1970-05-22

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


[Stage Direction]
First report of Standing Committee on Labour, Manpower and Immigration-Mr. Weatherhead.
[Editor's Note: For text of above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]

Hon. Mitchell Sharp (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I have now studied the report of the European Commission of Human Rights on the subject of Greece. I was most impressed by the careful, judicious and impartial way in which the commission carried out its work. Very briefly, the commission found that Greece had broken many of its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly those touching personal freedom. It also found that acts of torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners had been carried out and that the Greek government had not effectively suppressed these abuses. On this point, however, the commission found no evidence to suggest that the Greek government ordered or encouraged the use of torture or that it had tried to maintain itself in power by this means.
The commission put forward, and the Council of Europe accepted, ten proposals for the restoration of constitutional and democratic institutions and procedures in Greece. With the permission of the House, I should like to table these proposals. The Greek government does not accept these findings.
Since Canada is not a member of the Council of Europe and is not a party to the interstate dispute that has arisen between Greece
and the Council of Europe, it is not for the Canadian government to intervene in these matters.
However, we have the right, and indeed an obligation, to express our views in support of fundamental human rights and democratic freedoms, about which all Canadians have profound convictions. We are concerned that the European Human Rights Commission has found that there has been a denial of human rights and democratic procedures in Greece. I am conveying these views to the government of Greece. Indeed, I shall be receiving a call from the Greek Ambassador later today, and it is my hope that the government of that country will take them into account in carrying out its declared intention to restore democratic freedoms in Greece.
Members of the House have raised the question of Greece's position in NATO. I am still of the view that Greece should remain in the alliance. Otherwise NATO would be weakened for no useful purpose. We have been in touch with our NATO allies and there seems to be general agreement that Greece should remain in the alliance so that we and other members may maintain our lines of communication with the Greek government. This is the only way I can see for us all to work for the restoration of freedom and democracy in that country, to which the Greek government itself says it is committed.


Hon. Robert L. Stanfield (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, the subject matter of the statement of the Secretary of State for External Affairs has been one of great concern to many of us for some time. I note that the minister, following his examination of the findings of the European Commission of Human Rights, intends to express to the Greek government, through its ambassador to Canada, the concern of the Canadian government. Speaking for myself and on behalf of the Official Opposition, I approve of these representations being made to the government of Greece.
* (11:10 a.m.)
I would not suggest that the Canadian government should now attempt to force Greece out of the NATO alliance. I speak as one who believes in NATO and in Canada's continued

May 22, 1970
External Affairs
association with the alliance, but I have to ask myself whether it will really strengthen NATO if the conditions found by the commission remain. In other words, I have to ask myself whether, if these conditions remain and the commission is not able within a reasonable period of time to give Greece a clean bill of health with regard to human rights, the continued participation of Greece in the NATO alliance would do more to strengthen the alliance in a material way than it would to weaken it in a moral way. Therefore, while I would not press the Secretary of State for External Affairs to take a different position with regard to the membership of Greece in NATO in the immediate future, I hope the government of Canada will take up with our allies in NATO the question of the future and ask itself, ask our allies and ask Greece what should be done with a view to reopening the question of Greece's membership in NATO within a reasonable time if Greece is not able to purge itself before the European Commission of Human Rights. I say this as an earnest supporter of NATO, as one who wants to see the NATO alliance remain strong but also wants to see it remain respected, which is an essential part of its continuing strength.
I ask the Secretary of State for External Affairs to take into consideration not only the present position of the government with regard to the membership of Greece in NATO but what the position of the government will be if the present conditions in Greece, as found by the Commission, continue. In fact I would express grave doubts about the utility and usefulness of Greece remaining in NATO over a period of time if these conditions persist. I suggest very earnestly that if such conditions continue doubts will be raised in the minds of many people about the moral strength of the NATO alliance.


Mr. T. C. Douglas (Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands):: Mr. Speaker, the statement made by the minister is the kind of statement we have come to expect from this minister and this government. It is a statement expressing concern about injustice and totalitarianism but, as with most of these statements, it is followed by a clearcut assertion by the government that they are not prepared to do anything about it. It is not enough to say that we are concerned about undemocratic procedures in any part of the world. We ought to be prepared to back up our words with actions.
Naturally we are pleased that the minister has said that Canada abhors the repression

and the injustice which have been perpetrated by the military regime in Greece, a regime that came to power by a military coup d'etat which overthrew a democratically elected government and now retains office by all kinds of repression.
But the minister does not follow his sentiments of abhorrence by saying that the government is going to do anything. On the contrary, the minister says:
I am still of the view that it would not be desirable to force Greece from the Alliance. To do so would mean weakening NATO for no useful purpose.
It is probably true that from a military standpoint it would weaken the NATO alliance to have Greece out, but I submit that more than military considerations have to be taken into account. The fact is that the real strength of NATO, when it was first formed, lay not only in its military power but in its moral motivation. The primary purpose of NATO, as I recall the wording of the document, was for the defence of democratic institutions, and we are not going to defend democratic institutions in the eyes of the world by continuing to have in the alliance a country which has defied and broken all the precepts of democracy.
It seems to me that Canada, which is not involved in the European syndrome, is in an excellent position to state the case before the Council of Ministers of NATO. We should state categorically that we think that as long as Greece, or any other member of NATO, is carrying out policies which are contrary to democracy and which repress and destroy democracy, it has no place in the NATO alliance.
I certainly hope the government will reconsider its position on this matter and that when the representatives of the Canadian government attend the next meeting of NATO they will go there not only to state categorically that Canadians abhor what is happening in Greece but will urge our allies in NATO to request Greece to withdraw until such time as democracy has been reinstated in that troubled country. We have to say to the world that the purpose of NATO is to protect democratic institutions and that we cannot protect democratic institutions and fight totalitarianism on the left by the introduction of totalitarianism on the right.


Mr. Real Caouelte (Temiscamingue):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have heard the Secretary of State for External Affairs state
May 22, 1970



clearly and firmly the attitude of the government towards the Greek government which does not respect basic human freedoms.
It is never too late to make decisions, even if in our opinion that statement should have been made earlier. However, the Greek government will undoubtedly be informed by its own ambassador about Canada's firm stand about countries which would like to impose totalitarianism or dictatorship.
It is time, I believe, for a country which considers itself the champion of freedom to act, to make a responsible statement in this connection and to call upon Greece to restore individual freedom and democracy, in order that the human being be respected. In my opinion, Canada can play a very important role, by encouraging certain countries like Greece to review their positions so that human beings will be treated as such and not like slaves of the Middle Ages.
[DOT] (11:20 a.m.)



TAX REVIEW BOARD BILL


Hon. John N. Turner (Minister of Justice) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-216, to establish the Tax Review Board and to make certain amendments to other acts in relation thereto.


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


Robert Lorne Stanfield: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Finance, Mr. Speaker. In view of the reported indications yesterday that President Nixon is supporting some expansion in United States monetary policies, are the minister and those responsible for monetary policy in Canada actively giving consideration to some move to strengthen the economy of Canada particularly in view of the obvious slackening in business expectations and the very disturbing situation with regard to unemployment?
Inquiries of the Ministry Hon. E. J. Benson (Minister of Finance):
Mr. Speaker, if any changes in government policy in this regard are to be made they will be announced in the House in the usual manner.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, that is very small comfort to the unemployed people of Canada. I ask the minister whether any consideration is being given. If no consideration is being given to the views of those Canadians who are expressing concern, and they include some very distinguished Canadians apart from any member of the opposition, is the minister giving any consideration at all to the concern and criticism reported to have been expressed by the OECD group of examiners who have reportedly found a very serious fault in Canada's economic status?


Mr. Benson:: Mr. Speaker, I think the report is a false report.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Is the government of Canada prepared to table or publish the report of the OECD examiners with regard to Canada's present economic policy?


Edgar John Benson: Mr. Speaker, it will be made available as soon as it is published by the OECD. It has not been published yet.


Hon. George Hees (Prince Edward-Hastings):: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker. Is the Minister of Finance aware of the sharp fall-off in retail sales during the month of April, which has just been announced, giving very clear indication of the fact that the economy is slackening, and does he not think that, with all these indicators of a slackening economy and growing unemployment, the government should take some steps to quicken the pace?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I suggest to the hon. member that perhaps the first part of the question is not entirely in order. He asked whether the minister is aware of certain facts. I would think that the second part of the question is argumentative. Perhaps the hon. member might like to rephrase the question.


George Harris Hees: In view of the facts, of which I am sure the minister is aware, does he not think it is about time the government gave consideration to policies to bolster the economy?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. I simply wish to ask the Minis-

May 22, 1970
Inquiries of the Ministry ter of Finance and the Acting Prime Minister whether they will not give earnest consideration to the policies now being pursued and whether they are prepared to sit by with the present policies and either push Canada into or allow Canada to enter a depression?


Edgar John Benson: Mr. Speaker, I do not think there is any danger of Canada entering a depression-


Mr. Crouse:: We are already in it now, Mr. Speaker.


Edgar John Benson: -and the government is continuously reviewing its fiscal and monetary policies.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Am I to take it from the minister's statement that this is the first he has heard of the conditions in that village? Are communications in the minister's department so deficient that ships passing by have to do the job which his department ought to be doing?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. It seems to me that the second part of the hon. member's question is purely argumentative. Perhaps the minister might like to reply to the first part of the question.


Mr. Baldwin:: The Minister of Finance is not aware of general conditions, either.


George Harris Hees: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Does the minister not think that the country is entitled to something better than the same old broken record he has been playing for the last three or four years?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.



INDIAN AFFAIRS


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development regarding a report today that the S.S. Manhattan supplied some 4,000 pounds of food to the Eskimo inhabitants of Pond Inlet in northern Canada. Although we are all grateful for the generosity of the crew of the S.S. Manhattan, may I ask the minister whether his department was aware of the deplorable conditions in that area and whether any assistance has been provided or is to be provided to the people of that community?


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, personally I am not aware of the present situation at Pont Inlet. It is the first thing I have heard about a food problem at Pond Inlet.
I shall inquire immediately to determine whether there are really unfortunate conditions over there. We have a local administrator and if such a situation exists he should have reported it to the authorities concerned. Anyway, I myself shall be at Pond Inlet on Sunday and I shall make my own investigation on the spot.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: In answer to this question, Mr. Speaker, I can say that responsibilities having been transferred to the government of the Northwest Territories, such requests are usually sent directly to Yellowknife rather than to Ottawa. It was the desire of the House that responsibilities be transferred as quickly as possible to the government at Yellowknife. This probably explains why the news had not reached me. The request must have been made directly to the Commissioner in Yellowknife.



INDUSTRY


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Finance.
Does the Canadian government intend to make an early revision of its policy concerning Canada's gold producers?


Edgar John Benson: Mr. Speaker, if there is to be any revision we will announce it in the House.


David Réal Caouette: I would like to ask a supplementary, Mr. Speaker.
Could the minister tell the House whether the Bank of Canada is buying or is still prepared to buy the gold produced in Canada, at the free market price?


Edgar John Benson: Mr. Speaker, I will look into this. I believe the gold production of Canada is bought at the standard price and sold abroad. I will check and report back.
May 22, 1970



WHEAT-ACREAGE REDUCTION PROGRAM-ESTIMATED SUMMERFALLOW ACREAGE

Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prince Albert):: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the Minister without Portfolio, the hon. member for Sas-katoon-Humboldt, whether as a result of examinations which have been made in the western provinces he can advise the House of his department's latest estimate made three or four days ago as to the number of millions of acres that will be taken out of production this year and put into summerfallow?


Hon. Otto E. Lang (Minister without Portfolio):: Mr. Speaker, to my knowledge no authoritative estimate has been made in connection with the number of acres to be taken out. Of course, many people have been furnishing their own guesses on the matter. However, there has been no statistical survey.


John George Diefenbaker: I am not asking for "guesstimates", Mr. Speaker. The minister says that the departmental officials have not made any estimate on the basis of the seeding done to date, and the general reaction of the people. Is that the answer he is giving to the House?


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for-


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. The minister made a statement that bears striking resemblance to a statement he made a few days ago in this House. Does the minister say that an estimate has not been made in his department?


Mr. Mcllrailh:: That is not what you are asking.


John George Diefenbaker: It is so.


Otto Emil Lang: On the question of privilege, I do not think I have anything to add to my previous answer.



FINANCE


George Harris Hees: I wish to direct a question to the Minister of Finance. On April 28, four weeks ago, I asked the minister if the government would give consideration to its tariff policies as they apply to imports of footwear and electrical goods from low-wage countries such as Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and others where
Inquiries of the Ministry wage scales are so low that Canadians cannot compete with these conditions. This situation is causing mass lay-offs in these Canadian industries. The minister was kind enough to say that the government expected to make an announcement on this very soon. I checked the words "very soon" in his answer. Has "very soon" now arrived?


Edgar John Benson: Mr. Speaker, an announcement was made in one particular field, the textile area. The other areas are under continuing study.


George Harris Hees: A supplementary question. I ask the minister when "very soon" will arrive? When can we expect an answer to be given regarding these two industries?


Edgar John Benson: Very soon, Mr. Speaker.


George Harris Hees: What in the world is very soon? Is it like the four years the minister has taken to fight inflation?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The end of the question period is coming very soon.


Hon. Marcel Lambert (Edmonton West):: supplementary question to the Minister of Finance. Can the minister state whether the Prime Minister intends to discuss with the Prime Minister of Singapore the subject of imports from lower-cost countries so that bona fide Canadian importers will not be caught in the crunch of sudden government action by Order in Council imposing surcharges?


Edgar John Benson: I do not think that is on the Prime Minister's agenda. Of course I do not know exactly what he will be talking about with various people, but I do not believe it is on the agenda.



INDIAN AFFAIRS


Mr. Frank Howard (Skeena):: I wish to direct a question to the very youthful Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Now that the government has endorsed the concept of lowering the voting age to 18 in federal elections, will the minister take steps to ensure that this very beneficial action will also apply to native Indian electors on reserves in the election of band councils?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I am
considering that matter right now. I have

May 22, 1970
Inquiries of the Ministry given the power to the members of the councils in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon to set the age. I hope they will set the age at 18, the same as we intend to do for election to the House of Commons.


Frank Howard: A supplementary question. The answer of the minister was not precisely related to the question. I asked the minister about the Indian Act and whether he will take steps to reduce the age of electors for the election of members to band councils and in other votes and referendums that take place on Indian reserves in Canada?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I am personally studying that matter. The study has not yet been completed because we have a problem with the Indian Act.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: We are having discussions. We would like to change the situation, but we are in the process of negotiations with the Indians. If I say yes to the hon. member today, tomorrow he will accuse me of not having consulted the Indians.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



PENITENTIARIES


Hon. Martial Asselin (Charlevoix):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to ask the Solicitor General a question.
On several occasions I drew the minister's attention to the unfortunate suicides in St. Vincent de Paul penitentiary. The minister answered that an inquiry had been initiated by his department in order to ascertain the causes and remedy the situation. Since then, on May 18 last to be exact, there was another case of suicide at this same penitentiary.
As a preventive measure, would not the minister give immediate instructions to the penitentiary authorities, to have all new inmates undergo a psychiatric examination?


George James McIlraith: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I have examined this and other aspects of the matter. We are very much concerned about the situation in this respect in St. Vincent de Paul penitentiary. We have made a great many studies in that institution to try to get to the base of the

problem and find a satisfactory solution. I do not know whether it would be appropriate in answer to an oral question to give a lengthy answer as to the kind of action we have been taking there, but I would be glad to do so at any appropriate opportunity.


Martial Asselin: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question.
Would the House allow the minister to make a statement on motions because of the great importance of this matter?


Mr. Speaker:: Is the minister seeking leave of the House to revert to motions for the purpose of making a statement?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: Is the minister seeking the agreement of the House to revert to motions?


George James McIlraith: I would prefer to do it on
Monday, but I will do so now if the House wishes.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


George James McIlraith: Mr. Speaker, with respect to the situation regarding suicides in penal institutions, a committee is now examining that question. With respect to St. Vincent de Paul where the situation is quite different from other institutions and where there has been a sharp increase in the number of suicides, we have taken certain additional steps applicable to that institution only. One committee has examined the situation there with particular reference to the physical aspects of that old institution.
As hon. members know, the population of that institution has been reduced to slightly over 400 from 1,200, now that the new Archambeault institution has been completed at Ste. Anne des Plaines. The old wings, which were certainly depressing and which have been described in rather strong language because of their unsuitable characteristics, are being torn down. Extensive changes
May 22, 1970	COMMONS
are being made in a physical sense in the psychiatric ward in that complex. A new psychiatric hospital is being built at Ste. Anne des Plaines. This will end the need for such a facility at St. Vincent de Paul.
Without describing the physical changes proposed at the present time in the psychiatric ward in St. Vincent de Paul, I can say that they will be completed by the end of this month. These changes have been under way for approximately a month.
In addition a committee has been dealing with treatment and conferences are being held with the warden and the institutional officers. Some have taken place but there is continuing activity to try to raise the morale of the officers working in this particular wing and to develop leadership qualities in the officers and staff of that wing. I am referring to both the custodial officers and the nursing officials in the psychiatric area. Five additional hospital officers with psychiatric training are being recruited for that area. We are also rearranging the staff in that wing and supplementing it in a way that there can be increased deployment of the hospital officers mixing with the inmates during the program periods, especially in public places during leisure and evening hours.
c (11.40 a.m.)
We have a preliminary report that I would prefer not to table at this stage regarding some additional changes. We are supplying additional staff by way of full-time psychiatrists as well as the additional part-time officers of whom I spoke. Perhaps for the moment this is a sufficient indication of the position at this time, but I would be glad to report to the House subsequently as matters develop.


Mr. Robert McCleave (Halifax-East Hants):: Mr. Speaker, the House has listened to the minister's statement with extra attention because of the particular nature of the problem that has arisen at this institution. Perhaps it is a commentary on our proceedings that the other day the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs went into a fair amount of depth in dealing with the problem raised this morning by my colleague and on which the minister has made a statement. If the committees ever had a running Hansard the people of Canada would be much more aware of the important work done and the important statements and important information given in committees, but as it is now two or three weeks elapse before the proceedings are published.
DEBATES	7213
St. Vincent de Paul Penitentiary
The problem mentioned by the minister is not one encountered generally in the Canadian penitentiary system but is restricted largely to this one particular institution. The fact is that the problem can be fairly and squarely attributed to lack of proper manpower for psychiatric and psychological treatment. There is no other explanation for it. Indeed, by announcing his recruiting policy this morning the minister has acknowledged that more specialists are needed to examine these unfortunates who enter St. Vincent de Paul. However, this is not a problem that has arisen during the last few days; it has been kicking around for a fair amount of time.
I suggest that the minister has to take further steps to deal with this situation. He must reassess the whole method of admission to this institution-perhaps to others as well but particularly to St. Vincent de Paul. Second, he must bear in mind that the prisoners confined to the mental branch of the institution are less prone to suicide than those who are in other sections. In other words, we again come back to the fact that trained manpower-psychiatrists and psychologists-is the answer. This point was made a few months ago by Dr. Bruno Cormier of McGill University who does some part-time work at St. Vincent de Paul.


Mr. John Gilbert (Broadview):: Mr. Speaker, the most disturbing aspect of the minister's statement is his attitude and approach toward the high suicide rate that we are experiencing in our prisons today. He has the "tight little island" approach and wants to maintain the problem unto himself and his officials. However, the problem has far exceeded such bounds and it is about time that a public inquiry was held into all aspects of the high suicide rate in penitentiaries prevalent in Canada today. The minister talked of a committee having studied the physical aspects of this problem; surely it is time a committee studied the psychological and psychiatric aspects as well.
More important, I have been advised that a group of eight psychiatrists and psychologists in Montreal would have been more than happy to study this problem but were not given the opportunity to do so and had to go to the United States to carry on their studies. If there is a shortage of trained personnel, this may be the result of the attitude of the minister and his officials to employing these people and putting them to work on this serious problem. If the minister is not satisfied
May 22. 1970

St. Vincent de Paul Penitentiary that a public inquiry into the problem should be held, then surely he should bring the officials from St. Vincent de Paul penitentiary before the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs so the committee can study in depth the problems confronting these men today.
We have been told that part of the problem is due to the lack of information on the part of these officials about young prisoners who enter the penitentiary. It may be that the courts and the facilities of the courts have been remiss in giving proper information to the officials before these young fellows arrive at the penitentiary, thereby making it more difficult for the officials to assess their individual problems and to direct treatment for them.
I hope the minister will refrain from preserving this problem unto himself and his officials, and that he will set up a public inquiry to deal with the problem and permit the proper evidence to be given with a view to finding a solution. If the minister does not take that action, surely he should agree to the officials from St. Vincent de Paul coming before the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs to give their views so they may be publicized and solutions worked out.


Mr. Gilbert Rondeau (Shefford):: Mr. Speaker, I believe that the minister's statement is pertinent. However, I suggest that it is incomplete, considering that in recent years there has been a disturbing increase in the number of suicides in Canadian penitentiaries.
Taking into account the cost of the Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines penitentiary, for instance, that is $32,500 per inmate, we are justified in saying, I believe, that the government is spending too much on capital works but not enough to prevent unfortunate incidents such as those we are deploring today.
The government spends lots of money on buildings, but none to prepare the future of the inmates who will eventually be released.
In some countries, inmates are taught a job or a trade to bolster their morale. For some years, the federal government has had a manpower retraining program.
I feel the government should also see that our inmates get an education. In short, the government grossly overspends for the building of premises. In fact, in Cowansville, the district next to mine, there is a fine penitentiary, but the government has organized nothing there by way of psychology and phychia-

try in the interests of the inmates' morale, security and education. When they leave the penitentiary, they will have acquired nothing at all.
This morning, as we have been doing for some time, we must express our concern with the increasing number of suicides in penitentiaries, because we give too much attention to the material aspects and not enough to the moral aspects of the life of the inmates.


Mr. Speaker:: The House will now revert to the oral question period.
[DOT] (11:50 a.m.)



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I would like to return to the question of Greece and ask the Secretary of State for External Affairs whether it is the position of the government that the question of the membership of Greece in NATO is closed or, in view of the minister's statement that he was most impressed by the careful, judicious and impartial way in which the commission carried out its work and that the commission had found that acts of torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners had been carried out and that the Greek government had not effectively suppressed these abuses, is the government of Canada prepared to take up with her NATO allies the question of whether Greece ought to be asked to give satisfactory proof in a reasonable time that it is taking measures to effectively suppress abuse of human rights and, failing to do so, that Canada will reopen the question of Greece's participation in the NATO alliance?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I will be discussing this matter and the statement I made today with the Greek Ambassador who will be calling on me this afternoon. I will, of course, be urging upon him the importance to Greece as well as to the alliance that the government of that country should support the principles of human rights and democratic freedoms. It would not be my purpose, however, to raise that question at the NATO alliance, but of course it may be raised. As I said in my statement, I see very little purpose
May 22, 1970

to be served if Greece were forced out of the alliance, thus breaking the contacts that are so important-and we have found this to be the case in all our contacts internationally- in that we are able to have a direct channel of communication with the government of the country whose policies we are trying to influence. I can see nothing more stupid in this world than breaking diplomatic relations for the purpose of trying-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Lewis:: Who suggested that?


Mitchell William Sharp: Perhaps I might continue, Mr. Speaker. I can see nothing more stupid than to break diplomatic relations with governments you are trying to influence, and thus I do not see any very good purpose to be served in asking Greece to leave the alliance.
I think it is better to have Greece within the alliance where we can bring our collective pressures to bear on that country.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I want it to be clear that I did not suggest a breach of diplomatic relations. This question has not been raised. Is it the minister's view and the view of the government of Canada that Greece or any other country should remain a partner with us in the NATO defence alliance regardless of any breach of human rights? In other words, is it the position of the government of Canada that the question of human rights is of no concern in respect of the NATO alliance, and is it the position of the government that the people of Canada should be asked to remain associated indefinitely in a defence alliance with a government that has been found, in a judicious and impartial way, to have violated human rights?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, as I recall the NATO treaty, it does contain, as it should, references to the defence of democratic freedoms. The question is how we can best accomplish this purpose. We should ask ourselves whether it would be better to have Greece with the alliance where we can bring our collective pressures to bear in supporting the principle of democratic freedoms or whether we should tell Greece to get out and no longer be concerned.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. A number of hon. members wish to ask supplementaries on this very important matter but hon. members will realize that perhaps in due course we should move to another subject. I see that the Leader of the Opposition seeks the floor for a supplementary.
Inquiries of the Ministry


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the Secretary of State for External Affairs whether this attitude is not somewhat in common, although in a very different area, to the attitude of appeasement toward other governments adopted prior to the last world war?


Mitchell William Sharp: I do not think so at all. I think it is important for the alliance that we should all be permitted, including the government of Greece, to support democratic freedoms. If we can keep Greece in the alliance, which has as one of its purposes the support of democratic freedom, then we will be doing a greater service to the people of Greece by keeping Greece in the alliance rather than expelling it.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that the Council of Europe apparently did not consider it would be cutting off communications with Greece by expelling it, may I ask the minister whether he does not consider that NATO would be strengthened in the eyes of the world by making it perfectly clear that nations which do not support democratic freedoms and democratic institutions have no place in NATO?


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The Chair will allow the minister to reply to the hon. member's question, but I suggest we are clearly entering the field of debate. In my view we are having a debate on this question and are getting away from the question period. However, if hon. members agree the minister will be heard in reply to the hon. member's question and then the Chair will recognize a member on another question.


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I do not agree with the statement made by the leader of the New Democratic Party. I believe that the NATO alliance, with which he or his party are apparently not very much in agreement, serves a very great purpose in the world and I see no reason to believe the expulsion of Greece would strengthen that alliance. I do not think that by expelling Greece we would either strengthen the alliance or in any way help to restore democratic freedom in Greece.



TAXATION


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the

May 22, 1970
Inquiries of the Ministry Minister of Finance. In light of the very serious contentions of the Canadian Bar Association in its brief to the finance committee yesterday on the white paper proposals, particularly with regard to their assessment of the proposals dealing with mining companies, would the minister consider publishing the background papers which led the government to the conclusions expressed in the proposals so that the reasoning as well as the conclusions could be assessed?


Edgar John Benson: Mr. Speaker, I anticipate that later I will be appearing before that committee, together with officials of my department, and we would be most pleased to explain our reasoning at that time as we have previously.


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: Mr. Speaker, this concerns not so much the members of the committee as it does the members of the public who are making very elaborate and considered assessments of the white paper proposals. Witness after witness comes forward and says it is impossible to judge the conclusions because they do not know what the reasoning is upon which the government has based its proposals.


Edgar John Benson: Mr. Speaker, the reasoning has been often expressed publicly. I am very pleased that the white paper process is working so well and that the committee is receiving such good briefs.



WHITE PAPER ON REFORM-DRAFTING OF LEGISLATION

Mr. A. D. Hales (Wellington):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a supplementary question to the Minister of Finance. Has he issued instructions to the Department of Justice to draft legislation substantially in line with the proposals of the white paper?


Edgar John Benson: No, Mr. Speaker.



DIVERSION FROM CANADIAN TO AMERICAN PLANTS BY PROPOSED U.S. TAX INCENTIVES

Mr. Max Saltsman (Waterloo):: Mr. Speaker,
I should like to direct my question to the Minister of Finance. Is the government studying the United States government's proposed tax incentives to United States corporations, the purpose of which would be to divert trade

away from plants in Canada to those operating in the United States? If he is conducting such a study, does he intend to make representations to the United States government voicing the objections of the Canadian government?


Edgar John Benson: Yes, to both questions, Mr. Speaker.


Max Saltsman: Mr. Speaker, can the minister indicate to what extent these moves of the United States government are in retaliation against the government's white paper on tax reform?


Edgar John Benson: Not at all, Mr. Speaker.



FINANCE


Mr. Roland Godin (Portneuf):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to put a question to the Minister of Finance.
Could he say whether he has been consulted in connection with the merger of the Provincial Bank of Canada and the Banque populaire du Quebec and whether the move has been approved by the government under the Bank Act?


Edgar John Benson: Yes, Mr. Speaker; I announced it in the House some time ago.



POLLUTION


Mr. David Anderson (Esquimali-Saanich):: In light of the report of the International Joint Commission on oil pollution tabled yesterday and the commissioners' warning that a major oil spill in the Canadian waters of Lake Erie "would be met with only a fraction of the response capabilities available because of the lack of a plan for co-ordination between Canadian federal, provincial and local authorities", would the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources please indicate what steps are being taken or what steps are contemplated to achieve this necessary co-ordination?


Hon. J. J. Greene (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: An effective plan at
May 22. 1970

the federal level is close to reality. This is being co-ordinated among the various departments, and when the federal plan is available every effort will be made-and I think it can be successful-to co-ordinate it with provincial, state and federal United States plans.



WHEAT-PROVISION OF FOUR-BUSHEL QUOTA TO ALL MANITOBA ELEVATOR POINTS BY JULY 31

Mr. Craig Stewart (Marquette):: 1 should like to direct my question to the minister in charge of the Wheat Board. Canadian Wheat Board figures this week show that 212 delivery points, or over two-thirds of all delivery points in Manitoba, are still on a two-bushel quota. Can the minister assure the House that these points will be able to accept-and I stress "accept"-at least a four-bushel quota by the end of the crop year on July 31, 1970?


Otto Emil Lang: As the hon. member knows, this was the objective indicated by the Canadian Wheat Board, and I am certainly hopeful that that objective can be reached.


Donald Craig Stewart: Have the CPR and the CNR been made aware of the large number of boxcars that will be needed to move this grain in the next two months?


Otto Emil Lang: Yes, Mr. Speaker.



REQUEST FOR STATEMENT ON WHEAT BOARD


Mr. A. P. Gleave (Saskatoon-Biggar):: My
supplementary question is directed to the Minister without Portfolio. In light of the recommendations of the task force on agriculture with regard to the pricing policies of the Canadian Wheat Board and the ineffectiveness of the International Grains Arrangement, and in view of the fact that shipments from Australia and the United States to international markets were higher this year than last, will the minister make a statement on motions in the near future with regard to the pricing and sales policies of the Canadian Wheat Board and the status of the International Grains Arrangement?


Otto Emil Lang: Without accepting some of the preamble to the hon. member's question, I cannot answer the question by saying that a statement on these subjects might be made
Inquiries of the Ministry soon. Certainly, matters within the task force report will have to be considered by the government, and as decisions are taken on them or on other matters relating to the grain industry announcements will be made.


George Harris Hees: When the Minister without Portfolio makes the statement requested by the hon. member for Saskatoon-Biggar, will he also include in it an explanation of why Canada's share of the world wheat market has fallen to 23 per cent from 28 per cent in the 1960s, and what the government intends to do to improve this very serious situation?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon.
member is now making a suggestion to the minister. He has to assume that it will be taken into account when the statement is made to the House.



INCREASE IN SHIPMENTS THROUGH PORT OF CHURCHILL

Mr. Robert Simpson (Churchill):: I have a supplementary question for the minister in charge of the Wheat Board. In view of his statement on April 28 that we are still headed for the best wheat export year in years, and in view of the announcement the day before yesterday of the sale to the United Arab Republic, delivery of which is to be made during the period of July through October, is the minister in a position to say whether this will create an extension of the grain shipments through Churchill this year?


Otto Emil Lang: The extremely good sales year will mean, among other things, that shipments through Churchill will be again at a fairly high level. Most of the possible shipments through Churchill were in fact booked prior to the sale to the United Arab Republic.


Robert Simpson: Is the minister able to say whether additional shipments will now be made through Churchill in view of the new wheat sales?


Otto Emil Lang: I cannot say at this stage whether any of these particular shipments may be additional to the previous bookings through Churchill. Of course, the trade has already booked fairly heavily through Churchill, and the question would be whether more could possibly be put through that port.

May 22, 1970
Inquiries of the Ministry WHEAT-ACHIEVEMENT OF FORECAST TOTAL SALES


Mr. Les Benjamin (Regina-Lake Centre):: My supplementary question is for the minister in charge of the Wheat Board. Yesterday, in reply to a question from my colleague the hon. member for Saskatoon-Biggar, he said he was still optimistic about the possibility of exporting 375 million bushels of wheat by the end of July. In view of the fact that less than half of this amount was sold in the first eight months, can the minister tell the House on what he bases his optimism that 192 million bushels will be exported in the remaining four months?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The question is not in order. It is clearly a debate.



TRANSPORT


Mr. Thomas M. Bell (Saint John-Lancas-ter):: My question is for the Minister of Transport. Has the minister received or is he about to receive a report from the federal-provincial advisory committee on transportation in the maritimes, and will there be any publication of the report? Also, has he any ideas on what action will be contemplated?


Hon. Donald C. Jamieson (Minister of Transport):: I will say, in answer to all points in the question, that the report was received a few days ago. It is now being examined by me and by officials of the department. I have had preliminary discussions with some of the representatives from New Brunswick and am proposing to have others this weekend with the other provinces. I see no personal reason why the report should not be made public but I will consult with them. I might say, on the fourth point about implementation, that it will come as quickly as possible.



AIR CANADA


Mr. Stanley Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Transport. In view of the reports in Winnipeg, where I spent part of yesterday-


Some hon. Members:: Explain.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It is
nice to be missed, Mr. Speaker. In view of reports that more than 100 Air Canada pilots and an even larger number of Air Canada stewardesses who are presently based in Winnipeg are to be transferred to other cities so far as their base is concerned, will the minister take this matter up with Air Canada in the hope that an assurance can be given that this further slap will not be given to Winnipeg?


Donald Campbell Jamieson: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I will be very glad to do that.



WHEAT-ACREAGE REDUCTION PROGRAM-EXTENSION OF DEADLINE FOR REMOVING COVER CROPS-LAND UNDER WATER

Mr. A. B. Douglas (Assiniboia):: I have a question for the minister in charge of the Wheat Board. In light of the delay in seeding in many areas of the prairies this spring, has the minister considered requests that have been made to have the July 15 deadline under Operation Lift for removing cover or nurse crops of oats changed to July 31 and, if so, can the minister inform the House as to the decision reached?


Otto Emil Lang: We have given serious consideration to the many representations on this subject but we have made no decision to change the date for the removal of the cover crop. The difficulty includes the fact that there is a commercial market for forage and for hay, and a step in this direction could seriously interfere or disrupt that market. Of course, we contemplate watching closely the forage situation as the year develops, and if there appears to be some special need different action might be required.


Albert B. Douglas: I have a further question with regard to the extremely wet conditions in some areas. Can the minister assure farmers that cultivated land that may still be under water at the time of inspection or aerial survey will not be ineligible for benefits under the Lift program?


Otto Emil Lang: Yes, Mr. Speaker, there should be no difficulty in classing cultivated land under water as being out of cultivation for purposes of the program.


Gerald William Baldwin: 

NATIONAL DEFENCE

[Stage Direction]
REPLACEMENT OF CF-101B Am CRAFT
Mr. Sian Schumacher (Palliser):: My question is for the Minister of National Defence. Can the minister say when we can expect an announcement in reference to the equipping of our air force with an improved version of the CF-101B?


Hon. Leo Cadieux (Minister of National Defence):: The proposal for an exchange of our present inventory of 101's for a more advanced version of the same aircraft is now in the stage of discussions between officials of my department and those of the Department of External Affairs with their counterparts in the United Slates. I expect that we will have an announcement to make in a matter of five or six weeks.


Stanley Stanford Schumacher: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: May I ask the co-operation of hon. members? Since there are just a few minutes left in the question period, perhaps we might keep supplementary questions for the next sitting of the House.



UNITED NATIONS


Alfred Dryden Hales: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Can he explain to the House what Canada's position is or will be at the United Nations with regard to the possibility of a world youth conference, whether Canada is prepared to help financially and, if so, how much?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I could not answer all those questions now, as I would have to make reference to the files. I can say, however, that in principle we are supporting the youth conference. We are prepared to offer financial assistance that seems to us to be appropriate to Canada's interest in the matter. The problem lies elsewhere in the attitude of other countries toward the financing of this youth conference and it is by no means an assured success.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the
Inquiries of the Ministry Acting Prime Minister. Has the government reached a decision on whether to co-operate with countries such as the United States and Britain in financing programs to promote family planning, particularly in underdeveloped countries with rapidly expanding populations?


Mitchell William Sharp: No, Mr. Speaker, the matter is still under consideration.


Mr. R. R. Soulham (Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister without Portfolio responsible for Operation Lift. In view of the fact that the government plans to spend at least $1 million on checking the summerfallow acreages of those western farmers who apply for funds under the wheat acreage reduction plan, would the minister consider having the present PFAA personnel carry out this acreage check rather than pay some private air firm a million dollars to spy on farmers from the air, as is presently contemplated?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, the aerial survey technique is widely recognized as perhaps the most satisfactory way of readily determining what the situation is with regard to the use of land, and of course the aerial survey results will be used by the PFAA team which will have the direct administration of the program.


Richard Russell Southam: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: We just agreed a moment ago, at least I think tacitly, to forgo supplementar-ies in order to have as many members as possible participate in what remains of the question period.



NATIONAL REVENUE


Hon. W. G. Dinsdale (Brandon-Souris):: Mr. Speaker, I believe that the Minister of National Revenue has a reply to the question I posed the other day with respect to centralization of customs mail clearance facilities.


Hon. Jean-Pierre Cote (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, mail entering Canada
May 22, 1970

Inquiries of the Ministry for Manitoba arrives in bags according to the destination on the mail bag. If the destination of the bag is Winnipeg, all parcels therein are cleared by customs at Winnipeg, even though particular parcels may be addressed to other points beyond Winnipeg. There is no downgrading of the service but, on the contrary, it saves double handling by customs and consequent delay. If bags of parcels are addressed to other customs ports in Manitoba they are, of course, processed at those points.



FISHERIES


Mr. Doug Rowland (Selkirk):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Fisheries and Forestry, but since he is not here perhaps his Parliamentary Secretary could answer it. In light of the statement by the Manitoba Federation of Fishermen that compensation is urgently required by June 1 for fishermen who have been put out of work by the closure of various lakes and rivers, could the minister indicate when conversations between his department and the relevant officials in Manitoba will be completed, and also whether the department is carrying on conversations with the Department of Labour with respect to unemployment insurance compensation for people so displaced?


Mr. E. F. Whelan (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Forestry):: Mr. Speaker, I do know that they hope to be able to provide loans to the fishermen by the time the hon. member suggests. As to the other part of his question I am not that sure. I shall have to check and let him know later.



EXPO 70 DISPLAYING OF CANADIAN FLAG AT QUEBEC PAVILION

['Yes, Mr. Speaker. We have looked into this situation and I am very pleased to say that we have decided to provide $25,000 to assist the victims of these recent floods. This will be provided in the ordinary way through the Canadian Red Cross Society, which also has funds of its own for this purpose.']
Mr. Leonel Beaudoin (Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
We have been informed by a newscast from Osaka that the Canadian flag is being flown on one of the six flagpoles at the Quebec pavilion upon instructions from the new Quebec government of Premier Robert Bou-rassa. Therefore, I should like to ask the minister whether this initiative by the government of Quebec has been taken as a result of representations by the federal government?


Mr. Speaker:: I think this question should be put on the order paper.



Mr. Bruce Howard (Okanagan Boundary):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question on foreign aid for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. A number of countries are sending emergency help to flood-ravaged areas of Roumania. Does Canada not consider it has some responsibility to help the people made homeless in this catastrophe?


Mitchell William Sharp: Yes, Mr. Speaker. We have looked into this situation and I am very pleased to say that we have decided to provide $25,000 to assist the victims of these recent floods. This will be provided in the ordinary way through the Canadian Red Cross Society, which also has funds of its own for this purpose.



HOUSING


Mr. Lincoln M. Alexander (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Minister without Portfolio in charge of housing. It has to do with the new policy that the government has now implemented with respect to loans to municipalities for sewer construction. As I understand it, as of April the government is prepared to advance only two-thirds of the amount by way of loan for a project, without any guarantee with respect to additional loans. Would the government immediately reassess the present policy affecting loans for capital works under the National Housing Act in order that a policy can be evolved which would give the assurance of continued federal participation, thereby encouraging long-term municipal planning? I ask the question because apparently the government has unilaterally brought in a program which has frustrated-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The hon. member can ask the question but he should not argue his case.


Hon. Robert K. Andras (Minister without Portfolio):: Mr. Speaker, there has not been a change in the policy for sewage treatment loans made on behalf of the federal govern-
May 22, 1970

ment. We are increasingly facing the need for a careful rationing of our funds, even though we increased the amount of money available for this kind of loan by 50 per cent in 1970 and by 40 per cent last year over the previous year, 1968. I think there is some validity to the concern for longer-range planning on these things, and while there has not been a change in policy we all realize there can be some improvements. I am desirous of seeing what can be worked out in order to assure some continuity toward completion of the rather sizeable programs that are now under way.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Speaker:: Is the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre rising on a point of order?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Yes, Your Honour. My point of order has to do with the business of the House and I ask for the attention of the Government House Leader. In view of the fact that Bill C-215 seems not yet to have been printed for general distribution, I wonder if the Government House Leader would reconsider the plan of business for Monday? I realize there are a few proof copies around, but all hon. members do not yet have the bill. In view of its size and importance, I wonder if a change of business could be made, with the House perhaps going back to the Water Act on Monday.


Mr. Macdonald (Rosedale):: Mr. Speaker, I have been advised by the table that copies of Bill C-215 will be available by two o'clock today, but in order to give hon. members leisure to read its 300 pages I would suggest we might transpose the Order of Business, announced by my Parliamentary Secretary yesterday. On Monday and Tuesday, therefore, we would take the Canada Water Act, and on Wednesday and Thursday the Canada Elections Act-I assume both to completion.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Stanley Howard Knowles: part of a day away did us both good.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: I was here yesterday, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: Orders of the day.
Postal Service Policies
[DOT] (12:20 p.m.)



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Mr. Heath Macquarrie (Hillsborough) moved:: This House repudiates the government's postal service policies and censures those Ministers of the Crown responsible for the mismanagement of the postal services which, within two years, have deteriorated through fewer mail deliveries, fewer post offices, higher postal rates, disrupted and irregular services, and deplorable labour-management relations, to the prejudice of all Canadians, postal employees, and the national economy.
He said: Once again, sir, this House like this nation is showing concern about one of the government departments, the Post Office. How often in the past two years has this been the case? We have had one lengthy national strike, a number of walkouts, innumerable crises and constant and continuing dissatisfaction. There have been commissioners, task forces, inquiries, delegations and white papers galore. Once considered a minor and relatively quiet department of government, the Post Office Department has become one of the most controversial. Why is this so? Accident? Coincidence? Have technological developments made the transportation of mails uniquely difficult, while other forms of communication and transportation have become infinitely more swift? Has there been an obsolescence in this area? Hardly; people still read and write. Canadians still communicate one with another by the written word, whether it be for business or personal reasons or with love letters or what have you.
It would seem, therefore, that there are other reasons. Why, since June 25, 1968, has this department been so contentious, its services so frequently disrupted and its users so deeply dissatisfied? Why do turmoil, tension and uncertainty triumph eternally in this department? In what other department of government, in any level, municipal, provincial or federal, have we ever seen a case where the workers in that department insert paid advertisements in the press apologizing to the public for the poor service they are giving?
Months ago I described the Post Office under the present minister as a place where the mail accumulates and morale decays. On both counts there has since been ample and

May 22, 1970
Postal Service Policies
painful justification of that description. After, when the minister gets to his feet, when he finishes calling me names-he has a wonderful catalogue but I do not have a research staff, so cannot do that-no doubt he will don the mantle of the great reformer. The names I think of I would not use because I am a polite man, so I do not get into that field. The minister is better at tossing semantic star dust in people's eyes than running a department. After all this, he will doubtless point to the years of neglect before his vigorous initiatives and innovations were visited upon the unsuspecting Canadian people and their employees of the postal service.
He has often referred to those ancient pre-Kiernsian days and scorned those who failed to alter things. In the process of course, he chooses to ignore the years of the Postmaster Generalship of the Honourable William Hamilton when many reforms were inaugurated. Perhaps judging by the present minister's record he regards as reforms only those changes which are disruptive, traumatic and counter productive. Perhaps he is the kind of man who is an administrative Hercules, who looks upon his department as a many headed Hydra and he, with his vigour, must go and lop off these various heads. He started this very, very early in the game. He lopped off one day of mail service. That was a simple thing to do-six to five-but the cut was a bit jagged there because he had to restore it to the rural people. Now, some have six, some have five and some have three, but there has been no differentiation in the price of stamps.


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: It is lousy at the best.


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: Then again, he lopped off a couple of thousand or 1,500 rural Post Offices. In case the people were getting too many Canadian ideas he lopped off a few newspapers, a few publications, a few journals of thought and opinion through his prohibitive rates. One of his final efforts-I think he had a little help in this lopping off-was against the unfortunate drivers of the Lapalme trucks. They got lopped off, too.
So our mighty Hercules has been lopping off, lopping off. I wonder what he had in mind? Was it a Freudian slip when he said a year ago, after one of his greater mistakes, "if this happens again heads will roll, mine among them." So, my concern about decapitation is stimulated by this remark. It is not so much my concern about his head as concern about the department which he, alas, heads.

There are unique aspects of the present regime. Never has so much studying been done by so many for so long. Is it three-quarters of a million that has been spent-is it a million? I am not sure. There must be a massive library of studies on this one department. Inefficient his department may be, but surely it is a studied inefficiency.
How old fashioned were these inefficient predecessors of the present minister? Under their dull, stale administration things were so routine, so bread and butter. The mails went through and a nickel could buy a stamp. In the mail of the Members of Parliament the biggest pile was not a bunch of complaints about the mail itself. How long ago all this seems.
If one reads Bullock's "Selected Readings in Public Finance" one comes across an interesting paragraph which should appeal to a lineal descendant of a Liberal, stating:
The best-established and in many cases the oldest form of public industry is the postal service, which Adam Smith described as "the only mercantile project which has been successfully managed-by every sort of government."
It was reasonably so until lately. So powerful is this man that he can even make Adam Smith look a bit goggle-eyed and prove him wrong. How remote and unreal those days of his predecessors seem. How many days in the past two or three months have we been without protest about the postal service? How many Canadians in that period have not been unhelpfully affected by the actions of this department-increased costs, decreased services, wholesale closing of rural post offices, embargo this day, cessation the next and uncertainty all the time. It is a long and dreary chapter of stubborn ineptitude, bull-headedness and unwillingness to learn from any mistake no matter how egregious.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: How many more castigations, such as that of Mr. Martin, how many more criticisms such as that of Commissioner Goldberg, must we have before there is recognition that there is something terribly wrong in the way the Post Office Department is being conducted and administered?
In our concern for the present problem and our anxiety over a national strike, we must not lose sight of the fact that this is but a culmination of events which have been moving from bad to worse and to worse still, ever since this minister assumed the port-
May 22, 1970

folio-one for which by personality, temperament, background and value scale he is uniquely unsuited.
One might ask how many culminations are we to have? How much more must the people of Canada endure before someone up there decrees that this is the wrong minister doing the wrong things in the wrong department? I am not going to say at the wrong time-I would say all the time.
For many months the minister's lack of finesse and sensitivity in dealing with people in his domain and the people of the country has been demonstrated to the rueful regret of the people of this land. Need I refer to the magnificent mishandling of the Lapalme workers and the awarding of new contracts? The people of Montreal paid for that through week after week of poor service or no service. The people of the whole country will pay, too. The full accounting is not yet in.
But lest we believe that the minister may have lost the art of turning the incredible into the disastrous and making a fiasco out of any given bungle, his eruption of a few days ago reassured us that not much had changed, despite his long absence. He was back again in the headlines and again in trouble. On the eve of a strike vote, and at a time when representatives of the government were discussing matters with representatives of his workers, he erupted in the Globe and Mail as reported by one of that newspaper's respected and efficient reporters, David Crane. This was the helpful comment which he made:
[DOT] (12:30 p.m.)
The Post Office is in serious trouble-management still has a long way to go to get into the 20th century, poor morale, lack of opportunity, poor pay lack of opportunity for advancement.
Then, lest that be insufficient denigration of his side to aid the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Drury) who will be involved in these matters, he went on to make some other observations and made us wonder about some of these reported rumbles in the cabinet itself. He is reported as saying:
One problem is that the Post Office does not negotiate its final contracts with its employees. Post Office management has no bargaining power since postal pay increases and working conditions are determined in effect by the Cabinet and Treasury Board.
What was the purpose of that observation? Was there a little pressure on someone, a colleague perhaps? Was that a subtle suggestion that the Post Office and its maestro are really benevolent but that those Treasury
Postal Service Policies
people and perhaps some of the other ministers may not be? One wonders what he had in mind at that time.
Then, lest the public should lose interest in this dynamic administrator, Mr. Crane states in this article:
With time running out for the Post Office, Mr. Kierans and his officials are hopeful they can convince the Cabinet and Parliament of the need for change.
But a number of critical skirmishes lie ahead and these could easily upset the timetable for postal reform. The slow parliamentary pace of change being what it is,-
It is our fault, now.
-the country could have to undergo another national postal crisis along the lines of the present one before the postal corporation opens for business.
So, we are assured that unhappy days are still ahead.
We do not need to remain with the pages of the Globe and Mail to chronicle the minister's helpful contributions towards a smoothly running and efficient postal service. On Tuesday last, after his remarkable comment, as is reported at page 7062 of Hansard as follows:
Over the next five years the work force of the Post Office will expand by some 5,000 people, primarily to meet the increase in volume,-
He said:
-if the Canadian public continues to have confidence in the services of the Post Office.
Hansard then reports:


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: Questioning the confidence that the Canadian people have in his department is about as inane a comment as Nero might have made at a certain juncture when he said, "It's getting warm here." But the minister has been known to be humorous before. In the fall of 1969 he made the memorable proclamation that "99 per cent of the mail is delivered the next day 99 per cent of the time, and that's a conservative estimate." Here is a man who was responsible for blacking out the Saturday delivery. He is such a genius at mathematics as to assume that less than 1 per cent of all mail in Canada is put into our mail boxes on Friday.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: I wonder whether that minister used the old computers of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Benson) in making these

May 22. 1970
Postal Service Policies
calculations. But last Tuesday, the minister quickly passed from humour to something more typical of him. He is occasionally humorous but very often he is, as he was a few minutes later, when he made a comment which will not, I think, be quickly forgotten but which will, I am convinced, never be cited as a model of comment for good labour-management relations dialogue. On that same page he is reported as saying:
People who seek contractual obligations sometimes seek not the work but the pay without work.
This was some contribution to make at the time of delicate discussions on a sensitive issue. Possibly it forecasts another crisis in his department. Is it any wonder that the press and public across the land have made the Postmaster General the No. 1 target of criticism and denunciation, edging out even the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mr. Bas-ford) for that honour? It is not surprising that even the minister himself is now advancing again in the direction of proclaiming the virtues of the establishment of a Crown corporation. Over a year ago I predicted that such a move would come, not because a Crown corporation of itself in this area would be such a wonderful arrangement, but because the minister, having proven-and he has been given two years to do it-his total incapacity to run his department efficiently, smoothly and well, wishes to seek the only way out of his colossal failure. He wants to wash his hands of it and say that it cannot be run as effectively as it should be. There is uproar. The minister says, "We cannot do the job," hence his recipe of a Crown corporation. What a confession of failure, sir, this is. The confession of failure will be noted. Perhaps it is right that the minister should finally, in this way, make a confession of failure-a rather muted confession because the minister is not a man whose public humility shows too much.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: But the act will be a more eloquent confession than he could ever bring himself to make in words. So, we are at the stage where it is being recognized, apparently, that the present government cannot operate this department, that something must be done, and that a Crown corporation is the answer.
I wonder, can we overstress the seriousness of mismanagement in this sector of the governmental service, one of the most important departments of the government so far as the

average Canadian is concerned! There are many people in Canada, humble people, for whom the delivery of a letter is perhaps the most important service the government can render.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: This is a well established, ancient public service, and we find that in the last two years it has become the laughingstock of the country. People are paying more than ever before and getting less for their money, and the minister's only answer is to throw down a little stardust. He used to talk much about the communications satellite. Whenever there was trouble in the Post Office, there would be a speech about the communications satellite. But now even that refuge is gone, because we know the satellite will go up much later than forecast and will cost a great deal more than the minister anticipated. There will not be so much talk about that. Now, there is the suggestion of the Crown corporation, put forward as if it were a forward step instead of a confession of failure.
I have indicated, I think, that I have something less than complete confidence in this minister.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: I think, if ever anyone stated the obvious, I have done so. I think, too, that I have been saying what everyone in Canada knows. I should like to bring my remarks to a close, not because I am short of ideas, but because I am short of time. I should like to say a word about the current problem which might become a crisis. Indeed, the first quotation in the Labour News Headlines issued under the authority of the minister's colleague indicates that conditions will be pretty bad. It reads:
CANADA'S SECOND MAIL STRIKE in less than two years appears inevitable today. The 27,000 members of the Letter Carriers' Union of Canada and the Canadian Union of Postal Employees will take formal strike votes today and on Wednesday, but the outcome is a foregone conclusion. With the approval of the rank and file, union leaders in Ottawa could call a strike as early as the end of the week.
That quotation was taken from the Gazette, and is included in the Labour News Headlines of May 19.


David Orlikow: I cannot understand that. The ministers are such good friends!


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: I wonder if the shock waves of this man's disturbing influence ever
May 22. 1970

penetrate to the cabinet. But I do not rush to embrace such a pessimistic view. I have devoted little time to the issue, for two reasons. First, 1 still think that the fundamental question is the over-all conduct of this department and, second, it is also my hope that all will go well with the negotiations. And while I am not enamoured of the sensitivity and imagination of the Treasury Board or the President of the Treasury Board, I can only become enthusiastic about his possibility of success when remembering how much better it is that he should be at those negotiations rather than the Postmaster General. I say to him and the unions that while there are only two negotiating groups in the room, there is a third one in the picture. That is the group which I and every member here represents, the public of Canada.
[DOT] (12:40 p.m.)


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: I say clearly and definitely, and I am confident that in this I speak for Canadians generally, let there be no strike. No matter how well armed one side is to bring about a strike quickly and the other side prepared to sit one out because they have sent out a few cheques, let there be no strike!


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: The people of this country have endured enough poor postal service in the last 23 months. They endured a three-week long strike only a short while ago. They have endured a diminution in service daily. They will not countenance another disruption which would have grievous effects on all aspects of our national economy and bring injury to every Canadian. They will thank no one who forces a strike on them.
In issuing this warning, I am sure that I speak for hundreds of thousands of Canadians who do not want this strike to take place and who want to see that it is avoided. What is wanted by the people of Canada is reason, flexibility, good judgment and good sense, not bitterness, arrogance, hostility and bulldozing. With this reason, flexibility, good judgment and good sense, a serious blow to the nation can be averted. It must be averted.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, in rising to participate in this debate, I join with the hon. member for Hills-22375-39
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borough (Mr. Macquarrie). I agree that the people of Canada do not want another postal strike. There is no reason for another postal strike. I believe that postal employees do not want a strike and are more than willing to reach an agreement on reasonable terms.
If we are close to a strike, it is because of the stubbornness and incompetence of not only the Postmaster General and Minister of Communications (Mr. Kierans), but as the motion states, it is the stubbornness and incompetence of the ministers responsible. I agree with everything the hon. member for Hillsborough said about the incompetence of the Postmaster General. I do not agree with him that we can have more confidence in the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Drury). The constituency which he represents probably has a higher per capita income than any constituency in the country. The people in his constituency do not know very much from personal experience about unemployment and low wages. They do not have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. I do not have much confidence in that minister or the Postmaster General.
This is not a new situation. It is possible to be sorry for any Postmaster General, although it is hard to be sorry for this one, because of the situation in the Post Office. We know that traditionally the Post Office Department, to a large extent, was staffed through patronage. Recently that department has been a mess. It is inefficient and mismanaged. There is resentment and conflict on the part of the employees. Although the minister inherited a bad situation, he has done everything possible to make it worse.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


David Orlikow: The record is clear that the minister has had innumerable warnings about the situation. I wish to briefly put some of these warnings on the record. A few years ago, prior to this minister taking office, there were difficulties. The Liberal government at that time appointed Mr. Justice Montpetit to inquire into the Post Office situation. In his detailed and damning report of the Post Office because of the way it was being operated, Mr. Justice Montpetit stated that his investigation revealed mismanagement, incompetence, ignorance of basic human relations and that the Post Office was living in the middle ages. Why have all the recommendations of Mr. Justice Montpetit not yet been implemented?

May 22. 1970
Postal Service Policies
This Postmaster General made the unilateral decision to implement straight-through delivery ot mail, prohibiting letter carriers from returning to the Post Office at lunch time, something they had done for a long while. The minister was warned that he could not do that unilaterally, that the Post Office was no longer a semi-military organization which had one motto "The mail must go through". The minister was told that since there were provisions for collective bargaining that could not be done. The minister laughed at us. He ignored us. Eventually, the employees exercised their right and requested arbitration.
I wish to put on the record a summary of what the arbitrator, Mr. W. S. Martin, a lawyer from Winnipeg, had to say about that dispute and how the Postmaster General got himself into that mess. I quote from a news report in the July 5, 1969 edition of the Globe and Mail:
The Post Office violated a collective agreement with the Council of Postal Unions by introducing straight-through delivery without proper consultation, chief adjudicator W. S. Martin has ruled.
-it would appear he has not got the authority to bring Twentieth-Century employer-employee concepts to an establishment which still adheres to the Nineteenth-Century master and servant precepts," he went on.
"However, more importantly, the spirit of the collective bargaining agreement has been misapplied and misinterpreted by the employer. The employer must not be permitted to engage in this type of conduct."
"However, such changes must not cause deterioration in the agreed terms and conditions of employment."
Mr. Martin suggested in his findings on straight-through delivery that the militancy, rigidity and hostility revealed in the attitudes and decision of the postal union may be a natural byproduct of the environment in which the employer has forced it to operate.
Management's conduct has created unrest, undermined morale and resulted in the development of hostility between the parties, he said.
That article refers to the two years this minister has held office. We had recently the terrible experience in Montreal. This minister and his department decided to wipe out the contract for mail pick-up held by Lapalme. I do not want to go into the details because it is a sad story, but may I put on the record one paragraph from the report of Mr. Carl Gol-denberg who was appointed by this government to look into that particular dispute:
[DOT] (12:50 p.m.)
Although the Post Office was not their direct employer, its change of policy would directly affect
[Mr. Orlikow.l
the livelihood of the Lapalme employees. The Post Office was therefore under a moral obligation to seek to protect their employment as far as possible.
I submit that until the Lapalme employees started to conduct slowdowns, the minister was completely unconcerned about them and their rights. This is another illustration of the unconcern of this minister for any kind of sensible, decent and honest relationship with his employees.
I could go on to say more about the Post Office Department but my time is limited. The minister has decided, and the government has agreed, that the Post Office should be operated not as a public service giving the kind of service that the people of Canada require, but should be operated in the black; that the postal rates should bring in enough money to pay for the cost of running the Post Office Department. As a result, the rates for non-profit journals have been increased 200, 300 and 400 per cent. Many of these journals have had to go out of business. Let me remind the minister that the journal of the CNTU, one of the best labour publications in Canada, has gone out of business in spite of the fact that some ministers of the government had a pretty close connection with the CNTU and ought to have had some appreciation of their problem. A large number of post offices in rural areas have been closed, to the great detriment of the residents of many parts of rural Canada. I have already referred to the mishandling of the situation relating to the Lapalme drivers.
I now come to the provocative, inflammatory and irresponsible statements made by the minister, not just in years gone by but during the last couple of weeks. The minister has talked glibly and publicly about automating the post office operations in the interest of greater efficiency. The employees of the Post Office Department would be stupid, would be less than human, if they were not to make the obvious assumption that automation will mean a reduced staff and large scale lay-offs.
When the postal employees and their unions made it clear that, unless there was a very specific guarantee by the government, the employees would, if necessary, go on strike rather than accept these lay-offs, the minister got cold feet. Then, the postal employees were treated to long lectures which, in effect, said to the employees: "Yes, we will have automation", and "Yes, we will have increased efficiency, but this will not mean lay-offs". In fact, only last Tuesday we were treated to the
May 22. 1970

amazing statement that, in fact, more employees would be hired. How can you save money and hire more employees, I do not know. Only somebody with the convoluted logic of this minister would make that kind of statement. So, is it any wonder that the employees are upset, that they are going down to the wire with the likelihood of there being another postal strike?
I must also refer to the statement made by the minister on Tuesday, May 19 last. I realize my hon. friend from Hillsborough has already alluded to it, but I should like to put it on the record again. As reported at page 7062 of Hansard, the minister said:
People who seek contractual obligations sometimes seek not the work but the pay without the work.
Following that statement my colleague from York South (Mr. Lewis) tried to raise a point of privilege to get a correction, but the Speaker did not permit him to do so. I would have thought that if the inference taken by most members of the House with regard to what the minister was saying was incorrect, the minister himself would have made a point correcting it. But no, the minister sat in his chair, just as he is at this moment. I say there has never been a more anti-labour statement made by a minister of any government in the federal parliament, or in a provincial legislature, in the history of Canada. Is it any wonder that, given this kind of stupidity and stubbornness on the part of the minister, we are close to a strike? What surprises me is that we have not already had a strike.
In the few minutes I have left may I deal with a couple of other postal problems. I suggest that the main reason we are close to a strike is the mistakes that were made in the provisions of the Public Service Employment Act and the Public Service Staff Relations Act. The government failed to incorporate into those acts provisions spelling out that job security, lay-offs, promotions, demotions, transfers, etc. are not within the authority of the arbitration and conciliation boards. I have on the Order Paper a private member's bill which seeks to make such changes. I do not know whether it is useful to make a suggestion to the minister, but I would nevertheless suggest that as long as this imperfection exists in these acts, that as long as these matters, which are negotiable with any private employer, are excluded from the legislation, we are likely to have strikes.
Nor has there been any action taken by the government, despite the honeyed words of the 22375-391
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Minister of Labour (Mr. Mackasey) who knows how to say all the right things but very seldom takes any action, to implement the major provisions of the Freedman report.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bechard):: Order, please. It being one o'clock I do now leave the chair until two o'clock.
At one o'clock the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Richard):: Order.


Mr. Ian Watson (Laprairie):: Mr. Speaker, with leave of the House I should like to revert to routine proceedings for the purpose of tabling a committee report I should have tabled this morning.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Richard):: Has the
hon. member unanimous consent to lay the report on the table?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


[Stage Direction]
Fifth report of the Standing Committee on Indian Affairs and Northern Development- Mr. Watson.


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Macquarrie:
This House repudiates the government's postal service policies and censures those Ministers ot the Crown responsible for the mismanagement of the postal services which, within two years, have deteriorated through fewer mail deliveries, fewer post offices, higher postal rates, disrupted and irregular services, and deplorable labour-management relations, to the prejudice of all Canadians, postal employees, and the national economy.
David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, before the luncheon adjournment I was outlining what I considered to be the

or more. I say to the Minister of Communications and to the President of the Treasury Board that if they want some restraint shown, they should begin showing it in their own organizations, in the number of their own assistants, special advisers and public relations people. God knows, if there is any minister who is in greater need of a public relations man who could get a better image across, I do not know of him. He will never make it. Obviously, the Postmaster General has a good one, but he is too stupid to use him.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Richard):: I regret that I must advise the hon. member his time has expired.


David Orlikow: May I have one more minute, Mr. Speaker?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Richard):: Is it the
pleasure of the House to allow the hon. member to continue.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


David Orlikow: Since we have a limited time for debate today, I would not want to cut off any other member who wished to participate. I say to the minister, and to the government, that from everything I have heard, and I have good contacts with the public service side as do most members on this side of the House, I am satisfied there is no need for a strike. There is no desire for a strike on the part of the employees. Certainly, as the hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie) said, the public does not want a strike.
I suggest to the minister and to the government that if they will show some common-sense, some intelligence and some compassion, of which there has been virtually none until now, even at this late date there can be a settlement which will be fair to the employees, to the public, to the government and to other public employees, one which will obviate the necessity for a strike which will hurt everybody in this country.


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, the motion of the official opposition regarding the government's behavior towards the management of the Canadian postal service is extremely important. However, I wonder if the mover of the motion is as serious.
I see right now that there are three Conservative members in the House while we are
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discussing this motion. There are only two now because the other one just left.
As for government members there are about ten to discuss or to hear the grievances of the opposition members.
The motion, which reads in part as follows:
This House repudiates the government's postal service policies-
-is certainly relevant. I am pleased to see that the Postmaster General and Minister of Communications (Mr. Kierans) is in the House to hear what we have to say.
In my opinion, the Post Office Department should not prepare a balance sheet at the end of the year to find out whether it has made a profit or not. This department must provide services to the entire population. Unfortunately, it offers fewer services every year but it charges more for them.
The minister himself says that post offices had to be closed in certain areas. At a time when everybody requires more and more services, the department, because they cost too much and because profits are not high enough, must eliminate some services.
The previous speaker contended that at the higher levels of administration in the Post Office and Communications Department, the number of employees or their salaries were not reduced in order to cut expenses; their social benefits were not abolished either. Everything has increased at dizzying speed, and the population bears the cost. However, the result has been a reduction of services.
In my area, many small post offices have been closed. The mail is sent once or twice a week. We have postal service five days a week instead of six. The services have clearly diminished while the rates have undeniably increased. This is nonsense!
I am not against paying a little more for a service, provided it is improved. The service is literally rotten, as it says in the motion:
This House repudiates the government's postal service policies and censures those ministers of the Crown responsible for the mismanagement of the postal services which, within two years, have deteriorated through fewer mail deliveries, fewer post offices, higher postal rates, disrupted and irregular services, and deplorable labour-management relations, to the prejudice of all Canadians, postal employees, and the national economy.
Mr. Speaker, all that is quite true. However, the Progressive Conservative members have forgotten to provide a solution. In my opinion, their complaints against the Post Office and Communications Department as well as against the government in general are

May 22, 1970
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justified. But when their party governed the country, what did they do to establish on a sound basis everything related to the conditions of the employees of the Post Office and Communications Department and to improve the mail services which must be provided to the Canadian people? They provide no solution and I certainly do not intend to copy them. On the contrary, I shall supply the solution to the thorny problem facing both the government and the Canadian people at large.
This morning, I read an editorial from the Quebec television station concerning strikes, especially in the post office, and I quote:
Methods for consultation need to be reappraised.
On Saturday and Sunday, May 16 and 17, 1970.
A strike vote is an extremely important occurrence-
One was taken recently among the postal unions.
-not only for the workers involved and their employers but also for the public at large, it being sometimes severely affected by a prolonged work stoppage.
[DOT] (2:20 p.m.)
What does this mean? A strike and finally, it is the people who suffer from it; the strikers are always the most hard hit, never the union leaders who are still being paid during a strike. I never saw any of them paying for the milk required for a family of eight or ten, or helping a family in any way.
Those labour leaders, as are found in Montreal and elsewhere in Canada, instead of always handing out boxing gloves in order to pit the workers against the employers, and the employers against the workers, should act as conciliators and thus make it possible for them to enter into a dialogue. But union leaders are not interested in that. It seems that they are afraid of losing their jobs. This is why the situation deteriorates both in the postal service and in other services.
What we are now concerned about is the situation prevailing in the Post Office Department. I go on with the quotation:
It is clear therefore that such action should be taken after due consideration-
-that is, a strike vote-
-by those concerned and in a context that enables them to express their opinion freely.
We were present at strike votes where a man opposed to the strike was termed a scab, a blackleg, a rat, and what not! Then, those
IMr. Caouette.]
men become afraid and do not even show up at the poll. I could give as an example a recent strike vote taken in the postal service. Out of 27,000 workers, 5,000 abstained from voting; 22,000 did vote; out of these 22,000,
15.000	voted for the strike and 7,000 against;
5.000	did not vote at all. And they say on TV that 74 per cent of postal workers want to strike. It is not true, because not 60 per cent of them want it. And I challenge the Montreal union leaders to tell me that one single mother in Montreal is for a postal strike, even if she is the mother of a postal worker.
They don't want to strike. It is the union leaders who create a strike atmosphere. They have been preparing that strike three weeks to a month in advance in Montreal. And we hear them say: We urge our members to vote hands down in favour of the strike. What will the strike settle? It is depriving the population of essential services and will bring about another increase in postal rates, to be paid by whom? By the Canadian taxpayer. Union leaders have not grasped that yet. Nor have Canadian newspapers.
The high flown statements of the trouble-mongers make the headlines. But when solutions are put forward, the newspapers publish them in the obituary column.
Mr. Speaker, we can't go on letting those people take us for a ride indefinitely. I will point out to my colleagues that I am entirely in favour of unions, provided their members have the right to speak up, reveal their innermost thoughts, say they are men and not rags, not sheepish followers who are told to place bombs, blow up trucks, break the windshields of cars or vans. But the people should be free to express themselves and should be respected as human beings, instead of being treated like animals, or being ordered around and sent packing at every opportunity.
Mr. Speaker, I shall go on with the quotation:
-the current methods of consulting organized labour are to much questioned for them not to be thoroughly reviewed by the proper authority, in this case the new Minister of Labour, Mr. Pierre Laporte-
-as far as the province of Quebec is concerned.
Let us first consider the case of the information received by the workers on the negotiations and their results. It is conveyed to the union people in an atmosphere that is not always conducive to sound and responsible thinking.
This is a fact. We only have to listen to Michel Chartrand when he talks to the Montreal construction workers to realize in what
May 22, 1970

kind of an atmosphere people are worked up and urged to damage trucks and buildings. That is the pervading atmosphere before the vote is taken. Once people are over-excited they listen to hotheads such as Michel Chartrand.
Let us now look at the type of information reaching workers.
This is conveyed to union workers in an atmosphere which does not always favour serene and responsible thinking, and union leaders recommend that they accept or turn down the employer's proposals.
Do not argue. Accept or refuse. Period. That is all you have to do.
Employers are forbidden to have direct contact with their employees-
This is where boxing gloves are handed out. The employer is a human being just like the worker, but the worker is not allowed to speak to him. It is always the chap who is neither employer nor employed who dictates to both, worker and employer. He is more important than the employer. Think of Chartrand in Montreal. Look at William Houle in the Post Office Department. One evening, recently, I was watching television. One would have sworn that one was hearing the future president of the new Crown Corporation announced by the minister. He is the one who decides if, tomorrow, my mail will reach me or not. He is the one who decides if, tomorrow, the letters I sent out will be delivered or not. The decision does not rest with me nor with the worker, but with Mr. Houle.
Employers are forbidden to have direct contacts with their employees-
They are two species to whom it is forbidden to agree.
-in order to make known to them their offers and their views. There is a strange similarity with the voting procedure in a totalitarian country, where a single party controls all information given to the electorate. As for the vote itself, can it truly be stated that it is carried out in a climate that favours participation and the free expression of one's views? We believe that, on the one hand, the employees should receive all necessary information from two authorized sources.
Information from their union, of course, but also from the employer.
If the employer or the union leaders are liars they will be able to find that out at the same time.
Employees should receive all the required information from two authorized sources: their union and their employer. Besides, they should vote under the best conditions and one of the best ways of doing it would be for the union members to vote by mail.
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Otherwise, when they are brought into a room, if one of them says he is against the strike and shows it even so slightly, as I said previously, he is called a traitor, a Judas and a scab. Maybe this guy has argued for a week or even ten days with his wife about what attitude he should have in the event of a strike. But, once he is in the union room, the results of his discussions no longer matter. His union leaders and a group of bullies who are probably paid for it will threaten and call Judas, traitor, and scab and so on anyone who has different views.
Liberty is all right for them but not for those who think differently. That is the mentality of some union leaders. Not all but a good proportion of them are like that.
In the first place the union members should be able to send their ballots by mail to the polling station.
The counting of the votes should take place in the presence of representatitves of both parties and of an impartial third witness.
In such cases, representatives from the union and the employer are in attendance with an unbiased third party in order to ensure an appropriate and honest counting of the vote. I continue the quotation:
[DOT] (2:30 p.m.)
It might involve major disadvantages, but we are far from sure of that. It is up to the unions to prove it.
As to the strike vote recently taken in the Post Office Department, I should like to mention that all of us recognize the tremendous work which the Post Office employees have to perform. When we meet the mailman on the road, we know that he works hard. It is also the case for employees in post offices. We know that their income should be increased if possible in accordance with the capability of the country to make available to all classes of society the goods and services it provides.
When a union asks for job security for its members because of automation, the use of machinery, science or progress, I submit that labour leaders are in the clouds, that they are running around in circles. Let us increase salaries, prices, let us maintain our position although we do not need all the things we are asking for. This is not logical.
However, there is a suggestion that if man is replaced by machine, he will soon be unemployed. This is what the government should be concerned about. The Postmaster General knows the answers. I am accused of

May 22. 1970
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always reducing problems to dollars and cents. Is it not, in this case, a matter of money?
I remember that in 1963 the present Postmaster General was touring the province of Quebec preaching that the Creditistes were dangerous people, offering a simplistic answer. According to him, the New Democratic party was the only political party with a wide-range policy. The Postmaster General said that in Chicoutimi. That is the time when I called him a financial shark.
Has the Postmaster General, now a member of the Liberal cabinet, changed his mind about his socialist friends, his friends of the CCF party or the NDP? He said that in 1963, because the Creditiste solution was too simplistic; according to him, only the socialists had the solution.


An hon. Member:: It is a myth.


David Réal Caouette: A myth? The minister has set aside the myth, for he is being devoured by moths.
Why? Because there is no solution. What solution does the minister suggest? He does not suggest any, not because he is not a good fellow, a charming fellow; but because he is trapped in the dilemna: namely, reduce the services or increase the rates. They have "fooled" around with that ever since the minister was appointed. In the present circumstances, anyone else would not have done better than he did. No! Only they do not want to alter the circumstances. Indeed, they are dying in them.
What do we say? Automation or mechanization-in case journalists do not understand what automation or mechanization is-must not penalize men but replace them because the machine must serve man. But, to the extent where machines replace men, I say that the government should pay a national dividend to the men so replaced, whether it be called a guaranteed annual income or anything else, but an income corresponding to the goods or services produced by machines and progress.
Then the union leaders will stop clamouring: full employment, full employment, full employment, for the more we yell for full employment, the less employment there is. One has but to look at the present unemployment increase in Canada. Even though we have in Quebec a premier clamouring: 100,000 jobs, 100,000 jobs, 100,000 jobs; in Ottawa we hear the minister say: No employment, no 
employment, no employment. The premier of Quebec claims that he will create 100,000 jobs.
The minister is laughing. He knows I am right. The Creditiste solution is not a myth. It can be explained without turning everything upside down. The post office employee who is replaced by a machine complains that he is losing his salary, but if he were sure of getting a sufficient income or an income equal to the output or to the service obtained through the use of automation, the problem would not exist anymore and the strike that is threatening would not take place. I do hope it will not be launched because only from 50 to 55 per cent of the workers voted in favour of the strike, which shows clearly that the union leaders did not get a majority and that the Canadian people are clearly against a strike.
The people of Canada, however, want the government to suggest an answer in order to provide the workers with a decent way of life.
I invite the Postmaster General to have a look at the Creditiste pollution and to consider whether it could be possible to apply it, partly at least, as suggested to the House by my colleagues from the Ralliement creditiste.
Mr. Speaker, have I been called to order?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Richard):: I regret to interrupt the hon. member for Temis-camingue (Mr. Caouette) but his time has expired. Does the House agree to allow the hon. member for Temiscamingue to complete his speech?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for their kindness. I shall try not to overtax it since I was about to conclude my remarks.
I would like to direct the attention of the Postmaster General on the problem of the Post Office.
I know he is eager to see the conflict settled. Under the present economic circumstances however, I am convinced that were the conflict settled, the problem would still remain unsolved. Once the contract is signed, it will only be enforced for a period of two and a half years; the strike will remain a potential threat because the economic circumstances will remain unchanged. Some insecurity will still prevail, which the Post Office workers refuse to accept. They want security and they
May 22. 1970

should have it, whatever the cost may be. It is imperative, not only for the Post Office workers but for the population as a whole.
The people want good services; they also want improved services, and at the best possible price. They do not want to pay twice what they are worth.
While reading a bulletin published by the Treasury Board and giving the hourly rates paid to postal employees, I realized that letter carriers were earning $3.25 per hour, and postal employees an average of $3.32 per hour, and postal clerks $3.37. The average hourly salary of skilled and unskilled workers in the manufacturing industries of Canada is $2.93.
It is obvious that they cannot be granted $5 per hour, when the population as a whole earns $2.93 or $2.95. Everybody understands that. However, a strike will not solve the problem.
If it is proved to me that a strike has previously settled the problems of the workers in the world, I will then seriously consider the possibility of recommending strikes. I have always seen this paradox: the end of one strike is always the beginning of the next one. One is never satisfied, and that cannot be satisfactory either.
The price of goods increases at a faster rate than salaries. Even if the worker earns $3 per hour, the manufacturer will take his profit off the increase in salary. If he takes a profit of 10, 15 or 20 per cent, a salary increase of $1 can result in a price increase of $1.15, $1.20. Then the problem has not been solved, but the situation has perhaps helped increase inflation, because prices increase and the purchasing power does not increase correspondingly.
This is why we in the Ralliement Creditiste advocate a myth and recommend the distribution of a national dividend in order to boost the consumer's purchasing power. This would not affect the cost of goods or increase prices, but it would increase the purchasing power. Some say that if there is more purchasing power, prices will go up. That is not true. Prices increase when salaries are increased. That is clear!
However, if a dividend were paid directly to the consumer by a national credit board, it would not affect the cost of goods or services. Therefore, prices remain stable. With an increasing purchasing power, goods can be sold so that industries resume normal opera-22375-40
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tions and create new jobs. This way, we fight unemployment and we bring real economic stability to the Canadian people.
I urge the Postmaster General and Minister of Communications (Mr. Kierans) to examine this solution and to stop calling it a myth. Let him study it since he has no alternative to suggest.


Hon. Eric W. Kierans (Postmaster General and Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, if there are very many more motions of non-confidence like this, and they seem to come fairly regularly, I might even begin to believe some of them myself.
Before stating in a general fashion the position of the Post Office, I should like to take up some points that have been raised by the previous speakers. I regret very much that the hon. member for Winnipeg North (Mr. Orlikow) is not present in the House, because there are a number of his statements that I wish to qualify. Some matters I shall interpret rather differently then he did.
[DOT] (2:40 p.m.)
The criticisms remain the same and have not changed, although there are some improvements in the oratory. The criticism that we have introduced a five-day week in the Post Office and that this has resulted, as it certainly has, in a physical diminution in the service we provide, does not take into account the fact that the country itself has changed. Eighty per cent of what the Post Office does it does for the business community of Canada, and the business community of Canada works a five-day week. 1 fail to see the desirability of wasting the money of the taxpayers of Canada by providing services and knocking on doors of firms when there are no people there.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North said that I introduced another measure for the purpose of saving money, called single mail processing, and said that we were refusing to allow the letter carriers to return for lunch. This is not true, and reflects a misunderstanding on his part of exactly what single mail processing is all about. What single mail processing avoided was an unnecessary, or partial or minimal additional mail processing for very small numbers of items carried on a letter carrier's route that he would undertake after he had returned and finished his lunch.

May 22. 1970
Postal Service Policies
He always had the freedom, and nobody ever took it away from him, to go where he wanted for lunch.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North criticized my lack of concern in the Lapalme situation, and from this sought to develop an anti-labour attitude on my part. At no time during the Lapalme dispute did the Post Office or its Postmaster General ever reflect a lack of concern for the employees of Lapalme. Well over one year ago, before this present dispute started, the Postmaster General offered to take them all into the Post Office, and the vast majority of them, 245 of some 397 employees, accepted this offer in March, 1969 within 24 hours. But it was their union that showed unconcern for its members. The union proved that it did not have the interests of the members at heart and that it thought its members should have the interests of the union at heart.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North also cited, as an example of my unconcern, the fact that I willingly saw Le Travail cease publication. Although he is a distinguished advocate of the labour position, and I applaud him for it most warmly, he apparently is not sufficiently aware of what is going on in labour circles in Quebec to know that the Le Travail is publishing, perhaps not in the same form and perhaps not as often, but it is publishing today. I do not think this reflects an anti-labour attitude any more than when I refused to accept the suggestion of his colleague, the hon. member for York South (Mr. Lewis), who suggested that the Postmaster General could impose a union on all the private contractors. The hon. member suggested that the way out of the difficulty posed by the fact that one of these contractors already had a union, The Teamsters, would be for the Postmaster General to advise the employer to set up a new corporation and take this new group into that new corporation, thereby denying his responsibility to the Teamsters. Mr. Speaker, I wonder who was anti-labour and who sounded like a corporation lawyer then?
I do not think I was anti-labour, either, when I refused to split the bargaining units in the Public Service and in the Post Office in order to accommodate the CNTU, or when I insisted that all those who entered the service of the Post Office as chauffers would have to join the existing bargaining units, those which are bargaining today on behalf of the employees of the Post Office. I do not think that was anti-labour. I do not think it reflects an anti-labour attitude when the Postmaster 
General is concerned about avoiding the fat and the feather bedding that has crept in over the past century. The Laplam,e dispute boils down to this. While the transitional cost may be $1.5 million, the fact is that we shall be carrying the mail in Montreal with a trucking service employing approximately 257 drivers, instead of the 459 which the taxpayers of Canada were saddled with; so that while the transitional costs may be between $1 million and $1.5 million, the continuing savings in operations to the taxpayers of this country will be $2 million a year. I do not think it is anti-labour to reflect this continuing concern, and I do not think I am criticizing my present colleagues in the Post Office when I say that the Post Office is a veritable gold mine if one wishes to look for ways of managing the department and administering the public purse the way it ought to be administered. I do not think I am being anti-labour if I suggest to the Ontario Regional Director that he might take a closer look at operations in Toronto which permit 30.1 per cent of all calls at red letter boxes in the city to be made at boxes containing not even a single letter.
Similarly, in this effort to slim down the Post Office, we have taken a look at Post Offices in the rural areas. The fact that so many of them can be closed down now is not so much a reflection of an avid, overwhelming desire to cut costs and services at any price as a reflection of the fact that communities have disappeared, that rural populations have moved to cities and that when we close down a post office in any community, we do so long after the doctor, the dentist, the banks and the schools have left. When we close down a post office we make sure that an alternative service is available.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: A horse and buggy service.


Eric William Kierans: It is a service that is complete and satisfactory as soon as people realize and become accustomed to a simple little thing called change.
During the past 23 months many motions have been moved relating to the Post Office. It is quite evident that the Postmaster General must be guilty of something, and I guess I am guilty of something. And of what am I guilty? I think I am guilty of waking up the sleeping giant that was the Post Office. Not only was it a sleeping giant; it was a giant that was drugged.


An hon. Member:: Don't be modest.
May 22, 1970


Eric William Kierans: It was drugged by the nonsense of previous governments ranging from John A. to John G. I refer to the period from John A. Macdonald, the first Postmaster General, to John George Diefenbaker, whose government's minister the hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie) so loudly praised.
[DOT] (2:50 p.m.)


An hon. Member:: What about Lester B.?


Eric William Kierans: Perhaps partly him, too, but it began to change because he at least knew that there would be problems and appointed Mr. Justice Montpetit to head a royal commission. Many members have been continuing to cite Mr. Justice Montpetit's report without realizing what they are citing.


David Orlikow: You ignore him.


Eric William Kierans: The nonsense that was perpetuated in the Post Office for 100 years was that everything else could change, but the Post Office did not have to change. The environment and the needs could change, but the Post Office was going to be protected in splendid isolation, insulated from all the advances in technology and the changing needs. Because it had always been done that way, it was always going to be done that way. Because the Postmaster General and sorters did things a certain way in John A. Macdonald's era, it must continue to be done in the same way.
When hon. members quote Mr. Justice Montpetit, they fail to realize what he meant. I admit that Mr. Justice Montpetit's study of 1965-66 was a damning indictment of the previous 100 years. It was also a damning indictment of the last Conservative Postmaster General, who was so loudly praised this morning, the Hon. William Hamilton. What he did I do not know, but I do know that he was determined not to change anything. The best way to keep everything the same in the Post Office was to keep the employees ignorant. That was his purpose.
If one looks at the last Post Office estimates under Mr. Hamilton, the magnificent amount of $15,000 is shown for training and educating in the arts of carrying the mail, supervision, being a postmaster and in the skills of handling the employees and the public. This magnificent sum of $15,000 was to be spread among 41,000 employees. It was felt it would be better if they did not know anything; if you do not wake and disturb them, they will not disturb you. I plead guilty to waking them.
Postal Service Policies
For every $1 spent when the Conservatives were in power, there will be $100 spent this year. The purpose of spending that $ljj million is so that everyone who has any responsibility in the Post Office will clearly understand his role, the purpose of his work, his involvement in providing a vital service to the Canadian public and the very responsible contribution that he, as an individual, makes. In other words, every employee will understand that he has a very vital role to play in providing this service.
When you awaken a giant there will be one of two reactions. Either he will resist the awakening or respond to it. It is possible to resist by throwing sand in the wheels or gears of change. We have had examples of that, although it is not entirely the fault of these people. It has been our inability to communicate our objectives. There has been a great deal of resistance. This poses a particular challenge to the Post Office. I wish to assure hon. members that we are aware of this challenge.
We must communicate to all employees of the Post Office that we have the same objectives. We must work with the changing world. We cannot stop change. We cannot stop the world and say that the Post Office wants to get off. This change must be done in a manner that persuades and convinces, but never imposes. We have quite a job to do. The productivity in the Post Office according to the same standards varies between 54 per cent and 89 per cent. That is an indication of the road that we have to travel. We do not intend to change this by imposing directives, as we have done in the past. Systems and industrial engineering and computerized activities have a role to play and a contribution to make. In the last analysis, it must involve every member of the Post Office in the tremendous responsibility that rests upon us. Through invited participation and changed attitudes, we must eventually be worthy of the gift of trust and confidence.
It is not only the Post Office Department that faces a challenge in this period of tremendous change. Contemporary society is dominated by the theme of organization. Nobody likes to be organized. When directors of private or religious hospitals are asked to make changes and direct their activities according to certain national objectives, such as the provision of free hospitalization, they resist these changes. They will have a longing for the good old days when they ran their own show. Doctors do not like to be organized, even if it is the national objective that

May 22, 1970
Postal Service Policies
medicare should be available. Teachers do not like to be organized to attain a national objective that might eventually result in free education.
This whole theme of organization is partly responsible for the rebellion of the young. They see themselves entering a society that is too highly structured and organized to permit the kind of initiative and creative activity for which they have been educated. We have the problem of change in an institution that is not used to change. These are changes that must be accomplished in a way that will eliminate the impersonal attitudes of highly organized administrations and structures.
[DOT] (3:00 p.m.)
The objectives of the Post Office are to provide a dependable postal service for all Canadians and to create a progressive and rewarding working climate for all who work in the Post Office. To that end, in this day of change we in the Post Office are taking the highly centralized decision-making process away from Ottawa and placing it where it belongs, in the regions, in the field, in the post offices themselves. We intend to involve everyone in this decision-making process.
What has happened since the report of Mr. Justice Montpetit? He published a second report a little while ago in which he said that the progress that has been made is remarkable. This progress has not been without, of course, all of the stresses and strains that accompany change. What are some of these changes? No longer are political appointments of any kind made in the Post Office. All employees entering the Post Office are nonpolitical appointments. The Post Office now offers to anyone entering its service a full career with all the civil service benefits and security that this implies. Postal employees now have collective bargaining. They also have their own independent union-and today we know how independent, strong and forthright those unions can be. Employees of the Post Office have the right to strike, and we assume that they recognize all of the responsibilities that go with that right. In addition, in the last several years the employees have had numerous increases in wages which have brought them up to equivalent rates obtaining for similar work. Their working conditions have been continually improved, though we still have a very long way to go because there is so much lost ground to make up.
I now come to the Frankenstein monster that has been raised here today-mechanizatMr. Klerans.l
tion. Mechanization is not a Frankenstein; it is not a Baal; it is not a demon. On the other hand, it is not an idol. Those who attempt to set it up as some sort of monstrosity that has to be feared are scarcely presenting arguments that have any measure of quality. The purpose of mechanization is, quite simply, to eliminate the drudgery and routine of work. Mechanization is a productive force. It should be productive of leisure. It should be productive of that affluence that will enable society to pursue its objectives of better health, better education, better housing and the attainment of all our other social needs. Mechanization is not a threat to the job security of anyone who is presently working in the Post Office. At the present time we have 42,947 employees. Five years from now, with a normal increase in volume, we would expect to have about 47,392. Mechanization simply means that that 47,000 will not be 55,000.
Mechanization improves the productivity of the department and the service it can render to the Canadian people. It will reduce to some extent the rate of growth in the work force, the rate we have experienced in the past and which we would continue to experience at an accelerated pace in the future if we refused to mechanize. To this I can add that even though there will be an absolute over-all increase in the number of jobs in the Post Office in the next five years, at the same time approximately 10,000 people will be leaving the Post Office for retirement and other reasons, but not for the reason of being laid off as a result of automation or mechanization.
For too long has the Post Office been divorced both from close contact with the people that it serves, the people of Canada, and its own employees. These two types of contact are the hallmark of any successful corporation. We in the Post Office are at the present time going out and contacting the people who use our services and we are attempting to find out how better we can serve them. Most of all, we are digging down deeply into the service itself, getting to know the people who work within the Post Office, explaining to them how vital their role is, their own personal contribution, and how important it is that they see the over-all responsibility that the Post Office has to all people in Canada.
I say quite honestly and sincerely that no improvement made in the Post Office will be the work of one man or even a number of men. The only way to improve the Post Office is through the work, the involvement and the
May 22, 1970

participation of each and every member of the Post Office. We have to earn the trust and confidence of the people in the Post Office Department who have been left alone for far too long. We have to ask them to help us, and I hope I can ask my colleagues in this House to help us shape the future of the Post Office.
[DOT] (3:10 p.m.)


Mr. Ambrose Hubert Peddle (Grand Falls-White Bay-Labrador):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer my wholehearted and unreserved support for the motion placed before the House by my colleague, the hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie). It is rather a damning motion, but the unfortunate truth of the matter is that the motion, in my opinion, is a statement of fact. Not too long ago Canadians took pride in the excellent quality of our postal service. This is no longer the case. One would not have thought it possible for one to have accomplished what this Postmaster General (Mr. Kierans) has accomplished during his two years in office. Never during the 100 years of Confederation has such a chaotic mess been created by so few to the detriment of so many. It is indeed a record, but not one that the bards will sing about with happiness in the years to come.
The motion before us is very broad. It sadly brings to mind the fact that few segments of our society which once had an excellent postal system have escaped the mark of the present minister. During my remarks I should like to deal with the portion of the postal service which directly affects the area of Canada I have the honour to represent in this House. I should like to bring to the minister's mind a few thoughts concerning the impact of his postal policy on the lives of the people of Grand Falls-White Bay-Labrador-indeed, on the lives of all the people of the newest province, Newfoundland, and Labrador.
Geographically, my constituency is almost entirely rural. I am sure hon. members are aware of this. Our province's coastline is rugged and raw. Our people are spread out in hundreds of small communities scattered along the coastline and at various points in the interior. It is a remote country. There is no Montreal, no Toronto or Vancouver handy. In most places there are not a number of radio and television stations to choose from in order to keep in contact with the rest of the world. Only been recently have many of our communities been able to have what everybody else in Canada regards as certainly not a luxury-a simple telephone. Many com-
Postal Service Policies
munities are still waiting for this basic service.
We have had to rely on whatever means of communication has been available to us. The contact of many thousands of Newfoundlanders with other parts of Canada and the world has always been through their post offices. However, over the decades their post offices have come to mean more to them than simply the place they go to receive a letter from a son, daughter, brother or sister who has left home to seek his or her fortune elsewhere. Their post offices have come to mean more than just the place they go to pick up a newspaper, a magazine or even Eaton's catalogue. For many of them the post office is the only source of communication with the world beyond their doorstep. Their post offices, however, have come to mean more to them than that. Over the years their post offices have been their daily meeting place, the place where the man who works alone, be it in the woods, in the fields or at sea, has a chance to chat with his neighbour. Over the years the post office has filled a social need within their community: it has become a catalyst bringing men together to talk, exchange ideas and understand one another.
Of course, the Postmaster General does not understand this. It is something which unless one has lived in a rural community, especially an isolated one like many in Newfoundland, one cannot truly comprehend and understand. When we first learned of the government's intention to start closing down rural post offices we were shocked. How can a government which talked about creating a just society take away from us the one government service we have always valued most? I have lived all my life in Newfoundland. I know how important a post office can be. Perhaps, had I been born and brought up in Montreal I would not understand this. Perhaps, had I studied at McGill and been president of the stock exchange, a humble rural post office would not mean much to me. Perhaps, had I lived in Westmount and had a television set and several stations to watch, not to mention radio and movie theatres, live theatres, libraries, museums, department stores, shopping centres and universities to go to, I would not think a post office in a far-off place like Cape Onion, Smith's Harbour, Quirpon or Beachside was very important.
Perhaps we have been unfair to a minister who has never really known what it is to rise at four o'clock in the morning, be on the job at five o'clock and spend several hours, perhaps

May 22, 1970
Postal Service Policies
alone, in the North Atlantic tending fishing traps or nets. Perhaps we have been unfair to a minister who does not know the joy of returning home after a lonely day at sea and ambling up to the post office for the mail and a friendly chat with his friends. Surely, if the minister knew what life in rural Newfoundland was all about we would not be suffering from this policy today. We recognize that it is not the minister's responsibility to maintain social contact in rural communities. We would ask him to remember, however, that the Post Office is a national government agency, not a business.
The purpose of the Post Office is to provide a service equally for all Canadians, not to show a profit. Surely, if we believed that running a postal service was a money-making thing we would have sense enough not to leave it up to the government but would let private enterprise step in and take over. But that is not what it is for. It is to provide a service for people which in our society, be it in Westmount or in West St. Modeste, we deem to be essential. The only difference, because in many cases this is about the only contact we have with the world outside our small communities, is that this takes on greater importance to us. I guess it is our misfortune and that of people living in countless small and sometimes remote communities all across Canada that we should have as our Postmaster General a gimleteyed businessman from Westmount who cannot see beyond his computers, his ticker-tape and his profit motive.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Ambrose Hubert Peddle: Perhaps our only chance lies in the hope that this minister will have the courage to recognize that he does not have the understanding, indeed the compassion, to recognize the very great importance to so many Canadians of this institution with which he is experimenting so frivolously. Therefore, like my colleague the hon. member for Hillsborough, I call on the minister, I implore the minister to do the people of rural Canada the service of tendering his resignation, because the Post Office is a human institution and his has not been a human policy. He does not have to resign acrimoniously. He can make a deal with the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). It is simply a matter of his admitting that he is not fit for the job, and of the Prime Minister admitting that he should not have been appointed to it. This would make millions of Canadians happy.
IMr. Peddle.]


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Ambrose Hubert Peddle: In fact, at times the implementation of the minister's policy has been positively brutal, not only in respect of its impact upon those who over the years have come to rely on their local post offices but on those who have worked faithfully in the service of the department. Recently I received a letter from a lady who has for a number of years diligently and in good faith served as postmistress of her village post office. Now she is unemployed and unable to receive unemployment insurance. They have closed down her post office, and because of the rules and regulations she is unable to obtain unemployment insurance.
a (3:20 p.m.)
The Post Office Department had to close down the post office at Goose Cove because it could no longer afford to pay the "exhorbi-tant" salary of $27 a week to the postmistress there. It seems that she did not sell enough stamps to enable the department to pay her $27 a week. She could not justify her existence. If the Prime Minister of this country were willing to give up just one of the 75 or more people on his personal staff, the Postmaster General could probably have kept open or retained a dozen post offices like the one at Goose Cove.
This is the government of the just society. Although the Prime Minister denies now that he believes in slogans-he does not sloganize any more-the fact is that they are stuck with this one. This is the government of the just society. Of course, this is darned ridiculous. The other day I received a letter from a man who served the Post Office Department and the people in the St. Anthony area in my constituency for ten years delivering the mail. Recently it has not been too tough a job; things have become a little easier. However, before the days of roads in that area he had to carry the mail along a rugged coast in his boat or by dogteam, or sometimes even on his back to see that the mail got through. On May 1, some days ago, he received a letter from the district director of the postal services in Newfoundland that the department had decided to close the Cape Onion post office on May 6, the post office from which he delivered his mail, and they were beginning a new rural route on May 7. I should like to quote the concluding words of the letter, which read as follows:
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you most sincerely for your past faithful service and we wish you every success for the future.
May 22, 197C

After ten years of faithful service all he rates is six days' notice and the good wishes of the district director of postal services. The minister could at least have sent his good wishes, considering that the future of this man does not look very bright. The minister does not understand this. Where can this man get a job in Raleigh, Newfoundland, a province where approximately one in every four men is unemployed? You cannot just pick up a job.
In a question on the Order Paper my colleague, the hon. member for Bonavista-Trini-ty-Conception (Mr. Moores), recently asked the government what their policy was with respect to reviewing those post offices intended to be closed. In his reply the minister stated:
When a definite decision is made to close an office, all available information relevant to the case has been carefully checked beforehand to ensure that the decision is just.
If that did not come right out of a computer, I do not know where it came from. I submit that the decisions made in the two cases I have just mentioned could hardly be described as just-and these are only two among countless others unless, of course, one does not consider the effect of the decision on the people directly involved as "relevant information". In that case it might be just. That really sizes up the main reason for the complete failure of this one-time man of promise as Postmaster General. At no time, can it honestly be said, have people ever been considered to be "relevant information" or just plain "relevant," for that matter.
The pretext under which the minister set out to reform the Post Office might have been fine had he been dealing with the assembly line in an automobile factory or in a furniture factory. But he was not. He was dealing with a human institution, the Post Office.
I hope that hon. members will not misunderstand me. I believe in reform. That is why I sit here as a Progressive Conservative. I believe in progress, in change if it will improve things. However, I do not believe in change, the change that was mentioned all the way through the minister's speech this afternoon, simply for the sake of change. When we have a good thing going for us that is serving the people, let us not destroy it until we have something better with which to replace it.
The minister said in his remarks this afternoon that dentists, doctors and banks have gone. What are we going to do? In the name
Postal Service Policies
of heaven, why does the minister not spend some time in Newfoundland? The people I am talking about never saw a doctor or a dentist, and they have never been in a bank. What doctors? What dentists? What banks? It shows a Montreal or Toronto orientation. I am afraid that we have already destroyed our postal service.
Perhaps if the minister would resign we could get a new minister who planned his reforms in advance instead of commissioning three quarters of a million dollars worth of studies and then proceeding with reckless abandon from whim to whim. The minister appears to be obsessed with the idea of the Post Office paying its way. Could he tell us whether his expensive studies and his bright young executives have paid their way? I wonder if in fact the minister himself has paid his way.
The minister has said repeatedly that the Post Office must pay its own way so that those who do not use the postal service will not be stuck with picking up the bill through their taxes. I ask: Is that what Confederation is about? Although I come from a province that is very new to Confederation, I think I understand it a little better than the minister. Did not the four provinces unite in 1867 for their mutual benefit? Did Newfoundland not join Confederation in 1949 for the mutual benefit of both Canada and Newfoundland, and have we not both benefited from that union? As a province, have we always borne our share of the financial burden? The minister does not have to tell me the answer because I know that we were and still are financially less fortunate. But some day we will make it up, and the same applies to the government.
I suppose that if the present Postmaster General were Prime Minister there would be no Canadian armed forces and no Department of Regional Economic Expansion. Historians would probably have to pay to do their research at the public archives. If we called the RCMP to our homes to investigate a felony, we would probably have to pay for the house call if the Postmaster General were Prime Minister. I wonder who would pay for the services of Members of Parliament. I guess Members of Parliament should be thankful that he is not Prime Minister, just as all the people who live in rural Canada are thankful that religion and education do not fall under his jurisdiction, because our churches and schools would probably be closed. One never knows, the Department of National


Mr. Pepin:: This is taken from a book on Japanese humour.


Ambrose Hubert Peddle: The hon. gentleman should be familiar with a book on Japanese humour. There are many other points which I might have talked about had there been more time, but I recognize that other hon. members wish to speak in the debate. I might have mentioned the fact that despite all the minister's proposed reforms, despite the raise in postal rates and the changes in classification of many non-profit periodicals, the postal service has not improved. In fact, it has deteriorated considerably and has become highly irregular and irrational. I might have mentioned the fact that the rural route system which has

replaced so many of our small post offices is not too successful because the service provided by it is unsatisfactory to many people and because it is proving to be much more costly than the minister had initially intended.


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


Some hon. Members:: Carry on.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent to allow the hon. member to continue?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Ambrose Hubert Peddle: I will just be a few more moments.


Jean-Luc Pepin: Tell another story.


Ambrose Hubert Peddle: The minister wants to be amused. There are too many jokes around here, Mr. Speaker. The elimination of the rural post offices is proving to be much more expensive than the minister initially intended. I might have mentioned the unwholesome and unacceptable state of what we call labour-management, or in this case labour-government relations that has arisen almost since the day the minister entered office, and I have not mentioned the apparent failure of the government's latest decision to place such delicate negotiations in the heavy hands of the inexperienced members of Treasury Board. Talk about bulls in a china shop! There are many things I might have mentioned had there been more time. But in conclusion I would simply say that Canadians have benefited, I suppose for 100 years, from the royal mail. We no longer have the royal mail: we have what is rapidly becoming a royal mess.


Mr. Alexandre Cyr (Gaspe):: Mr. Speaker, the motion introduced by the hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie) has several interesting points on the operation of the Post Office and Communications Department.
I shall limit myself to one point in the motion, namely the one dealing with the deterioration of services and the closing down of small post offices, such as those my learned colleague has just referred to.
I cannot accept the allegations of the mover to the effect that the closing down of small post offices has helped deteriorate the Canadian postal service. This is far from the truth,
May 22, 1970

since it has been proven that the program related to the closing of small post offices, implemented in 1966, enables the Post Office and Communications Department to give a better service in the rural parts of the country.
The Canadian postal service is very expensive and tradition-ridden, as the Postmaster General and Minister of Communications (Mr. Kierans) remarked earlier. In order to give the population better services, his department must find new methods of mail delivery.
Mr. Speaker, in the century we live in, when governments propose practical reforms in the interest of citizens, they immediately face the protests of certain groups, and particularly in deliberative assemblies such as the Chamber of Commons.
But I wonder whether those who protest have alternative solutions to offer. After listening to the speeches made this afternoon on this opposition motion I have heard no member of the opposition suggest a single solution the minister might deem acceptable.
Mr. Speaker, some services provided by the Post Office should be subsidized by the government, because due to the vastness of our country and the sparseness of the population, in particular in several rural areas, the Canadian Postal authorities have very serious financial difficulties to overcome.
Some rural post offices make only from $500 to $1,000 profit a year. Managing expenses amount, in some cases, to $2,000 while returns are only $100 a year.
When I was the executive assistant of the Postmaster General, we established a program to close small post offices and, in the beginning, it was implemented in the Gaspe area which was designated as a pilot-area.
In the ridings of Gaspe and Bonaventure, 90 small post offices have been closed since 1966. In the single riding of Gaspe, which I represent in this House, 56 have been closed down. During the same period of time, postal delivery services have been changed. Four distribution centres were created. I challenge any member of this House to go to the Gaspe area and find one person who is not satisfied with the new postal service.
Mail from Montreal, Quebec and Toronto used to reach us through the CN at 8 p.m. With the closure of smaller post offices mail trucks which stop at fewer places first deliver the mail at the various distribution centres. We therefore receive our mail at 8 in the
Postal Service Policies
morning instead of at 8 at night, that is 12 hours earlier.
And as a proof of this a letter mailed in Gaspe used to take from four to five days to reach Ottawa.
Now, on Wednesday night, May 20, a letter was sent to me from Grande-Riviere, in the Gaspe peninsula, and I received it this morning. Yet, at this time of the year service is very slow, since it is known that with delays at certain distribution centres, such as in Montreal, it is difficult to dispatch mail as fast as before.
But in January and October of last year I had the following experience. I found out that a letter sent from Ottawa to the Gaspe area or vice versa gets through in 15 hours due to the new program applied in 1986 by the Post Office Department, a program which provides for the closing down of small post offices and the establishment of distribution centres.
Opposition members who criticize this program are dabbling in petty politics. I recall that, in the beautiful province where the mover of the motion lives, while I was employed by the Post Office Department, we had to close down some small post offices, including those of Iona, Alma, Cherry Valley and Somerville. In Cherry Valley, there were only five users; in Iona, there were 34, and in Somerville, 38.
And we received complaints from small patronage handlers in the area, or from the local postmaster who did not want to lose his job or again from the contractor who carried the mail from one post office to another. We have established a rural mail delivery service in those localities. And I challenge the members from that province to go back home and ask users in Iona, Alma, Cherry Valley or Somerville if they are satisfied with the programs that the Liberal government has implemented since 1968 without receiving an affirmative answer. Mr. Speaker, the proof that they are satisfied lies in the fact that they recently elected Mr. Campbell as Premier of Prince Edward Island with an overwhelming majority.
[DOT] (3:40 p.m.)
Mr. Speaker, if there is a delay in mail delivery in Canada, the cause is not the closing down of small post offices in rural areas, but rather the mail handling problem in large centres such as Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Winnipeg.
Hon. members who opposed the program of closing down small post offices and establish-

May 22, 1970
Postal Service Policies
ing postal stations in rural areas were against progress and that is why I cannot support the motion.
In conclusion, and in order to allow another member to speak before 4 o'clock, I would like to put into the record the statement that the president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers made when Bill C-116 was introduced two years ago. Mr. Houle said that members of Parliament who protested against the closing down of small post offices and the improvement of rural mail service in some areas were more interested in patronage than in the service that the Post Office wants to give its users. He used an expression often heard in Quebec when he said, as was reported in an article in La Presse in October 1968:
In the country, he added, it is still like in the days of Seraphin, the post office is really something.
In my opinion, Mr. Speaker, those who object to the closing down of small post offices and want to go back to the old system are against progress and I do not think that they deserve to sit in this chamber.


Mr. W. B. Nesbitt (Oxford):: Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we have had quite a number of observations from members in different parts of the House, but other than the remarks of the Postmaster General (Mr. Kierans) a few moments ago and those of the hon. member for Gaspe (Mr. Cyr) who has just spoken we have heard nothing very favourable to the Post Office.
I listened to the Postmaster General's remarks with considerable interest. One thing which I noticed was also mentioned by my colleague, the hon. member for Grand Falls-White Bay-Labrador (Mr. Peddle), and that is that the Postmaster General seemed to be possessed with the idea of change for the sake of change. The last speaker said that we must have progress. That is all very fine, Mr. Speaker, but unless there is some purpose in changing, or some appreciation of what progress is, there is no point of getting up in this House and using blanket words that mean very little to cover large areas.
At one point in his remarks the Postmaster General pointed out that only $15,000 was allocated to Post Office training in the days of the Conservative government when the Hon. William Hamilton was Postmaster General. That may well be, but one comes to the inevitable conclusion that contrasted with the costly training of today there seemed to be no problems in the Post Office at that time. The

mail went through, the rates were not raised and there were no problems.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Wallace Bickford (Wally) Nesbitt: Since this minister has taken office under the present government there has been nothing but trouble in the Post Office, nothing but complaints from the public. If this is the minister's idea of change and progress, it is certainly a peculiar interpretation of those terms. I will not spend time this afternoon reciting the catalogue of blunders, errors and stupidities that have occurred in the Post Office Department. They are well known to all members even if they do not like to recite them, and some of my colleagues have already dealt with this aspect of the problem.
I notice that the Postmaster General is not in the House. I am not blaming him for not being present during all of this debate because there are other things on his mind at the moment, such as the possibility of a postal strike. I assume he is trying to keep an eye on the present negotiations with the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Drury) and on the meetings that are going on this afternoon. I cannot help but recall a remark made not long ago by the Leader of the Ralliement Creditiste (Mr. Caouette) that there were very few members in the House. Perhaps it is worth while observing that only one of his colleagues is present at the moment.
Yesterday the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker) asked the Postmaster General about the closing down of small post offices all across the country. As reported at page 7160 of Hansard, the minister replied:
-all hon. members on both sides of the House will be relieved to learn that this program is coming to a close.
Well, perhaps we are relieved. The hon. member for Gaspe pointed out that 56 post offices are being closed in his riding alone. I have no complaint in this regard because in my constituency only one or two are being closed, and while I am sorry to see them close because they remove a certain part of life from the rural area, I realize that it is because of the costs and so forth. But in many ridings, as members have brought to the attention of the House on many occasions, post offices are being closed in a wholesale manner. I am sure the Postmaster General does not appreciate this, but it has been pointed out by hon. members. This means one thing to people who live in Montreal or
May 22. 1970



Toronto-and ministers from these two areas dominate the cabinet-but it means quite another thing to people living in the Northwest Territories, in the northern parts of the Prairies, Newfoundland, and even the more distant parts of Ontario and Quebec. In small centres of population the post office is often the centre of the community. It is the place where people meet and communicate in ways other than by letter. In removing these post offices we are removing part of our way of life, and I do not think that is necessarily wise.
[DOT] (3:50 p.m.)
I have here a letter written to me by one of my constituents. I will refer to it briefly and then go on with the main part of my remarks. The letter points out what it costs rural people to get their newspapers. The letter comes from the rural part of my constituency, from a village called Embro. I expect hon. members will want to know the author's name. It is a Mr. Usher. He says that before 1968 he had to pay $22 a year to receive the local morning paper, the London Free Press, but with the new postal rates introduced by the minister the cost has increased to $44 a year.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: No wonder there is inflation.


Wallace Bickford (Wally) Nesbitt: Moreover, it is $44 a year payable in advance. What has happened there may not mean too much to people living in Montreal or Toronto; they could not care less. But for elderly people with not too much income, especially elderly people in the rural areas, doubling the cost of the daily paper works a great hardship. People like to know what is going on in the world. They like to read daily newspapers. In our part of the country we are flooded with United States radio programs.
Although the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Greene) said he was going to jam the airwaves along the border, or some such nonsense, nevertheless it is a good idea for people in our part of the country who live near the border to have access to Canadian news. Their access to it should not be denied by a doubling of the rates. This constituent also pointed out that a number of rural carriers were able to deliver the paper in their personal capacity while delivering mail and that the problem was being cirvumvented in that way. Frankly, I cannot understand the minister's argument that rates for newspapers have to be so high.
Postal Service Policies
I know that the minister at various times has put forward the pious philosophy that those who use the mails must pay for them. That sort of idea is pretty good if you run a dime store, say, but not otherwise. He said the government's objective is to make the Post Office Department pay its own way without subsidization. Sooner or later it may even become a Crown corporation. Well, saying that the postal service should pay its way may be the minister's point of view but it is not my point of view. I am not saying that it should not do as well as is reasonable, and reasonably pay its way, but we must consider what is the purpose and objective of the postal service in Canada.
It is my understanding, from reading Canadian history and listening to expressions of policy by the representatives of all parties in this House, that it is traditional that Canadians must not be discriminated against in essential government services merely because they live in remote parts of the country or even rural parts of the country. This is part of the cost of keeping Canada together. We are a very large country and, as we know, a great country and part of the cost of keeping our country together, of expanding it, exploring and opening it up is the providing of equal service for all parts of the country and discriminating against no one, no matter whether the people live in the far north, Newfoundland, northern British Columbia or the remoter parts of Ontario or Quebec. This principle applies to other services and has been followed as fully as possible in our railway services. It is certainly followed in that other form of communication, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which is subsidized to the tune of $160 million a year.
I and a great many members of this House would like to know the answer to this question: Why is the postal service, which is essentially a means of communication in Canada, being treated differently from means of communication such as the CBC, Canadian National Railways, or means of communication which are privately owned such as the CPR and Telecommunications? This is the big question. What is happening seems very strange to me. One has to guess what lies behind government policy. The government does not impart the motives for its behaviour to members of the opposition, so that one has to guess. Why does the CBC get special treatment, the subsidy of $160 million a year? It seems strange. In some ways the CBC is not

May 22, 1970
Postal Service Policies
helpful. At least the Post Office does not do any harm to the country.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Wallace Bickford (Wally) Nesbitt: It gives us the means of communicating. However, the same cannot be said of the CBC. The Prime Minister himself was so dissatisfied with the French network of the CBC that he threatened to put it under trusteeship. It was not holding the nation together; it was pulling Canada apart. Yet we are subsidizing an institution like that with tremendous amounts of money. It is like paying for your own funeral. If we want further examples of the way the French network operated, we need only remember that one of the leading people on the French network was Mr. Rene Levesque. When some people in this House pointed out what the French network was doing and where the views of Mr. Levesque were leading us, everybody said, "Tut, tut! Nothing can happen."
The CBC, of course, does other things. It spends a lot of its time on so-called news broadcasts and public affairs programs which promote the foreign policy and foreign policy aims of the Soviet Union and China and little else. If that is not enough, you will find that quite a number of people in the CBC, to say the least, are rather individualistic or eccentric, to put it in a kindly way, and spend most of their time promoting their own personal eccentricities with the youth of the country -eccentricities such as the use of drugs and things like that. They try to mould the young people of Canada to their own peculiar shape. And for this we are putting up $160 million a year.
Where postal services have been cut off in the rural areas, newspaper mailing rates have been increased and people have had to pay twice as much for receiving their daily paper.
I can only say it seems very strange to many of us that the users of one of our essential communication services, the Post Office, should be discriminated against. The minister has told us that the Post Office is supposed to pay its way; that is the ultimate objective of the operation. Those who use its services will have to pay for them. But that philosophy does not apply to the CBC nor to the railways, where there are equalization payments, and so on. There we apply Maritime freight rates, the Crowsnest Pass rates and the like. Why do we invoke one principle for one of the essential communication services in the country and another principle for the others? 
The government has never answered that question. May be the Postmaster General has no choice; perhaps this is what he must do. Perhaps this is a cabinet decision. Perhaps there are dual policies for our means of communications. Perhaps the Postmaster General is not in a position to tell us why the means of communication over which he has responsibility are being treated in a special way. Perhaps he will tell us about this later. In the meantime, the members of the House want to know why there is special treatment for the postal service and not for our other means of communication.
[DOT] (4:00 p.m.)
In conclusion, I hope we get an answer to this question. I hope that when the Postmaster General is implementing his policies he will try to implement them with a little more tact and will pay a little more attention to the suggestions that have been offered by members on both sides of the House.


Mr. John L. Skoberg (Moose Jaw):: Mr. Speaker, in taking part in this debate on the motion proposed by the official opposition I wish to say that our party agrees with the Postmaster General (Mr. Kierans) that a most efficient postal service is necessary for Canada. The New Democratic Party will cooperate with the Postmaster General when he starts treating people like human beings and not like stock-market ticker-tape. In Canada today people are considered in light of their economic situation in the community.
We believe it is necessary to have an efficient postal service of which Canadians will be proud. The moral issue must be considered rather than the discipline of the balance sheet. I personally like the Postmaster General. I think he is a very congenial individual. Unfortunately, he is a victim of the position in which he now finds himself. I am sure the people of Canada wonder how in the name of heaven he finds himself in so many damnable situations. No individual should be subjected to so many of these situations unless he is being used as a guinea pig by the cabinet, trying to put up the balloons to his and the public's detriment.
The Postmaster General must realize that the role of the Post Office is to provide efficient service. Communication between all areas of Canada is one of the most important factors with which we must be concerned in this debate. Our nation is far-flung. If we do not have efficient communication, we can
May 22. 1970

forget about Canada being a nation: we can think of the regional aspects only. This would be to the detriment of all concerned. I wonder if the Postmaster General insists on recognizing the discipline of the balance sheet when considering service to the people? From what we read about the Postmaster General, it appears that the discipline of the balance sheet is consistently what he has in mind. If this is all that he considers in relation to service to the Canadian people, there will be no efficient communications service for the people.
Does the Postmaster General not realize that millions of taxpayers are now paying for a not yet proven satellite communications system which is linked with our nation, when in reality the users of the satellite are unknown. When the minister appeared before the Standing Committee on Transport and Communications he indicated that the users of the postal service must pay for this satellite service. I do not object to millions of dollars being spent on developing a communications satellite for the benefit of Canada, but we have a proven communications system and some of this money could be allocated to the postal service to keep that line of communication open. It must be kept open for the benefit of Canadians. We should not spend millions of dollars on research and development of a new method of communications and at the same time disregard that line of communication which is the postal service.
Does the Postmaster General believe that only the users of the postal service should pay for the cost of that new service? Does the Postmaster General believe that senior citizens and those on low or fixed incomes should pay for the use of that service? The corporate giants, Members of Parliament and members of the cabinet are not concerned about an increase in postal rates. However, millions of people across Canada are concerned. Because of the increase in postal rates they will no longer be able to afford the paper which they have been used to reading. I would like to know whether the postal authorities in general and the cabinet in particular are concerned about increases of up to 400 per cent in respect of certain communications and journals. I realize the minister will say that there has been no change in the postal rate for these publications, but in fact a number of publications have fallen by the wayside.
It is easy to say that publishers can increase their rates to users and so cover the deficit. Those who can afford it will continue
Postal Service Policies
to buy these publications, but those in the low-income bracket will not be able to renew their subscriptions. If this happens, publications such as farm journals will go out of circulation completely. If this is communication, I fail to recognize the definition of the word. Is it any wonder editorials are headed, "Kierans talks rubbish"? In many cases it is rubbish. The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and his cabinet know that increases are passed on to the users. When enough people opt out of subscribing to these publications we will realize that the policy on which the Post Office is based is rubbish. This means very little to the gold-studded people, but it means very much to those on low-income. The Postmaster General continues to say that the user must pay.
At this moment millions of dollars are being spent in Canada on a bilingual program. Thousands of Canadians are studying either the French or the English language in order to create a more effective means of communication in our great nation. However, the government is effectively cutting off the one positive means of communication, the postal service.
At the time when millions of dollars are being spent on a bilingual program, an effective means of communication is being cut off. I suggest that the type of postal service and communication to which we have become accustomed is in far greater danger at this time than the bilingual program. If we do not keep Canada united with an efficient communications system, it will be the end of our great nation. The Postmaster General always says the user must pay. Has the user a say at the ballot-box when the time comes? I say he has. I hope at the next election the users of the postal service of this nation will indicate whether they are in agreement with the Liberal government and its policy with regard to the postal service. The Liberal members may be very surprised to find that the grass-roots people of this nation are the ones that count.
What does service to the people really mean to this government other than the pronounced policy of service to the wealthy? The wealthy are not concerned, but the average Canadian is. The Postmaster General recently indicated to the committee that the government intends to take every possible step to reduce the deficit and establish a balanced budget within a few years. Is this a philosophy of the Postmaster General? Is this a socially acceptable and reasonable policy which the users in Canada should expect?

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Surely the Postmaster General can indicate whether he considers this a socially acceptable measure that meets the criterion of giving service to the people. An article appeared in the Free Press Weekly of January 4, 1969, with regard to publications in Canada. It reads in part:
[DOT] (4:10 p.m.)
And again (Hansard, page 2004): "With regard to the Free Press Weekly, 22,676,000 copies were carried last year. The cost of carrying the Free Press Weekly last year was $1,622,000."
The financial statement of the Post Office, dated October 1968, reports that 18,304,111 copies of Time magazine were handled at a cost of $1,094,147.
From these figures, the Post Office cost of handling a single copy of Time was 5.97 cents; and for the Free Press Weekly, 7.15 cents.
This is a clear indication that if the Postmaster General and the cabinet are concerned about Canadian weeklies and dailies they should give consideration to this particular publication Time, which seems to me to be costing many Canadian dollars.
I now turn to some of the closures of post offices in Canada. I am not going to refer to particular cases but rather will speak about the general situation. The Postmaster General has stated that the criteria for closing many of these post offices include service of less than 30 families and revenue below $1,000. The minister indicated to the Transport Committee that a thorough investigation would be carried on before any further closures would be made. This appears from the committee proceedings on March 10 and March 12. I ask hon. members of this House whether since March 12 any post offices have been closed in their constituencies. Some have been closed in mine, and I think other hon. members will find a similar situation in their constituencies.
The main question that this House has to be concerned with is whether the minister and the government are interested in effective communication, in whether the user, the general public, has had the opportunity to make representations to the postal authorities before such closures are made. I am beginning to wonder from looking at the various reasons given for post office closures in various parts of the country whether the government is concerned at all about community life. I have my doubts in this respect.
If all that the government is worried about is the balance sheet, and this is the only criterion used in deciding whether to close post offices, then community life in eastern and western Canada as we have known it will

come to an end. People in those areas will suffer and so will the community and the nation at large. There is no way you can close down post offices in these areas and expect community life to continue as the residents there have known it in their lifetimes. This community life should continue to exist for many years, even though we accept the fact that change is in the air, that the name of the game is change at the present time.
If the government is determined to eliminate rural life in Canada, it is important they should say so now so that the people in those areas will know where the government stands on this issue. The report of the task force recently delivered to us suggests that the small farmer will probably disappear, having been absorbed by corporate enterprise. The small community is disappearing too, with the backing of this goverment. What else could result from taking away services from the people? The small community will disappear through no fault of its own and with the assistance of the federal government. It appears to me that this government is hellbent upon the elimination of rural life in Canada, and as quickly as possible.
I should like to make reference to the definition of "moral community" which appears in the Dictionary of Sociology and Related Sciences. The minister is not in the chamber at the moment but I hope that one of the members of his staff will bring it to his attention. "Moral community" is defined as-
The sharing of ultimate values among a number of persons so as to produce in them a sense of common orientation and striving. Moral community may be present in as small a group as a family and as large a group as a nation.
If we refuse to recognize the concept of a moral community in this nation, we will devalue not only our principles but our morals. We will no longer be a nation but will consist of a complex of large metropolitan areas of the sort to be found in central Canada. It appears to me that if we are worried about Canada generally we must realize that moral community embraces more than the elimination of unprofitable post offices that the Postmaster General appears to believe must be done away with.
The Postmaster General said that the principal factor in this situation is change. We all know the name of the game is change, but not all change is good. Yet the government are insistent upon making changes even though some of the changes are not good. Indeed, they are so determined to make
May 22. 1970

changes that they do not worry about the people who are adversely affected. I suggest that the goverment should think about the people affected by the changes that they make. We have all heard of trial balloons, and it appears that the government is not prepared to put up a trial balloon in this instance. Instead, it goes ahead with its plans, being more concerned with the principle of the balance sheet.
The minister also stated he was going to wake up the sleeping giant of the Post Office, and to some extent we would agree with this. At the same time, as reported in the Globe and Mail for Tuesday, May 19, under the heading "Kierans hopes Post Office can find way into 20th century as corporation", there is reference to the fact that the Postmaster General has stated that labour relations and working conditions are in a mess. The article goes on:
"We've improved working conditions tremendously," Mr. Kierans boasts, "but management in the Post Office still has a long, long way to go to get into the 20th century."
It is commendable on the part of the minister to make a pronouncement of this kind so forthrightly. At the same time he is reported to have said-though we hear many versions of what he is alleged to have said-that any employee who resists new working conditions is resisting change. In fact, reference was made to throwing sand into proposals to bring about change. I am wondering whether the minister has heard of the term that has been used during the last few months, "industrial democracy". Did the minister and the government really take the employees of the Post Office into their confidence before embarking upon changes?
I should like to draw the attention of the minister to today's Globe and Mail which carries a report on the Canadian Labour Congress convention in Edmonton, where 1,500 delegates voted yesterday. It is apparent from this article that the government is suspect in the eyes of labour since under the Public Service Staff Relations Act the only matters that can be negotiated, apart from wages, are small things which mean very little. The resolution adopted at the convention stated that while the congress recognized that there was a division of functions between labour and management, it endorsed the extension of collective bargaining to encompass all matters which affect the worker's life.
It is unfortunate, in my opinion, that the leader of the Creditistes used this House as a
Postal Service Policies
forum to bring the present negotiations into our discussion. In my opinion, conciliation procedures are taking place in the course of the collective bargaining process and this is not an issue that should be discussed here at this time. I was pleased that the minister stayed out of that discussion when he spoke this afternoon.
Although the postal authorities are making many changes at the present time, they are not taking into consideration the interests of those employees whose rights are affected by those changes. The Globe and Mail report contains this paragraph:
The Freedman report would give the unions the right to veto the changes during the life of the contract if no agreement can be reached by the parties on the changes.
We are all well aware of that.
Even more far-reaching was the proposal that bargaining extend to management's production plans, future industrial development policies, curtailment of operations, methods and processes of operations and pollution control.
[DOT] (4:20 p.m.)
Mr. Speaker, it is also noted that the Postmaster General has said that if this were a Crown corporation some of these areas could be covered by collective bargaining. But the situation does not preclude this, because he has the public service regulations. Perhaps it does because the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Drury) has his "sometimes" 2 per cent increases. But if the Postmaster General were to ask the employees' organizations how it will affect the working life of the affected employees, he would find that many of the changes put into effect are really the prerogative of the workers themselves because they have to live with them. We cannot oppose change, but we can oppose a situation in which the managerial prerogative is uppermost in the government's mind. The postal authorities seem to live with the idea that managerial prerogative is the only way in which to operate.
If they insist on this attitude I am sure we will continually have strikes in respect of all public service bargaining units in this country. We also know that the President of the Treasury Board said there is a moral obligation on the part of many people to write into a contract a job security clause. If there is a moral obligation to do this, there is a moral obligation on the part of the government to include it in their bargaining in respect of things which affect the workers. Unfortunately, too often in the past this has not hap-

May 22, 1970
Postal Service Policies
pened. I believe in this case the government is attempting to impose guidelines on postal workers who are not in a position to do much about it other than use their economic strength. Their position is their business, and how they settle this dispute is also their business.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Francis):: Order. I regret to interrupt the hon. member, but his time has expired. The hon. member for Fraser Valley East (Mr. Pringle).


Mr. Perrault:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Jerry Pringle (Fraser Valley East):: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also thank the hon. member for Burnaby-Seymour (Mr. Perrault) for his applause. I had not intended to speak on this rather stupid motion which is before the House, but in view of the brutal attacks made upon the Postmaster General (Mr. Kier-ans), especially by the hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie), I feel I should say some things that have been on my mind for a long time concerning this very serious problem and the very serious attacks the members of the opposition are making, not against this government and not particularly against the Postmaster General but against the consumers of Canada. This is one thing which has always bothered me in this House of Commons as an amateur who has not been on this side long enough to lose my amateur status, as have many others. Most of the opposition is not directed against anybody but the consumers of the country. When we were elected and took on the job, we agreed that there should be some fiscal responsibility here.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


M. Ervin Pringle: Perhaps fiscal responsibility is different in some areas. For instance, I know that the hon. member for Hillsborough requires seven other members along with him in this Parliament to represent an area with a population only slightly less than that of my riding, which I alone represent. It costs eight times as much money for them to be here than it does for me to be here. So when we speak about fiscal responsibility, possibly we are not very aware of what fiscal responsibility really is or should be.
Let us take a look at what really is going on. There is a reorganization of the postal system. This is a service to Canada. It is a reorganization that is long overdue. I have been told by people who ought to know that this service has been used by all parties in

the House of Commons over the years as a kind of football. Of course, the mail must get through. The hon. member for Moose Jaw (Mr. Skoberg) said he abhorred anybody who has anything to do with unions and bargaining agreements saying anything here about the negotiations. He said that this is not the place for us to be discussing this question. In my opinion this resolution is certainly out of place. Then the hon. member for Moose Jaw proceeded to take ten minutes in this House of Commons talking about bargaining at a very delicate time in labour-management relations. I know the opposition have been dragged kicking and struggling into the twentieth century and that they speak of change for the sake of change. But they do not really believe in change. I have never heard in this House a positive approach to change, to organized change, to progressive change or to improvements in organization such as the Postmaster General has had the courage to attempt in Canada this year.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


M. Ervin Pringle: I think we are most fortunate to have the services of the Postmaster General, a man who has the courage to stand up and be heard. Those members of the opposition who think this gentleman is not being heard should get out into the Maritimes, into western Canada and across the country, because he is being heard. We do not like to be inconvenienced. We do not like to have to wait an extra day for our mail. But when the chips are down and when a proper explanation is given, the people understand the situation and know that in order for Canada to progress there must be change and reorganization. This is what is taking place at the present time.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: Have you not heard of the
western protest?


M. Ervin Pringle: I have not heard of it. There is no such thing as a western protest. I think the time has come to suggest to our hon. friends opposite that we could use a little help. The reorganization program, contrary to the statement made by the hon. member for Moose Jaw, is in effect and has been established by a large number of postal employees, the people who are in charge of the various departments of the Post Office of Canada. I am not suggesting there has been a great deal of input from the postal carriers who walk the routes, but I am sure there has been some. I know there has been some in my area. So
May 22, 1970

the postal employees are involved in this reorganization program. The formentation which has been caused by members of the opposition has made it most difficult for corrective measures to be taken. I believe corrective measures will be taken and that reorganization will take place. I believe, also, that the Post Office Department will be able to provide the necessary service to the people of Canada without becoming involved in an expense that would be almost impossible to recover.
We know what would have happened to the taxpayers of this country had not the Prime Minister and the cabinet in their wisdom decided that we must apply austerity measures. It is not right for one to say "Austerity, phooey" when speaking of a postal problem such as this, and then turn around and condemn the government for the additional expenses and capital outlays required to operate the country.
[DOT] (4:30 p.m.)
This is the time for co-operation. We do not need to get up in this House and insult the Postmaster General, to give a great oratorical speech which really is nothing but a type of condemnation which, I suppose, we are supposed to accept as being rather well put. Right now we need the help and assistance of everyone in the House of Commons to understand, first, what the problem is and, second, to provide some input instead of nothing but output and to support the Postmaster General in his efforts to reorganize and reform the postal system.
At the same time we must give due consideration to the fact that in the process of reorganization there is usually a natural resistance from everyone involved, as anyone who has been involved in reorganization within his own business or company will know. During this period it is very difficult for the people charged with responsibility to carry on the task of reorganization, and it is very easy for those who are dedicated to condemnation.
We are now at a crucial time in the life of the Post Office Department. We need to close some post offices, and many have been closed. Some of them might be reopened as times and conditions change and populations shift. Policies are being developed by the Post Office Department which will enable us eventually to provide a much better system of getting the mail to the people. I am not convinced that we are supposed to be operating a
Postal Service Policies
town hall type of post office. I was raised in a small town, but the post office was never a place where we went to hang out. We would sooner go to the drug store to buy a soda. I can recall going into our small post office, but very seldom was there anyone there. Nowadays, however, the system is much improved.
I am a young fellow, but I remember driving a Democrat into Dugald, Manitoba, with a horse and buggy. This is perhaps what we should be doing today if we are to meet the demands of members of the opposition.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: Close down western Canada.


M. Ervin Pringle: In closing-and here I hesitate because I usually get applause from the opposition when I mention I am closing-


An hon. Member:: Only from your
colleagues.


M. Ervin Pringle: -I would suggest that those people who are bent on destructing-


Stanley Howard Knowles: That's a new word.


M. Ervin Pringle: -the postal service reorganization and who are dedicated to doing everything they can to obstruct reform in the Post Office, should supply us with a list of changes and reforms that they say should be made but of which they have not stated a single one today. I wish they would tell us how we can improve the postal system. I would like to see them going forward instead of putting on the brakes and attempting to go backward. In the first place, this government and this Postmaster General will refuse to drive in reverse. The government is bent on improving, reforming and reorganizing the essential service of the Post Office Department, and we are going to do it.
During this period there will be some inconvenience. There is always inconvenience when we make changes. But we will gradually, over a short period of time, prove to the people of Canada that we can improve and reorganize and that we have a Postmaster General with the courage to do it. I am convinced that when it is the duty and the privilege of the people of Canada to make their decision known in the future, we will find again, as we have time after time, where their support lies.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Before recognizing the hon. member for Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain (Mr. Southam), I understand there

May 22, 1970
Postal Service Policies
have been consultations and the hon. member tor Gatineau (Mr. Clermont) seeks leave to revert to Routine Proceedings.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Gaston Clermont (Gatineau):: With
leave of the House, Mr. Speaker, I would like to revert to routine proceedings in order to table a committee report.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Faulkner):: Does the House agree?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Gaston Clermont: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of tabling the sixteenth report of the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs, in both official languages.
[Editor's Note: For text of above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Macquarrie:
This House repudiates the government's postal service policies and censures those ministers ot the Crown responsible for the mismanagement of the postal services which, within two years, have deteriorated through fewer mail deliveries, fewer post offices, higher postal rates, disrupted and irregular services, and deplorable labour-management relations, to the prejudice of all Canadians, postal employees, and the national economy,
Richard Russell Southam: Mr. Speaker, in rising this afternoon during the debate on postal matters I want, first of all, to commend the hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie) for introducing this most serious subject to the House of Commons regarding the deterioration of postal services. I also congratulate him on the able manner in which he reviewed the problems facing our postal department and the many realistic suggestions he made to cure these ills.
IMr. Deputy Speaker.]
I was quite amused, in listening to the remarks a few moments ago of the hon. member for Fraser Valley East (Mr. Pringle), to hear him refer to the fiscal responsibility of the government. This raises a very touchy subject. I suppose he has forgotten that we have the highest cost of living in our history, the highest interest rates in our history and the greatest number of unemployed people in this country since the hungry thirties, as well as the greatest pile-up of wheat in Canadian history. He has also forgotten other instances such as the Bonaventure. If he wants to refer to this as the government's fiscal responsibility, I fail to understand his argument.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Lloyd Roseville Crouse: Liberal times are tough times.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: A Liberal apologist.


Thomas Miller Bell: The same old bunch.


Richard Russell Southam: When my good friend, the hon. member for Fraser Valley East, said that the opposition had to be dragged by the heels into the twentieth century so far as modernization and bringing our services up-to-date are concerned, I wanted to ask him and members of the government if they consider waiting ten days to get a letter from the House of Commons to Spiritwood, Saskatchewan, to be a change for the sake of change and whether this is modernizing the postal services. I doubt it.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: We were better off in 1867.


Richard Russell Southam: I could recount another experience. Before this administration took office and the so-called improvements were made to the postal services, we could mail a letter in Gainsborough which would reach my friends in Pierson, Manitoba, a distance of eight miles, on the same day. But now if it is mailed on Friday, it takes four days. There are many such instances.


Raymond J. Perrault: Are you sure there is an address on it?


Richard Russell Southam: Yes. These are the facts because the government has set up an arbitrary rule that they cannot take postal trucks across provincial boundaries.


Stanley Howard Knowles: You
can walk faster than that.


Richard Russell Southam: We really have a crisis in the Post Office. It is acknowledged right, left and centre that the Canadian postal service has reached its lowest ebb in history. It has not taken us 100 or so years to reach such a sorry
May 22. 1970

state. This government must take full credit for masterminding the situation in a little under two years. This is a remarkable achievement, Mr. Speaker. All the more so when one reads Bullock's "Selected Readings in Public Finance" and comes across the following paragraph:
The best established and in many cases the oldest form of public industry is the postal service, which Adam Smith described as "the only mercantile project which has been successfully managed-by every sort of government.
We may begin to wonder what sort of government we have in Canada.
We face our second nationwide postal strike in two years. That is serious enough, Mr. Speaker, but sandwiched between these two strikes there has been case after case of blundering and bungling and fumbling, dispute after dispute, violence and destruction, delayed mails, parcel embargoes and post office closures-and all at a higher cost for what is said to be an improved service. This government mocks the people of Canada when it talks about a better mail service. How dare it offer such balderdash! Today we have the spectacle of a government that blindly turns its eye as its ministers fall over themselves in their eagerness to neuter what was once a proud, efficient postal service.
[DOT] (4:40 p.m.)
We have a union-hating Postmaster General (Mr. Kierans) who thrives on trouble and newspaper headlines and creates problems every time he opens his mouth. We have a Treasury Board President who occasionally pinch-hits for the Postmaster General and who is dedicated to testing the government's anti-inflation missiles on some of the lowest paid workers in the country. And we have a Minister of Labour (Mr. Mackasey) who has the remarkable knack of sidestepping the thorny management-labour relations his colleagues work so hard to produce.
In short, Mr. Speaker, the Post Office under the leadership of this government is in one heck of a mess. It sounds like the English Post Office before 1784 when the Postmaster General there introduced sweeping reforms. Commenting on the actions of this Postmaster General, A. T. Hadley in his history of postal services wrote:
Previous to his time the mail conveyance had been infrequent, slow, irregular and utterly unsafe.
We are not going forward; we are going backward in history. Such has been the
Postal Service Policies
number of problems confronting the government over the postal service that you might think the ministers would learn a lesson or two in human relations. They look to automation and they look to a streamlined Crown corporation to lead them out of this wilderness, and every time it would seem they forget they are dealing with people and not cattle. The Montreal Star of May 12, 1970, put its finger on the issue. I do not suppose anyone on the government benches read the article so I will take time to read a paragraph or two as follows:
Improvements in efficiency (meaning first and foremost automation) are essential.
But one thing is just as essential and that is improvements in and consideration for the human aspect in dealing with Post Office employees.
Marcel Perault, local head of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, draws a parallel between the national dispute which now appears inevitable and the strictly Montreal conflict between the Post Office and the former G. Lapalme truck drivers.
To some extent, he is right.
No one came out of the Lapalme dispute smelling like a rose, but Mr. Kierans and his department were definitely the least likely candidates for any flower garden. The thought of displacing 457 men (even though it was partly their own choice) is distasteful to most people and it is downright objectionable to any union members.
"The inhuman treatment by Kierans of the guys from Lapalme is no different than what he is trying to do to us," Mr. Perault claims.
A quick perusal of union demands tends to add credence to his viewpoint.
The article then touches on the issues as seen by the postal employees and, let me say, these issues cannot be contemptuously swept away-issues such as working conditions, job security and rates of pay. The article continues:
It appears that he (that is Judge Montpetit) knew that technological changes alone will not create better efficiency, which is something Mr. Kierans and the Post Office Department hierarchy have yet to fathom.
The Post Office employees themselves are in the best position to know where improvements should and could be made with the least amount of friction and with the greatest speed.
It requires a new outlook on labour relations and until it is adopted Canadians can expect continued trouble in the service.
The government pins its magic-wand hopes on automation or mechanization, and the employees seek the security that the government refuses to give. The Postmaster General was questioned in the House about this very matter earlier in the week and he told us that over the next five years the work force of the Post Office could expand by some 5,000

May 22, 1970
Postal Service Policies
people. That does not answer the question. He then went on to say that there was no possibility of automation or productivity outstripping the present work force, and here I quote, "People who seek contractual obligations sometimes seek not the work but the pay without the work." Such a statement was unwarranted and, I suggest, at a time when one might expect a greater degree of sensitivity from the government, almost calculated to inflame the unions which have been attempting to bargain in good faith on behalf of their 27,000 members.
The statement has been described as scandalous and irresponsible. But anyone who has watched closely the performance of the Postmaster General might have expected it. When I suggest that the statement was calculated to inflame, I mean precisely that. Is it mere accident that the Postmaster General stumbles into situations, throws spanners into delicate negotiations and steamrollers over the rights of postal workers? I do not believe so. Time after time he has shown himself seemingly incapable of understanding when it comes to the rights of other people. In the dispute that last year went to arbitration it was said again that the Post Office management was arrogant and high-handed and that management's conduct had created unrest, undermined morale and resulted in the development of hostility.
The Postmaster General-and I prefer that title to Minister of Communications because he does not communicate as well as we would wish-cannot ignore the charge. After all, he is top of the heap of arrogance and highhanded action. In fact, we have only to see him perform in the House to have a fine appreciation of where the trouble in the Post Office originates. He tiptoed into the Lapalme affair like a Sherman tank and the end result was confusion, violence, destruction and a chaotic mail service. This time the official verdict handed down by Commissioner Gol-denberg was that the Post Office management had made "a serious omission" regarding the future employment of Lapalme workers, and the Post Office had ignored a moral obligation to seek to protect the employment of these workers.
Only yesterday, writing in the Montreal Star, Professor Bernard Brody, an economist who is a member of the Department of Industrial Relations of the University of Montreal, said:
Heightened militancy, fanned by additional fears of job elimination, was produced, unnecessarily in [Mr. Southam.l
this writer's opinion, by Eric Kierans' recent Lapalme fiasco. The incredible, short-sighted mishandling of the Montreal postal trucking situation turns up to explain part of the bad feelings, mistrust, suspicion and aggressiveness.
The words are "incredible, short-sighted mishandling." It leads one to believe that the minister has put his foot in it again. But has he? Was it an accident? I think not, Mr. Speaker. It all becomes part of a pattern, the pattern that records the behaviour of a spoiled child for whom the rod should not have been spared. Spare the rod and you spoil the child, and in this case you shatter what confidence the public had in our Post Office service and rob the people providing that service of the one thing they seek, job security.
Look at his record, Mr. Speaker. If any member of this House had to work for the minister, the first thing he would have written into his job contract would be job security. The Lapalme situation became such a mess that the Postmaster General has members of the cabinet at war with each other. He was forced to move out of the frontline while others were left to patch the holes. A nationwide strike looms over the postal service and members on both sides of the House can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the Postmaster General is nowhere to be seen. Things are bad enough as it is, with the government carrying its anti-inflation banner into negotiations-"take what we give you or join the ranks of the unemployed. There are plenty to take your place." But the Postmaster General has been sulking in the wings. Then he comes back and gives an interview that even to the government must have been regarded as the most extraordinary thing. He is back where he likes to be-in the headlines and in trouble-and the damage has been done.
He follows this with a statement to the House to the effect that people who seek contractual obligations sometimes seek not the work but the pay without the work. Is this the sort of attitude that helps negotiations or helps to avert strikes? Does anyone in the House really regard the actions of the minister or his seemingly irresponsible statements as an accident? He has engineered this whole bagful of trouble. The sooner he goes, the better for the government, the better for the Post Office and the better for the Canadian public.
May 22, 1970

[DOT] (4:50 p.m.)
I refer again to Professor Bernard Brody's remarks in the Montreal Star of yesterday. He wrote:
This whole mess should serve as an example to every employer on how not to introduce change, unless one is intentionally looking for a disruption of his operations.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, it may sound absurd but I charge that the Postmaster General of this government is going out of his way to create a climate of unrest. He is doing so, not because he does not understand people but because he does understand people. He knows they must rebel. And having brought the Post Office of this country to its knees, he can do what he darned well likes in the name of improving the service-higher rates, fewer post offices, fewer services and, like a knight in shining armour to the rescue, in will come the Postmaster General with his Crown corporation. I say, get rid of the man now before it is too late.


Mr. A. D. Alkenbrack (Fronlenac-Lennox and Addington):: Mr. Speaker, I realize that time is short and we are near the end of our day so I will just say briefly that I do not think any of the citizens of Canada are very well satisfied with the present situation in this department. The state of affairs in our Post Office operation certainly characterizes the day-to-day operations of this government. If we had not selected the Post Office as a subject for today's debate, we could have chosen at random from the long list of government failures that keeps growing from day to day.
I am concerned about the effects of closing several small post offices in my riding. The Postmaster General said as recently as yesterday that he received representations from interested parties prior to the closing of each post office affected by his arbitrary and senseless hatchet job on the small rural post offices and rural mail delivery service. The minister also implied that he considered each representation on its own merits.
Well, Mr. Speaker, I made representations to the minister over every one of the planned closings of many rural post offices in my riding and I can tell you that my representations fell on deaf ears. The post offices were closed and as far as the end result is concerned I might just as well have made my representations to the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Cadieux).
Postal Service Policies I must confess that the Postmaster General's efforts to streamline the operations of the Canadian Post Office have most of us completely baffled, and there are clear indications now that the Postmaster General is himself baffled. Every time the minister announces that he is going to improve some aspect of the Post Office operation, the Canadian public goes into a state of near-panic. By now all of us know that every time the Postmaster General decides to improve that once-great institution, the Canadian postal system, we can expect a new crisis to develop immediately.
There is one statement that I am anxious to make today. That is, that at this time I am incontrovertibly against our Canadian Post Office Department and system being converted to a Crown Corporation. Of all departments of the dominion government, it is the most unlikely or most ineligible for such treatment. This is the one department of government that if necessary the Canadian people are willing to underwrite by their taxes in order to obtain a reasonably good mail and communications service. Millions of Canadians depend on the mail because they cannot afford any faster or more dynamic form of communication such as radio, telegraph, television, automobile, railway or air. They depend on this simple, reasonably-priced service for their routine and basic, fixed habits of use.
The state of affairs in the Post Office is an indication of where this government is taking us, and I do not like it. The Canadian people do not like it. I would ask the Postmaster General again not to resign until the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) makes his next visit to Canada to share the shame and the blame for the state of affairs of not only our Post Office system but of all the institutions in our country that they once pledged themselves to preserve.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Suppose the Prime Minister doesn't come back?


An hon. Member:: Hurrah, hurrah!


Almonte Douglas Alkenbrack: Oh, I think he will be glad to return to his native land that has been so generous to him and to which he owes so much.


Thomas Miller Bell: He must be getting tired in those nightclubs.


Almonte Douglas Alkenbrack: However, if present conditions prevail the time is not far away when the Canadian people will be only too relieved

May 22, 1970
Postal Service Policies
to accept the resignations of both hon. gentlemen.
May I call it five o'clock, Mr. Speaker?


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: It being five o'clock it is my duty to inform the House that pursuant to section 11 of Standing Order 58, proceedings on the motion are considered to have expired.


Stanley Howard Knowles: So
has the Post Office.
At 4.57 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Monday, May 25, 1970