly what he said. I think the minister is a man of conscience and great sincerity. I have known him in this house for 20 years and, although I have fought with him over many issues, I have always respected him. I may not have agreed with him, but I knew that when he spoke he told the truth as he saw it. He said this government is doing nothing to halt the inflation taking place in this country. Since the Prime Minister took office inflation has increased month by month. When you ask the Minister of Finance what he proposes to do to curb inflation, he answers that everything possible is being done; that we should trust him and wait to see what will happen next month or the month after. Yet, inflation increases all the time.
[DOT] (4:30 p.m.)
Yesterday morning the Deputy Prime Minister said that the Prime Minister would sooner debate constitutional issues than tackle the practical problems facing the people of the country. He said that the Prime Minister, who is his seat mate in the house, his senior in the cabinet and his closest confidante would sooner discuss constitutional matters in a scholarly way than come to grips with practical problems facing the people of this country.
At his press conference yesterday morning the Deputy Prime Minister made clear in no
April 25, 1969

uncertain terms an additional reason for resigning from the government. He believes sincerely and has always believed sincerely that the best way of preserving world peace is through collective security. With that we in the opposition, thoroughly agree. He believes the greatest contribution this country can make to peace is as a member of NATO. He believes we ought to fulfil our obligations to our NATO allies and not withdraw from those obligations. The Deputy Prime Minister is convinced that we cannot have world peace through collective security if we withdraw our forces from NATO and set the rest of the world the regrettable example that was first set by France. Such an example may encourage smaller nations wishing to make a lesser contribution to NATO to do so. As a former Minister of National Defence familiar with these problems, the Deputy Prime Minister knows perfectly well that once you start setting an example of withdrawing from the NATO alliance it will not be very long before there is no NATO alliance that is of any value at all. If that were to happen our chances of preserving world peace would diminish in direct proportion to the weakening of the alliance.
The Deputy Prime Minister knows perfectly well that world wars have come about because aggressors have misjudged the will of the western allies to withstand aggression. That is how World War I and II began. He knows perfectly well that our potential adversary, the Soviet Union, has not changed its attitude one bit in the last 25 years. What happened to Hungary and Czechoslovakia shows that to be true. He knows perfectly well that this government's attitude towards NATO weakens our chances of stopping World War III from beginning. That is one of the fundamental reasons why the Deputy Prime Minister has found it necessary to resign from this government.
His decision was the most difficult decision that any man in public life has to make. His decision must have been taken after a great deal of thought and consideration; it must have been taken with great regret on the basis that he could not, in all conscience, continue as a member of a government that refuses to face its responsibilities in dealing with the practical problems of the people of this country.
The minister says that the people of this country cannot wait for the Prime Minister to debate these constitutional issues. These matters must be dealt with now. Because the
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government of which he was a member refused to deal with these matters he found it necessary to resign. That course of action could well be considered by other members of this government who, as is commonly known, disagree strongly with government policies affecting matters of national importance.
In conclusion, may I say that the views I have expressed this afternoon have not been the views of the opposition alone. I have placed before the house views expressed by the second most senior member in this house, the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, and I have elaborated on what he said in his declaration of resignation yesterday. I say to the Prime Minister, let us not be content to only debate these questions. I say he ought to come out of the classroom where, as the Deputy Prime Minister suggested, he is spending too much of his time. Let the Prime Minister get on with the job of fulfilling the promises he made to the people of Canada last June, because on the strength of those promises he was elected. Let him get down to business, as the Deputy Prime Minister has told him to do, get on with the job and produce the results that he assured the people of Canada he would produce if he were elected.


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: Mr. Speaker, since many of the arguments I intended to raise have already been covered, I shall be brief. There is no difficulty in accepting the premise that there is a housing crisis. The evidence is there for all to see. It speaks for itself. The Minister resigned because, as has been pointed out by other speakers, his complaint is that the government has no policy in the field of housing and does not intend to implement any suggested policy. I think the hon. member for York South (Mr. Lewis) described the housing crisis adequately. The only answer the minister received to his complaints was that housing is a matter for the provinces or the cities and that the constitution precludes this government from taking any positive steps to solve this problem.
One need not be a constitutional expert to appreciate that the constitution of any land should serve its people and not make servants of them. After all, every constitution changes. Although the wording of a constitution may not be amended, the meanings of words change. In some ways constitutions are like growing trees. They can be interpreted differently under different circumstances.

April 25, 1969
Housing
Under former Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, one of the great constitutional experts of this country, the federal government became involved with the national housing program. But it was the government of the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker) which appreciated the problems relating to housing. In one year it made available $700 million to be spent on houses in order that Canadians could live in dignity with their families in decent houses. This crisis has not just developed. It was in existence during the last election. One of the great mistakes made in elections is that governments continue to be elected on slogans like, "The New Deal", "The New Frontier," "60 Days of Decision" and "The Just Society."
[DOT] (4:40 p.m.)


An hon. Member:: And "Follow John."


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: He was good to follow, and talking about slogans I remember another one, "King or chaos". When we got him we got both. I concur in what other hon. members have said that housing is a national responsibility and that the government is not living up to that responsibility. So far as I am concerned, it would take very little effort on the part of any government to negotiate and consult with the provinces and the cities.
Just a few moments ago I received a telegram from the city of Calgary which reads:
Calgary was one of the few cities in Canada to suggest a research program for housing. We were also one of the few cities prepared to invest civic employee pension funds in housing.
All they want is federal direction.
We urgently request that Calgary be considered as the western site for a housing research project. We have the builders, the land, a complete planning department, and a proposal ready once we receive federal support.
So, the city of Calgary says to the government, "We have all the facilities. We have the land and the builders. All we want is direction and a policy from the government."
As indicated in recent newspaper articles cabinet approval to finance Ottawa city scheme with 6| mortgage money has been granted. Housing matters are urgent in Calgary as people are moving in from all over Canada compounding our problem. With uncertainty magnified with departure of Mr. Hellyer we feel immediate federal decision imperative if homes are to be built this year.
That telegram is signed by two men: Aider-man Eric Musgrave and Alderman Adrian Berry. I might say that in the election prior to the last one Alderman Berry was the Liberal candidate in the riding won by the

former Minister of National Defence from Calgary Centre (Mr. Harkness). Now, he says, like the Minister of Transport, that the government is not measuring up to its responsibility.
I differ with some other speakers in this debate. I say that during the election campaign the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) promised nothing and, believe me, when you examine what has occurred since he became Prime Minister he has delivered that program far faster than my expectations. Now, the only thing he says he will do is introduce legislation that will extend housing mortgage payments from 30 years to 40 years. What will that mean? Let us take the example of a $10,000 mortgage. What will that mean in this present period of inflation?
Here, I read from an article to which I have referred previsously, by Richard H. Steacy in the Toronto Star, who breaks down the payments for a $10,000 mortgage;
A startling feature about the chart is the difference in monthly payments of a 40 year mortgage and a 30 year mortgage, which is a cool ten years. It amounts to $2.94 a month.
That is no solution. What we need is a good housing program. The cities have the land. The provinces can work with the cities. All we need is for the federal government to accept its responsibility and negotiate at the provincial and the city level, through the provinces, and get on with the job. Because the government would not move, the Minister of Transport resigned.
There is not much more I can say in reference to housing. During the election campaign the great excuse of the government was that money was hard to come by. Why doesn't the government use its initiative? The United States has just brought in a new national act under which municipalities can borrow money at reasonable rates of interest. Under that plan, individuals can place their money in the national fund, up to a ceiling of $20,000, and the interest paid to them is tax free. This means that municipalities in the United States can borrow money at 5 per cent.
After this debate has concluded, surely the government should put a minister in charge of implementing some of the recommendations made by the former minister. Surely, it should get on with the job. It does not take words from me to show that there is a crisis. It exists in every city across our land. To solve it would require a little initiative, a little ambition, a little foresightedness and, above all, a little responsibility. Let us not
April 25, 1969

again hear from the Prime Minister that the constitution is blocking housing programs. That is utter nonsense. If there are any factors in reference to housing that fall within the jurisdiction of the provinces they can be met through negotiation. Because it is a national crisis the responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of the federal government.


Mr. Andrew Brewin (Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, the crucial issue in this debate is the whole future scope of federal government in Canada. The question is, are we going to treat the Canadian constitution as a means of preventing federal action in the field of vital national social problems affecting all Canadians?
Housing is vitally important, but it is only one of the national problems of concern in this debate. During the election the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) sought widespread support for himself and his party by appearing to be a strong federalist. He spoke of a strong Canada, and many people thought he means a Canada whose federal government would in fact use strong initiatives to deal with the pressing problems of the Canadian people.
The Prime Minister's election campaign was carefully managed, through vagueness and the exploitation of a certain charisma, to conceal the true views and intentions of the Prime Minister. A certain verbal bellicosity vis-a-vis the Prime Minister of Quebec was used to create an illusion that the Prime Minister was a champion of a strong federal government. It is this false view of the Prime Minister's basic stand that has been shot down in flames by his closest colleague, the Minister of Transport.
The Minister of Transport has made it abundantly clear in his letters and interviews that the Prime Mnister's interpretation of the present constitution is that the federal government should stay out of using federal powers to deal with issues such as housing, pollution, inflation and urban development. I am not making this up. These are the words of the Minister of Transport, formerly the deputy prime minister. It really is a matter of interpretation.
[DOT] (4:50 p.m.)
The Prime Minister adopts a view that is quite a responsible view and held currently by a number of people, particularly people within his own province. This view is that the use
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of its spending power by the federal government to deal with national needs is an intrusion upon provincial rights. I say to the Prime Minister that it is not as clear as all that. There is another constitutional view, and I think a better one, and that is that the federal government under its powers of taxation and spending has the power to be a strong and purposeful government. I think it has the legal right to use those powers to deal with those problems, and I think it should use those powers in co-operation with the provincial and local governments, but with a firm federal initiative in the field.
The Prime Minister, to do him justice, has made it clear, if one studies his writings, his statements and what he said to the students in London at the time of the Commonwealth conference and repeated I think in Calgary, that he accepts an interpretation of the constitution which gives to the provinces the major, if not the sole, power in such fields as housing. Other have mentioned that we take issue with this view, as I think does the Minister of Transport. The Prime Minister's view is that of a cautious and laissez-faire government which cannot act firmly in the interests of Canadians. As I said before, there is a view held by people in some parts of Canada that the federal government should not deal even with the vital social need of people to have shelter. If such a view should be held in one province, perhaps some constitutional or governmental arrangement could be made to give that part of Canada where the view is held the right to opt out of activity in this field at the federal level.
I suggest, however, it is totally unacceptable that the Prime Minister should impose on us his own view, although it is shared by some others, of the constitution that effective action in those parts of the country which believe as we do should be vetoed and prevented by this narrow view of the constitutional position.
I should like to turn directly to the question of housing. I could not but help notice that the Prime Minister placed a relatively low priority on the matter of housing. I say that we in this party, especially those of us who happen to come from urban centres, place a very high priority on the question of housing. Our view is not based on comforting statistics about housing, and rates of starts. Our view is based upon a daily acquaintance with the facts.

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I wish to say to the Prime Minister there are many people in this country who are desperately anxious because of this crisis. I want to say to him that all the good effort of which he spoke could only provide-and this is admitted to be so in the task force report- housing for people with incomes of $8,000 a year. The vast majority of Canadians do not have an income at that level. We have urged this government to do something for those people who urgently need housing. This is an area which requires direct government action. We are suffering today from 30 years of free enterprise laissez-faire in respect of this basic problem of our people. I admit that it will not be overcome in a little while, but it will never be overcome until the federal government assumes its full responsibility in this matter.
Every country of the world which has tried to deal with this matter has found it necessary to adopt a method for establishing public housing. We have failed miserably in this field. I take issue with the task force report suggestion that this is not necessary. As my colleague the hon. member for York South (Mr. Lewis) pointed out, in the metropolitan area of Toronto alone there are 16,000 families on the waiting list for public housing. I have set up a small office in my riding and day by day, week by week, people come in who are desperately in need of housing. They are urgently looking for assistance in getting their names placed on the list for public housing. These people include widows, deserted wives, people with families and older people. These people are harassed by escalating rents. We do not need any statistics to prove this situation because we see it day by day in our experiences if we get down and meet the people whom we are supposed to represent.
Certainly, there is no need for the complacency which was contained in the speech the Prime Minister made today. I should like to deal with another aspect of housing which I think all too often is neglected, certainly in an urban area such as I represent. I say that the cities of this country are faced with the likelihood of growing decay unless federal action is taken in respect of the rehabilitation and the care of the existing stock of housing. The whole burden of taxation has a crushing effect in this field. Areas like my own-a very excellent place to live with very many fine people-are threatened with growing decay because of the burden of taxation and the burden of increasing costs which means that

the people are not in a position to maintain their own stock of housing. There is urgent need for initiative in this field.
I noticed only a little while ago that a gentleman by the name of George Cook, director of housing standards for the city of Toronto, told a national gathering of urban renewal officials that nothing effective would be done to achieve any improvement in housing standards until the federal government recognized the need to provide special loans and grants. In the Prime Minister's speech today we did not hear a single word about public housing and the urgent need for assistance in maintaining the stock of housing we have at the present time.
I wish to commend the Minister of Transport for his action. It is in accord with a sound principle which too often is neglected; that is the principle that if you differ from the policy of your government it is your duty to resign. 1 wish others had had the guts to resign when such a situation presented itself. As I have said, this debate is of vital importance to the future of Canadians. The desperate housing crisis should have a top priority in the consideration of the government. Not only does parliament hang on this, but also the whole concept of government in Canada.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: Mr. Speaker, you know I feel like shedding a tear on this momentous occasion because over the months here I had developed a rapport and certain dialogue with the Minister of Transport in charge of housing. I stand here today wondering what I am going to do in the future. I thought we almost had the answers to an urban renewal program. I was eagerly anticipating the guidelines for public housing which C.M.H.C. would accept and now I find my minister is gone. The Prime Minister delivered, in his usual inimitable and flowery way, a speech in which he said how great things are in respect of housing in Canada. At that time I scratched my head, because if things are so great why did the Minister of Transport in charge of housing resign. It is amazing to watch the Prime Minister throw a red herring across to the opposition.
[DOT] (5:00 p.m.)
The leader of the New Democratic party stood up this afternoon and with his usual brilliance said: I can see through this whole thing; we are dealing with housing but at the same time there is an issue here we must be concerned about this afternoon, and that is the constitutional aspect. There can be no
April 25, 1969

doubt about that. The Prime Minister today gave a series of excuses which can only be described as flim-flam. The issue is not only government housing policy or the lack of it; it is much more significant. The issue is that, coupled with the resignation of the Minister of Transport and whether or not he is right.
For the benefit of those who are not up to date and have not read today's Ottawa Journal, let me indicate that it suggests the Minister of Transport will continue to fight the kind of federalism the Prime Minister has expounded today. That becomes very important to hon. members sitting on the other side of the house.


An hon. Member:: Don't believe that.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: We have to believe everything we read in the newspapers nowadays because they are getting closer to home so far as the Liberals are concerned.
If the Prime Minister has adopted a rigid, inflexible, constitutional attitude which prevents the government from giving leadership in housing, pollution and other urban problems including slum clearance it seems to me, with all due respect, that this government should not be sitting here. The Prime Minister does not answer the issue by citing figures as to the number of housing starts. He knows that most of the houses he talked about today are out of the reach of the vast majority of Canadian people. The situation is as simple as that, and that is all there is to it. Once again he has dragged in a red herring. Over 90 per cent of the people have been placed in such a position as a result of inflation that they cannot afford the houses to which the Prime Minister has referred.
The minister's resignation came as a dash of cold water to a government lost in a dreamland of abstract speculation. It pricked the balloon of the just society and the theory of participatory democracy. I should like to know what kind of participation the minister had. When I asked him questions in the house it is no wonder that he, even with his knowledge, could not give the answers. He could not get the answers from his cabinet colleagues. They would not allow him to answer. I now feel sorry for the Minister without Portfolio from Winnipeg (Mr. Richardson).


An hon. Member:: He hasn't got any housing problems.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: I am told that he is one of
the more fortunate ones in this house. The
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Minister of Transport was concerned about the nuts and bolts problems, in other words, the nitty-gritty problems of living, the bread and butter issues. These problems:, which affect the majority of Canadians, are: prosperity eroded by confiscatory taxation and runaway inflation, the neglect of the cities and their progressive deterioration, the refusal to consider the by-products of industrial growth-pollution of air and water. These problems are the nuts and the bolts of the matter and are what the Minister of Transport talked about.
Not only has the government failed to deal with these problems but it has failed to recognize their importance. I think the Canadian people could stand up today without hesitation or reservation and say, not only is this government arrogant but it is callous; with the greatest respect, this government is indifferent to the growing problems of urbanization. The minister adopted the unusual course of personally taking charge of the task force as a dramatic demonstration of the importance of the problem. The government failed to back him up.
I was looking at television the other day and I heard the Prime Minister state that the Minister of Transport was one of his best ministers, a man who knows all about these problems. Yet he is gone. Who else over there knows anything about these problems? I do not know what is going to happen now.
It is stated on page 1 of the task force report:
In short, if there was not an urban "crisis", there most certainly was a serious urban problem. People were conscious of it as they were conscious that existing efforts by their governments, most of which seemed as much a reaction to circumstances as an attempt to direct them, were inadequate to meet it. The time had come for a hard, new look at housing and urban development in Canada.
Let me now turn to page 9 of the task force report where there is a statement which becomes extremely significant when one remembers that Ontario alone, as stated by the Economic Council of Canada, will have a population of some ten million people by 1970. The task force report states:
The first and major impression of the task force -and one on which abundant satistical data exists- is that Canada is increasingly and rapidly becoming an urban nation. The statisticians say that seven out of every ten Canadians now live in urban areas and that more than eight out of ten will do so by 1980, most of them in 29 major urban centres across the country. If the statistics are impressive in themselves, even more so is the physical effect which this massive migration, equal

April 25, 1969
Housing
in scope to the first settlement and development of Canada, has had and is having on the national landscape.
In other words, we are on the verge of a crisis greater than any we have experienced so far. This is significant when we realize that the Minister of Transport has indicated to his cabinet colleagues that he has some of the answers. He took it upon himself to go across the nation, under the direction of the government, to find out what are the problems. He has now provided some of the answers. But what was his response? I cannot answer that. The minister is the only one who knows the answer.
No Prime Minister, after a short period of one year in office, has received such a resounding vote of non-confidence as that delivered by the former Minister of Transport in his press conference, and he did a magnificent job. The indictment that the government has shunned the hard problems of inflation, lack of housing, high taxes, urban rot, pollution and a host of others, is unanswerable. It was a picture of a government engaged in creating handmade, headline-catching issues while sheering away from the things which affect the greatest number of Canadians in the most serious way.
It was a member of the N.D.P. who indicated, in so many words-and I have said this before and will continue to say it-that if we look across the border to the United States we will find that if we continue to ignore the grievances which result from neglect of many problems including the lack of housing, then because of urban expansion we will be in trouble. It is amazing to me that this government continues to hang on to expressions like constitutional reform-certainly that is important-and homosexuality. I suppose that is important as well. The government must remember that there are nitty-gritty issues that must also be answered. All the Prime Minister can say is that the government is doing its best, but look at all the money we are spending. Nothing could better illustrate the truth of the former minister's charges than that reply.
One of the former ministers most telling statements, and one with which most people will agree, was that there was more concealed than there was revealed in the present NATO policy. This was reported by Peter Stursberg on television last night. I wonder what is being concealed in respect of the minister's resignation. When we consider that this is a statement made by a former defence minister,

the architect of unification, the virtual creator of the mobile brigade now serving in Europe, it is a very serious situation indeed. Defence policy is a vital and continuing issue and it will continue to be so. Since the recent statements of the Prime Minister constituted a virtual repudiation of the policies of which the former minister was a convinced advocate, his concern is understandable.
It may be said of the present member for Toronto Trinity, as it was said of Charles I, that nothing so became his ministerial career as the leaving of it. We are told by some who attended his press conference and had the privilege of hearing his last words, as it were, that his department was dignified, even condescending, as he proceeded to pull the rug out from under the Prime Minister and his former colleagues. In other words, to put it in the language of the street, with which I am quite familiar, he shafted the government. There was much more in his resignation than a simple difference over housing; let that be understood. That is what this motion is all about. This matter is being dealt with today because of his resigning, and I cannot understand why the Prime Minister should say we cannot talk about constitutional matters.
[DOT] (5:10 p.m.)
I think the Minister of Transport in his resignation wanted not only the government and the house but the whole country to know that things ain't so hot on the other side of the chamber. It is as simple as that. Certainly the Minister of Transport was disturbed about the government's failure to end the housing crisis in this country. In that respect the minister is not alone; we stand behind him. But he placed that failure on a ground that had not heretofore been placed before the Canadian people, the ground of constitutional difference. I should like to quote what the minister said, because it's beautiful, as they say:
I cannot personally accept a theory of federalism which, however attractive in principle, cannot meet the needs of the Canadian people.
The constitution is supposed to meet the needs of our people. According to the Prime Minister, the way it stands now he cannot, by any means, with the co-operation of the provinces and going down to the municipalities, solve the many pressing problems in this regard because, as he says, the constitution prevents him from so doing. The minister underlined that between himself and the Prime Minister there is a great gulf on the
April 25, 1969

constitutional question, the very structure of the federal system. This is why I will not accept the Prime Minister's red herring when he says: You are not talking about housing; you are talking about the constitution. We have to talk about it today because the Minister of Transport says we have to talk about it. The Minister of Transport does not sit on this side of the house; he sits over there and is one who knows what the problem is.
Almost on the eve of a federal-provincial constitutional conference the Minister of Transport, in charge of housing, the No. 2 man in the cabinet, says that he has no confidence in the Prime Minister's constitutional position. According to the minister, it is a position which prevents the Prime Minister and his government from taking action on housing, pollution, urban development and a number of equally important and urgent issues. Poor Hamilton and its hopes for urban renewal! Poor Vancouver and Toronto! What other cities are involved?


James Aloysius McGrath: St. John's.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: St. John's, and Calgary. I could go on naming the cities involved in this problem; there are some 300 of them. These are issues partly or totally within provincial jurisdiction. If it is a fact that the Prime Minister, in the inner sanctum of cabinet, has taken the stand that the government is prevented from dealing with these matters, this is something the people of Canada are entitled to know. Will this continue to be his stand? Is this to be the attitude of the Prime Minister, when we are told that about 80 per cent of our people will be living in urban areas? These are the people who need help, leadership and direction in respect of these problems. Will it always be the stand of the Prime Minister that because of the constitution these people cannot be helped by the federal government? If so, let the Prime Minister tell them, because the people want to know today.
This is something that parliament is entitled to know. We must have answers today, if possible, but next week for sure. We know there has been little action to end the housing log-jam. We know that next to nothing has been done in the field of urban rehabilitation and public housing. We know that not enough houses are being built, and those that are being built are out of the reach of low income families. We know that speculation is rife and 29180-507
Housing
has taken over the field of land assembly; it is one of the major factors of inflation.
The minister had some of the answers to these problems but they were ignored. The Prime Minister has taken the stand that pollution, housing, urban renewal and similar matters are beyond his purview. How can he justify a hands-off attitude at this time? How, in heaven's name, can he take such a stand?


An hon. Member:: He says there is no
problem.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: That is what he said, there are no problems. I listened with interest to the speech of the hon. member for Calgary North (Mr. Woolliams). He said the Prime Minister made no promises, and he has kept his promise. I say that he made no promises and has done less, but it comes out to the same thing. I could go on and on, Mr. Speaker, because I think it is very important that we have a feeling of responsibility in this debate.
I am concerned about unity. I listen to the Prime Minister when he places great stress upon the official languages bill and says it will unite the country. I disagree; I think unifying factors are a full belly and a good house. They are much more important than being able to speak two or three languages; there can be no mistake about that.
I close with these few remarks, Mr. Speaker. When we talk about unity we are talking about making Canada a country in which Canadians will be happy and content to live. There can be no doubt that the constitutional question is important in this regard. But there is also no doubt in the world that a government which does nothing about urban problems will create new sources of disunity. When I think of the four million people that the Economic Council of Canada says are on the bottom of the economic ladder-I have said this on many occasions-I know they are a voice to be reckoned with. Therefore I tell the government to take heed. Canadians are already angry and unhappy about the failure of the federal government to act on housing. If they come to believe, as the deputy prime minister of Canada has come to believe, that the government has virtually no intention to act at all on urban problems, the government will be in trouble in our cities.
I say to the government: You cannot ignore the problems of the cities and, particularly, you cannot ignore the problems of the millions of low income Canadians who need help

April 25. 1969
Housing
to find housing, jobs, contentment, peace and happiness, for which they are looking to the government for leadership and direction.
[DOT] (5:20 p.m.)


Mr. Henry Laiulippe (Compton):: Mr. Speaker, it is for me a pleasure to make some remarks on the problem of housing. That matter closely affects us and every one, in my opinion, should make a point to find solutions to it.
That problem may be overcome. It is essentially financial and may be solved rather easily for, in our beautiful Canada, there are building materials, engineers and land available to build houses. Unemployed people only want to get work. Houses could be built and, at the present time, the means for doing so are not adequate.
Any individual, any human being, any head of a family wants to have his own home. The first concern of the human being is a decent home and, as the one who spoke before me said, something to eat. That is what every Canadian wants, and Canada could provide that to the people, because it has the means to do it.
Canada has everything necessary to build houses. We build homes with the money our financiers are willing to make available to the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation and other agencies that lend it at exorbitant rates, and this is harmful to human development. Many people, because of the rate of 10 per cent, do not even consider building a house. Those who can efford it-this has been told over and over again, statistics have been given in this regard-are those who earn an income of at least $10,000 per year. A great number of people in Canada do not earn $5,000, or even $3,000 at the present time. Therefore, they cannot afford to build a house.
As to the governments, they do not see any other solution than building sky-scrapers, multiple dwelling houses, which will be rented at the moderate rate, according to them, of $150 or $200 per month.
But a labourer who does not earn $3,000 or $5,000 a year is unable to pay this kind of rent. Yet, it is suggested they are moderately priced dwellings. They are built because it is the only way available to the lenders to make 10 per cent profit.
The housing crisis is due to the harmful way this system operates and the minister

who resigned became aware of it. As former Minister of National Defence, he did not have any difficulty in financing his department. He had his own budget and the money was always available for the purchase of guns and tanks, airplanes and so on.
However, he was given the responsibility for the Department of Transport which includes housing.
The minister, with all his good intentions, toured Canada. He then realized what were the people's needs. He found that people were terribly destitute. He requested that a report be prepared. He came to the house with that report in his hands. He asked the government to reduce the 11 per cent tax on building materials. He even asked that it be abolished. He demanded that the interest rates be reduced.
The Minister of Finance (Mr. Benson) took the floor and said: We are unable to reduce both the tax and the interest rates. Such items must help the capitalists above all.
Capitalists must make excessive profits and then all kinds of expedients are resorted to in order to exempt them from taxes. They are visibly getting more numerous. In fact, the present system is ideal for high finance to make billions at the people's expense.
At the present time, 95 per cent of the houses already built are subject to the capitalists' interest rates. Very few are free from excessive mortgages and it still intended to take advantage of the human being.
Mr. Speaker, the helplessness of the government which faithfully obeys finance makes its action inadequate in the housing field. It is not by constantly enriching the wealthy, by enlarging the gap between the poor and the rich and preventing the people from being properly lodged-even if there are some dwellings-that the human being may recover his strength. We know that this is where the family blossoms out and where are moulded heads of families who can work who will become the builders of the country. But if we have no houses to lodge them, we will not even have builders for the country but only a group of slaves or downcast Canadians.
The present policy of the government is to lend money at 10 per cent interest and to extend the repayment period. The Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation presently allows 30 years to repay a house and the intention is to extend the period to 40 years.
I believe it was the leader of the Rallie-ment Creditiste who earlier gave the example
April 25. 1969

April 25/ 1969
Housing
A large number of absolutely destitute human beings have had enough; someone will have to pay the piper before long.


John Gilbert: Mr. Speaker, the moment of truth has arrived.


An hon. Member:: Has it?


John Gilbert: The Minister of Transport (Mr. Hellyer) has told us that his policies with regard to urban development, housing and the constitution were not acceptable to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) who holds a narrow theory of federalism.
This afternoon we heard the Prime Minister berate the leader of my party for failing to go into the facts concerning the housing crisis, and then explain his narrow theory of federalism which in essence means a weak federal government and strong provincial governments. The right hon. gentleman shrugged his shoulders and said in effect: I represent Mount Royal which is a well to do area and we have no housing problem there. It is obvious from his background that the Prime Minister never encountered a housing problem himself. He has never found difficulty in paying a mortgage with an interest rate of 9 or 10 per cent. He has never found difficulty meeting a high rent. He has the Bugaboo lodge philosophy of living well and spending high. He has no conception of what the average man in Canada today is suffering because of the housing crisis.
I am sure the people across Canada will accept the assessment of the Minister of Transport in charge of housing that there is a housing crisis and that the federal government should take the lead in dealing with pollution, housing and urban development. I was shocked to hear the hon. member for Don Valley (Mr. Kaplan) say in substance that this was really a provincial matter and that the Minister of Transport has resigned because the Prime Minister has said the federal government has no responsibility for leadership in this important field. I was also shocked that other Liberal members from Metropolitan Toronto did not get up and tell the house that in Ontario there is a waiting list of 16,000 for public housing, or that we have high rents and high interest rates. For the last two years the Toronto newspapers have been exposing this situation to people across the country. Yet we find the Prime Minister, the dilettante of our society, coming forward with a philosophy of stand pat, no leadership, no

policy on housing development and little or no action.
It is my intention to persuade the members of this house that there is a housing crisis in Canada. When the Economic Council of Canada said 200,000 homes are now needed to take care of the housing requirement I was prepared to accept that estimate. When I review the federal housing record and find that in 1965 165,000 homes were built, in 1966, 134,000, in 1967, 164,000 and in 1968, 196,000, simple arithmetic tells me there is a tremendous shortfall in housing across Canada today. According to the task force report on housing there are 5,700,000 families and non-family users who need housing units in Canada while there are only 5,500,000 available housing units. Simple arithmetic indicates that there is a shortfall of 200,000 in our housing stock. When I read further that 500,000 homes are in substandard condition, lacking toilet facilities and the ordinary amenities, the need for strong federal leadership is underlined. When I learn there are 400,000 people sharing accommodation and 100,000 waiting on lists across the country for public housing, and when I read that one Canadian in every five pays 70 per cent or more of his income for food, clothing and shelter, as reported by the Economic Council in its fifth annual report, I am more than satisfied that there is a housing crisis in Canada today.
I am deeply shocked that the Prime Minister and members of the government should take their present attitude with regard to such a serious question. The government has done very little over the years to face up to the housing shortage. Something was done by a former minister of labour, the Hon. John R. Nicholson, who arranged a symposium across the country. He did not reveal the results. They were probably too shocking. When the present government was elected, the Minister of Transport assumed the portfolio of housing. He wanted to do something about this matter. He set up a task force on housing to determine the problems and find the solutions.
* (5:40 p.m.)
We in this party have said that the task force report was inadequate and fell far short of dealing with the problem of housing today. The great merit of the task force report on housing is that it underlines the housing crisis in Canada and brings to light important questions on housing for nation-wide debate, such questions as the philosophy of housing, public
April 25, 1969

and private financing of housing, public ownership and development of land, public housing and home ownership, the need for regional forms of government and the multitude of related problems dealing with these areas. This is the merit the housing task force report has shown.
The task force under the guidance of the Minister of Transport was so determined that the housing needs of Canada and the financing arrangements should be left to the private sector that it missed many of the serious aspects of the problem. The task force was less bold in its order of priorities. It was intent with making home ownership more accessible to the middle income groups and failed to face up to the magnitude and urgency of the housing needs of the low income group. This is why there is nothing in the report for one million Canadian families with incomes below $5,500. This is why the task force recommended a halt on public housing projects until a study could be made of the psychological, moral and economic aspects of public housing. They were baffled by the problem of why the housing needs of the low income groups could not be met through the private market, and instead of solving this problem they used public housing as the whipping boy for the failure of the private market.
The criticism that has flowed from this report, more especially from the Canadian Federation of Mayors and Municipalities and such organizations as the Canadian Welfare Council, has exposed the main weakness of the report and imposed on the Minister of Transport, in charge of housing, the responsibility for the failure of the report in this urgent area. The minister became sensitive to the problem and made a token attempt by announcing to the house a few days ago an experimental public housing project in Ottawa by building 518 low rental and condominium housing units. This was tantamount to giving a naked man a handkerchief to clothe himself.
The record of this government on public housing is the most shameful of all the countries in the western democracies. Since 1951 the government has built approximately 40,000 public housing units or less than 1 per cent of the total housing stock in Canada. In England the public housing stock is 30 per cent, in Sweden 25 per cent, and even in the United States it ranges between 1 and 2 per cent with a massive public housing building program having been recently undertaken.
Housing
In 1968, Mr. Speaker, the amount invested by the federal government in public housing was approximately $116 million, representing
10.000	public housing units. The estimates for 1969 do not show any substantial increase in government spending in this sector. This exposure of government intention indicates its minimal concern for the most serious sector in the housing crisis today.
The minimum target in solving the low income housing problem should be between
20.000	and 30,000 public housing units a year, requiring an investment of approximately $300 million annually. If we accept the task force target of one million dwelling units over the next five years and the requirement of $20 billion for financing purposes and the necessity of $3.5 billion in public funds or an average of $700 million annually, the government must announce a program related to the projected requirements of the different income groups.
The government should set forth the amount of moneys to be allocated to (1), direct loans to the private sector; (2) public land assembly and servicing; (3) limited dividend and non-profit housing projects; (4) public housing and co-operative housing and urban renewal; (5) the purchase of existing properties and income supplements. This information would give an indication of the government's plan with regard to the number of units, the types of units and the financing requirements to achieve these results. The Minister of Transport has not done this. He has not indicated the breakdown of the $700 million minimum requirement and is depending on the private builders to exercise their social conscience in this1 critical area.
The minister does this in the light of his statement before the Standing Committee on Health, Welfare and Social Affairs dealing with the housing estimates when, on March 18, he said:
But although we are building housing as never before in our history, there are serious inadequacies and imbalances in our production. Last year's exceptional level of starts was weighted very heavily in favour of apartments. No one denies the continuing need for rental accommodation in multiple high-rise buildings. But there must be a better balance between rental and ownership, and between high-rise, single family and row housing so that Canadians can have a proper selection and choice according to their needs and tastes.
He stated the problem, Mr. Speaker, and then did nothing to indicate a solution. The task force report indicated that the financing of homes in recent years has been on the

in the field of housing and urban development. We would set up a separate ministry of housing and urban development. We would determine this country's housing needs, coordinate programs with provinces and cooperate with provinces and municipalities in determining this country's housing needs. Also, we would determine this country's financial requirements in the field of housing and establish priorities for a building program.


David Réal Caouette: At what rates of interest?


John Gilbert: We would set a target of 250,000 homes to be built, 50,000 of them to be public housing units. We would also have the proper mix between public and co-operative housing.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member but his time has expired.


Some hon. Members:: Continue.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


John Gilbert: Mr. Speaker, may I thank hon. members for their courtesy. I was speaking of our target of building 250,000 houses to take care of the shortfall in housing and that we would have the proper mix of public and cooperative housing. Our target would be to have 50,000 public housing units. Altogether we would wish 60 per cent of our housing to be private, 25 per cent to be public and 15 per cent to be co-operative. Also, we would ensure a steady flow of mortgage moneys to the housing field, either by persuading financial institutions to lend or, if necessary, by legislation.
We would set up a crown building corporation specializing in public and senior citizens' housing. By having close liaison with provincial housing corporations and municipalities we would ensure that the latest building techniques are used and that the benefits of research programs are fully felt. We would inject massive amounts of public money, up to $1.5 billion, into programs for the acquisition of land banks. Under such a program federal, provincial and municipal governments could acquire serviced land. Under that program we would also finance public housing, co-operative housing, various types of home improvements and urban renewal.
Housing
If necessary we would supplement rents and subsidize interest rates until those rates have fallen back to their proper levels. The hon. member for Temiscamingue (Mr. Caouette) wondered what interest rates would apply to moneys lent. We would fix interest rates at 6 per cent, and the federal government would pay a subsidy of half of any amount paid on interest rates above 6 per cent. We would retain the 11 per cent sales tax on homes costing more than $25,000. On homes costing less than $25,000 we would use a tax credit in order to help the purchaser with the down payment on his home. We would also introduce a capital gains tax on land, to drive out land speculators. Lastly, we would set up some sort of research department to determine the type of accommodation needed in this country and to examine all social and environmental factors. Of course, we would make sure that the latest building techniques were used.
These proposals, Mr. Speaker, would be but a first step in building a Canada which puts people first and which will ensure a good life for all Canadians. This' is the New Democratic party's version of a just society.


Mr. Walter C. Carter (St. John's West):: Mr. Speaker, replying to a question of mine of February 5 of this year, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Benson) revealed that the government did not intend to accept the recommendation of the Minister of Transport (Mr. Hellyer) that the 11 per cent sales tax on building materials should be removed. As the house knows, the report of the task force on housing which the minister headed recommended strongly that the 11 per cent sales tax should be abolished. That recommendation was made after the minister and the task force had visited every province and every major centre of Canada. Having seen existing conditions in the field of housing, the minister felt that the 11 per cent sales tax ought to be abolished, thereby making houses available for many who otherwise would be unable to buy them. I believe the Leader of the N.D.P. pointed out that the 11 per cent sales tax on building materials pushes the price of the average house up by about $500. In addition to the 11 per cent federal sales tax, there is a provincial tax on building materials. In Newfoundland this is 7 per cent. On top of that, there is a mortgage insurance fee administered by C.M.H.C. which again increases the cost of a house by 2 per cent of the amount

April 25, 1969
Housing
being borrowed. In the case of a person borrowing $18,000, this means he pays a $360 mortgage insurance fee.
[DOT] (6:00 p.m.)
Hon. members may recall that during the late show on February 6, I pointed out that the Minister of Transport had been repudiated by his colleagues in that his recommendation for the removal of the 11 per cent sales tax had been pushed aside. I said the only honourable thing he could do was resign. He has now done the honourable thing. I regret it took him two months to do it but he has faced the facts, and I admire him for it.
The task force report recommended that the 2 per cent mortgage fee be cut in half. I believe this fund was started in 1954 and since that time has grown to $224 million. Out of 800,000 loans made only the small number of 6,000 claims have been made against this fund. Therefore, I urge the government to accept this recommendation to reduce the fee, if not eliminate it altogether.
The report also made considerable reference to public housing. There are certain sociological problems involved in public housing. I am of the opinion that the whole concept of public housing as we know it to date is wrong, in that it brings poor people together and throws them into what I believe will eventually become ghettos. There is quite a lot of public housing in my constituency, and I disagree with the method through which rents are collected and assessed.
Public housing rents for 1969 are based on incomes in 1968. If a person made $2,000 or $3,000 extra in 1968, through overtime or by engaging in extra work, his rent this year is assessed on his increased income of last year. If his normal income were $3,000 but he made $5,000 last year, his rent this year will be based on the $5,000 figure. This deprives public housing tenants of the chance to accumulate enough money to buy or build homes of their own. It destroys their initiative. They know that if they work overtime and earn more money, some 27 per cent of that extra money will go to pay rent.
The Prime Minister's optimistic comments today will do little to impress my constituents. I am thinking of the hundreds of people who tonight must see their children go to bed in substandard houses. They will get little consolation from the Prime Minister's words.
The average per capita income in Newfoundland is $1,173, compared with the max-

imum average of $1,988. According to computations made in 1967, 34 per cent of Newfoundland families would qualify for mortgages of only $10,000 at then prevailing interest rates. Building costs in Newfoundland in 1967 were $30.54 per square foot, as compared with the Canadian average of $12.54 per square foot. The people in the maritimes, especially in Newfoundland, have the lowest per capita incomes in the country and the highest building costs1. In addition, according to a C.M.H.C. booklet that I have in my possession, they have the highest average land costs in Canada. In these circumstances, what chance does the average family man in the Atlantic provinces have of being able to own his own home?
We must admit that the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation has done a reasonably good job in recent years, but it is catering more to the upper middle classes and the wealthier people. To those who can occupy subsidized rental accommodation, C.M.H.C. is of no use whatever. One must remember that a man who earns anywhere from $4,000 to $6,000 is too well oil to qualify for subsidized rentals. In fact, in this regard there is a ceiling on the income which a man can earn. But having got that salary of anywhere from $4,000, $6,000 or $7,000 a year, he cannot qualify for a National Housing Act mortgage. So, there he is caught in the economic squeeze. As I said before, he is too well oil to be able to move into and enjoy a subsidized rental house and does not have the required income to qualify for a National Housing Act mortgage. These are the people who should be given every consideration because they and their children are just as entitled to a decent place to live as anybody else who lives in Canada.
[DOT] (6:10 p.m.)
I agree with one of the other speakers who said that the government and the Prime Minister are hiding behind the constitution in order to avoid the responsibility they have to the people of Canada, especially in the area of housing and urban renewal. We have extremely high interest rates, we have high building costs and high priced serviced land. If all these things are thrown together, then we do not have a healthy society in which there is a good opportunity for a person to acquire a house.
With regard to the urban renewal recommendations in the task force report, I can speak with some personal knowledge and
April 25, 1969

experience. I have had experience in respect of urban renewal and land assembly. I would again urge the government and the new minister of housing, whoever he might be, to take a very serious look at the amount of red tape that is involved. I know that in St. John's it took something like seven or eight years to obtain approval and have a start made on a land assembly area. While I do not mean to suggest that all the delays are caused by the federal government and Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, I do say that the biggest contributing factor to the delays involved is the red tape in Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. I believe I can cite another case in my riding where plans have been made for an urban renewal scheme for close to a decade. So far as I can find out the plans for that scheme are still on the drawing board.
I do not think it is right to build up the hopes of the people or give them the impression there will be some grandiose scheme for urban renewal and so on, then keep them dangling for five, seven and sometimes ten years. I urge the government and the new minister to take a very serious look at this red tape and do what they can to have it eliminated. I would also ask the Minister of Finance (Mr. Benson) and the government to show a little kindness and compassion for the less fortunate people by no longer concentrating on the large financial interests. I ask that they think about the need of the newly married Canadians, the people in the middle and low income brackets who, without this help, understanding and compassion, can never hope to own their own homes.


Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, it was certainly an amazing speech we heard today from the Prime Minister. This debate is being held today because the minister in charge of housing, the Deputy Prime Minister, the man who was at least formerly the number two man in the government has resigned. One would have thought- and I am sure the public expected-the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) would have taken this first opportunity to explain to the people of Canada and members of parliament why the man in charge of housing resigned. What were the differences between the minister and the Prime Minister? What did the minister want to do that could not be done? Did the minister's plans with regard to improving the housing stock in Canada flounder because the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance (Mr. Benson) said there is 29180-508
Housing
not sufficient money? Or did they flounder because, as the minister said in his press conference, the Prime Minister's views on the constitution are so rigid that he could not proceed? Surely, the people of Canada were entitled to expect that the Prime Minister would come into the house and explain precisely what happened.
Instead, the Prime Minister came into this house and gave a speech which sounded as if he were reading a shopping list. He gave us a list of the tremendous things which have been done in the field of housing under this government. He ignored completely the Minister of Transport. It was as if the minister did not exist. I could not help but be reminded of the way the late dictator of the Soviet Union used to deal with his colleagues with whom he disagreed. When Stalin disagreed with somebody he became a non-person; history was immediately rewritten as if he never existed. That is what the Prime Minister did today. It was as if Mr. Hellyer had never existed, was never in this parliament and was never a minister or in charge of housing.
I suggest that the Prime Minister ought to have dealt with the issues raised by the Deputy Prime Minister or I suppose now the former deputy prime minister. A number of excellent speeches were made here this afternoon but I submit there was no more damning indictment of this government made here today by members of the opposition than was made yesterday by the minister. I should like to place on the record some of the things the minister said to which I believe the Prime Minister should have replied. I see the Minister of Labour (Mr. Mackasey), the chief hatchet man of the Liberal government, is here. I hope he will take on the job as he has taken on so many other unpleasant tasks for the government. The fact that the minister is in this house, I suppose is an indication that there is no imminent settlement of the Air Canada strike. Otherwise, he would be getting his picture in the paper. I do not blame him for that.
Let me quote a few of the statements made by the Minister of Transport as reported in the Globe and Mail for Friday April 25. Mr. Hellyer said that the interpretation the Prime Minister placed on federalism was as follows:
-a theory of ten virtually autonomous provinces held together by the strings of a fairly weak federal government.
He said further:
I can't personally accept a theory of federalism which, however attractive it is in principle, is not viable from the standpoint of meeting the

April 25. 1969
Housing
needs of a highly industrialized society and meeting the real problems created by the technological revolution.
The article continues:
Mr. Hellyer said he does not believe national unity can be achieved unless people's real problems are met. Even in Quebec, he said, people are worried about issues like property taxes and inflation although some, like the students and some civil servants, would put the constitution first.
He began his interview by saying:
I don't think the little people of my riding can wait until the constitution is reconciled before we have a more aggressive housing policy. I just don't think the kids who use the beach where I swim can wait forever to make sure it isn't polluted as it was last summer.
That is what the number two man in the government said yesterday about the government. What did the Prime Minister say in reply? Nothing. In speaking today I could not fail to comment on the complete absence- with the exception of the hon. member for Don Valley (Mr. Kaplan) who having been born with two silver spoons in his mouth would not know what people in the low income brackets need or want-Of a speech by any of the tremendous number of Liberal members from the cities of Canada.
[DOT] (6:20 p.m.)
Every seat in the metropolitan Toronto area is represented by Liberals. A substantial number of seats in metropolitan Vancouver are represented by Liberals. Half the seats in my city, or in the metropolitan area, are represented by Liberal members. Of course, we do have the Minister without Portfolio who was the number two man under the former Minister of Transport, but one could not expect him to know about the housing needs of the ordinary citizens of Winnipeg because he is not an ordinary citizen. He is one of the fortunate few; one of the wealthiest men, they say, in the province of Manitoba.
Where are all the representatives of the urban people of Canada? They are completely silent. They have not got the guts to say anything about their great leader on whose coattails they wafted into office in the last election. Surely, we can get more from the Prime Minister than criticism of the leader of my party because he moved a motion to discuss the reasons given by the former Minister of Transport (Mr. Hellyer) for his resignation, namely that the Prime Minister's views on the constitution were so rigid that, given those views and his positions, it is impossible to take steps to meet the housing needs of this country.
[Mr. Orlikow.l
We heard a great deal from the Prime Minister about how much more we are doing for housing this year than we have ever done before. What the statistics given by the Prime Minister avoid is information in respect of whom we are doing this extra work. For whom are we building these houses? We are not building fewer but more and more homes for those people in the upper income brackets.
The cost of a modest home in the city of Toronto today is now $30,000 plus, and this is at an interest rate of close to 10 per cent. How many people are there in this country or in the city of Toronto who can afford to pay that price for a house? I know of people who live in the city of Toronto-teachers, school principals, social workers, etc.-who are receiving salaries which, ten years ago or even five years ago, they would have thought would give them a life of relative luxury. These people are taking extra work on weekends because the cost of meeting their mortgage payments does not leave them enough to cover the ordinary costs of food, clothing and educating their children.
That is the situation, yet the Prime Minister comes here and tells us we are doing more than we have ever done before. Of course we are doing more than before, but for whom? We now have a mortgage rate of 9|- per cent. With the government's policy of adjusting the rates every three months, we can be certain that with the next adjustment the interest rates will be close to, if not more than, 10 per cent. How many people are there in this country who can afford to pay that kind of interest rate?
The Prime Minister stood in the house today and told us that all is well in this country, that the people do not have to worry because the government has this whole matter well in hand. I am not going to put the statistical evidence on the record today because my colleagues, the hon. member for York South (Mr. Lewis) and the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Gilbert) have already done so. I do want to put on the record a few of the comments made by people who are experts in the field of housing needs for people in the low income bracket.
Let me refer to the task force report which we in this group do not have to defend, and will not defend. We have a Prime Minister who forces the resignation of the Minister of Transport, who is in charge of housing, because the Prime Minister is not prepared to
April 25. 1969

implement the necessary steps recommended by the task force.
I received a copy of a communication forwarded to the Minister of Transport, the hon. Paul Hellyer, by the Age and Opportunity Centre, Inc. of Winnipeg. This document is dated April 17, 1969. Let me read a couple of these paragraphs to dispel the complacency of the Prime Minister in respect of what the government is doing. The first paragraph reads:
The most glaring omission in the report of the task force on housing is that it ignores the need by those earning under $5,500/year for housing, which, at present, they can neither afford to rent nor buy. Since more than half of the elderly in Canada fall into this category, this is doubly unfortunate. Provision must, therefore, be made to include legislation which will allow this large segment of our population to live in decent accommodation.
Having turned down the Minister of Transport, what chance is there that the government will agree to that kind of suggestion? The brief then states:
The report makes no mention and no provision for supplying funds at a reasonable cost for the preservation and rehabilitation of deteriorating housing stock. Many old homeowners find themselves unable to live on reduced incomes, pay higher taxes, and keep their homes in a state of repair.
The brief then states, at page two:
The National Housing Act should be broadened to make mortgage funds more readily available for the building of apartment or hostel accommodation for the elderly, whether it is being financed by a profit or non-profit corporation ... Since high interest rates directly affect rent structure, everything must be done to keep the interest rates low.
My colleague, the hon. member for Broadview, indicated that our party believes the interest rate should be fixed at six per cent. The Prime Minister said two days ago during an interview with a writer from the Toronto Telegram that there was no money for new programs unless old programs could be liquidated. He is not likely to adopt a policy of subsidized rent.
Let us look at what some of the experts said about the task force recommendations. Michael Wheeler, who is the housing expert for the Canadian Welfare Council, said, as reported in the Toronto Globe and Mail of January 31, 1969 in reference to task force recommendations:
The critical flaw in the report is that it would halt those measures that now offer some hope to low income groups without offering anything definite in their place except pious suggestions for further research and study.
29180-508J
Housing
Later in the article it is stated:
The welfare council had called in an earlier policy statement for expansion of Canada's public housing program "as the most direct means of helping those in the worst housing conditions. The council also urged policies to avoid the stigma attached to public housing, including "a general housing allowance" for low income families to rent or buy homes.
There is nothing of that kind in the government's program.
Let me refer to what Leon Kumove, head of Toronto's social and community planning services, said about the task force report:
It made far too many generalizations about the nature of public housing. Some of it is bad, but some of it is also good. You must change public housing, you cannot eliminate it. The report is superficial.
This is from the Globe and Mail of January 3, 1969. The article then states:
Humphrey Carver, former chairman of Central Mortgage and Housing Corp.'s advisory group, said not one of the seven task force members had any previous knowledge of public housing or urban renewal.
"These are two of the most difficult subjects. The task force was battled by the problems it encountered, said it didn't like the whole idea of public housing and recommended it to be virtually stopped. This is an elementary attitude to take and it has done great damage to the whole cause of getting housing for low income families. Because of that report, a lot of people will go without proper housing".
[DOT] (6:30 p.m.)
Mr. Carver was right, because we had had a freeze by this government on the approval of public housing projects. A number of speakers from all parties have already mentioned that of the total number of housing units built in this country since the end of world war II, less than 1 per cent have been of the public housing type. Yet the government has seen fit to freeze the approval of any new public housing projects. I have spoken before, as have other hon. members, about public housing. There is a great deal wrong with public housing.
If you come to my city, in the corner of the constituency represented by my colleague the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles), you will see a new public housing project. I do not know who drew the plans. It certainly was not somebody from Winnipeg. They must have been drawn here in the maze of the bureaucracy of Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. There are brick fences around that project, and a person going by it

April 25/ 1969
Housing
cannot help but think he is looking at a prison. Having made that criticism of the project, I want to say that the project itself and the facilities in it are infinitely better than the facilities and houses in which the people were living before they moved into the project.
The Minister of Transport and his task force did not ask the key question which they should have asked when they were travelling the country looking at public housing projects. The question is not, "What is wrong with this project?" but, "Do the accommodations in this housing development compare with the housing accommodations and conditions in which you lived before you came here?" If the task force had asked that very simple and elementary question, I am certain they would have received a 100 per cent response that with all the faults and criticisms one can make of public housing units which are built in this country, the people living in them are infinitely better off than they were when they lived in the slums from which they came.
That is the situation which exists. That is the situation we ought to be moving to correct. It is the situation which the Minister of Transport was examining. I may not agree with some of his proposals for solution, but one cannot gainsay the fact that the minister was interested in the problem. One cannot lose sight of the fact that the minister was committed to improving the environment of people living in slum conditions, those living in the deteriorated cores of the cities of Canada. I am sure the Minister of Transport is enough of a pragmatist that, had he continued in office and seen that the proposals he enunciated in his task force report could not or would not work, he would have come up with better solutions. But the minister has resigned.
I say now as I said when I began my speech, that the people of this country have a right to know why he resigned. The people of this country have a right to know what, if anything, the government proposes to do about housing for the millions of people in the low and middle-income brackets who either cannot obtain adequate housing accommodation or can only do so by cutting back on necessary expenditures for food, clothing, modest recreation and so on.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but his time has expired.


Hon. Bryce S. Mackasey (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, it was not my intention to participate in this debate.
IMr. Orlikow.l


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: I made a mental note many months ago not to let the Socialists prod me into debate, because in the few months since this session began I have found that nothing has changed in their quarter of the house. They lost a leader for a little while. That did not seem to do them any harm, and his return does not seem to have done them much good. But he is still one of my favourite members of the House of Commons.


An hon. Member:: How does Durante feel?


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Mr. Durante will be back. Listening, as I have, for most of the afternoon to speakers from the Socialist group I have found, as I anticipated and have learned through the years to anticipate, their usual subtle method of comparing class with class. They do this in the hope that one day they may pick up enough of those votes to form a respectable part of the House of Commons.
The hon. gentleman who just resumed his seat made, in a disparaging way, a few choice observations about the hon. member for Don Valley (Mr. Kaplan), whom he said was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It does happen in Canada that one can be born into this class of society and still show an interest in the democratic process of the House of Commons. This is not true of Socialist countries, because people there are born with no spoons on the table, let alone a silver spoon in their mouth.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Have you ever been to Sweden?


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Yes, I have. Sweden is a great country; you wait six and half years there for a home. That is a great Utopia; everybody is equal and on the same level. They are all poor and everybody waits six months for a home.


An hon. Member:: You said six years just now.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Sweden is not the only Socialist country or regime that the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands (Mr. Douglas) can tell usi about. Since he raised the question of Sweden, he might tell us about the 16 or 17 disastrous years in Saskatchewan, when they had no unemployment because people left the province faster than jobs disappeared. There were no border points, no immigration laws, no customs. If this was Utopia, Socialism at its best, the
April 25. 1969



land of milk and honey, I do not know why the people of British Columbia, Alberta and neighbouring provinces did not all flock into this Socialistic Utopia which the hon. gentleman eventually left with disastrous consequences. He finally became pragmatic and left the province. I shall not refer to his seat, because he changes it so often that in ten years I have not been able to keep track of his latest riding.
If the Minister without Portfolio from the province of Manitoba is one of the more fortunate Canadians who does not have to concern himself about owning a home, who does not have to concern himself with all the day-to-day problems of earning a living, it is all the more to his credit that he has given up a life with a very leisurely pace, sought election, and come to the House of Commons to meet some Socialists. The Minister without Portfolio has shown by his performance here that he cares for his fellow man regardless of his situation in life.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I have not seen any of it.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Someone today alluded to the fact that possibly the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) could not understand anything about poverty since he comes from a wealthy family in the riding of Mount Royal. I am a little disappointed at the hon. member's contribution, because the hon. gentleman who made it does not usually make this type of attack. I have never had to resort to it, and I do not know why he had to do so. I say in all sincerity that it will be a sad day when the House of Commons is limited to members who, for one reason or another, have an income of so high and no higher.
[DOT] (fi:40 p.m.)
To accuse the Prime Minister of Canada of not being aware of the social problems of this country simply because he is a very well educated man, simply because he represents a wealthy riding and simply because he is wealthy himself, indicates a flagrant ignorance of the background of the Prime Minister. There is no man in this house who has devoted more of his time, more of his money, and more of his talents to the poor and to the labour class as well as to the trade unions of this country than he did in the 1950's when he and one or two other people had the courage and the nerve to stand up to Mr. Duples-sis, not only for the unions but, as the leader of the New Democratic party knows, in the
Housing
case against the Jehovah's Witnesses. So I do not think the Prime Minister of this country has to take second place to the hon. member for Winnipeg North (Mr. Orlikow) who just sat down.
We thought that this debate would be on housing, and I will say in all sincerity that members of the opposition, who are in general a pretty responsible group, have stuck to the issue of housing. This is a house of debate. The hon. member for Hamilton West (Mr. Alexander) made what I thought was a very pertinent, honest and useful contribution to the debate as a member from an urban riding. The purpose of the House of Commons is to debate and criticize without resorting to personalities. But unfortunately the New Democratic party has chosen to fight this issue not on the question of housing but on the question of the constitution.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: That is what the Minister of Transport resigned over.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: The Minister of Transport did resign over that, and I might say about him that he is a most honourable man; he is a man of integrity and a man who had the courage to resign on a matter of principle, which has happened all too infrequently in Canadian history.
In speaking about the constitution-and that is the subject on which the New Democratic party has decided to fight-I am at a tremendous disadvantage in one way and at an advantage in another way. I come from a part of the country where people are perhaps more preoccupied with the constitution than the more pragmatic English speaking people in the rest of the country. Perhaps the reason for this is that I have one foot in each culture and I get exasperated with both. I can understand the average Canadian's concern about housing. I used to be parliamentary secretary to the minister who was concerned with housing, and I can remember making a speech here on that issue and referring to the red tape which prevented public housing in my riding. I remember personally starting the agitation for a project because someone asked me why I did not stop talking and do something about it. I did something about it in March of 1967. Here we are in April of 1969 and my city is just now turning over the sod for the building of a home for senior citizens. At that time there was no apparent reason in the world for holding up the project except

April 25. 1969
Housing
for the red tape on the part of the federal, provincial and municipal governments.
This is really the crux of the matter in the housing problem of this country and, I suspect, the problem which bothered the Minister of Transport-the inability at the federal level to cut down the red tape and, as someone said, to get down to the nuts and bolts and to help the man in the street. He does not care about the constitution; all he is interested in is a roof over his head.
I share the concern of the Minister of Transport. It is all too easy for members of this house to say, as the New Democratic party members have said today, "Disregard the constitution; the constitution is there to serve the people." I have heard the ringing phrases of the hon. gentlemen. It is all too simple to say that the constitution is there and that it should be there to serve the people. If it does not serve the people because it is out of date 100 years later, it must be amended. I think we should all hang our heads in shame-and this includes all levels of government and all Canadians-that we have not even been able to find a formula to bring the constitution back to this country, or the amending of the constitution back to Canada. This is no more the fault of this government than it was the fault of the government when the opposition was in power and when, with Davie Fulton, they tried to find a formula. But perhaps hon. members opposite have short memories.
When I say I am at an advantage as a Quebecker in understanding constitutional problems, it is because I have lived there for 48 years. My disadvantage is in not being a member of the New Democratic party so that I am unable, no matter how many documents I have here and I have too many of them, to understand the philosophy of the New Democratic party on the constitution. Perhaps someone can tell me what it is, but I have six documents here and in each one there is a different version. I will try to pick out a few.
Just in case people think that the Prime Minister is hung up on the constitution to hide the frustration of the government or as an excuse for what is considered in some circles to be slow progress in the field of housing, let me make it clear that it is not only the federal government that is concerned about the constitution. The provinces are concerned about it. It is not only the province of Quebec that is concerned about it. As a Quebecker I resent the implication that it is only
[Mr. Mackasey.l
Quebec that is concerned about the constitutional problem. I know that the members from Halifax and others are much more familiar with the report of the task force on housing than I am, but I should like to quote from a Canadian Press release in a Toronto newspaper of February 24, 1969, with regard to a document that was submitted by the province of Ontario, not the province of Quebec although Quebec endorsed it, about the constitution. Part of the article reads as follows:
Position papers released by Ontario and Quebec delegates after the meeting indicated Mr. Hellyer was told the federal government should not expand much into the housing field-a provincial jurisdiction-
That is not the Prime Minister talking; it is not the backbenchers here using excuses; it is not the ministers explaining away inactivity. This is from the government of Ontario-a Tory government.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


An hon. Member:: Never trust a Grit.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: -beyond the present role of providing most of the public funds.
That is the Ontario position, not the Quebec position. The provinces say: "Stay out of our affairs. Provide us with more money and we will do the job". That is what they are saying. I share the opinion and the frustration of the minister who has resigned that the constitution needs change, and I will talk about it in a moment. Let us first get the decks cleared and try to understand who is complaining and who is insisting in 1969 that the constitution be respected in the field of housing. It is not the federal government but the provinces, not necessarily only the province of Quebec. I am quoting from the submission of the province of Ontario to the task force in February of this year. I will read some more of it.
Ontario's paper was brusque in warning Mr. Hellyer against any attempts to establish direct relationships with municipalities.
Who warned Mr. Hellyer not to come into direct contact with municipalities? Was it the federal government? Was it the Prime Minister? Was it the opposition? No, it was the provincial government of Ontario which, quite properly, pointed out that as long as the constitution is written as it is we should respect it. I have sat here and heard people from the opposition ranks say to the federal government, "Stay out of the field of provincial
April 25, 1969

affairs. This is why we have trouble. You are arrogant. You are entering into provincial jurisdictions. These are no longer the days of Mackenzie King. The provinces want to be strong, and they want their rights respected." What do the provinces want us to do about it so long as the constitution is there? One speaker said today that it is not the Bible, it is not something written on Mount Sinai, it is not sacred. Yet it is, because it is the constitution of this country until it is changed.


James Aloysius McGrath: Where does that leave the have-not provinces?


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: I will get to that subject in a minute. Mr. Randall, who probably wrote this article, and if he did not someone in his office did, also said the following:
"Few actions could do more damage to the working out of a more rational federal system in Canada than the inevitable confusion and upsetting of priorities which would occur if our federal system were short-circuited", the paper said.
[DOT] (6:50 p.m.)
This is the position of the province of Ontario, not of the province of Quebec. All the provinces except British Columbia sent delegations led by the cabinet minister responsible for housing. To the best of my knowledge not one of them got up and said: Let us see our jurisdiction in the field of housing transferred to the federal government where it should logically be because of the massive sums of money needed and the direct action required to deal with the housing crisis in this country. Even in a unitary state like Sweden, you wait six years for housing. I will not talk about the iron curtain countries where there is a dictatorship. I and others went to Poland and saw what type of accommodation is available for the workers. And there is no red tape or divided jurisdiction there. We should not say that everything in this country is bad. That is one of the great faults we have as Canadians. You can deprecate the remarks of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). You can say he is emphasizing the wrong priorities. You can say he is too rigid. How is he rigid? He is rigid because he understands the constitution, and understands the problems. He is saying we want a strong federal government and that the provinces need to be strong, too. Is he too rigid when he says to the provinces: If you want to raise monies, then raise your taxes? Is he too rigid when he tells a province to stay out of the federal field? Is he too rigid when he says we shall build an airport in Sainte Scholastique
Housing
and not in St. Jean because this is a matter within federal jurisdiction and we refuse to play petty politics? Is he wrong, there?
I have heard opposition speakers say: You have no right to do certain things because you are interfering with provincial jurisdiction; you have not consulted with the provinces. I have heard that word "consult" ad nauseam. Now, the Prime Minister is saying: This is our area of jurisdiction and we want to be masters in it; if a province wants to be master in areas which directly concern it, it may. I remember that in the housing debate last year the former hon. member for Brome-Missisquoi, a good member who knew all about housing, stood in this chamber and suggested that we should establish a ministry of housing. The next day he was castigated in about every editorial in Quebec, including La Presse for daring to suggest that the federal government set up a ministry in what is normally a provincial field.
This is the type of thing we encounter and will continue to face until the constitution is changed. It is all very well for members of the New Democratic party to say "to hell with the constitution." That is what they are saying, in effect. They change their policy like you change your shirt. They have gone all the way from two nations to associate state; there is Cliche's version, Taylor's version, the leader's version and back again and now nobody knows what version they are following. I don't.
It is quite possible that with the latest phase of socialist thinking about the constitution that housing is a federal responsibility on the logical grounds that the situation constitutes a national emergency. It is a national emergency.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: The Prime Minister says it is not.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Oh, I was doing all right until the hon. gentleman came along. I would love to keep the hatchet buried. An hon. member over there referred to me as a hatchet man; that is what got me on my feet and will keep me on my feet. This is the dilemma in which we find ourselves. There is no excuse for the federal government failing to give a lead in the field of housing. There is no excuse for failing to show initiative, if we have failed to show initiative. I agree that the criticism which has been raised today is valid if we have not placed a high enough priority on housing. The Minister of Transport made this perfectly clear. Legislation will be before

April 25, 1969
Housing
the house in a few weeks time, as the Prime Minister mentioned, and if it does not go as far as it should, then that is the time to say so. Let us not castigate the government for doing nothing in the field of housing when it is not true.


An hon. Member:: Mr. Speaker-


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: If you want to say something, wait your turn and stand up.
The Economic Council said that in 1970 we would need 200,000 housing units in this country. The Council under-estimated the number, because we will reach that figure this year. We reached 190,000 last year, two years before the target date. If the problem is particularly acute, as it is in Hamilton, Oakville, Burlington and the Golden Triangle, it is because this area is a heavily industrialized part of the country and inevitably housing difficulties arise in the industrialized section of every nation.
This is true of Sweden as it is of England, that great Utopia of labour. Mr. Speaker, with all the labour discrimination that is going on there, God knows what kind of government they will have-


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: There has not been a Liberal government there for a long time.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: The solution there is not as complicated as it is in Canada where there are ten jurisdictions. The solution put forward by members of the N.D.P. is a simple one, and very pragmatic; I am inclined to be pragmatic myself. It is to ignore the constitution. Full steam ahead, they say, walk into the municipalities, build low-cost public housing; to heck with the constitution and the municipalities, because the man in the street wants something done. That is true. But let us stop and think. The man in the street who elected the hon. member for Hamilton West (Mr. Alexander) is the same elector who elects provincial members to office. He is the man who elects councillors, aldermen and reeves to city councils and so on.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bechard):: Order. The hon. gentleman's time has expired.


Some hon. Members:: Go on.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: I shall bring my remarks to a close. I thank hon. members for their courtesy.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: The only reason we raised any objection yesterday about extension of

time was that a specific order had been made to enable as many hon. members as possible to participate. Now, we have reached Friday and we have all the weekend ahead of us.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: I shared the opinion of the hon. gentleman yesterday. There was a time limit and he was quite right in invoking it. I appreciate his courtesy on this occasion. I hope he will be flying home one of these weekends. It seems to me the labour vote is coming to the conclusion that it does not need to concentrate on the socialist party to get recognition in the House of Commons.
As I was saying, the people who elect the federal government are also those who elect the provincial governments and the candidates for municipal office. Before the constitution of Canada can be changed so as to place the responsibility for housing policy and so on within federal jurisdiction, under the proper jurisdiction, it is necessary to sit down in consultation with people who are prepared to do just that. The same applies to a determination of what should be federal and what should be provincial in the field of education. The solutions will come when the people in the provinces understand that they may be attacking the wrong source. They should elect in each province, members who are prepared to attend constitutional conferences, who will agree to revise the constitution and put in the federal field those areas which ought to be federal, and in the provincial field the areas which should remain provincial. But this is not something on which action can be taken unilaterally. Anyone with common sense knows it.


David Lewis: Nobody said it could.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: You implied it. You have suggested everything. Would you like me to rim through everything you have suggested in three years? I will start with Mr. Cliche.


David Lewis: You are not intimidating me.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: I am not trying to. I could deal with LaPierre, Cliche, Taylor, Gifford and a few of the others. I could tell you about Dr. Lagure. He almost won an election, he told me one night, because he managed to coral all the separatist votes in Outremont.


David Lewis: Will the minister permit a question? I know how fair, how honourable the hon. gentleman is, and how careful-
April 25, 1969


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: I have used that tactic, too, and I recognize it.


David Lewis: I learnt it from the hon. gentleman. Will he not agree he might be doing a great service to the government, and to this parliament, if he were to refer to the subject of this debate instead of making rather cheap electoral asides?
[DOT] (7:00 p.m.)


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Mr. Speaker, I am not guilty of cheap electoral asides as the arrogant member has suggested. I did refer to remarks made by members of the New Democratic party and their cheap tactics used during the last election campaign; not my tactics, theirs. These tactics were reported in the Globe and Mail for May 22, 1968, as follows:
We have to give to the central government the necessary constitutional authority to do the things that need to be done. We are trying to make do with a horse and buggy in a jet age.
The leader of the New Democratic party said;
We cannot abrogate our constitutional commitments to Quebec. It may mean that in any area such as education and housing, where Quebec feels that a strong federal power may erode provincial rights, it may be necessary to have two programs-one for English speaking Canada and one for Quebec.
As a Quebecker, I say that is separatism in disguise. It is a special status no matter how you look at it. It is nothing more than a weakening of the federal government. If you want to say to the province of Quebec, you take housing, and the other nine provinces will cede their rights to the federal government respecting housing.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Can I ask the minister a question?


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: You have already asked enough questions.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I have not asked any. Could I ask the minister if by having two pension plans, which he supported as a member of the Liberal government, he feels that separatism had been introduced in Canada?


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: I would have felt a lot better with one pension plan. I voted for it because it was the only way. If you want to extend that principle to every area of the constitution of Quebec, whether you like it or not in 18 months you are going to have two countries. You may want that, I don't.
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I have been talking about Quebec, but we must not lose sight of the fact the other provinces are equally jealous of their rights under the constitution. The strongest paper submitted to the task force in the field of housing did not come from the province of Quebec, but from the good Tory government of Ontario.


Mr. Stan Schumacher (Palliser):: Mr. Speaker, I rise in this debate to point out the ridiculous position taken by the Prime Minister in implying there is no crisis in this country. If there was no indication of a housing crisis, why did he appoint the task force on housing as one of the first acts of his administration? Was it merely an effort to keep his deputy out of his way so he would not be reminded of some of the urgent and practical problems facing the people of this country? Was it to reward some of his important supporters in the last election?
I wish to point out some of the practical problems facing two municipalities in my constituency. The city of Calgary faces the problem of trying to house some 2,000 people which arrive at its gates every month. It has been active in the field of urban renewal and public housing for approximately five years. Both of these projects have been established as a result of action taken by previous federal administrations in recognition of a problem that has been present in this country since the end of the second world war. These programs have not had the best results because of some of the actions of recent federal administrations which have been referred to by the Minister of Labour (Mr. Mackasey). He just concluded some colourful and interesting remarks, which were not entirely to the point, but he did say that one of the basic problems is that of red tape in the administration. The problems of Calgary are clearcut examples of the red tape which this administration is incapable of cutting through. This is an admission of failure to solve the problems of housing which we face today.
Some policies of this government create housing problems which are not related to the constitutional problems faced by this nation. Housing units are being built in an attempt to solve the problems, but these people cannot afford to live in these units. High rise apartments have high rents. Why are these being built instead of units which will satisfy the needs of the people? The reasons relate to problems under government control, such as taxation and fiscal policies of the government.

April 25, 1969
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For the past three or lour years there has been rampant inflation. Tax policies, in conjunction with the inflation, have forced insurance companies to divert their capital from investment in single family dwellings or semi-detached units to high rise apartments. Therefore, the money has not been available where it is really needed. The reason for this diversion is that insurance companies receive an equity in the investment which affords them a much better return on their money. The city of Calgary has embarked on rather ambitious renewal schemes. These have been held up because of a freeze and lack of policy by this government. Because of the lack of these policies, the Sheganappi Village project in Calgary has been held up. If the federal government would make a decision, this project could be completed. It does not require any new programs, merely old programs to be implemented.
[DOT] (7:10 p.m.)
I do not wish to take much time, but I ought to point out a problem facing my constituents in Drumheller. That general area has been depressed for some time, largely because coal mining has stopped. Exercising commendable wisdom, the federal government decided to build a medium security penitentiary there. I believe that the building began late in August, 1967. The institution created problems because the employees needed houses. Mind you, we are not complaining about having the institution there because it would have created problems no matter where it was built. The federal government has the duty to solve those problems. Exercising a degree of foresight the federal government seems incapable of, the local authorities at Drumheller initiated an investigation. They wanted to ascertain whether it was possible to introduce some sort of urban renewal program which would make housing available for those employees working at the penitentiary. Although Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation had been involved in the program since 1965, the investigation was begun in 1968. Actually, Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation was involved in every step taken. The City had annexed some land in 1966 and 1967.
There were problems to do with low rental housing which necessitated a visit on the part of officials to the former minister in charge of housing, Hon. J. R. Nicholson. He was surprised to hear of all the impediments set up by the Central Mortgage and Housing office in Calgary.

Now, four years later, we have reached a stage where there has been an expenditure of $35,000, half of which has been contributed by the federal government. The money has been put out in various studies and preliminary work. However, since the government seems unable to make up its mind, applications to go ahead with the scheme in our area have not been accepted. Only about 900 units are to be built under a rehabilitation scheme. No huge sums of money are involved, but the government will not act. The people of my constituency want the government to wake up and act. They want government members to quit their discussion of academic, constitutional problems and get down to business. There is no point in saying that you cannot get results under the present constitution, because you can.


Mr. J. M. Forresiall (Darlmoulh-Halifax East):: Mr. Speaker, without getting into any of the matters raised by previous speakers and without talking about why the minister resigned or why does the government not resign, may I, in an effort to secure the goodwill of the whip and in a special effort to pay a compliment to Mr. John Steel, Executive Director of the first Canadian Urban Transportation Conference held under the sponsorship of the Association of Canadian Mayors and Municipalities, put a few remarks on the record on an aspect that has been touched on obliquely only. There is a dominant form of urbanization in which the lack of firm planning has resulted in gigantic agglomerations of people in a relative tangle of land uses and overworked, inefficient transportation systems, half completed expressway networks, and an urban environment which is at best chaotic and at worst deadly. We are quite likely to have super-slums on a gigantic scale and a crippled economy if we persist in our neglect of regional planning and in our inattention to the urban environment.
Who wants the kind of Canada in which up to 90 per cent of Canadians are crowded into a few overcrowded and overbuilt metropolitan areas while the rest of the country is empty and poor? What is there to prevent this, the way things are now developing? What is there in present government legislation to prevent this from happening? Nothing I suggest, Mr. Speaker.
As the Economic Council of Canada has told us, most of the inhabitants of Canada in 1980 could be living in artificial environments. About 20 million people will live in a few huge cities. Toronto and Montreal will have a
April 25. 1969

combined population of about 7 million, and Vancouver will have a population of between 1 million and 1.5 million. These three cities will have living in them one-third of all Canadians. Then, between 3 million and 6 million people will live in Winnipeg, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, Hamilton and Quebec City. We shall have about 20 cities containing populations of between 100,000 and 500,000 people. They will be cities like St. John's, Newfoundland, Kingston, Oshawa, St. John, New Brunswick, Sarnia, Saskatoon, Sault Ste. Marie-


An hon. Member:: Mention Stratford.


J. Michael Forrestall: -Stratford, St. Catharines, Halifax, and Trois-Rivieres. Altogether, it is estimated that these cities will contain between 3.5 million and 4 million people.
A gigantic linear megalopolis 600 miles long from the Great Lakes down the St. Lawrence Valley would begin to appear. Between 1961 and 1980, about 500,000 acres of land as a minimum for physical building for the 29 cities would be needed, and in total the typical sprawl which we have used is likely to take for these same 29 cities up to 1.8 million acres of land. Given the tendencies for a tidal wave of urban shadow to reach out from these urban centres, a further 1.8 million acres at least could be affected. The urban growth could reach up to 35 miles in unbroken mass from the core areas of the larger cities such as Toronto or Montreal. By the year 2000 or 2020 at the latest, the best of our farmland could have been built over or taken out of food production. But this extensive spread could in many areas have been achieved without adequate environments having been created. We have not at the present time adequately planned ahead for the structures of services, facilities, transportation rights of way, open spaces and residential, commercial and industrial balances to hope for much more than a second best environment in most of our urban areas, unless we change our ways. This will continue unless the federal government gets off its rear and tackles these problems.
[DOT] (7:20 p.m.)
The lack is not only in the machinery for planning and in the financial support that is required. There is no adequate administrative territory in most of these urban areas for the growth envisaged. There are no effective pollution control measures. There is no stability to the total environmental picture. I suggest that the lack is one of preparedness, of
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appreciation of the gravity and the force of urbanization which is bursting upon Canada. The growth we have seen will appear mild by what is to come.
The problem is that unless we very rapidly come to improved planning, grave errors and ineradicable problems will be firmly built into our urban systems. It is possible to create insoluble problems. The challenge today is to make ready a structure for that growth, and the future forms or patterns of urban development are the key to the whole future of our civilized society. Now is the time when we have an opportunity to do something about it.
I would ask the government these questions. Is it inevitable that we simply continue to pile up people in the very limited areas of our country which already have severe urban problems? Can we not do something to ease the pressures?
Even if the bulk of the population is to occur in a few large urban centres, is it not possible to make the new national development policy one of a moving and advancing frontier of urbanization? As an example, if Toronto is to spread to Lake Simcoe can we not organize its actual form into a "string of beads," a "constellation," a series of "linear cities", or to use another phrase current in the lingo of the discussion "hive-off" some of the growth to build a range of new settlements well into the northland and still tied together by rapid communications?
Must we continue to accentuate the traditional corridors of transport? Can we not use the networks of transport to divert pressures from such existing corridors as the St. Lawrence valley, the Ottawa River, the Red River, the Fraser, the Great Lakes shorelines and the Red River valley to parallel routes further inland?
Must we always neglect the urbanization of the old historic routes, the northern lands where there are resources but no people? Can we not design a strategy of urbanization which will gradually set up all over Canada a mesh of new urban centres, even to the creation of 30 or 50 new cities by the year 2000, cities of 50,000 population to 100,000 population each? This would have the tendency to divert from the tragedy that is the urban suffocation in Montreal and Toronto today.
Why can't we get on with the development of a new transcontinental corridor, as suggested by Rohmer in his imaginative "Canada North Development Corridor" proposal-a

April 25, 1969
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corridor running 4,000 miles from Newfoundland via Labrador City, Rouyn-Noranda, Lake Winnipeg, Thompson and diverging off from there into three great areas of Canada that have not yet been touched, the first the Mackenzie River out to the Arctic Ocean, the second down the Yukon River to the Dawson area, and the third by way of the Peace River all the way through to Prince Rupert? Why can we not do this as a means of establishing a pattern of smaller related urban centres for the next century of growth?
In the Acres study, which developed Rohmer's theme, it was suggested that Canada consider creating cities of up to half a million population in areas such as Whitehorse, Hay River, Thompson, Flin Flon, the Lakehead, Noranda and Labrador City. While these may as yet be beyond our sights, would not the creation of a series of expanded towns between the existing limits of major urbanization and such frontier areas greatly speed up the process?
In the case of the largest urban centres can we not advantageously explode the new growth into the creation of a related and interacting set of cities each with a special pattern of appropriate functions, with a definite form? There are strong trends towards decentralization, and by working with them and moving imaginatively into large scale regional planning and open space reservations we might well achieve a higher level of economic activity and by God we sure as hell, would achieve a better living standard.
Do we not need a wholesale resrtucturing at all levels of our national governmental units? Can we not devise a form of region which involves a common set of large regions, in which there is a definite strategic plan, and permanently flexible contingency planning with federal and provincial levels in a contractual relationship carrying out these plans; and a set of urban areas with local government to do the urban planning within that regional context?
Should not each region move swiftly to safeguard the space for both the environmental areas and the transportation corridors? We know that land costs have a drastic effect on transportation solutions. If we do not wish to reserve the actual space are we not compelled then in some way to bring the force of our legislative power, counsel and wisdom to the controlling of land costs so that these problems can be met at a later date?
Since our economic capacities will be strained to cope with the massive growth that
[Mr. Forrestall.l
faces us, do we not need some new policies? Why we do we hide behind the cloak of constitutional arguments? I suggest that some of these policies might include very strong regional planning, with the power to control the intensity of land use in relation to transport capacities; a greater, perhaps even lavish use of green belt regulations to give stable units of urbanization a chance as functioning entities in the regional urban pattern; strong powers of industrial and office and commercial location so that these generators go where new towns and new satellites can be built around them; diversion of growth from areas which are considered relatively stable and "in balance" to "expanding" areas; new powers jointly exercised by the federal-provincial governments or by new regional forms of government to guide growth.
We need road protection and road pricing policies to introduce the concept of profitability into urban planning.
We need computer controlled regional networks where the right of entry and egress can be controlled in accordance with need.
We need a new approach to planning which seeks to create stable environmental units with the longest possible life, but with multiple use development to minimize external traffic generation and internal movements. We need staggered working hours, and even a slower pace of life, and that in much more compatible surroundings than what we are facing.
[DOT] (7:30 p.m.)
Can we not totally exclude the through vehicle and the mixed traffic from the centre of our cities, and make them pedestrian havens with servicing by vehicles to controlled points and at controlled hours? Should we forget about the traditional suburb and create instant cities or cities in the suburbs; or should we recognize the "scatteration" concept and instead simply accelerate the sprawl which is now occurring, trusting to the market forces to create a good environment? Does not the challenge confronting us require a much more effective technique of enforcement and development control than we now have? Even if we are to develop the regional strategies needed, do we not need a form of permanent contingency planning to cope with change? Even if we do not wish to concern ourselves unduly about the form and pattern of urbanization, have we any likelihood of avoiding massive slum conditions, severe
April 25, 1969

social pathology in the form of riots or protests against an inhuman environment, poisoned air in the overloaded corridors-higher death and accident rates-of movement, and economic blight because we have let unit costs increase beyond all reason. The sooner we wake up and learn something about the conditions in which the people live, the sooner we will have better cities and a better country to live in.
Must we persist with poisoned air? Must we continue to overload our existing transportation corridors? Must we continue to be bogged down with the economic plight we have because, through our unit cost of land and unit cost of anything, we have let any chance to create a better life slip out of our hands in terms of control.
All over the world logical answers to the problem of taming megalopolis and guiding giant city growth to human well-being are available. Canada lags notably in the application of these methods and we have neglected the basic research. The prognosis for urban Canada is grave. On this point, I believe every member agrees. But the future forms and patters of our urban development need not inevitably be more of the same. Rates of growth on the scales predicted mean we can rebuild the environment as we see fit. We should recognize then an open-ended set of demands for as long as we can foresee will be made upon the space and resources of our urban areas.
In terms of the form and pattern of urban development, we need to think in relation to the needs of 50 or 100 years from now. Even though we have little idea of how life might be lived, what we do in this massive urbanization is forever and will affect the quality of life for most Canadians for many centuries from today. What we do today in this decade will affect planning for the next 200 years if we do not do it right and do not get off our rear ends and start to act. I see my time is up, Mr. Speaker. I would have liked to have been able to go on much longer.


Randolph Harding: Mr. Speaker, I know the hour is getting late. As various speakers who preceded me have taken part in this debate, I have found bit by bit some of the material which I wanted to present to the house has been used. However, they say repetition is the mother of learning! Perhaps a recap of some of the main items might be of interest. I feel this is an important and very interesting debate. I believe it has given this house an opportunity once
Housing
more to review and assess its position on one of the major problems facing Canadians today. It has clearly set the picture of the housing crisis in its proper perspective. The resignation yesterday of the Minister of Transport, and the reasons he gave for relinquishing his number two spot in the government of this country, have shaken thoughtful Canadians to the core. The general public expects criticism of government policy from members of the opposition party. However, when one of our key cabinet ministers resigns in protest over weak, ineffective and indecisive government policy, and when he warns all Canadians that we are headed in the wrong direction, that we are weakening our central government, it is certainly time for the general public to turn the searchlight on the policies of the present administration.
It is time for the government members in this house to assess their own position. A disastrous course set by the government today could bring real and increasing trouble to our nation before the term of this parliament expires. The resignation of the Minister of Transport has been a tragic one. It has brought to all Canadians the fact that the present administration does not have a solution to many of the major problems facing our nation. It is high time this government set down a clearcut policy on a number of issues so that all Canadians would know where we are heading.
We have seen indecision and delay in respect of a number of issues. These include housing, urban development, pollution, foreign policy, unemployment, pensions, regional development and many other problems. Let us look briefly at the resignation statement of the minister. He did not give up his post merely because of a lack of policy in the housing field. His statement is a stinging repudiation of this new administration. It is a castigation of present government policies. It is a warning to the Canadian people, and it is a plea to the members of the government to change direction.
In looking over the resignation statement which the minister gave to the press and to the people of Canada yesterday, I note the minister pointed out that he felt the present Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) was pursuing a policy which was resulting in a federation of ten semi-autonomous states held together by a weak federal government. This is not a statement coming from opposition members in the house. This is a statement coming from the number two man in the Liberal party, the number two man in the government of this

April 25, 1969
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nation of ours. He said that the Prime Minister's "classroom brand" of federalism was hobbling the country. Most of all, he said, it was holding up housing; it was delaying action on pollution; it was crippling urban development; it was stalling urgent action on many other gut issues. The Minister of Transport said he could not accept this situation.
When we examine in detail the statement which the minister made yesterday, it would seem it is high time that everyone sitting in this house did a little more thinking about the direction in which this government is taking Canada and Canadians. I have been here since September. I have heard a host of promises from ministers of the government. I have heard them tell us what they were going to do about the housing problem facing Canadians.
[DOT] (7:40 p.m.)
Let us see what the minister in charge of housing, the key man in the government and the number 1 expert on the housing problems of this nation, had to say yesterday. What he said was, that he could see "little or no chance in the coming "weeks or even months", of any of his housing task force recommendations being accepted by the government." He went on to say, as reported in the Ottawa Journal of April 24:
I say housing is a matter for the federal government. It always has been. It should be now, with Ottawa giving strong leadership.
This afternoon we heard member after member from the Liberal side of this chamber repudiate the statements made by the former minister. We have had an indication since September that strong leadership would come from the present administration. Suddenly, we find that it has not come and apparently there is little intention on the part of the present administration to give effective leadership to the Canadian nation in the field of housing.
The minister went on to discuss another phase other than housing and said:
My constituents, many of them poor people, can't wait.
The kids who tried to swim at a beach in my riding last summer can't wait for somebody to decide who should clean up the pollution.
I say that we, as Canadians, cannot wait any longer for this ineffective, weak, vacillating government to take action in the field of pollution. For too long we have had these important problems in respect of housing, pollution, urban development and unemployment hanging over our heads like millstones.

Finally, in desperation one of the key men in the government party had to throw in his resignation because he could not accept this inaction any longer. Hon. members in the Liberal party should give a lot more thought to standing up to the Prime Minister and demanding that changes be made, particularly when we are heading in a direction that is not good for Canadians.
Let me spend a few minutes more discussing one or two statements made yesterday, because they are vitally important to Canada. We in this party have been critical, as we are being critical today-perhaps more so than ever before-of this government. Let me refer to what the former Minister of Transport, who was in charge of housing, had to say as reported in the same article. The article reads:
Now, he has found himself stymied by a Prime Minister who insisted that "constitutionally many of these things are not federal responsibilities."
He was referring to urban problems, problems in respect of housing and pollution.
During the election last June, this government gave every indication to the people of Canada that it was going to deal with these problems. When we arrived in Ottawa we found that the Prime Minister and his cabinet had deliberately misled the Canadian people. They did not tell Canadians during the election campaign last June that they were going to abandon the housing problem and place it on the shoulders of municipal and provincial governments. They did not say last June that they were going to throw housing and pollution problems over to municipal and provincial governments. They never told the people last June that they were not interested in the urban problems facing this nation. They did not tell the people last June that this was the direction in which they intended to proceed. I suggest it is high time every member in this house did a great deal more serious thinking about this resignation and this statement than has been done in the short period since it was made.
The minister made another statement which I think is worth reading into the record. He said:
The Prime Minister's constitutional theories sound fine in the classroom-the trouble is they just won't work.
People expect the federal government to provide full employment-without this insidious inflation- to take action on clear air and clear water. These are the bread and butter issues. But these are the issues the Prime Minister says must be left to the provinces while he sorts out the constitutional priorities.
April 25, 1969

This is not criticism by a member of the N.D.P. or the Conservative party. This is a criticism coming from the number two Liberal of this country, as of yesterday.
Let me make a very quick review of the housing problem that faces Canada. When we came to Ottawa, the members of this party had a program in respect of housing which we thought would work, and we presented it to the Canadian nation. I have no regret because of the stand we took. Last September when we came to Ottawa for the first session of this particular parliament we were told by this government we were to expect a just society. What a wonderful vision this was. The poor "Joe" in the most humble home began to think that at last we had a Prime Minister and a government which might do something for Canadians. I came here filled with the hope that at long last the government and the Prime Minister were interested in the problems facing all Canadians. What happened?
We had not been here very long before this problem of housing was pushed aside. We then had to appoint a task force to look into housing problems. We have been looking into housing problems in Canada for many years. I am sure every hon. member has a thick file with suggested solutions to this problem.
In order to stall for time, this task force was set up. It travelled across the nation and heard briefs from a number of organizations. We were told the report would be made in December. Then, we were told it would be made in January, or that legislation resulting from the report would be presented. We were told the same thing in February, then in March and then in April. We are now very close to May. There is an indication that at long last some legislation is to be brought before the house.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: Don't bet on it.


Randolph Harding: If there is one thing I will bet on so far as legislation is concerned, it is that the minister would not have offered his resignation at this time had the proposed legislation included a majority of the recommendations of the task force.
[DOT] (7:50 p.m.)
The task force report was extremely weak. The need for public housing was completely ignored. Then, we find the Minister of Transport handing in his resignation because of lack of action by the cabinet. I ask, Mr. Speaker, who in Canada needs housing? It is
Housing
not the members of the House of Commons; it is not people in the higher income brackets. The people in Canada who need adequate housing are those in the lower income brackets. What has been done about this problem? What are the suggestions from the government benches? Statistics have been thrown at us today by the Prime Minister and others. With regard to housing starts and houses constructed in Canada over the past two years, the vast majority have been for people in the well-to-do class in terms of income. Today, you have to earn $8,000 or $9,000 a year before you can obtain a loan under the National Housing Act. What about the people in the $2,000 and $3,000 a year income class- what is the government doing for them? Is this part of the just society? Is this the Liberal vision of bringing justice to a group of people who are in dire need? What are the plans of the government?
I have read the report of the task force and listened to speakers from the government side of the house, but nowhere do I find even the suggestion of solutions to the problem. In Canada today one million families live in poverty; this is the estimate of the Economic Council of Canada. One hundred thousand Canadian families in our large cities are waiting for public housing accommodation. We are told that the government cannot do anything about it because it is a municipal and provincial problem. There are recommendations in the task force report, inadequate as they are. One solution is to bring down the cost of housing to a level which people can afford. Then, they will be able to own their own homes; young couples will be able to live in homes of their own and raise their families. But we find that recommendation after recommendation has gone by the board.
Our recommendation, to cut out the 11 per cent federal sales tax, has been stamped upon by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Benson). Just yesterday or the day before he indicated, in answering a question in the house, that the tax would not be removed. This is one solution, but the government has not the gumption to act up on it. There is the problem of land assembly, and the curtailment of costs. If you go down the line you can find 20 or 30 items in regard to which the government has done nothing and intends to do nothing. The people of Canada should know what this government is doing to solve the problem. They should know why there has been this stalling by the government. That is why I welcome the opportunity to raise this issue in the house.

April 25. 1969
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Steve Eugene Paproski: Mr. Speaker, the motion before the house is of great importance. We are dealing with more than the resignation of a minister; the question facing us involves basic questions of government policy. When the minister resigned, he gave a press conference and made charges against the government of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) more serious than any made from this side of the house. He has brought into question the whole area of government policy on major matters affecting many millions of Canadians living in urban centres.
The Minister of Transport has placed before parliament and the people, in the most public way possible, a basic disagreement within the cabinet about the government's constitutional position. He has stated that he cannot accept the narrow and inflexible position taken by the Prime Minister, which has the effect of preventing action in the fields of housing, urban renewal, pollution and all the other matters affecting the populations of our great cities.
The minister has brought to light a basic and serious disagreement on policy. To do this, he resigned. That does not settle the question. It does not free the Prime Minister from the onus of placing before the house his views on these matters and reassuring the people of Canada that he has not, in fact, adopted a position which is not consonant with the great problems which we face in these areas. The problems affecting the urban populations of our vast metropolitan complexes such as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Halifax and Ottawa are the most serious, urgent and vital problems which we have before us today.


An hon. Member:: And Cornerbrook.


Steve Eugene Paproski: My hon. friend says, "And Cornerbrook".


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: And Hamilton.


Steve Eugene Paproski: And Hamilton. Parliament has voted hundreds of millions of dollars. We have witnessed a number of conferences at the federal-provincial level, and many of us have attended conferences designed to come to grips with these problems. It is a fact that when the government invited the provinces to Ottawa on these questions, shortly after the Prime Minister assumed his high office, the provinces went away empty-handed and disappointed. We know now why this was so. The reason was simply that the government refused to recognize the problems.
[Mr. Harding.)
It is obvious that the Prime Minister suffers from some kind of mental block when it comes to urban problems. The minister in charge of housing, transportation and urban problems is a reasonable man. He has held important and responsible portfolios; he was the architect of the unification of the armed forces; he was the chairman of a housing task force with which he allowed himself, as minister, to be actively identified. There is no question about his sincere appreciation of the problems involved in the urban field.
One can sympathize with and understand his feeling of frustration as month after month went by and nothing was done about the extremely serious problems affecting Canadians living in the big cities. In the face of the inertia and steadfast refusal of the Prime Minister to take the problems seriously, the minister, who is an honourable man, resigned. Because of that resignation we see the problem affecting this country today. That problem is indecision at the highest level; indecision about taxes, indecision about housing, indecision about inflation and indecision about pollution.
What of the old people eking out a miserable existence on $120 a month, while this government spends $50 million on a concrete shell in the city of Ottawa, and the Prime Minister disappears to Bugaboo Lodge, as my colleague the hon. member for Hamilton West (Mr. Alexander) said? It was the Prime Minister's indecision which finally became a bugaboo for the Minister of Transport. He was the No. 2 man in the cabinet. There was no room in that cabinet for a No. 2 man there was room only for a No. 1 man. The No. 1 man is the Prime Minister, and don't you forget it.
[DOT] (8:00 p.m.)
Well, when the No. 1 man cannot make up his mind, what does the No. 2 man do? He resigns.
I, for one, am ready to give the Minister of Transport credit for a courageous act. We have seen the growth of ghettos transforming formerly attractive cities into sad and debilitated areas. We have seen pollution transforming attractive waterways into open sewers. We cannot go on selling out our heritage for a mess of pottage. The minister knew that. Yet, nowhere in that cabinet could he get any sympathy for his point of view.
The Prime Minister says, "We are spending a lot of money". No one will deny that. What are we getting for it? It is not the number of
April 25. 1969

housing starts that we are worried about. As the Prime Minister said today, it is the number of completions in a single year, and it is the soaring cost of those houses once they are completed.
Let us not forget that the 11 per cent tax that this government imposed represents one of the major elements in escalating the price of homes beyond the reach of ordinary Canadians. The more the value is inflated, the bigger the tax gets. A $12,000 home five years ago is a $16,000 home today, and the tax is applied to the $16,000. Naturally, it becomes a bigger and bigger tax as prices go up.
We all know that action must be taken on urban problems. We all know that there must be a minister in the government with whom the provinces can deal, a minister to whom the provinces can turn with their problems, a minister with whom the municipalities can confer. We will have a new minister in charge of housing, I hope. I do not envy him that position because he will have the same problem as did the former minister, namely, the problem of getting this government interested in the "nuts and bolts" questions of keeping this country a good place for Canadians to live.
The Minister of Transport is not the issue here, nor the minister's resignation. The issue here is the Prime Minister and the policies or lack of policies which made that resignation necessary. It is up to the Prime Minister to explain to the house what his polices are. We do not want the wishy-washy cover-up we got yesterday, but a full, frank and complete expose of the government's program for housing; their program for making land assembly funds available to municipalities; their program to combat pollution and the blight of urban decay. That is the only way in which the Prime Minister can deal with this situation.
Has he or has he not got a program? If he has, what is it? We have waited a whole year now for some sign of action on the part of the government, some realization on their part that there were problems in these areas and that something had to be done. There has not been the slightest indication that the government even recognizes the problems. Naturally, if they do not recognize them, they cannot solve them.
The issue is a simple one. Both the Minister of Transport and the Prime Minister cannot be right. One of them must be wrong. If what the minister said is true and the Prime Minister is taking a hand's off attitude about
Housing
some of the most serious and urgent problems affecting Canadians in every province, then he should say so and take the issue to the people. If the Prime Minister feels that his constitutional beliefs are such that the government can neither co-operate with the provinces nor show leadership in the fields of housing, pollution, urban transit, and slum renewal-and this is what the provinces themselves have charged-then let the Prime Minister say so in a frank and honest way. Let him take the question to the people so that Canadians can decide whether or not they want leardership in these fields.
Let him take the issue to the people and let us see whether they will believe the Prime Minister's lame, halting, confused explanation, or the clear, concise position taken by the Minister of Transport. This is a matter so important to the future of this nation that only the people can decide.


Winona Grace MacInnis: Mr. Speaker, I regret that it has been necessary for me to miss a good part of the debate today. I realize that a great deal has been said on this subject and that many facts and figures have been adduced. However, I feel that, coming from the west coast, I have something to say on behalf of the people out there for whom a housing crisis does exist, as a matter of fact, for whom a housing crisis has existed for a long time. Many of these people will be terribly upset and disappointed when they listen to or read the words the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) spoke here this afternoon. He said that, in his opinion, there is no housing crisis in Canada at the present time. There is none for the Prime Minister. There is none for most of us here in the house, and there is none for a great many Canadians because the housing crisis is basically a crisis of income and those people who can afford to rent or to buy decent housing accommodation can do so. As for the other people, the two-thirds of Canadians who have incomes of below $7,500, there exists a very great housing crisis, increasing in severity as one goes down the income scale.
It is not a new thing for the Prime Minister to have told us that no housing crisis exists. He said this last fall in the speech from the throne in which there was no mention of one of the major problems facing the Canadian people today, namely housing. Nor has there been any subsequent action which would result in providing homes for the people who

April 25, 1969
Housing
need them in this country, people in the moderate and low income groups. There has been no subsequent action of any kind until the task force was hurriedly set up and travelled across Canada.
I am beginning to understand fully why the Minister of Transport decided to head the task force. I know of no other commission or committee of this type which has ever been headed by a minister. In my view it was a very strange thing to do, but I think I know why the minister did it. When a government does not like the recommendations in a commission report, frequently it pigeonholes it. I rather suspect that if an independent commission had gone across this country and the government had not liked the recommendations of that commission, that is what it would have done. So, the Minister of Transport decided not to run that risk and he headed the task force himself. Then, he hoped that the government would like the recommendations of the task force. However, the government was not even prepared to accept the recommendations of this task force headed by a cabinet minister. The resignation of the minister in charge of housing, in my view, marks the complete and total failure of the government to deal in any way with housing in this country.
The thing that most appalled me in the Prime Minister's speech this afternoon was the total lack of consideration which he displayed for people with moderate and low incomes. Even worse than that was the total lack of any knowledge of how people, apart from those in the upper income levels, have to live in Canada. As he spoke I could not help thinking of the time when Marie Antoinette, prior to the French revolution, was told that the people had no bread to eat. She replied, cheerfully and logically, "Let them eat cake". Today, the Prime Minister, when told that these people had no homes in which to live, said, equally cheerfully and gaily in effect, "Let them go to Bugabook, or the West Indies, or some place else. There is no housing crisis in Canada".
[DOT] (8:10 p.m.)
As a matter of fact, we are reminded of an incident which took place not many weeks ago when the Prime Minister, in an exercise of participatory democracy, headed down to la Petite Bourgogne, a housing project in Montreal. He was met by a group of tenants who noisely demanded housing, and the Prime Minister had absolutely nothing to say to them. He left, and participatory democracy

was left behind. He had no housing policy to give them. He did not even know that for these people there was a housing need. This is what we should be worrying about in Canada. The Prime Minister is worrying about the constitution and using it, as prime ministers have done over the years, as an excuse for doing nothing. This is nothing new on his part. For a long time the constitution has served as a shield for inaction with regard to pressing problems at the federal level. Instead of spending his time worrying about the constitution and using it as an excuse for inaction, the Prime Minister should start worrying about the people of this country, particularly the wellbeing of those who are in the low income brackets and are unable to look after themselves.
Consider the Hellyer Report for a moment. It says bravely that every Canadian should be entitled to clean, warm shelter as a basic human right. Yet the government knows, or should know, that private enterprise cannot possibly meet the housing needs of the great proportion of the two-thirds of Canadian families whose annual income is below $7,500 a year. The government is also aware that its own agency, the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, has provided in the past largely for the needs of the income group covering the upper 15 per cent in this country, though it is supported by all the taxpayers of Canada. The government knows that more than a million Canadian families have incomes of less than $5,500. It has been told by every housing expert in the country that public housing oriented to the needs of low-income groups is the only way in which people with low incomes can hope to have decent housing.
Despite this, the task force made a recommendation to put public housing in a deepfreeze until its less desirable features could be removed. Even so, the government was not willing to accept the report. Mr. Speaker, I come from Vancouver where there are two big urban renewal projects for which the city has been preparing. The architects and others have been working on them for two years.


Mr. Francis:: May I ask the hon. lady a question?


Malcolm MacInnis: I do not want a question right now. Ask me at the end.
Over and over again, the green light has been sought from this government in connection with these projects so that work could go ahead to rehouse people who so badly need modern, decent housing. These efforts have
April 25, 1969

met with no success. Today, again, my hon. friend from Vancouver East (Mr. Winch) asked about them. I, myself, have asked about them on a number of occasions. The City of Vancouver has been sitting on the doorstep waiting anxiously but can get nothing from this government. It is true the Prime Minister says: We are looking at these bread and butter projects. What people need is not looking, but action.
They need a Prime Minister who can see that there are needs of this kind, one who does not have to be reminded by disorder in the streets that we need urban renewal and attention to urban problems. We were told yesterday by the vice-chairman of the Economic Council that if action is not taken to deal with poverty and these urban difficulties, we shall likely get disorder in Canada's streets along the lines of that experienced to the south. Does the Prime Minister look forward to a situation of this kind?
I should like to remind the government of the need of young couples who are starting to raise families, but who lack decent accommodation in which to do so. What is the sense of our spending money on education, on the rehabilitation of young people and in a host of other directions if we allow the very seedbed of Canadian citizenship to remain in such a poor condition? Good citizens cannot possibly be raised in some of the conditions we find in housing today, these fire traps and rat traps about which we have heard in so many speeches.
I should like to make a plea, too, for the elderly people who cannot find a place in which to live. When I was home at Easter many such cases came to my attention. An elderly lady was living in a small basement room; she had been told to leave and had no place to go. A mother was trying to raise two girls in one little room behind a store. She found there was a long waiting list for public housing, and that nothing short of death would create a vacancy. Even then, there were too many people ahead of her. And what about the 40,000 families where there is no father as breadwinner, or the families who are living on relief, or those which are supported only by the mother? These are the people of whom I am thinking, and they are to be found in every Canadian city.
When we get a replacement for the Minister of Transport (Mr. Hellyer), I think we should get twins. It is no use having a minister of transport in charge of housing. The Canadian people are sick and tired of having
Housing
housing tied like an appendage to other departments. In the eight years since 1960, housing has been tied to five different departments. It has been shifted from one to another. What is everybody's business is nobody's business. Though the government pays lip service to the principle that housing should receive a high priority, responsibility for housing has been made an appendage of the Department of National Revenue, the Department of Labour, the Department of Public Works-I cannot remember the others for the moment. The Prime Minister could, of course, reserve it for himself. If he does so, he will be giving this responsibility to somebody who says he cannot see evidence of a housing crisis. In that case, it will become a little memory and will go the way of other memories connected with housing in this country.
I urge the Prime Minister and those behind him to see the writing on the wall while there is yet time. We have seen no disorder in our streets yet. We still have citizens who believe that the Prime Minister and the government intend to do something; that all the shiny new machinery that has1 been set up since the beginning of September will produce results and that all the extra civil servants are there for some purpose. They believe that the regional desks, the extra boards and commissions will be turning out services and facilities which the people need. While they still believe these things, let me urge the government to take action before it is too late. I suggest that the Canadian people will be patient only for a little while longer. When they find they will not get houses, when they find nothing will be done, there will be a change. The Canadian people are going to turn into something very different from the patient, quiet, well behaved citizens they have been. If the government will not solve these problems for the well being of the people and out of concern for the way the majority of the people in this country have to live, let them do it in order to save themselves while there is still time. We in Canada are patient, but there is a limit to our patience.
[DOT] (8:20 p.m.)


Robert Jardine McCleave: Mr. Speaker, in the wee small hours of this morning, Mr. Jean Beliveau said "I am going to put an end to it", and did precisely that. I think there is a general agreement on this side that my contribution will wind up this particular game of overtime.
The history of housing in Canada has many chapters that could be considered studies in

April 25, 1969
Housing
frustration. To this state of frustration has been added the tragedy of a man who has put a great deal of enthusiasm into trying to do something about the housing situation in Canada. He has been frustrated and his reward is to depart from a high position in public life.
Since two o'clock this afternoon, we have debated many aspects of the situation. Two of the most important aspects are the government's approach to the constitution and, what has been hardly touched upon, the reorganization of the government departments as well as the related question as to whether they can reach decisions easily. It seems one of the by-products of the approach of the present Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) to government has been to make the decision process more cumbersome than it had been previously.
We heard the Prime Minister speak this afternoon. He put forward the best face he could following the resignation of his senior Privy Councillor. When the Prime Minister's speech was finished, Mr. Speaker, the fact still remained that the body was still at the scene and so was the Prime Minister. I suggest that with the Minister of Transport continuing to occupy a seat in the house, the Prime Minister will find himself very much like MacBeth who was haunted by the ghost of one he had slaughtered.
The Prime Minister has not given us an explanation of the differences between himself and the Minister of Transport. No explanation has been given, yet this is the real purpose of the debate. If we cannot get the information inside the House of Commons, we can look at what happened over the past few months. We can look at the statements made by these gentlemen outside the house and get a pretty clear idea of what has happened.
The Prime Minister has mentioned the proposed amendments to the National Housing Act. This was the legacy from the Minister of Transport. I listened carefully to the Prime Minister on this point. He seemed to deal with specific aspects of the housing problem, but not with the heart of the problem. The heart of the housing problem is twofold. The first aspect of the problem is the cost of housing, and the other is housing for people with lower incomes. With neither of these core problems has the government been conspicuously successful in arriving at good solutions.
As the hon. member for Vancouver-Kings-way (Mrs. Maclnnis) noted, housing has been

an additional portfolio. What has been done by the various ministers? Mr. Nicholson carried out a series of symposia from coast to coast. The right hon. Mr. Pearson held a dominion-provincial housing conference which was one of the more monumental fiascos in these parts. Following the last election, the Minister of Transport enthusiastically travelled around the country heading up a task force.
The task force has made its report, but what actual changes have occurred in housing policies since the last election? There has been some extra home building as a result of a $170 million windfall. This was simply a diversion from public housing because that money was not spent for public housing, but used for home building.
Secondly, there was the cut in public housing because of sociological and other distressing factors. The Minister of Transport promised he would bring in the criteria for acceptable housing projects. This has not been received yet, and today was supposed to be the last day this would be presented. For historians of this rather interesting occasion, I refer to Hansard of last Thursday in which there are exchanges dealing with this criteria. On Tuesday of this week I asked the Minister of Transport when those criteria would be available. He did not say "by the end of the week", but "fairly soon".
I suspect the failure to win acceptance for this criteria may have been part of the minister's frustration. An announcement was made with regard to a start on two housing projects for lower income people in Ottawa. I think these will be very worth while. I certainly hope they achieve what the minister had in mind. However, it is a very small experimental start on what is really a very severe national problem.
One specific act in the field of housing is the provision for more flexible National Housing Act mortgages with periodic reviews. A person is not faced with the prospect of having to settle for one fixed interest rate over a long range mortgage but can have a short range mortgage which will be negotiable at the end of five years at whatever interest rates prevail at that time. I suggest this really means people are asked to gamble, to guess, or both. If any of us in this chamber five years ago could have guessed what type of mortgage position we would be in today, I think we would be horrified. Five years ago no one would have anticipated mortgage rates of 10 per cent and second mortgage rates of almost double that.

April 25, 1969
[DOT] (8:30 p.m.)
These are four things that have happened in the housing field since the Minister of Transport was appointed to head the task force and made responsible for Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. No wonder the story reeks of frustration. There are other factors, of course. The government ignored his task force report and the suggestion going to the core of the problem, the one to do with setting up a department of urban affairs. All those recommendations were met with a blunt no. When the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Gilbert) asked in this chamber whether the 11 per cent sales tax on building materials was to be removed, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Benson) dismissed the idea in a cavalier manner. He also did that the other day, almost out of contempt for the ideas of the outgoing Minister of Transport.
On looking through the transcript of the press conference one finds that the minister considered most important the idea of making loans to municipalities, with the concurrence of the provinces, of course, so they could buy serviced land. The idea was to buy time with the constitutional purists of the cabinet, but that did him little good. He considered that such a policy was most likely to succeed and was the most practical policy. In the transcript he is reported as saying, in part:
The reason I feel that Is very Important Is because it is the only way that I know that you can get the cost of housing down quickly. Well, I shouldn't say the only way-the most practical way, the thing that is most likely to succeed in the short run, and consequently I put considerable importance on it because I think the cost of housing could be reduced by say $1,000 to $2,000 per unit for all houses built in Canada in perpetuity, by aggressively pursuing this policy.
There, he was speaking of something that was at the heart of the recommendations contained in the report of the task force. That was all whistled aside because of a constitutional position about which many of us have serious doubts. No wonder the minister could take it no longer and simply backed out.
Years ago, in the 1920's and 1930's, one of the great English judges on the judicial committee of the Privy Council looked at the Canadian constitution and treated it with what lawyers call the living tree approach. That is, the constitution was not the bare
bones of something put together in 1867 but was a growing and useful instrument which took into account precedents arising from dominion-provincial developments over the years following the enactment of the British North America Act. I think the living tree philosophy for a constitution is sound. I suggest that the Prime Minister has taken the living tree of our constitution and vigorously pruned many of the new limbs. Has the man never heard of Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation?


Thomas Miller Bell: I doubt it.


Robert Jardine McCleave: Why, if the Prime Minister's philosophy had held sway in previous years the National Housing Act would never have become reality. Have not the National Housing Act and Central Housing and Mortgage Corporation become great instruments for the development of Canada?
Again I say that the Prime Minister has taken the living tree of our constitution, knocked off all kinds of branches and turned it, or tried to turn it, into dead wood.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Richard):: Order, please. Pursuant to Section 13 of Standing Order 26 I am satisfied that the debate has been concluded. I, therefore, declare the motion carried.


Thomas Miller Bell: Mr. Speaker, is there anything particular for Monday, if the government can look that far ahead?


Mr. Macdonald (Rosedale):: Business will be as announced yesterday, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Richard):: Order, please. Before adjourning I think we ought to extend our thanks to the staff and to the officers of the house.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Richard):: And to
many who have contributed as much as those who spoke in the debate.
This house stands adjourned until Monday, at 2 o'clock p.m. I hope you all have a happy weekend.
At 8.40 p.m. the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.



END OF VOLUME VII


[Stage Direction]
Thursday, March 20, 1969


[Stage Direction]
Sixth report of Standing Committee on Transport and Communications, in French and in English-Mr. H.-Pit Lessard (LaSalle).
[Editor's Note: The text of the foregoing report appears in today's Votes and Proceedings.]