1972-06-19

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS

[Stage Direction]
On the order: Introduction of Bills.
members of the public; ability to adapt to changing conditions; initiative, tact, discretion, firmness and persuasiveness. The language requirements for each position depend on its location and the service which is to be provided to the public by the incumbent. Accordingly, appointees may be required to be qualified in the knowledge and use of the English language or the French language or both.
Mr. Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether the President of the Privy Council did not overlook something. Would he not like to move the first reading of the bill in the name of his colleague, the Minister of Veterans Affairs, so that we could advance it as quickly as possible?


Mr. MacEachen:: I would be happy to move it for the minister. I was engaged in conversation with a colleague and, unfortunately, I missed it.



PENSION ACT


Allan Joseph MacEachen: for leave to introduce Bill C-215, to amend the Pension Act.


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

[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)

Mr. Marshall: What are the qualifications of Manpower counsellors who work with the unemployed?


Hon. Gerard Pelletier (Secretary of State):: I am
informed by the Public Service Commission as follows: University graduation or equivalent (secondary school and years of related experience); evidence of ability to carry out counselling duties through work history; general awareness of acts, regulations and programs related to the duties; ability to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing; ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with both departmental staff and


PER CAPITA COST OF HEALTH CARE
[Stage Direction]
Question No. 78-Mr. Rynard: (supplementary)
1.	What was the per capita cost of health care for each province for the period January 1,1969, to January 1, 1970?
2.	What was the per capita cost of hospital care for each province for the period January 1, 1969, to January 1,1970?
3.	What was the per capita cost of medical care for each province for the period January 1,1969, to January 1, 1970?
Hon. John C. Munro (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: 1. The per capita cost of health care for January 1, 1969 to January 1, 1970, includes: mental, tuberculosis and non-shareable hospital care expenditures, non-shareable personal health care, health administration, public health and general health expenditures. Excludes capital expenditures-
Province
Newfoundland
Prince Edward Island
Nova Scotia
New Brunswick
Quebec
Ontario
Manitoba
Saskatchewan
Alberta
British Columbia
Yukon & Northwest Territories
Per Capita Cost $
124.31
123.88
158.17
151.05 172.87 202.58
178.05 163.15 196.80 185.62 128.50
2.	The current estimated per capita cost of in-patient hospital services for each province for the period January 1, 1969 to January 1, 1970 is as following:
Province
Newfoundland
Prince Edward Island
Nova Scotia
New Brunswick
Quebec
Ontario
Manitoba
Saskatchewan
Per Capita Cost $
58.79
52.12
70.41
73.36
88.55
84.62
72.04
76.71

June 19, 1972
Questions
Alberta	81.54
British Columbia	72.81
Yukon Territory	68.66
Northwest Territories	79.38
3.	The Medical Care Program operates on a fiscal year basis from April 1st to March 31st. As a result, precise per capita cost of insured services are available on a fiscal year basis only. For the fiscal year 1969-70 the medical care per capita cost of insured services by province is as follows:
Province
Newfoundland Prince Edward Island Nova Scotia New Brunswick Quebec Ontario Manitoba Saskatchewan Alberta
British Columbia Yukon Territory Northwest Territories
* As the provinces joined the Medical Care plan during the year, their cost of insured services does not represent a full 12 month per capita cost.
NOTE:* Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Quebec and the Territories did not join the plan in 1969-70.
Per Capita Cost $
23.86*
28.93*
34.65*
40.60*
32.38
35.60*
53.59


EGG IMPORTS
Mr. Lambert (Bellechasse): 1.	Does the production of eggs in Canada meet the demand of the domestic market?
2.	What was the volume of whole egg imports during the past 12 months?
3.	What quantity of eggs in other form was imported during the past 12 months?
4.	From what countries were eggs imported?


Mr. Bruce Howard (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Industry. Trade and Commerce):: Statistics Canada reports that: 1. The following table provides data on the egg market in Canada for the past year (1971).
Jan. 1 to Dec. 31 1971 (million dozen)
Stocks of eggs as of	January 1	5.8
Production	499.3
Imports	7.31
Total Supply	512.4
Less: Exports	3.7
Stock at end of period	9.3
1 Includes 3.2 million dozen eggs for hatching.

2.	Import of whole eggs from January 1 to December 31, 1971 (the latest twelve month period available): Quantity (dozens): 4,523, 678; Value: $5,424,000.
3.	Import of eggs in other forms from January 1 to December 31, 1971 (the latest twelve month period available): Quantity (pounds): 3,065,902; Value: $899,000.
4.	Eggs (whole) and egg products were imported from the following countries between January 1, 1971 and December 31, 1971: United Kingdom, Belgium-Luxem-bourg, Denmark, France, West Germany, Netherlands, Hong Kong, People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, United States.


CBC STRIKE
Mr. Orlikow: 1.	What dollar losses has the CBC experienced in terms of work done for programs subsequently cancelled or postponed as a result of the strike of CBC technicians?
2.	Were any contracts for advertising cancelled on CBC radio or television as a result of the strike of CBC technicians and, if so (a) how many (b) what was their dollar value?


Gérard Pelletier: I am
informed by the CBC as follows: 1. It is not possible to make an accurate calculation as to the dollar value of work done on programs and subsequently lost because of cancellations or postponements due to the technicians' strike. Programs which have to be postponed for showing at a later date are held in inventory and when later shown represent no loss of production costs, although there may be revenue loss or gain from advertising depending on the nature of the program and the time of showing. Programs which have to be cancelled (because work on them has been interrupted and they cannot be completed), or which, if completed, cannot be shown at a later date because they become out-dated, represent a dollar loss which is difficult to calculate accurately. In some cases the expenditure on an uncompleted program is actually less than the expenditure which was budgeted for that program and an actual saving results even when the cost of the cheaper replacement program is taken into account.
To illustrate the difficulty of making an accurate assessment, the sum of $55,000 was expended on a program which had to be cancelled because of work stoppages, without any salvage values accruing from the expenditures already incurred. On the face of it this represented a production dollar loss of $55,000, but in actual fact the amount which was budgeted for this particular program was substantially greater. The uncompleted program was replaced in the schedule by a program already in inventory which cost much less than the under-expenditure on the originally scheduled program. The result was a loss of a valuable program of high quality, so far as the viewers were concerned, but in terms of the Corporation's expenditures there was a saving in dollars. Subject to the foregoing qualifications, the best calculation which can be made of the dollar value of production losses up to February 29, 1972 is less than 1 per cent of the Corporation's program production budget for the year ($1.2 million out of $151 million) and this in turn was offset in large part by
June 19, 1972

savings in wage and overtime payments not made to striking technicians.
2.	As of February 29 no contracts had been cancelled. One was withdrawn before it came into effect, the amount involved being less than $10,000 (covering both radio and television).


MOVEMENT OF CANADIAN, UNITED STATES AND FOREIGN CONTROLLED FIRMS OUT OF CANADA AND QUEBEC
Mr. Yewchuk: 1.	For each year 1961 to 1971, how many (a) Canadian controlled firms (b) American controlled firms (c) other foreign controlled firms have moved their (i) head offices (ii) plants out of the Province of Quebec?
2.	For that same period, how many (a) American controlled firms (b) other foreign controlled firms have moved their (i) head offices (ii) plants out of Canada?
3.	If this information is not available, does the government intend providing it before the end of 1973 and, if not, for what reasons?


Bruce Andrew Thomas Howard: In so far as Statistics Canada is concerned: The information requested is not available and Statistics Canada has no plans to develop such information before the end of 1973.


PURCHASES OF BARLEY BY CANADIAN WHEAT BOARD IN ALBERTA
Mr. Horner: How many bushels of barley have been purchased by the Canadian Wheat Board in the Province of Alberta through the elevator system each year 1962 to 1972 (until March, 1972)?
Questions
of live births per 1,000 population for the years 1940, 1950, 1960 and 1970:
Canadian Birth Rate per 1,000 Population
Year	Rate
1940	21.6
1950	27.1
1960	26.8
1970	17.4


FAMILY ALLOWANCE CHEQUES-COST OF MAILING
Mr. Mather: 1.	How many Family Allowance cheques are mailed monthly?
2.	What is the total postage per month for mailing such cheques?
3.	Is consideration being given to reducing this cost by mailing the cheques less frequently than once a month with detachable sections of each cheque good for one month?


John Carr Munro: 1. 3,023,000.
2.	$241,840.
3.	It would not be practical to issue one cheque with detachable sections to cover entitlement for a number of future months for several reasons. The monthly entitlement is affected when a parent ceases to maintain a child, a child dies, a child ceases to attend school, the parent or child leaves Canada, or a new child is added to a family. The detachable sections could be lost and, in some cases, negotiated by unauthorized persons. Also, some persons would find ways and means of cashing these sections in advance, and would not have the money when it is due and needed. However close attention is always given to ways of reducing mailing and other administrative costs, and proposals such as this are reviewed from time to time.


Hon. Otto E. Lang (Minister of Justice):: Alberta
Receipts from Producers Crop Year	(Millions of Bushels)
1962-	63
1963-	64
1964-	65
1965-	66
1966-	67
1967-	68
1968-	69
1969-	70
1970-	71
1971-	72
35.9
50.0
41.1
37.6
56.6
46.4
43.4 74.3
109.5
48.9	(to Mar. 30. 1972)


CBC CREW ATTENDANCE AT PEARCE COMMISSION SESSIONS IN RHODESIA
Mr. Robinson: 1.	What was the cost to Canada of the CBC crew that attended the Pearce Commission sessions in Rhodesia?
2.	How much film was obtained and how will it be utilized?
3.	Was any report filed with the government by the CBC in connection with its attendance in Rhodesia?


Gérard Pelletier: I am
informed by the CBC as follows: 1 and 2. A CBC crew did not attend the Pearce Commission sessions in Rhodesia but some news items were provided by NBC and Visnews and these were carried by the CBC news service.
3. No.


CANADIAN BIRTH RATE
Mr. Mather: What was the Canadian birth rate in 1940, 1950,1960 and 1970?


Bruce Andrew Thomas Howard: Statistics Canada reports as follows: The following table provides the rate


PROVISION OF LIVING ACCOMMODATION FOR PUBLIC SERVANTS
Mr. Rodrigue: Does the government provide accommodation to public servants on duty in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto and, if so (a) what is the total value in dollars (b) how many public servants so benefit?

June 19, 1972
Questions


Hon. C. M. Drury (President of the Treasury Board):: The
government normally does not provide living accommodation to any public servant within the city in which his regular workplace is located. Such accommodation is provided only in special circumstances as described below: 1. When a public servant moves to a new location, he is permitted to stay in temporary accommodation at public expense (for a period normally not exceeding 21 days) until he is able to locate and get settled in permanent accommodation.
2.	A public servant may otherwise be provided accommodation in commercial facilities within his headquarters area only in very exceptional or emergency situations, which require the employee to remain close to his post for periods long in excess of normal working hours.
3.	When a public servant is a participant in a conference within his headquarters area, which involves having the delegates housed under one roof for a full-time program, including evenings, then he may be provided with overnight accommodation within government conference facilities or university or college facilities; however, accommodation in commercial facilities for this purpose is excluded.


INTERNATIONAL COFFEE AGREEMENT-CANADIAN POSITION
Mr. Brewin: Has Canada supported the United States in refusing a proposal of the coffee producing countries within the International Coffee Organization for an increase of four cents per pound of coffee to offset the loss occasioned to them by the United States devaluation of the dollar and a further proposal accepted by some of the importing members of the International Coffee Organization to accept two cents per pound increase as a compromise and, if not, what is the Canadian position in respect to these proposed increases in coffee prices?


Bruce Andrew Thomas Howard: Canada did not support the proposals of the coffee producing countries within the International Coffee Organization for adjustments in the price ranges for coffee to offset the devaluation of the U.S. dollar for the following reasons: (a) the ICA price ranges are only trigger points at which export quotas are adjusted and, therefore, are not minimum or maximum prices directly determining producer returns; (b) agreeing to an upward adjustment in the ICA trigger points would have decreased export quotas thus reducing the amount of coffee coming on to the market and creating an artificial shortage of coffee amounting to almost 10 per cent of annual availabilities; (c) the ICA trigger points are set annually taking into account the availability of coffee which, in turn, is reflected in the level of the annual export quota established. At the time of the proposals, already half of the coffee year had passed. In August, the Council of the Coffee Organization will have the opportunity to change the trigger points for the new coffee year taking into account not only any effects of the devaluation of the dollar but also the expected level of trade in coffee for the coming year; (d) Many producing countries immediately devalued their currencies in line with the USA dollar thus offsetting any adverse effects which they might have foreseen for their exports.


MERCURY CONTENT PERCENTAGE TOLERATION IN FISH
Mr. Matte: 1.	Does the Department of National Health and Welfare check the mercury content in food on a continuous basis?
2.	What is the content percentage tolerated in the case of fish, particularly pickerel and pike?
3.	Are studies carried out with a view to accepting a higher percentage tolerance of mercury in pickerel and pike?
4.	Does the government check the mercury content of imported fish on a continuous basis and, if so, in what manner?
5.	Is the mercury content tolerated for pickerel and pike caught under a commercial fishing licence the same as for sport fishing?


John Carr Munro: 1. Yes. The Department of National Health and Welfare examines, on a continuing basis, a wide variety of individual food items for mercury. The Department also examines total mercury content. In addition, the Inspection Branch, Fisheries Service, Department of the Environment, examines large numbers of fish for their mercury content.
2.	The Department of National Health and Welfare has established a guideline of 0.5 parts per million of mercury for fish, including pickerel and pike. Fish containing levels of mercury in excess of this amount may not be offered for sale in Canada.
3.	No. However, the Department of National Health and Welfare does maintain close surveillance of studies conducted in various countries around the world on safe levels of mercury in fish and other foods.
4.	Yes. Fish are checked at the point of entry into Canada by the Inspection Branch, Fisheries Service, Department of the Environment.
5.	Yes. The 0.5 parts per million guideline for mercury in fish applies to all fish offered for sale.


PORT OF VANCOUVER-DEMURRAGE CHARGES
Mr. Murta: What was the total amount of demurrage charges paid during the 1971-72 crop year at the Port of Vancouver?


Otto Emil Lang: $1,081,529.43 has been paid to May 23, 1972.


AGRICULTURE-PAYMENTS TO HOG PRODUCERS
Mr. Mazankowski: 1.	How many hog producers, in each province, received payments under the Agricultural Stabilization Act and Agricultural Products Board Act for 1971?
2.	What was the total amount distributed in each province?


Mr. Marcel Lessard (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Agriculture):: As at May 19, 1972, the situation was as follows:
1.	Provinces	Producers	2. Amount
Paid	Paid

Newfoundland	22	18,635.00
June 19, 1972

P.E.I.	711	221,450.00Nova Scotia	228	129,585.00New Brunswick	371	110,675.00Quebec	3,015	1,345,910.00Ontario	14,046	4,979,455.00Manitoba	8,534	1,992,530.00Saskatchewan	13,051	2,328,655.00Alberta	10,291	2,450,215.00British Columbia	187	56,675.00Canada	50,456	13,633,785.00


INCENTIVE GRANTS-CANADIAN PROTEIN PELLETS LTD.
Mr. Mazankowski: 1.	Was an industrial incentive grant awarded to Canadian Protein Pellets Ltd. of Saskatchewan and, if so, what amount was awarded?
2.	What was the date of application and approval by the Department of Regional Economic Expansion?
3.	Was an extension for the grant requested and, if so, for what reason?
4.	What was the date of application for extension?
5.	When was approval of extension granted?
6.	Who are the principal shareholders and directors of this Company?


Hon. Jean Marchand (Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: 1. No grant has been paid, but an offer of $215,000 has been made and accepted.
2.	Date of application: December 29, 1969. Date of approval: August 19, 1970.
3.	Yes, because the company was unable to acquire equipment.
4.	September 30, 1970.
5.	No extension was granted.
6.	Information provided by business firms in the course of government investigation of proposals is on a confidential basis.


QUESTION PASSED AS ORDER FOR RETURN
Mr. Godin: During the years 1970 and 1971, did Canada import any lamb or pork and, if so (a) in what quantities of each type (b) from what countries?
Return tabled.
Inquiries of the Ministry



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Robert L. Stanfield (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the right hon. Prime Minister a question arising out of the communique on offshore mineral rights issued by the governments of the four Atlantic provinces and the government of the province of Quebec, asserting the ownership by those provinces of offshore mineral rights. What is the attitude of the right hon. gentleman's government in light of this communique and this assertion of rights by those provinces?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I did receive a telegram, of which I took notice only five minutes before coming into the House, from the premier of Nova Scotia to the effect that they had arrived at certain positions and that they would be prepared to sit down and discuss them with me. My answer will be that I of course look forward to such discussions as soon as convenient to them.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: The communique indicates that there has been an assertion of rights and a claim to full benefits. I should like to ask the Prime Minister whether his government accepts the claim of the five provinces to virtually the full benefits of offshore mineral rights?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I do not see anything in this telegram which refers to full benefits, though there is something on the ownership of resources. The Leader of the Opposition may be right in regard to the discussions which took place; I was not, of course, party to them. But I think there is a willingness on the part of the provinces to discuss certain federal responsibilities and, I take it, the benefits that would go with them. However, I cannot say any more than what the telegram has stated.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Without being controversial or provocative, may I ask my right hon. friend whether he would not agree that an assertion of ownership amounts to a claim to full benefits? It was for that reason that I asked the question.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I would think that question as posed is an argument rather than a question.


Mr. John Lundrigan (Gander-Twillingate):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question. In view of the fact that the question of offshore mineral rights has been under discussion for several years, may I ask the right hon. gentleman whether the government has prepared a series of proposals or counter-proposals or alternatives to the original plan regarding the formula for sharing the benefits, and will it be presented to the provinces and to the Canadian people?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Yes, Mr. Speaker. Since the position that we made known to the provinces in November, 1968, there
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June 19, 1972
Inquiries of the Ministry
have been many meetings between the premiers and myself and between the various provincial ministers and the federal Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. In each case we said that we were prepared to take our position as a starting point and to negotiate from it. There have been many indications of this to the provinces. Also there have, indeed, been some attempts by the Atlantic provinces to arrive at a joint position with the province of Quebec. But there has never been an indication as clear as this one that they were prepared to sit down with us and discuss, and I am very happy that this is apparently now the case.


John Howard Lundrigan: In view of the position announced publicly in the communique issued by the four Atlantic provinces and Quebec to the effect that they lay claim to offshore mineral rights in toto, can the Prime Minister say when we may expect a formal response from the federal government which will either accept or offer counterproposals to the various provinces in response to their representations ?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I can give that assertion clearly now. We do not admit that offshore mineral rights belong in toto to the provinces. Indeed, we have some evidence from the courts that the contrary is the case, that the federal government has ownership of offshore mineral rights. However, we have been discussing the allocation of resources from these rights, and I might answer the question of the Leader of the Opposition by saying that we have never claimed that we wanted the revenue obtained from such resources in its totality. This is what we are prepared to discuss with the provinces, at their convenience.



OFFSHORE MINERAL RIGHTS-NEGOTIATIONS WITH FRANCE RESPECTING ST. PIERRE AND MIQUELON- INQUIRY AS TO AGREEMENT

Mr. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Has an agreement been reached with the government of France in respect of sharing offshore mineral rights as they relate to the territorial rights of France over the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon?


Hon. Mitchell Sharp (Secretary oi State for External Affairs):: No, Mr. Speaker.



AIR TRANSPORT


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs and arises out of efforts being made today by airline pilots round the world to get something down about skyjacking. In particular, may I ask him what steps Canada is taking, either by itself or in concert with other nations, to meet the request of the pilots for the boycotting of those countries that harbour skyjackers?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, we have, of course, been supporting the idea of a meeting of the Security Council in New York. Although we are not a member, as I said in the House, we would be very happy if a meeting were to be held. We ourselves have been taking initiatives in Montreal at the ICAO conference, along with the United States, trying to get some international agreement for enforcement of the conventions to which we subscribe.



REGIONAL ECONOMIC EXPANSION


Mr. Real Caouette (Temiscamingue):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to put a question to the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion.
Last Monday I put a question to him concerning the closing of the CIP plant in Temiscaming, about three weeks ago. Has the minister had talks with the provincial authorities respecting the establishment of new factories that the federal government would subsidize?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, as for the second question that the hon. member put to me last week, I said I had already answered it, which was not true. I apologize.
In fact, there have been no discussions with the province of Quebec, but officials of my department are in contact with the group responsible for the industrial development of the Kipawa area, and we hope we will eventually find a firm interested in operating the existing industrial plants.



AIR TRANSPORT


Mr. Eldon M. Woolliams (Calgary North):: Mr. Speaker, I direct my question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. In light of the fact that Donald Watson, President of Pacific Western, and directors and management of commercial airlines in Canada have supported the protest action of the International Federation of Airline Pilots today, and in light of the fact that the minister said on June 9, as recorded on page 2987 of Hansard, "we are trying to take whatever action we can", I should now like to ask what definite action he is taking internationally, what liaison work in particular is being done, and what inducement or even pressure the Canadian government is affecting to obtain full international agreement on a set of principles and laws which would not only bring about expeditious international crime detection but would also act as a deterrent to any kind of hijacking in the future?
June 19, 1972


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, that is a very complicated question. Unless the strike of the airline pilots interferes, we intend to deposit our instrument of ratification of the international convention today. We have also been trying through ICAO to strengthen the enforcement of the conventions that now exist and to which we are party. My colleague, the Minister of Transport, could certainly give an account of the extra measures that have been taken to protect the travelling public against the possibility that hijackers may be aboard or may have some instruments in their baggage. We have taken a number of measures that I hope will be effective, although I have to say what I have said many times before, that I do not think there is any single way or even a combination of ways which could prevent hijackers from operating under certain circumstances.


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: Mr. Speaker, may I ask a further supplementary question, and perhaps I can make it a little more plain. I am looking for action rather than words. What action has the minister really taken on behalf of the government to bring the members of the Security Council of the United Nations together to get ratification of the law he has been discussing so there will be international teeth in the law to bring about a proper deterrent in reference to the crime of hijacking? That is what I am asking for rather than answers such as "I am trying to do this and trying to do that".


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please!


Mitchell William Sharp: We are not members of the Security Council, and we could hardly force anyone to attend even if we were. It is my understanding that the Security Council is meeting today. I hope there will be useful results. I think it is equally important that in Montreal ICAO, which is concerned directly with this question, is meeting today, and I hope will carry certain proposals and initiatives now being taken jointly by Canada and the United States.



HIJACKING-INQUIRY AS TO IMPOSITION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OR AMENDMENT OF CRIMINAL CODE

Eldon Mattison Woolliams: Mr. Speaker, I have one further supplementary which I should like to direct to the Minister of Justice. In section 75 of the Criminal Code for 1971-I believe the sections are numbered differently but I will paraphrase it-in respect of piracy on the high seas it states that anyone who commits violence and murder will be found guilty of murder, and then of course capital punishment would apply. Is it the intention either to amend the Ciminal Code or introduce amendments to the new act which has just been passed by the House of Commons and I believe approved by the Senate to see that capital punishment for violence and murder in respect of hijacking will be carried out according to the code, or is it the intention of the government to amend the section in respect of piracy on the high seas which is now outdated?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Perhaps the minister might attempt to reply to that question, but it seems to me that we are getting into the area of debate.
Inquiries of the Ministry


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, it is our intention to apply the law as it exists and as it has just been amended by the passage of new amendments to the hijacking provisions, and to apply them to the extent they apply. It is not our intention to bring forward further amendments in that connection.



HIJACKING-REQUEST FOR OUTLAWING OF BLACKMAIL PAYMENTS

Mr. Arnold Peters (Timiskaming):: I have a supplementary, Mr. Speaker. I should like to ask the Secretary of State for External Affairs whether Canada will give leadership in outlawing the right of any airline in Canada to pay ransom to anyone as a method of preventing the hijacking of aircraft, and make this suggestion at the United Nations?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, a similar question was asked by the right hon. member for Prince Albert last week. I replied that I was very doubtful whether this would be of very much value inasmuch as, under certain circumstances we can all imagine, people would be quite prepared to break the law in order to save hundreds of lives.



NATIONAL PARKS


Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prince Albert):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development having to do with the round-up of bison in Wood Buffalo National Park. This round-up took place with helicopters and as a consequence of the terror of the animals stampeding took place and many died. Has the minister looked into this matter and does he have any information? Is there any reason that the round-up should have been carried out in this way when it could only result in much cruelty against these wonderful animals?


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, I have been given no details on this matter, but I will make inquiries and I will be happy to report to the House as soon as I have this information. Unfortunately, I have not yet been informed of this incident, but I will be happy to supply the information to the right hon. member as soon as it is available.


John George Diefenbaker: I have a supplementary, Mr. Speaker. The reason I asked the question is that one department of the government had pictures taken. I have them here and they show a slaughter of these animals which is totally inexcusable.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please!


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, when ministers do not know they need help.
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June 19, 1972
Inquiries of the Ministry HOUSING



PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO ACT-ALLEGED INTRODUCTION OF BILL PRIOR TO RECEIVING VIEWS OF ALL PROVINCES

Mr. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa-Whitby):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of State for Urban Affairs who is responsible for housing. In view of the fact a majority of the provinces have not yet had time to respond to a request to comment on proposed amendments to the National Housing Act, can the minister inform the House why the cabinet decided, in full knowledge of this fact, at an evening meeting on Thursday, June 1, to proceed to introduce the bill in Parliament?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member will appreciate, I am sure, that a question asked in those terms cannot be in order.


John Edward Broadbent: I will rephrase the question. Can the minister inform the House as to the government's reason for proceeding with the introduction of the new housing legislation in view of the fact that the request that had gone out to the provinces to submit their views had not been met by a majority of the provinces.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. It seems to me that question is inviting debate, the kind of debate that should take place if and when the legislation in question comes before the House. If the minister can reply briefly he will be recognized for that purpose, but I suggest to the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby that his question really involves debate rather than a search for information.


Hon. Ron Baslord (Minister of State for Urban Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, in this case the provinces were given more details and the proposed housing legislation was discussed with them more than had ever occurred before. Many have had an opportunity to comment in detail. In addition, the hon. member's party and the Official Opposition were demanding the immediate introduction of housing legislation-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member may ask a supplementary question, but the reply by the minister indicates why I felt that the question really invited debate. This is what we will get, I am sure, if we pursue this line of questions and answers.


John Edward Broadbent: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I will try to implement your stricture. In view of the fact that the new bill is essentially the same as that recommended by the hon. member for Trinity and approved by the cabinet on March 30, 1970, can the minister tell the House why we have had to wait two years for its introduction?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I am sure the hon. member will recognize that this question is not much better than the others-from a procedural standpoint, of course.



LABOUR RELATIONS


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Labour.
Last Friday we discussed the longshoremen's strike and the conditions in St. Lawrence ports. I would like to ask the hon. minister if, during the intervening week end, anything new has happened. Has he been in contact with the parties involved or has he some news to give us on this matter?


Hon. Martin P. O'Connell (Minister of Labour):: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I have had contact with the parties. This morning I sent a wire advising the parties that unless they undertook to make use of the arbitration procedure as provided by law it was my intention to appoint an industrial inquiry commission, provided the work stoppage was ended and the port was put back into full operation. I also advised the parties that I was prepared to meet them at any time at their earliest convenience to discuss these arrangements.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Things have matured a lot over the weekend.



AGRICULTURE


Mr. H. W. Danforth (Kent-Essex):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct my question to the Minister of Agriculture. In view of his visit to the areas where crops were damaged by frost in southwestern Ontario and because of certain statements attributed to him as reported in the press, will he make an early statement on motions dealing with government proposals of financial aid to the producers of the various crops involved and stating whether loans or grants will be made now or at harvest time?


Hon. H. A. Olson (Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, a number of questions have been asked respecting this matter. I made no commitment. What I did was to make a commitment that we would be as helpful as possible through the people we have in research stations in various parts of Canada in assisting farmers to determine whether or not they should reseed some of these crops or take other appropriate action that would reduce the damage as much as possible.


Harold Warren Danforth: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a supplementary question to the Minister of Agriculture. In view of the fact that progress has already been made in reseeding and looking after the crops, will the minister make a statement on motions dealing with the government's proposal with regard to the financial aspect of the crop losses?

June 19, 1972


Horace Andrew (Bud) Olson: Mr. Speaker, it is quite impossible to deal with the financial losses until it is known what they are. When I was in the area last Friday everyone agreed that it was too early to assess the damage. I have, however, in keeping with the commitment I made, sent a press release to that particular area advising farmers of the services we will make available in addition to those already there, in order to be helpful immediately in this situation.



SURPLUS HENS REDUCTION PROGRAM-REQUEST FOR STATEMENT IF QUOTA EXCEEDED IN VIEW OF PRICE DROP

Mr. Mac T. McCutcheon (Lambton-Kent):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question. Will the minister make a further statement on motions relative to the surplus poultry program? If the quota for the removal of a million surplus hens from production is exceeded-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I have some doubts about this being a supplementary question. It is supplementary in the sense that it is addressed to the same minister, but not much more supplementary than that. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. member in view of the fact he has already asked half the question. Perhaps he might be allowed to ask the other half now.


Maclyn (Mac) Thomas McCutcheon: I assumed it was supplementary because we were both asking for statements from the minister. If the quota for the removal of one million surplus hens from production is exceeded, and present indications point that way, will the minister make a further statement covering this aspect in order to stabilize the market in view of the drop of two to two and a half cents per pound in prices now being offered by processors?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. My suggestion to the hon. member is that the supplementary or related question is hypothetical.



THE CANADIAN ECONOMY


Hon. George Hees (Prince Edward-Hastings):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister. As the Minister of National Revenue, speaking in Toronto on Friday, described as "a good first step" the Ontario government's newly announced policy to require all foreign-owned corporations operating in Ontario to have a majority of the members of their boards of directors as Canadians, is it the intention of the government to introduce a similar measure for all such companies operating in Canada?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: We would let the House know, Mr. Speaker, if it were around, when we took any further steps in this regard.
Inquiries of the Ministry


George Harris Hees: Thanks for the non-answer. I have a supplementary question. As the Prime Minister stated the other day that he would hold Members of Parliament responsible for holding up the foreign investment in Canada bill past the end of June, who does the Prime Minister intend to hold responsible for the year the cabinet wasted in fiddling and diddling over the Gray report before it arrived at a non-policy?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please!



OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUTH PROGRAM-REASON FOR DISMISSAL OF CHIEF OF INFORMATION SERVICES IN ONTARIO

Mr. G. W. Baldwin (Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Secretary of State but in his absence I will direct it to the Acting Secretary of State, or possibly the Prime Minister might know-the fountain of knowledge. Can the hon. gentleman advise if Mr. Norman Seve-rud, the $14,000 a year chief of information services for the Opportunities for Youth program in Ontario and summer employment, 1972, was summarily dismissed last Friday, and was his dismissal because he was made the scapegoat for several projects that went sour and received adverse publicity in the press?


Abram Ernest Epp: Mr. Speaker, I will take that question as notice on behalf of the Secretary of State.


Gerald William Baldwin: Mr. Speaker, would the minister ask the Secretary of State to make a statement on the matter in the House at the earliest possible moment and include in that statement an explanation of why this federal government employee was dismissed by John Watkinson, who is not a federal government employee but is a member of a public relations firm in Toronto which has a very close association with the Liberal party?


Mr. O'Connell:: Mr. Speaker, I will draw this representation to the minister's attention.



CONSUMER AFFAIRS


Mrs. Grace Maclnnis (Vancouver-Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. In view of reports that United States food chains are forecasting further price rises, and because Canadian food prices invariably follow American prices, is it the government's intention to investigate this situation and take steps to deal with it?


Hon. Robert K. Andras (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, the general aspect of food pricing in the supermarkets is under constant review by my department.

June 19, 1972
Inquiries of the Ministry


Winona Grace MacInnis: In view of the fact that Statistics Canada reports wide variations in food prices among Canadian cities, with western cities higher than the rest, will the Minister of Corporate Affairs look into this matter so as to ensure that every Canadian from coast to coast will get a fair break from the food chains?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that variations in prices from coast to coast do not represent some form of food store competition, but I will be glad to take the hon. member's suggestion under consideration.


Winona Grace MacInnis: Mr. Speaker, if the minister is inhibited in investigating the situation as Minister of Corporate Affairs, would he look into it as Minister of Consumer Affairs?


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please!



PRICES AND INCOMES COMMISSION


Mr. A. D. Hales (Wellington):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. Is the Prices and Incomes Commission to be disbanded at the end of June?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is addressing his question to the wrong minister. I do not have responsibility for the Prices and Incomes Commission.


Alfred Dryden Hales: Then may I address it to the Minister of State for Urban Affairs. I assume the responsibility has remained with him. Is the Prices and Incomes Commission to be disbanded at the end of this month?


Stanley Ronald Basford: Yes, the commission itself, but it may be necessary to keep on a small group.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Heath Macquarrie (Hillsborough):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Can he advise whether he has definite word that the French government, in the face of world criticism, is proceeding with its scheduled nuclear test, and can he also advise whether the government has any information on the whereabouts of the Greenpeace III and its fine, public-spirited crew?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that the nuclear test is scheduled to begin in the Mururoa Atoll zone at 8 p.m. tonight, eastern daylight, time. We are not

quite sure whether it will take place as scheduled because meteorological conditions may not be favourable. I regret very much that this is taking place despite the representations we have made and that many other countries have made. It is our hope that the French government, notwithstanding this particular test, if it proceeds, will join with the rest of the world in trying to stop all nuclear tests both in the atmosphere and underground.


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: Would the minister direct himself to the other part of my question regarding those fine people of the Greenpeace III?


Mitchell William Sharp: Yes, Mr. Speaker. As I understand it, the Greenpeace is somewhere in the area.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


George Harris Hees: That is about as close as you fellows ever come.


Mitchell William Sharp: This is not a Canadian ship. It is not registered here. It does not carry our flag. It is very difficult for us to keep track of a ship sailing under some other flag or some other ownership. We understand there is a Canadian aboard, and of course I do hope the ship is not going to get involved in the explosion and that the necessary steps will be taken to see it is removed from the area.


Mr. Speaker:: I believe the hon. member for Saskatoon-Biggar has a supplementary to the previous question.


COMBINES
Mr. A. P. Gleave (Saskatoon-Biggar):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to ask the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs whether, in view of the information he received from the National Farmers Union alleging price fixing among fertilizer companies in Canada, any investigation is under way into the allegations that have been made?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, if these allegations have in fact foundation, then the director of the anti-combines investigation section will carry out his duties in that regard.


Alfred Pullen Gleave: Mr. Speaker, what I am really asking is whether any investigation is under way. I will put this question to the Minister of Agriculture. As I have made some attempt to satisfy his request for further information, has he initiated any investigation into this matter?


Horace Andrew (Bud) Olson: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member wants to have a matter investigated respecting price fixing or violations of the anti-combines legislation he knows that the action he referred to a moment ago is the proper procedure.
June 19, 1972




Mr. Lloyd R. Crouse (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Now that the United Nations conference on the human environment has terminated at Stockholm, would he state whether any discussions were held among the delegates in attendance with regard to the 1973 law of the sea conference and, if so, would he indicate whether any date has been set for this important conference?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I have not had any reports to that effect, but the Minister of the Environment will be home soon and I hope that he will give us all an account of the very successful efforts he has made on behalf of Canada.


PRICES AND INCOMES COMMISSION
Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Minister of State for Urban Affairs with regard to the report of the Prices and Incomes Commission. From time to time questions have been asked about it. Can the minister now give us an approximate date when we may expect this report to be made public?


Stanley Ronald Basford: Mr. Speaker, it will be made public very soon.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Will it be worth publishing?


PROPOSED TAPS TANKER ROUTE-RESPONSE TO REQUEST TO UNITED STATES TO JOIN IN REFERENCE TO INTERNATIONAL JOINT COMMISSION
Mr. T. C. Douglas (Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to put a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Has he received any reply to the letter he sent to Secretary of State Rogers asking the United States government to join with the Canadian government in a reference to the International Joint Commission concerning the Valdez to Cherry Point route for the shipment of oil?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, on June 16 I received a reply and to my disappointment, and I am sure to the disappointment of the hon. member and all members of the House, the United States has rejected the Canadian proposal for reference of these problems to the International Joint Commission. However, the United States government has
Inquiries of the Ministry
indicated that it is prepared to discuss the matter further in a committee on trans-border environmental problems which involves, on the United States side, the chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality and, on the Canadian side, the Minister of the Environment. The United States has suggested that the agenda for such meeting could include consideration of the problems put forward by Canada in proposing the reference to the International Joint Commission. Under the circumstances I believe we should accept this offer since it will get the question discussed between ministers and officials of the two governments.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: In view of the disappointing nature of this reply I should like to put a supplementary question to the right hon. Prime Minister. As his discussions with President Nixon indicated that the latter was favourably disposed toward such a reference to the International Joint Commission, would the right hon. Prime Minister be prepared to take up this matter personally with the President of the United States?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I believe the hon. member is wrong in saying that I suggested that President Nixon was favourable to that approach. What I said was that we put that position to him and he said he would consider it. Furthermore, I do not see why the hon. member assumes that it is a disappointing response. Surely it is results we want. I do not see why the hon. member is so concerned about the form provided it produces the right effect.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: May I ask why I have not the right to be disappointed while the Secretary of State for External Affairs has the right to be disappointed?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Because the Secretary of State for External Affairs has much higher standards than the hon. member.


MANPOWER
Mr. Robert Muir (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion. In view of comments within the past few days regarding the necessity for a new institute of adult vocational training in Cape Breton and in view of the discomfort and problems faced by the students and teachers in that area and in the present building, can the minister advise whether DREE is going to fund a portion of this school or would he have that information available at the present time?


Hon. lean Marchand (Minister oi Regional Economic Expansion):: Mr. Speaker, if we ever do it it will be at the request of the Minister of Manpower and Immigration who has authority over adult training programs.


Robert Muir: I want to thank the minister for clarifying the situation with regard to that point at least. May I ask the

June 19, 1972
Inquiries of the Ministry
Minister of Manpower and Immigration the same question? Is he in a position to cast some light on this very interesting subject?


Hon. Bryce Mackasey (Minister of Manpower and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, first of all I should like to get the written assessment of the hon. member as to exactly how dilapidated are the conditions under which these students are forced to study in order that I may assess the situation properly and decide whether I should make a recommendation to my colleague.


AIR TRANSPORT
Mr. E. B. Osier (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, on May 15 I put a question to the Minister of Justice regarding Manitoba's Bill 21 and he said he would look into it. Can he now cast any light on this cloudy and ominous threat to the free passage of Canadian citizens and Canadian goods from one part of our country to another?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I do not have any final position to give to the House at this point.


Edmund Boyd Osler: Mr. Speaker, has any major Canadian airline advised the minister that it intends to challenge the constitutionality of some aspects of this bill as it seems to impede their ability to service the country?


Otto Emil Lang: I do not believe we have received any such communication, Mr. Speaker.


REGIONAL ECONOMIC EXPANSION
James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion. Does he intend to act on the recommendations contained in the annual report and review of the Canadian Council on Rural Development which was released last Friday, specifically on the recommendation calling for greater provincial input in departmental planning, or does he intend to continue ignoring this important submission?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, I do not mind the last part of the question. As to the first part, we are now studying those problems with the new government of Newfoundland. The studies are going very well and I hope we will find solutions to all the problems.


James Aloysius McGrath: Has the minister in fact studied the latest annual report of the Canadian Council on Rural Develop-

ment, and does he intend to act on any of the recommendations contained in that report?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, I have read the report and now it is being studied in the department. I do not run this department alone.


James Aloysius McGrath: That is obvious.


Jean Marchand: That is obvious and it is good because I believe in democracy and I believe in the civil service, which the hon. member does not seem to. We are dealing with the government of Newfoundland and I think they are much more amenable than the hon. member.


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Andrew Brewin (Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. In view of the public concern in respect of the administration of the immigration laws, which the minister apparently shares, would he make a statement on motions outlining the changes in the administration and in the legislation which he proposes to clear up this situation?


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Mr. Speaker, I said last week that I would not be bringing forward legislation until this fall but I would be bringing before the House on motions some time later this week administrative changes to deal with the growing backlog of cases at the special inquiry officer stage.


REGIONAL ECONOMIC EXPANSION
Mr. Walter C. Carter (St. John's West):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion. Can the minister tell the House whether a report has been received by his department from the Argentia task force? I am asking this question in light of a similar question put to the minister last December and also during the recent meetings of the standing committee-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Perhaps the hon. member might allow the minister to reply to the first question.


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, I believe we have received these reports; we have taken several decisions about this area in Newfoundland, but there is nothing more we can do for the time being.
June 19, 1972



The Argentia task force is over and now we are studying with the government of Newfoundland what we can do in order to help these people.


Walter C. Carter: Can the minister say whether a report has been filed since the one dated November, 1971,1 believe?


Jean Marchand: I think there was another one, Mr. Speaker, but I should like to check before giving a definite answer.


EFFECT OF LONGSHOREMEN'S STRIKE ON SHIPMENT
Mr. Gordon Ritchie (Dauphin):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the minister in charge of the Wheat Board. What success has the minister had in dealing with the problem of moving grain in view of the Montreal port strike, and will the strike result in a significant delay in deliveries of Canadian grain, estimated to be as long as five months by the head of the Wheat Board?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, the other ports in the eastern region are going all out to try to handle shipments of grain which are scheduled. The result of not having Montreal and other facilities available has meant some significant delays in the rate at which vessels are loaded at other places, but so far they are being loaded. One would hope that the ports will be back in operation and that we can catch up fairly promptly with the very high level of orders.


SUGGESTED INCLUSION OF HEALTH WARNING IN PRINTED ADVERTISING OF CIGARETTES
Mr. Barry Mather (Surrey-White Rock):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of National Health and Welfare. Having in mind the recent decision of the United States federal trade commission requiring that in all advertising of cigarettes published in the print media there shall be included a very definite health warning, has the minister given consideration to a similar requirement in Canada?


John Carr Munro: Yes, we have, Mr. Speaker, although as the hon. member is aware we do have a warning of a different nature from that in the United States. There is a warning now on every package.
Inquiries of the Ministry NATIONAL PARKS


POSITION OF NEGOTIATIONS WITH ONTARIO FOR DEVELOPMENT OF NEW PARK IN GEORGIAN BAY AREA
Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and concerns national parks. What progress has been made in the negotiations with the province of Ontario for the development of a new national park in the Georgian Bay area?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his interest in this problem, but unfortunately I cannot report any progress at this time with regard to these negotiations.
The provincial authorities are taking into consideration the proposal we put to them and we are waiting for an answer.


Mr. Speaker:: Orders of the day.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. May I say that there have been discussions among House leaders regarding the length of speeches for today. Initially, it is our proposal that there be no change from the provisions of Standing Order 58(13). However, I wish to reserve the right to suggest a shortening of speeches later in the day if that should become necessary. To begin with, the rule will apply, and it is understood that no one will ask for overtime.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville) moved:: That this House regrets the failure of the Government to produce a comprehensive and coherent program to deal with the growing unemployment among our young people and its disregard of youth's legitimate aspirations.
He said: Mr. Speaker, the motion that we have presented to the House today deals with the question of high unemployment among the young people of this country. We are primarily concerned with the high unemployment among young people under the age of 25.
First, I must say that in Canada we have the unfortunate record of having the highest unemployment rate of any industrial country. Naturally, when you have such a high unemployment rate, you are going to have a very, very high unemployment rate in groups such as the young people of this country. The government should be ashamed of this. Indeed, it is not acceptable for Canada to have such a high unemployment rate when this country
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June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth
has so many resources, technology and educational skills among our people.
When you analyse the employment statistics, you find that the rate of unemployment among the young people of this country under the age of 25 is about twice as high as the unemployment rate among Canadians in general. I suggest that this is a very serious problem. It is something to which we must address ourselves. There are not many excuses which the government or the minister can put forward. We are tired of empty rhetoric. Now is the time for action.
We all realize that there are some problems. We realize that there are a lot of young people hitting the labour market. In spite of that, we must look at the feelings and realities behind the statistics. Over one quarter million young people under the age of 25 in this country are unemployed. No rhetoric in the world can cure this. What we need is action. We need policies to face this very important problem.
At the outset, I wish to read a couple of very short paragraphs from a report that was prepared by the Canadian Council on Social Development as a result of their study of the problems of young people. I quote the last couple of paragraphs. In summary, I believe they set the tone for the debate I am trying to precipitate this afternoon. The Report of the Canadian Council on Social Development reads:
The choice for Canadians is between tinkering with existing programs for the wrong reasons, or embarking on new ventures in policy made imperative by the transitory nature of society and our inability to cope with present difficulties.
This study of youth applying for social assistance illustrates the need for many reforms in the policies, practices, and programs of our social welfare system. But we believe that even more important is recognition by a greater proportion of the general public that the private market economy in its present state cannot by itself provide youth with the opportunities they seek for self-fulfilment, constructive contribution to, and meaningful participation in Canadian society. Acceptance of this premise will demonstrate the need for a comprehensive and integrated approach to policy formulation and implementation encompassing all levels of government and the major social systems-education, manpower, welfare, plus the major institutions of the private market sector.
I think that the approach being used by the Canadian Council on Social Development is one that is on the right track. What we really need are some new approaches and some new values. We cannot rely on the conservative status quo we have been following in the past. Obviously, the approaches we have been taking have been failing. All you have to do to realize this is to look at the statistics. We have many unemployed young people who are totally frustrated and alienated because of the type of system we have in this country. If we look around us, we see that life is rapidly changing each and every day. Technology is far outstriding the change in our social and economic institutions. It is about time that our social and economic institutions caught up with the technological part of our society. We must not just repair the old ship. What we need is a new ship. If we are going to solve this problem that is facing so many Canadians, particularly those under the age of 25, we need a new direction.
According to the latest report from Statistics Canada, the unemployment figures for May are startlingly high. There were 552,000 Canadians unemployed. Of this

number, almost half were under the age of 25. Some 269,000 young people under the age of 25 are unemployed today. This represents 48.7 per cent of the total unemployed in this country. In other words, nearly half the unemployed people in this country are under the age of 25. A large segment of our unemployed is composed of young people between the ages of 14 and 24, but they only make up 26 per cent of the total work force. As you can see, proportionately the rate of unemployment among people is twice as high as it is among Canadians in general. The government must face up to this fact and bring new policies forward in order to cope with the problem.
The rate of unemployment among the young people in this country has been increasing. In May of this year, approximately 13 per cent of young people on the work force between the ages of 14 and 19 were unemployed. Between the ages of 20 and 24, 10.2 per cent of the young people were unemployed. I want to emphasize that these figures do not take into consideration the fact that a lot of the university and high school students are seeking jobs. All you have to do to realize this is to go back to the statistics for the month of January when students were in school. In the month of January this year, 16.6 per cent of the work force between the ages of 14 to 19 were out of work and 11.1 per cent of the work force between the ages of 20 and 24 were out of work. The number of unemployed youth has grown drastically over the past few years.
I wish to refer to one more statistic. In 1966, 6.2 per cent of the young people under the age of 25 were unemployed. The figure for 1972 is 11.5 per cent, thus it has almost doubled in a period of seven years. The situation we are now faced with is indeed serious. In many cases, the young people who are unemployed are just starting a new life, getting married and raising a family. These people do not have jobs. They do not have an adequate income which would enable them to supply good housing, clothing and food for their families. Indeed, this starts off a whole cycle of poverty, financial poverty as well as social and cultural poverty. The children of these families may follow the same route.
Although I do not want to spend too much time on this, the situation facing students in this country is very serious. According to the Department of Manpower, in 1971 there were 1,184,000 students in this country seeking work. Out of that total, there were 212,000 who did not find a job. They could not find a summer job of any sort. Many of those who did, could obtain only temporary or part-time jobs, or else some work which brought them only minimum wages and kept them at a bare subsistance level. As a result, many students were unable to return to university last fall. We find that even those who completed their university education are experiencing difficulty in obtaining employment of the kind they believed they would obtain when they entered university. We found examples of men with Ph.D degrees driving taxis, students with masters degrees working as clerks or secretaries. In the Finance Times of May 29, it was stated that 20 per cent of those who graduated from the University of Toronto this year will not have found jobs by the end of 1972. The article suggests that even this figure may be misleading because half of these students might drop out
June 19, 1972

of the labour market or return to university to continue their studies there. So, the figure might be 40 per cent.
We should remember, too, when we are talking about jobs, whether for students, graduates or young workers, in all too many instances, women are discriminated against. The report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women emphasizes this fact. I should like to urge the government, once again, to take action on the recommendations contained in this report, because there is continuing discrimination against women in many sections of our society solely on account of their sex, without account being taken of their knowledge, experience or ability. It makes me angry to hear the old Elmer Fludds in this Parliament refusing to recognize the fact that women are discriminated against in our work force and in our society generally. I could give hon. members dozens of examples from my own University of Saskatchewan showing how hard it is for women to find jobs. Many of those who do succeed in finding work must take low paid jobs as waitresses or secretaries, receiving only minimum wages. The government must take action to improve this situation as soon as possible; we are already years late in reforming our system.


Winona Grace MacInnis: Hear, hear!


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: The result of the situation I have been describing is this: students are increasingly questioning the validity of the university system. I remember, back in the 'sixties, we were told: If you go to a university you will have a guarantee for life that your income will be higher; you are likely to get a much better job than others; you will find it far easier to raise your family properly. Today, we find this is not true, at least with respect to many of those who are leaving our universities, and old values are being shot down as we find university graduates, those with M.A. or B.A. degrees, failing to find jobs, or finding jobs they could have filled without going to a university at all. As they look across their backyards or alleys they see some of the people who dropped out of school, perhaps holding down a unionized job and making between $10,000 and $12,000 a year while they, with their university education, are not making as much. As I say, many young people are questioning the value of the university system today.
Many universities are becoming increasingly elitist. The Conservative government in Ontario has just increased education fees. This makes the universities more elitist. Most of the students who graduate as lawyers or doctors and business executives come from upper middle-class families. It is almost as though they inherited a medical or legal degree. The chances are that their fathers and mothers were involved in those professions; they had access to a lot of money; they were brought up in the proper milieu when they were going through the school system. Anyone who has studied social psychology knows that young people are influenced by their environment, their families, the books they have in their homes. It is obvious that access to an expensive university system tends to be limited to the sons and daughters of the wealthy. It is they who will enter universities and succeed in finding the better jobs. It is time we got down to grass roots issues and put
Unemployment among Youth
into force policies relevant to the working class people of this country, the young farmers, the average young citizens of Canada. It is time we got away from old policies which are obviously failing, given the fact that half the unemployed are under the age of 25.
Look at some of the answers we have been given by the Liberal government. Many of them have been short term answers. Some have been mere tokenism. Other have been patronizing. Obviously, they have failed. Some have been good.
A few weeks ago the Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. Mackasey) introduced amendments to the Manpower Training Act reducing the number of years during which a person had to be in the work force in order to qualify for benefit under the act, from three to one. This is a good move, a step forward. It is a move many of us have been suggesting for years, along with representatives of organizations concerned with young people.
But consider the Opportunities for Youth program. Many of us believed the concept was a good one, one which enabled young people to submit to the department programs in which they were interested, created their own jobs and carry out their own administration. In practice, what has happened has been this: the jobs have gone to the students who do not really need them. That this is the case is apparent from the findings of the Cohen Report. Many of the jobs have gone to the sons and daughters of the upper middle-class. These are the young men and women who are best able to fill in application forms; it is they who have the right contacts and who can afford to gamble because they always have father's bank account to fall back on. As I say, the government realizes this. I am suggesting that hon. gentlemen opposite do something to make sure that jobs created by the Opportunities for Youth program go to those who really need them, not to those who don't.
In this connection, I should also like to mention the travel exchange program and the travel grants. Again, many of these grants go to people who do not really need them; they go to people who would be working or doing something in any case. A press release issued by the Department of the Secretary of State on May 25 announced two travel grants to youth orchestras in Alberta. I have nothing against youth orchestras or the work they may be pursuing, but I question the validity of grants being made in such a direction. In this connection, I quote from the press release.
Grant of $11,375 to the Edmonton youth orchestra for visit, July 22 to August 17, of 100 of its members to Lausanne, Switzerland, for two-week stay, and then travel to Germany and Austria.
The orchestra will, of course, be giving concerts, and it will travel to Germany and Austria. The second grant, of $7,500 has been made to the Calgary youth orchestra; 75 students will take part in a concert tour of England, Germany and Holland from July 2 to August 1. Rather than spend money in this way, it might be better to grant money to people who will be remaining in the country, people who really need it to feed themselves and, perhaps, go on to receive university or post-secondary education at some future date. Despite these programs, not only are more people unemployed and living in a situation of eco-
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June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth
nomic stress, but increasing numbers are becoming frustrated, adding to the tension we find, especially, in our larger cities. Unless we take some corrective measures soon, we are going to have more and more violence in the years that lie ahead. Obviously, we must search for more solutions.
There are people in the country who tend to give up, who tend simply to go on welfare because they have been unable to find a job, and there is no other choice for them. They find themselves in a system that encourages them not to find work or to have any motivation for finding work. Then again, we have some of the older people in society who like to criticize our young people for being lazy. They criticize their standards, the fact they let their hair grow long or the fact they challenge the norms of present day society. Something must be wrong with a society in which our young people do this, and which forces them into the situation they are facing. I suggest we have to act and to act soon. If we do not, we will have more and more of our young people saying that any value placed by society on institutions is irrelevant, that society must be changed. Perhaps others will declare that they must resort to violence, and this is what I do not want to happen.
Much of this reaction would be prevented if we had programs that provided work for our young people, which gave them something meaningful to pursue in their lives and in the lives of their families. This is why there are a number of suggestions that I want to make. I am repeating suggestions that have been made by this party, by the Canadian Council on Social Development and various other institutions. In talking about unemployment among young people, you cannot divorce it from general unemployment in this country. The important reason there are so many young people unemployed in Canada today is that there is so much general unemployment. The economy is not operating correctly, and I suggest there is no excuse for this. There is no reason for over half a million Canadians being unemployed. No rhetoric or excuse can justify that.
If we are to solve youth unemployment, we will have to start the economy rolling again, and there are a number of ways of doing this. First, we have to solve the problem of foreign ownership. We need more research and development. Many of our graduates go through university but are then unable to find work. Obviously, this research and development is not going to be done if parent plants are not located in Canada. We will have to locate them in Canada if we want to create more jobs in this country.
If I may turn now to something more specific, I should like to detail some of the things that can be done for our young people. I suggest we put more emphasis on on-the-job training so that our young people, regardless of their educational background, receive training on the job. This is very important. Sometimes people have to be retrained three or even four times during their lifetime, especially in a fast-moving technological society. Some of the regulations have to be much more flexible if people are to qualify for training courses of this kind. On-the-job training is relevant today, and is something that should be emphasized a great deal more than it is.

Second, if we are to continue the Opportunity for Youth program, opportunities for youth should be directed more to those who really need those opportunities. Perhaps more importantly, Opportunity for Youth programs or similar programs should be brought in for non-students, for the working class or young farmers, or for those young people who want to start up a business, and so on. Only 9 per cent of the jobs provided through OFY go to non-students. If we continue this program, we must have a similar program for those who are not students.
I also think we will have to have more programs for young people starting farming. In my province and across the country I am told that the average age of farmers is about 57. I think this tells us a great deal about rural Canada. We will have to offer more training for your young rural people, with interest free loans and similar financial help, if we are to provide jobs for our young people in rural Canada.
Then, we will have to do more for young married couples. Many of these young couples are in very severe economic straits and need to be helped. My colleague, the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mrs. Maclnnis) has already mentioned that day care centres should be readily available. We should spend more money on day care centres rather than giving gifts, write-offs and tax concessions to the rich corporations of this country. Day care centres provide our young women with an equal opportunity to go out to work or to pursue what they wish to pursue. In addition, there should be more public housing and a greater availability of loans at low interest rates so our young couples can make a better beginning as they enter their working life.
Then, we must have such programs as early retirement for our older people. I do not see why our older people should not have the chance to retire and to draw benefits from security plans, such as the Canada Pension Plan and the Old Age Security Act at the age of 60. If that were the case, we would open up a whole series of new jobs for our younger people, and it would enable our older people to pursue a more interesting life.
These are some of the things that can be done, so we are making these concrete suggestions today. We will have to do some of these things if we want to find work for a quarter of a million young people who are unemployed today. There is no excuse for this number of unemployed. If we do not do something about it, the situation will snowball; it will worsen and we will then be faced with many more serious social problems. I trust that when the minister speaks he will reply to some of the points that we are going to raise, and will explain to us why the government is not pursuing some of these ideas. Perhaps he will announce new programs that he may have for this quarter of a million young people who are unemployed. They are a very important part of this country and they need jobs as much as anyone else. With that I conclude by once again emphasizing that unemployment is a very serious problem that we cannot overlook, one that will have serious repercussions for the future if we do not act now.


John Howard Lundrigan: Mr. Speaker, first of all may I congratulate my colleague to my left for introducing this motion which is a very succinct one, very much to the point, and perhaps one of the most important
June 19, 1972

motions that will be debated in the remaining part of the session.
If I recall correctly from my limited knowledge of history when Alexander the Great was causing great devastation militarily a number of centuries ago, he spared one city because the city fathers indicated to him through an envoy that they were prepared to give him anything in the city with the exception of their young people. Alexander the Great replied that anyone with that kind of attitude, anyone who had that kind of foresight, did not deserve to suffer a military attack. That was the reaction of Alexander the Great.
Today we have "Pierre the Great", the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), who has quite a different attitude. If 1 can quote the Prime Minister, who was speaking in London, Ontario on November 11, 1971, he said:
Isn't it true that perhaps more and more people are turning away from the work ethic ... And some of them are unemployed, but their life is more meaningful being unemployed-that's their judgment-than somebody else who works a 40-hour week and produces something which in their judgment is of no use to society and perhaps may even be of negative use-
The Prime Minister is claiming that our young people are turning away from the work ethic, that in fact they rather enjoy being unemployed, that they do not aspire to be creatively employed but are enjoying life just lying around in various parts of the country. As someone has just indicated to me, Pierre the Great should heed the lesson of Alexander the Great. I think the Prime Minister was correct when he said that young people today and people generally would question whether in fact work should be defined as only the creation or production of material wealth. I agree with him in that, but think he is very much out of touch if he still thinks young people in Canada today are satisfied to be on the unemployment roll and wandering across this country in search of jobs. That is certainly not the attitude of the young people I have talked to in the last several months. As a person who has been actively involved with a number of young people across Canada, and as a Member of Parliament talking to those who visit here, I have been very impressed with the attitude of young people as far as future employment is concerned. I suggest that today the greatest significant effort of our young people is the endeavour to find employment. They are as concerned as any age group about becoming productively employed.
One of my colleagues to my left has indicated the statistical problem in some detail. In the last several months I have been accused of emphasizing the statistics of unemployment to a greater extent than I perhaps should, so I will leave that matter as it now is on the record. The hon. member indicated the number of young people in the age group from 14 to 24 who are looking for work, and has also indicated the national average in respect of employment of those under age 24. He has referred to the 30,000 jobs created under the Opportunities for Youth Program, and emphasized the fact that we have spent some $30 million. He indicated that approximately two million Canadians, and the figure 1.8 million is quoted frequently, between the ages of 14 and 25 years are looking for employment.
Unemployment among Youth
What concerns me much more than these statistics and the impact of our economy on these young people, is the fact that from the first day they enter school, that is from kindergarten through the entire educational system, they are urged by their parents, their teachers, their community leaders and their governments to strive to reach that great plateau when they have gained an education and can enter constructive fields. However, there are tens of thousands of young people in this country who have gained university degrees, graduation from technical trade schools and various colleges and high schools, who find themselves frustrated in an unfriendly economy in which they cannot find employment. I think these unemployed young people represent the most serious component of the problem we are discussing today.
I am not going to become involved in a long discussion of this problem, but I could spend a great deal of the next few minutes talking about the magnitude of it and quoting examples of the devastating effect unemployment has on these people. I could quote examples of representations we have received in recent weeks from urban groups, especially those in Toronto, but perhaps I should move on to a discussion of the responsibilities and where they lie, with some elaboration of the suggestion made by my colleague.
We must take first matters first. The fact of the matter is that the problem of unemployment among young people can never be considered totally a government problem. The government should recognize this fact. Regardless of what type of program it adopts, including the Opportunities for Youth program, there is no way this problem can be resolved by purely narrow government involvement. The government must acknowledge the fact that we have to consider the total economy. It must recognize that unless we get industry more actively involved in an effort to create employment for young people we will continue for the next several years with a very heavy degree of unemployment among young people.
In its haste to create a favourable political climate by bragging about the Opportunities for Youth Program, the government has failed to recognize the problem, and has overlooked the importance of getting the economy moving. The government should make more effort to get industry involved. It should provide some kind of incentive to industry to show how worthwhile it is to employ young people. I firmly believe the federal government has never really paid enough attention to the federal-provincial-municipal aspect of this situation. The federal government announced the Opportunities for Youth Program without any consultation whatsoever with the provinces. The province of Ontario, the province of Alberta and other provinces have brought in their own programs and if I can judge by comments made publicly, there was never any great effort to integrate these policies and programs.
I would hasten to add that the federal government is not totally to blame. Certainly, all three levels of government must be brought into play if we are to have a significant impact. The first thing that must be said is that the Opportunities for Youth and the Local Initiatives Programs must undergo very serious re-evaluation. We are talking about 30,000 jobs and about literally hundreds of groups

June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth
of young people who have had projects and programs rejected. I suggest they have not fully understood the criteria. Other groups in other communities have had similar projects accepted. The frustration and anxiety caused by this type of activity on the part of the government can in many cases make these programs more destructive than useful.
The fact of the matter is that rural parts of Canada, particularly small communities, have received a great deal less benefit and less opportunity under these government programs. They have less opportunity to become involved in these activities. The hon. member also referred to the lack of opportunity for young people from poor families. It certainly is a fact that very few people from poor families really understand the power structure in order to take advantage of these types of programs. This situation certainly must undergo serious scrutiny.
We must give credit to the minister for his forward looking attitude in respect of manpower programs and for his introduction and passage of the bill which eliminated the three-year requirement of involvement in the labour force. There are many areas of our manpower programs that could be amended to help young people, and one is the 52-week maximum time for upgrading skills. An individual can go to an upgrading school, but after 52 weeks, regardless of whether he has completed his program, he is dumped out. That is one thing that ought to be changed in this type of manpower training program.
We must look as well at the idea of taking these young people from manpower training programs and somehow integrating them into the economy. There is no point in putting people into manpower programs, going through the expense of training them, and then dumping them into an economy in Canada in which there is no opportunity. In many cases, the government has been more interested in taking people off the unemployment rolls than it has been in creating job security. In other words, it has been devising welfare programs. A great deal more effort has to be made to integrate these training programs with the demand for trained workers in our economy. I hope the minister will tell us what he thinks about a five-year program in which industry can be involved in order that when these people complete training programs they can be placed in industry, finding a way from one stage of development to another.
I would say that our educators across the nation, even though education is sometimes thought to be purely a provincial matter, should reassess the type of education they are giving our young people.
I would like every Member of Parliament and every educator in Canada to read a book which has been a bestseller for the past six or seven months. The book is entitled "Future Shock". Perhaps every Member of Parliament has read it. There is a chapter in that book which is devoted to the theme that the educational system is directed more towards producing people geared to many aspects of society in centuries past rather than to people who would fit into the present system. I think everyone should read "Future Shock" to learn the way in which our educational system today produces people, even after 15

or 20 years in the system, who are not really qualified to fit into the society of the 1970's. I would like to say, as a teacher more than as a Member of Parliament, to educators across this country that they must start re-evaluating their educational process so that it will be relevant to the 70's. I submit that what we are providing our young people with today in the way of an education is irrelevant. It is completely out of tune with the 70's, let alone the 80's for which we should be planning. I will debate this with any educator in this country.
I have a couple more points I wish to cram into the 26 minutes allotted to me. My colleague, who speaks for our party in respect of the national health and welfare aspect of the federal government will be touching on this in more detail. However, there must be a re-adjustment of our attitude toward young people so far as welfare is concerned. If I may use the phrase "the adult world" to refer to people beyond age 25, that world refers to young people as being great recipients of welfare. If any one would read the very impressive argument put out by the Canadian Council on Social Development, it would be seen that there is not a preponderance of our young people on welfare. The figure is less than one per cent in the 14-25 year old group compared with in excess of two per cent in the group beyond that age. The fact of the matter is that we must change the attitude we have toward our young people who find themselves in trouble and need a little assistance under our social welfare schemes. If they need assistance they are just as entitled to it as is any adult in Canada.
We should make available to our young people opportunities which would make it possible for them to avoid the necessity of requesting assistance under social welfare programs. More importantly, I would like to see a long serious look taken at the Canada Assistance Plan. At the present moment, no province is entitled to adopt policies which would allow it to replace welfare schemes with work schemes. For example, if the province of Quebec desired to give its young people $100 a month plus a few dollars from its own coffers rather than $50 a month welfare, along with the $50 a month which is available from Ottawa under the cost-sharing agreement, and put them productively to work, that province would not be entitled to do so because under this legislation the provinces which encourage people to work are refused the federal share under the Canada Assistance Plan. In other words, the federal government says that if a province wants to use the payments it receives under the Canada Assistance Plan to put people to work, those payments will be cut off. I believe that is grossly unfair. I think a more liberal attitude could be taken so that provinces which are capable of designing work schemes to productively employ young people would be able to use the federal share of welfare assistance for this purpose.
I have a final comment. I do not wish to dominate the discussion today because I know a dozen of my colleagues on both sides of the House who wish to become involved. In the past several days, I have watched a number of television programs covering various festivals. Last evening everybody saw on national television a program covering the festival held by the "Jesus Freaks". I am not very much aware of the motivation behind these festivals or the psychological motivation behind tens of thousands
June 19, 1972

of young people getting together and worshipping in the way they do, listening to music or getting turned on, or whatever it is. I am not familiar with the psychology behind this, but there are hundreds of thousands of young people who find the energy to get together and enjoy music festivals, religious festivals, or whatever it is.
I wonder whether anyone has seriously considered challenging the young people through federal assistance, to take part in some kind of activity related to their own future. I should like to see some kind of national conference. It could be called a rock conference, a religious conference, an employment conference or something else. Let us have some type of federal encouragement and federal funding which would enable thousands of our young people, not when the problem is right on us but at some appropriate time, to get together and offer their suggestions on what they believe can be done to help alleviate unemployment among young people. I know the Canadian Council on Social Development had a great many of these young people involved in its survey procedures. However, I have never seen a means by which the young people from each province could get together to spend some time in offering suggestions as to ways in which their own future could be assured.
Too frequently politicians like myself and other members, as well as the Minister in charge of youth, whom we never see in this House-what is his name? I forget his name. It is the Secretary of State (Mr. Pelletier), the Opportunities for Youth king. I should have liked to see the Secretary of State here today. I know my colleague on the other side, the outstanding minister, the Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. Mackasey) will be back in a few minutes to participate. The government is also bringing on another heavyweight, the hon. member for York-Simcoe (Mr. Roberts). I am very serious about this. I should like to see the federal government challenge the young people from St. John's, Newfoundland, Vancouver or wherever to come to Ottawa and spend a few days talking about their problems. Perhaps they have all kinds of ideas which we have never really tapped.
I remember a few weeks ago a group of young people from Toronto came to my office. They represented a variety of groups which received local initiative grants. They offered numerous suggestions. I must admit, having listened to them for a few minutes or half an hour, I learned a great deal more about the problems of young people than I could learn from Members of Parliament in the next six years. So, why do we not accept this challenge and offer it to our young people. We could tell them we would sponsor a conference of representatives from the universities, schools, councils of all kinds and organizations, to talk about their problems. Perhaps in this way we would receive a little guidance, because I am convinced that if we have to wait for the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State to solve the problem of unemployment among young people we will have to talk about 1980 instead of 1970.


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, the motion introduced by the hon. member for Yorkton-Mel-
Unemployment among Youth ville (Mr. Nystrom) is very serious since it deals with an apparently insoluble problem. In fact, we have been hearing about it for many years, without any solution having ever been found.
The situation in which young people under 25 must live nowadays is neither very nice nor very interesting to observe. We hear people say that today's youth does not want to work anymore and that is why they are in such an unfortunate situation.
Mr. Speaker, today's young people are our children, just as we once were our parents' children, and they are not so different from what we were. They haven't changed, but life styles have however. Twenty-five years ago, it was rather easy to find a job; today, the number of young people being maybe ten times larger, there is a surplus of young manpower in our country. That some young people do not want to work is not new; we always had them. Those who do not want to work do not include only young people 20 or 25 years old. In fact, some people 40, 50 or 55 years old would rather receive welfare allowances than work. They are not so much better than young people 20 or 22 years old.
However, I notice, Mr. Speaker, during my travels across Canada, that our young people are interested in their country, that they want to become part of the Canadian society, if they can, if they are permitted to do so. This is exactly the permission they cannot find.
A while ago, the mover said that 250,000 young people less than 25 years old are unemployed. Yet, these are young people qualified to work and seeking employment. At this time of the year, 1,400,000 students ask permission to work during the summer months in order to continue their studies in the fall, and the hon. Secretary of State (Mr. Pelletier) came up, after the Christmas and New Year's holidays, with the Opportunities for Youth program to offer some help to young students and young unemployed.
These days, we receive from the Department of the Secretary of State-I do not write them, but we receive them-letters stating that 19,000 serious requests were received and that approximately 3,000 were accepted. About 16,000 projects under the Opportunities for Youth programs have been rejected. Perhaps not a single day goes by without a member of Parliament receiving a telephone call from someone in his constituency asking for reconsideration of a project submitted in January, February or March that was refused because it involved spending too much money on purchase of materials, because all the funds and more have been spent, and so on. No request for review can be accepted because the funds have run out. The minister says: We have no more money. But the young people are still there. As indicated by the letters received, these projects are serious and valuable and would help young people. Unfortunately, we do not have the financial means to implement them.
Mr. Speaker, I do not accept to be told that we do not have the financial means to help the young. They represent Canada's future and we have no right to gamble it away. Our duty is to build the future and not to gamble it away.

June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth
Mr. Speaker, on several occasions, I said the following: If war was declared tomorrow morning, the 250,000 unemployed under 25 and the 1,400,000 students now looking for summer jobs, that is 1,650,000 young people altogether, would all without exception be enrolled in the armed forces, clothed, fed and housed, and also paid to wage war, to destroy. Anywhere in the world, the necessary funds would be found; the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) and the Secretary of State could not say that there is a shortage of money.
In case of national emergency, we would mobilize all our young people, without exception, to have them wage war, but if we want to develop our country, build something and not destroy, help shape Canada's future, the minister will reply: We have no money. Some citizens play with that. The media find that normal. The minister said there was no money; so there is no money. Why should money be scarce in time of peace and not in time of war? This is miraculous, something that defies comprehension, a real mystery.
Mr. Speaker, it is fortunate that many young people realize today that they have been and are still being deceived.
I remember that during the second world war, when I was 20 or 22 years old, a great many young men did not want to enlist in the army. For 25 years, the Liberal party had boasted that under a Liberal administration, we would never have another war requiring military service. In 1939, when war broke out, the mayor of Montreal was advising young men not to enlist or register. He was locked for five years in a concentration camp. He stayed there five years, not seven days like Pepin, Laberge and Charbonneau who had asked their followers to disregard the law. Today, the situation has changed, but it was very difficult then to get out of prison.
In 1939, young people my age were emerging from an economic crisis that raged from 1929 to 1939. No matter what colleges we graduated from, be it that of Limbour where I studied, or Victoriaville, or Montreal, or even university, and no matter what diplomas stuffed our pockets, there were no jobs available, because of the economic crisis. As soon as war broke out, on September 1, 1939, the then Liberal government, as if by magic, announced suddenly the following day: "Come on; no time to waste. We have found the money. War has just broken out." They were ready, then, to provide us with all our requisites for war.
The same thing is happening today. Of course, we are enjoying peace, but for our young, it is a time of economic crisis even worse than that we have been through, because in 1934-35, we were satisfied with far less than we require today. There is now such a variety of products and entertainments of all sorts available to our young that they are placed in a totally different social environment than the one we had.
Let us take the case of young man or woman of 20 today, who attends university or a CEGEP and holds a job in a plant or office. When the week-end comes, they are still obliged to go to their father and say, "Dad, as I work, could you not lend me $10 or $15 for the week-end?" If the father has five or six other children, if his income is not adequate, they understand. They know what the family
[Mr. Caouette.J
situation is; they do not revolt against the family but against society that keeps them from living decently.
Instead of blaming society for refusing to allow the integration of the young, we call them hearless or ill-mannered. We tend to blame the young generally. In fact, as soon as a small group revolts, we are ready to crush youth as a whole to safeguard the system, the financial system. Nobody denounces financing which is easily available in wartime, but not in peacetime.
Mr. Speaker, we all know-the young people as well as hon. members-that nothing is done in Canada to develop our natural resources. Let us consider the north and everywhere in our provinces. There would be lots of things to do, but since we have no money we remain idle.
I refer particularly to roads, especially Highway 8 between Hull and Montreal whose broadening has been promised for 40 years and which is still being promised for the next election. During an election campaign, numbered stakes are driven in along the highway, making electors believe that the road will be built. The day after the election, the stakes are removed and put away till the next election and the highway remains exactly as it was-


An hon. Member:: They are put up elsewhere.


David Réal Caouette: Yes, they are put up elsewhere in case of a by-election.


An hon. Member:: You are asking for it-


David Réal Caouette: In Ontario it is the same thing.
Today the road is good from the eastern border of Ontario up to Montreal. But on the Ontario side up to Ottawa and where traffic is very heavy there is a small two-lane road hardly allowing two cars to meet. Why not build a four-lane road and recruit young people to do it? This would create employment in asphalt plants, jobs for truckers, in short employment everywhere. Such roads have to be built all across Canada.
In another field, such as health, many things could be done, such as for instance the use of nursing and medical students where there is a possibility of using their skills. If we invested the required funds in all fields of economic and social activity in our country, there would be enormous possibilities.
We have the same situation internationally. I was in Cameroun for Easter. Mr. Speaker, there I noted that sending technicians to train these people for various jobs is a waste of time because they do not want to learn anything. What they need in these countries is social advisers to make the people aware of their situation. For 100 years we have been spending huge sums to help them. They have not yet understood the reason because their education is not in that direction. Therefore we should be sending them teachers.
In India and in Iran where I went, the same situation prevails. It is not the revolutionnaries who have to be sent there, but social workers who would appeal to the logic of the human being.
In every field in Canada, there are possibilities for helping young people provided the government, no matter which, decides to take the bull by the horns-not by the
June 19, 1972

tail but by the horns-in order to find a solution to the problems of young people, and indirectly help fathers and mothers who would like nothing better than to see their children busy at something for the development of Canada. That would allow them to be themselves and not think of themselves as numbers in a socialist or communist state, or in some group, but as free human beings, able to use their personal resources, to find their whole indentity and to put them at the service of this country.


Mr. lohn Roberts (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Mr. Speaker, I must admit that I was a bit surprised that this motion was put down in the name of the hon. member for Yorkton-Mel-ville (Mr. Nystrom) who is, I believe, and who prides himself on being, a progressive socialist. I would not have been surprised if the motion had been put down by one of the fossils from the official opposition, but I do find it surprising that it should stand in the name of the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville, one of the youngest and most idealistic members of the NDP.
What this motion asks is that the House express regret at what it calls failure to provide a "comprehensive" and "coherent" program. Mr. Speaker, the hon. member should know that those who stand in the way of progress have often been those who said, "You cannot take one step now because you have not drafted the final and complete program." The enemy of the good is often he who pretends to demand the best. Is it the hon. member's prescription that we should not act until we have taped every facet of a problem, until we can bring every weapon in our armoury to bear on its resolution? It seems to me that in his motion the hon. member is lobbying not for a program with action, but for inaction. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, it was not surprising to me that, in fact, he did not talk about his motion.
The hon. member did not talk about the need for a comprehensive and coherent program because I suspect that in his heart of hearts he, too, wants us to take practical steps forward whenever we see an area in which we can assist people who have social problems. I doubt that he really wants to insist that we should do nothing until we can do everything, or that we must know everything before we can take any action at all. What the hon. member spent a great deal of the first part of his speech discussing is a serious and grave problem-the extensive unemployment in that sector of the public under the age of 25 years.
This is a problem, a grave problem. It is not a problem that has been generated immediately over the past two or three years. It stems from structural factors in the Canadian economy which result from demographic patterns. Unemployment among the young is part of the general structural difficulties that the Canadian economy faces, not only this year but will face over the coming decade. I would suggest that that challenge is part of the special position of the Canadian economy; because, while our economy provides unique opportunities it also confronts problems that are not found in any other society.
Unemployment among Youth
There is, and the hon. member alluded to it, a problem of high rates of entry into the working force, higher than in any other developed country. There are problems of low levels of productivity, and there are problems of regional disparity, with which the hon. member for Gan-der-Twillingate (Mr. Lundrigan) has been much concerned. There are problems in deciding how we should use our great economic asset, the fact that we are resource rich, in determining a general industrial policy for this country.
The problem of unemployment among the young, which the hon. member has described, is one very important part of the more general question, namely-which is the appropriate industrial policy for Canada to pursue. If one looks back over the past four years of the government's policies, Mr. Speaker, I think one will see that most of them, in the economic area, fit around those four great themes. I have outlined the problems of unemployment, productivity, regional disparity and resource development. No one on this side of the House would suggest that we have dealt with these long term problems perfectly, although we have shown an increasing awareness and understanding of them-I would suggest a much greater understanding of them than any of the opposition parties.
The policy of the New Democratic Party toward developing an industrial policy for Canada is basically the ideal of nationalization. Of course, one is not always sure these days whether it does stand for nationalization. If I understand correctly, the policy of the Waffle group is to press for nationalization but this seems to be resisted by the leadership of the party. It is hard to know which is greater, the dismay of the leadership of the New Democratic Party that some of their followers take these ideals seriously or the disillusiorment of the followers that the leadership of the party does not take them seriously.
The proposals made by the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville were rather thin. He suggested that we should expand on-the-job training, seemingly unaware that one of the things the Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. Mackasey) has already done has been to increase the grants for manpower training from $20 million to $50 million. The fact is, Mr. Speaker, that proportionate to their place in the labour force, youth has a far greater share in manpower programs than do other members of the population. Manpower services are actually heavily tilted in favour of young people who, though forming but 26 per cent of the labour force, claim over 40 per cent of available occupational training places under our Canada Manpower training program. This proportion will likely increase if the eligibility requirements for training and allowances are broadened. Youth seeks the services of Canada manpower centres to an extent far outweighing their relative number. Almost half the people seeking full-time work through Canada manpower centres are under 25. Young workers are among those who are vigorously assisted to find employment and take up new opportunities. In 1970-71, 35 per cent of all those relocated through this program were under 25 years of age.
Mr. Speaker, I do not want to stray too far into the field of the Minister of Manpower and Immigration who, I understand, will be speaking later in the debate. However,

June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth I want to emphasize that, through the provision of career and employment counselling to post-secondary education institutions and through other programs, over 142,000 students were placed in jobs last summer by Canada manpower centres. As I said earlier, on-the-job training grants were increased from $20 million to $50 million and 64 per cent of the people who benefited from these schemes were young people. The hon. member's criticisms of the program, and his suggestions for doing things that we are already doing, brings to mind a line describing a not too successful British politician. It was said that he was "indebted to his memory for his ideas and to his imagination for his facts".
I have not yet discussed the use of the Local Initiatives Program in respect of providing employment for young people, but perhaps before I do that I should say something about the remarks of the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate (Mr. Lundrigan).


John Howard Lundrigan: I was beginning to feel a bit lonely.


John (Moody) Roberts: When I was speaking about fossils in the official opposition who might appropriately have proposed the motion proposed by the hon. member for York-ton-Melville, I was not thinking of the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate. He is a "progressive" Conservative and should be proud of that fact, as I am sure he is. He did not take the approach that is unfortunately taken by too many members of his party, that the Opportunities for Youth program and the Local Initiatives Program are gifts to our shiftless, lazy youth who are depriving other people of jobs. He did not take that approach and he is right because a Conservative should welcome these programs. I will expand on that later.
He did mention two major factors, however. One was the question of increased incentives for employment. The remarks I have just made about what we are doing under the manpower programs, particularly in respect of the young people, should lead him to conclude that we, as a government, are heading in the right direction. His second suggestion was that there should be a national conference for the young people of this country. As a private member and a backbencher, I would support that suggestion. It has a great deal of merit and should be seriously considered.
What has disappointed me most in the reaction of the first two speakers from the opposition is their failure to give credit where credit is due. In their heart of hearts, both the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville and the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate support the principles which were developed by the government in the Local Initiatives Program and the Opportunities for Youth program. I know it is the duty of the opposition to oppose, but it is not necessarily their duty to oppose everything at all times with all the force at their disposal. Their remarks might have gained more credibility if they had admitted that these are sound imaginative proposals which should be accepted and welcomed.
I said earlier that the Conservatives should support Opportunities for Youth and LIP. If there is one thing that we on the government side hear from the Conservative side it is that big government saps the initiative of citizens and bureaucracy takes away the capacity of the individu-

al to assist with the problems of society. In these two programs, we have not created a large bureaucracy to establish and administer them. We have gone to the people and said, "Let's have your ideas, your enthusiasm, your suggestions, your initiative and we will work with you to assist you and to meet a social need." I suggest that a Conservative, particularly a "progressive" Conservative like the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate, should understand, appreciate and support the concept of a government approach which says, "Let us, with a minimum of bureaucracy and red tape, tap the enthusiasm, the idealism and the initiative of the people who have something to contribute to our society."
It is obvious that the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville should support these programs and principles because they are progressive and pragmatic. Of course, they do not claim to cover all the problems of every individual in society, but with a minimal amount of money enormous numbers of people have been assisted not just to do things for themselves alone but to help other people in the community. I would have applauded the hon. member if he had said that clearly, as I believe it is what is in his heart.
The fact of the matter is that in dealing with this problem of unemployment among young people we have developed programs under LIP and Opportunities for Youth which have been enormously successful and which have not been tried in any other country. Indeed, people from other countries come to see how we administer these programs and to learn our secret. I am not the only one to say that the programs are successful. There was an article in the Toronto Star of June 3, written by Trent Frayne and I would like to quote from it at some length-not that he is more eloquent than I, Mr. Speaker, but because members of the House may be prepared to believe that he is less biased in favour of the government than I. He says:
It was as imaginative an idea for combating high unemployment as anything in western society. It was unique in that, instead of devising winter work projects for the people, the government turned to the people themselves for ideas about the kind of work they wanted to do.
To see how this concept has worked out in practice, I travelled from coast to coast to look at LIP projects. I interviewed dozens of officials and critics, people who got grants and people who received help from projects. My conclusion: The LIP program is a runaway success.
What are the ground rules? A project should be of benefit to the community; it should not compete commercially with established businesses and it should give work to people who need jobs. What Canadians did within these guidelines was as innovative as it was varied. Mr. Frayne listed 30 or 40 projects that have been assisted by the LIP concept. His conclusion-not the conclusion of a government representative, or a backbencher, or an official spokesman for government programs, but the viewpoint of a disinterested journalist who made an extensive study-was as follows:
The point is, though, that the abuses were remarkably few and the criticism soon muted, and what really mattered about the LIP program was that it caught up more than 90,000 people who would otherwise have had no work, permitted them the same freedom of invention and ingenuity that the wealthy enjoy, and directed them towards a new frontier in Canada, social justice for all.
June 19, 1972

That applies to the Local Initiatives Program. Of course, the Local Initiatives Program is not directed solely toward young people, but a large part of the projects undertaken have been ones in which young people have been involved.
There was only one comment by the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate which really aroused my ire. That was his suggestion that these programs, such as Opportunities for Youth, are something in the nature of a welfare program or might be used just as a welfare program. I resent that because I think it is wrong-


John Howard Lundrigan: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. My remarks with regard to welfare had to do with the Manpower adult occupational training program where people are placed in these programs in order to be taken off the unemployment list. The hon. member should know this. I did not use the word "welfare" in connection with Opportunities for Youth or Local Initiatives Program.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. That is hardly a question of privilege. The hon. member does have the right to rise on a point of order to explain or clarify his remarks.


John (Moody) Roberts: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to learn that I was mistaken in my comprehension of what the hon. member said. I am sure he welcomes the opportunity to put right the impression which otherwise might have rested with some members of the House.
Earlier I referred to the view of some members, in fact many members, of the Conservative party who regard these programs as simply give-aways or contributions to shiftless youth who do not need assistance or help. That is an unfortunate way of looking at these programs. This is not a system by which we give anything away. It is a situation in which the government works with young people to tap their ideas and do things which need to be done at low cost.
What most impresses me about young people in our society is the very strong desire that most of them have to contribute to this society. We all give lip service to the turbulence among young people, their criticism of the society we have, and their opposition to the "system" of the "establishment". I think we should debate more often in the House the problems of concern to young people.
Among young people, there have been two reactions to the society which confronts them, a society which, as we all know, is far from perfect. Some of these young people choose, perhaps through frustration, to opt out. There are people on the drug trip, people who abandon the life of their communities to live in communes, and people who say that our society is so rotten and corrupt that they simply want to amputate themselves from it and hope that they will be uncorrupted by the society in which we live.
There are others, much more numerous and I believe more admirable, who, although disliking many aspects of our society, decide that they will not opt out, but will opt in. They are not pursuing selfish goals for themselves, such as a higher salary, increased security or an easy and soft life. They are young people who feel they have something to contribute in helping their fellowman in this
Unemployment among Youth
society. These are the people to whom Opportunities for Youth and the Local Initiatives Program have been directed. It has given them a chance to contribute their energy and ideas to a society which desperately needs their enthusiasm and ideas. These young people are our best hope for the future. If we ignore them, or reject them, it will be to the peril of our society.
Since I have discussed the Local Initiatives Program at some length, I should say a few words about Opportunities for Youth. The programs which we have had under Opportunities for Youth have given the young people in our society an occasion to contribute, something which has been too often neglected in the past. Perhaps I might be pardoned if I make reference to the kinds of things being done in my own area, the constituency of York-Simcoe. I confess that when the idea of Opportunities for Youth was first broached, many constituents in my area were uneasy about the idea. They were concerned about the novelty of it. They were not sure it would be of great benefit. However, when you describe what has been done and what will be done this summer in my area, they become enthusiastic supporters of this concept.
Under Opportunities for Youth, there will be support this summer in my area for a mobile day camp concentrating on the arts, drama, music and related activities for young people between the ages of 10 and 14. There will be ecology studies, a youth involvement project, a co-operative between local businessmen and farmers in the rural area of my riding to find employment, and-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I regret to interrupt the parliamentary secretary, but I must do so to advise him that his time has expired.


John Howard Lundrigan: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am sure that the hon. member has 30 minutes.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: According to my understanding, the parliamentary secretary is entitled to 20 minutes.


Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Mr. Speaker, after listening to the remarks of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion, one gains the impression that only the Liberal party has any sympathy for the youth of this nation. When you look at the problems of youth from either the federal or provincial point of view, this is far from the truth.
I was also interested in listening to his remarks about on-the-job training. What he neglected to state was what happens to these people after the program is completed. The number who are laid off go back on the unemployment rolls. I suggest that many of these programs, such as the Local Initiatives Program and Opportunities for Youth, are in one sense stop-gap or short-term measures to reduce the number of unemployed. I am not suggesting that the Opportunities for Youth program is bad. I think the concept is a healthy one. It is one we should pursue further. The unfortunate aspect of it is that while there may be duplication on one hand, there is always the problem that such a program will not, and in fact does not, reach out to involve the entire community. In fact, in this summer of 1972 only 30,000 of the 250,000 unemployed young people in this country will be involved. This is

June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth
tragic. It should have been broader in its scope to include more of our young people.
It is my privilege today to enter this debate on the many problems and frustrations facing a substantial proportion of our younger people, notably those in their twenties who are just beginning to attempt to establish themselves in our society. Perhaps I should say "find themselves", for surely society today is changing so rapidly, it is so complex and confusing, that even the most secure and stable are often unnerved with apprehension. In urban Canada there are three major social and economic areas of great concern in which tension creates either violence or soul destroying frustration and crippling boredom. These are the lack of proper housing, educational systems that are out of touch with the realities of today, and the absolute boredom of the factory and office. No doubt there are many others, but I will limit myself to these three.
It is certainly ironic to me that while we have talked more about housing in the last four years than in any previous Parliament, lack of proper housing is still the number one problem in our cities. The present administration has deliberately ignored the needs of the low and middle income earners for proper living accommodation. It deliberately shelved urban renewal plans well under way in the mid 1960's, and only now at the eleventh hour the minister responsible for housing has brought in a bill to help save his government.
When I talk about housing, I am talking, first, about cost, because cost is obviously the barrier to adequate housing. A recent government task force on low income housing headed by Montreal architect Melvin Charney concludes that 49.5 per cent of Canadians cannot afford decent housing. This 49.5 per cent is in a group which ranges from families on welfare to those earning $6,500 a year or less. Many of our younger citizens are also in this category-under-educated, improperly educated, coming from homes where poverty has denied them the incentive for self-improvement, where squalor has depressed them to the point at which many just don't care.
Row housing, which is the type of home built mainly for the poor-and this is a mistake-dropped by 8 per cent in 1971 while more expensive housing starts increased by 38 per cent. I say row housing is a mistake because very often the people who live in this type of housing have many problems adjusting to conjested living conditions. Very often built of inferior design, these housing units frequently degenerate into modern slums. Moreover, people cramped into row housing find it difficult to relate to the community outside the "compound", if I may use that expression, because they feel inferior by the very nature of their segregated living quarters. Again, it is my personal experience that many of these people are young. Before they have a real chance in life, they are barricaded behind the poverty wall.
Among the villains in the cost of housing are land speculators. Cost of land rose in nearly all metropolitan areas in 1970, with increases of more than 10 per cent in Halifax; St. John's, Saint John, Montreal, Ottawa, Hamilton, Toronto, Sudbury, Edmonton and Vancouver. Another factor in the high cost of housing, and a major con-

tribator to inflation, is the present method of financing home ownership with high interest loans. A house priced at $20,000 typically would receive a first mortgage under NHA of $16,500. Interest over 25 years at 9 per cent would be $24,500. Principal, interest and the original payment of $3,500 would bring the cost of that house over 25 years to $44,500, more than twice the original price-hardly a bargain.
The tragedy of this situation is that most young married couples with a couple of children just cannot afford the down payment necessary to secure a first mortgage so are forced into a second mortgage situation which saps them of what money they should have left for ordinary family needs. The situation is aggravated by the fact that they are obliged to live in small apartments, many of a rundown nature, at the very time when their children should be enjoying the pleasures and security of a private home. Again, we see frustrations and tensions made even worse throughout the tenure of this administration by massive unemployment, particularly among the young. Young couples, because of interrupted earnings, have been forced to accept, where it is available, substandard accommodation. The unemployment insurance cheque comes in one day and the rent cheque goes out the next. This is another aspect of the Just Society.
In a 1971 report, the Science Council of Canada concluded that by sustained development of housing technology, even using conventional materials and methods, housing costs could be reduced by 15 per cent or more below the present norm in Canada. That represents a saving of $3,000 on a $20,000 home. The Science Council also endorsed a policy long advocated by the New Democratic Party-a vigorous program of land assembly by governments at all levels. Leadership in this field would have to be given by the federal government in co-operation with provincial governments, as municipalities are not in a financial position to do this effectively. A massive program of home construction would also reduce present high levels of unemployment especially among those 240,000 Canadians who are under the age of 25.
Mr. Speaker, if we intend to make a real effort at solving the tremendous social problems associated with, and to a great extent caused by, poor housing in our urban areas, we must launch an all-out attack against slums, high rents, high interest rates, land speculation and crowded and congested substandard accommodation. The time for talking and arguing is over. We must begin and begin now, or our cities will resemble the decay and rot that we see to the south.
It always seems a pity to me that we in Canada are unable to learn from the mistakes of our neighbours to the south. For a generation we have watched urban sprawl, innercity rot and decay, increasingly conjested living conditions breeding violence and terror in the streets, school systems which have virtually broken down, schools where hallways have to be patrolled by armed policemen, and where teachers in some cases actually have guns in their desks. We also see courageous social planners and bold and imaginative civic leaders desperately trying to turn the tide against utter social chaos.
America's faults were in part innocent. Americans were innovators. They led the way on this continent into the
June 19, 1972

technological age. Their mistakes can perhaps, to some degree, be forgiven. But can ours? Because surely we are following them down the same path to urban blight with all its attendant social and economic problems. Good housing at prices people can afford, particularly those just starting a family, is the very cornerstone of a healthy urban environment. So, let us rid ourselves of the land speculators and high interest rates and the endless red tape between governments and get on with the job.
Another major problem very evident in today's society, and one which is causing a rather widespread social malaise among the young, is the type of education most schools are providing. We see before us education systems which are not only out of touch with the real challenges of the present and future, but which have placed their emphasis on brick and mortar in the past ten years. This has created a generation of ill-equipped and, to an appreciable degree, over-educated unemployables. The cost of this failure has been astronomical.
One of the reasons our students today are over-educated is that we have trained them for professional jobs that our economic policies have exported to foreign countries, notably to the United States. In the vast field of what might be termed creative technology, the field of the inventor, the architect, the designer, the quality control analyst, and so on, most of the work is being done by the parent firm outside Canada. What our workers do, by and large, is assemble, package, label and ship. This is one major reason so many of our graduates find it difficult or, at times, impossible to find meaningful employment for which they have been trained at great cost. Let us not forget that the largest share of the cost of education, at all levels, is borne by the low and middle income earner.
It is my opinion, Mr. Speaker, that technical and commercial students should, after nine years of schooling, be released from our institutions to gain on-the-job training in industry and in commerce where they would receive the remainder of their education, not at the taxpayers' expense but at the company's expense. This, I suggest, would have a multiple effect: not only would it lower school taxes, it would relieve congestion in our schools and would provide more practical training where the action is-in the factory and in the marketplace. Students would also mature faster and be better prepared to face the challenges of a real life situation. They would have five or six years behind them before marrying and starting a family, and hopefully would be in better financial shape. The same would hold true for rural youngsters who wish to pursue a career in agriculture.
As a former teacher, I saw so much of the time of many students wasted because they were being forced to stay at school to prepare for jobs that to a great degree will soon be obsolete. This situation holds true for many academic students as well. It is indeed a sad commentary on our society today to see university graduates employed as check-out girls in food stores and trained teachers driving taxis. Bitterness is growing among this young group in Canada. In talking with university students I find that many are not even planning beyond graduation day. School has become a sort of asylum for them. They feel secure in the classroom but dread the thought of job
Unemployment among Youth
hunting. Is it any wonder that many become part of the drug subculture, or simply want to wander?
Opportunities for Youth Programs and Local Initiative Programs are not going to solve this problem. Not only are they extremely costly to the taxpayers, but they hardly make a dent in the unemployment figures relating to the young. This summer, for example, only 30,000 young people, mainly from our schools, will participate in the OFY, while approximately 210,000 young people will be left out. If we have an Opportunities for Youth program for students, why cannot we have the same kind of program for the thousands of youths who cannot find work in our factories?
Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would like to devote the remainder of my time to yet a third major cause of social malaise among our younger people. I am referring to the absolute boredom that comes from the menial, mind-numbing jobs to which so many of our younger workers-be they blue or white collar-are subjected in our factories and offices across the country. In a recent article in the Toronto Star, Sydney Katz reports that "of the thousands of men who work on the auto-assembly lines in Oshawa, 56 per cent are taking tranquilizers or some other kind of drug, many to help them cope with their mind-numbing jobs". Further, "we are notorious for the extent of our drug use", said Albert Taylor, president of local 222 of the United Automobile Workers Union. "The men move zombie-like performing the same mindless, minor operations, over and over again, their senses befogged and distorted by their robot-like movements and the hellish howls and shrieks of the machines."
To me this reads like an industrial history of Great Britain in the 19th century. Industrial development has not really improved working conditions at all. In fact, emotionally and psychologically, workers are worse off today. When one considers that the majority of these workers are in their twenties and thirties, it is not difficult to understand a host of social and financial problems emanating from this boredom and entering the homes and families of these workers. This boredom is also prevalent in office work as well where pool typists, copying machine operators, keypunch operators and filing clerks never see the beginning or the end of their jobs.
So, Mr. Speaker, all in all we seem to be nurturing a generation of young people who are suspicious of traditional professions because of lack of opportunity in many of those professions, bored and numbed by jobs that require no creative or challenging skills, disillusioned about traditonal work patterns, disinterested in learning because of antiquated educational systems, and lacking proper and decent living conditions in ever-growing congested cities. This is a pretty bleak picture, and a pretty sobering one.


Mr.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, the points put forward this afternoon both by the mover of the motion, the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom), and by the speaker who has just preceded me cover a wide range. If I remember correctly, the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville, in attempting to put forward some alternative ideas, said he approved of the on-the-job training programs of the government and that he would want to see these programs extended with the

June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth aid of increased financial support. When addressing himself to the Opportunities for Youth program, he made a rather interesting observation, which I share with him, namely that these programs should be more intensively redirected to those who need employment and made available more on the basis of need than has been the case so far. But both speakers, by their own admission, seemed to approve of and support the concept of training on the job and also Opportunities for Youth.
If that is the case as stated by them, then it becomes very difficult to understand the logic of the motion before us today which accuses the government of disregarding youth's legitimate aspirations. The word "disregard" is used in the motion. I ask, how can you, on the one hand, accuse the government of this disregard and, on the other hand, say that some of the programs that have been developed and made available to the people about whom the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville is so concerned should be extended? It seems to me that there is a contradiction in terms. The hon. member is agreeing that the programs that have been developed so far are good and perhaps we should have more of the same. I expected him to suggest that these programs were not good and should be replaced by a different approach, in view of his use of the word "disregard" in the motion before us today. In other words, the hon. member cannot have it both ways. He cannot accuse the government of disregarding youth's legitimate aspirations and at the same time say yes, we need more of the kind of program that has been developed over the years.
Not only has the government conceived of the idea of an Opportunities for Youth program, it has also had the courage to put it into effect, to make it available under some very simple, basic conditions, with almost no red tape, on the terms of the job seekers, and for the purpose of community betterment. All of this has been done in an attempt to catch and to understand the moods and values, the aspirations and changing conditions of our young people today. Certainly, the idea was not put forward by members on the opposition benches, for once having suggested such a concept they would find it difficult to disapprove of the program and to suggest that it be replaced by other programs. Indeed, it is obvious that the program is a popular one. The only route that then remains available to them is to outbid and ask for more, and to demand greater emphasis on these programs. Of course, we obviously all agree that when a concept proves to be good, in spite of all the predictions of gloom such as those that came from the opposition benches two summers ago when this idea was launched for the first time, everybody wants to support it. In that sense, we share the same approach.
It is a pity this motion is drafted in such narrow terms and deals only with young unemployed, as if this were a matter of a more serious concern than the unemployment of older people. There is a broad group of Canadians with which we are concerned here, and to select the young ones only seems to indicate the concern is not shared equally for other sectors of our community. If you are in your fifties or early sixties, mature and unemployed today, it is a very serious and very tragic circumstance. It would have been more desirable, and reflect greater concern had

the motion been drafted in a manner dealing with the total spectrum of those unemployed in an attempt to find the answer in these difficult years of providing new avenues of employment in our nation.
The impression that this motion creates is very serious and I should like to deal with it for a moment. The impression is created that we are dealing with a chronic period of unemployment, while at the same time employment is retaining the same level. This is far from being so. Anyone who wishes to become aware of the picture must look at the figures published by Statistics Canada from month to month and from year to year. He will see that, for instance between spring of 1971 and spring of 1972, employment in Canada has risen by over 300,000 new jobs, and that the figure for the same period perhaps a year before was somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000 or just below that mark.
While unemployment in this country is with us at a disturbing level, in order to get a complete and correct picture one has at the same time to look not only at unemployment figures but also at employment figures. Then, one will realize that employment figures are rising constantly from year to year at a phenomenal degree, a rate of almost 300,000 new jobs per year. That is no minor performance for a small nation with a population base of only 22 million. It is a remarkable performance because, according to studies and statistics, it outdoes the performance of five or six western European countries put together in their ability to create new jobs. The population of those five or six countries, namely West Germany, France, Italy and so forth is something in the range of about five to 10 times the population of Canada. Here we have a comparatively small nation able to generate and produce jobs to the extent of approximately 300,000 from one year to the next.
We are asked now to deal with a narrow motion that creates the impression that employment in Canada is a stagnant factor. How blind can one be in putting forward this kind of a proposal? One should have the courage or wish to look at the over-all picture, and admit that while we have shortcomings and weaknesses in our unemployment levels, which leave much to be desired, we have at the same time a substantially increasing labour force since our economy has been able to generate new jobs to the tune of about 300,000 per year. This is no minor feat.
Going back to the basic motion of the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville, I suspect his speech will read in the record tomorrow like the commentary of a biblical figure or prophet, because the whole tone of his approach to the question was one of sadness, a forecast of disaster, depicting the picture of Canadian youth as far from the one with which most of us are familiar. Some of these young people are here in the galleries with their teachers. We see them going through these buildings by the thousands each day. These are vibrant, competent young people looking to the future, which is very bright indeed. We certainly disagree with any member of this House who depicts the picture of Canadian youth as the one the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville painted.
The hon. member's motion has done something useful in that it asks this House to stop for a moment and give thought to how we should improve our approach to and
June 19, 1972

understanding of the new developments in society, how to understand why, in the area of employment, new values are creeping in and old ones are being rejected, while situations are developing within our industrial society that are becoming too difficult to accept when contrasted with the idea of working every day in the factory, and so forth.
The hon. member for Brant (Mr. Blackburn) concluded his remarks a moment ago by quoting an interesting article from a daily newspaper which indicated that a high percentage of people were resorting to certain drugs in order to come to terms with an environment in which they have to work. It is possible that we live in times when it is much more enjoyable to be outside the working situation, because at work, as we all know and have been told, there is an increasing dehumanization as a result of lack of identification, and the limited satisfaction of assembly line situations. We do not know the answers, nor do we know why these new values of young people are developing.
Both the preceding members spoke about the desirability of extending the Opportunities for Youth Program to young farmers and young people who are not students. I suggest this has been done already, at least partially through LIP. Thousands of young people who are not students are engaged in some of the LIP programs across the nation. However, it is much broader in its scope because it permits people to actively participate regardless of age. Perhaps had we done what has been proposed, we would have been accused of age discrimination by offering programs only to youngsters and not to other people. By means of LIP, we have an approach which tends to be universal. This is a program which states that any person, regardless of age, who is unemployed and wishes to contribute to the betterment of his community has an opportunity to do so.
One would hope in a debate like this that one could provide some help in discovering new answers to the present challenge, which is a very complex one. The challenge is to try to place the government in a position to adjust its approach from year to year to a society whose values change rapidly, as we all know, and to offer programs totally apart from the trend of the programs we have seen in the past. It is a fact, and it is a pity that none of the members opposite have admitted this, that in this situation the government of Canada, through LIP, has produced a program in respect of employment which is most imaginative and the envy of perhaps all western industrialized nations. People from other parts of the world have inquired how this program was conceived and how it is administered. They have asked also how politically dangerous it is. Usually the inquiry asks whether we do not think we took a great risk in launching a program of this nature. The government certainly did, but in the end the program seems to have worked out fairly well despite the criticisms, despite the newspaper articles and despite some of the questions asked in this House. I remember very clearly that in the spring of 1971, the opposition was determined to demonstrate that the Opportunities for Youth Program was ill conceived and hastily conceived. Now, 15 months later, we witness this
Unemployment among Youth
beautiful example of one speaker after another not only praising the program but saying, "Please give us more of this".
I could not think of a better testimonial to this policy or this program. It might be repetitive to say we think that unemployment in the 1970's is a phenomenom which will stay with us for reasons stated by others, and that it will be a constant and a complex challenge for any government to try to find adequate answers which will be acceptable to those who are unemployed as well as to those who are working. It is those who are working who, through their income tax, will have to support these programs and who will constantly, as has been the case so far, question the quality and validity of the program. This is a problem which is constantly before us. The beginning, however, has been good. The results have been outstanding. At least in our cities we know of the outstanding programs which have been carried out to the satisfaction of the community, the participants themselves and the establishment. What is being provided today, obviously, is an opportunity for us to hear from some members of the opposition what should be the answer in the years to come.


Alfred Dryden Hales: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this motion before the House. Probably it is time the motion was repeated. I do not think it has been repeated since the debate started. The motion reads:
That this House regrets the failure of the government to produce a comprehensive-
I underline the word "comprehensive".
-and coherent program-
I underline the words "coherent program".
-to deal with the growing unemployment among our young people and its disregard of youth's legitimate aspirations.
It is a very timely motion, and one which I believe the House ought to appreciate being brought before it for discussion and debate. Why is it important? It is important because last year in Canada, in 1971, there were 46.3 per cent of people aged 14 to 24 unemployed, roughly one quarter of a million of our young people. It is also a fact that 30.4 per cent of the unemployed people had a grade eight education or less. Over one million young people graduated from universities, last year only a fraction of whom have been able to find employment. Many parents told their children they should attend university because if they did not they would not have as good an opportunity to obtain a job. They attended university, received a degree, entered the labour market and were unable to find a job. This is a very sad situation. It certainly affects those parents who told their children they should attend university. People who have Ph.D. degrees are driving taxis and girls who have B.A. degrees are working as check-out girls in supermarkets. I am not suggesting there is anything wrong with such occupations, but these young people attended university in the hope of obtaining jobs of higher rating and with higher pay than they have been able to obtain.
These are very serious situations. This government has had an ad hoc approach to this whole problem. Under Prime Minister Pearson, the Liberals introduced the Com-

June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth
pany of Young Canadians. What happened to that? It should have been the answer to many of the problems before us today. Instead of building up the Company of Young Canadians and having it do the job it was intended to do, the government jumped from pillar to post and brought in another program called the Opportunities for Youth. These programs overlapped. They should have been co-ordinated in some way. The Company of Young Canadians seems to have passed into oblivion. Now we have new programs, the Opportunities for Youth program, the Local Initiatives Program, a sort of ad hoc approach to the whole situation. I am not here to criticize. I think perhaps we should offer some constructive suggestions that would help clear up the unholy mess in which the young people find themselves after obtaining an education, whether at a university, a community college or a manpower retraining program.
I intend to keep my remarks along these lines. I wonder how the three levels of government allowed us to get into this situation. Surely, in this computer age it would not have been too much of a task to visualize the future requirements in respect of the various professions and the various disciplines studied at university. Surely, we could have anticipated 4, 8 or 12 years ahead the number of doctors, the number of engineers, the number of lawyers, the number of History and Political Science graduates and so on, that would be required. We should have been able to survey the demand and estimate the number of students which would be required in these various professions.
I am the first to agree that it is very difficult to say to a young fellow or to a young girl whose leanings are toward literature and writing "you should go into engineering" or "you should be a doctor". It should not be very difficult to say to them that four years from now there will be four times as many sociologists or engineers as we need, or the reverse. I do not know why the three levels of government have not joined together to work out a system to provide this information. I grant that education is not the responsibility of the federal government but is a provincial matter. However, we entered the field of education, perhaps by the back door, and since we are there let us give some guidance and direction in this very serious matter.
There is another problem to which we should give serious thought. I am one of those who believe that every young person who goes to university is independent enough to want to pay his own way. Many of these young people do not even want to borrow money from their parents or to obtain a student loan. They want to be able to say that they have earned the money and put themselves though university.


Mr. Knight:: They cannot earn that much money.


Alfred Dryden Hales: I will tell you how they can earn that money. I will suggest a new approach to education. Let us take the example of a university student who is taking a course in commerce. He can study the theory for three or four months and for the next three or four months he might work for a large company, in a bank or some other place, to get practical experience. His place of work he would

not be able to earn a sufficient amount of money to pay his way through university. So I say, let us scrap the student loan program and use the money for that program to subsidize the employer of these students under the work and learn program. Let us say to the student "you will have to learn to save to put yourself through university". He would be proud of the fact that he was able to earn enough money to put himself through university and that he did not even have to ask his father or mother to help him.
There would also be another benefit. The young person, after having worked four months in the profession in which he thought he was interested, might find that this was not what he wanted, that he was in the wrong course. He could stop right there and enroll himself in a course where his interests lie.
I believe that if we adopted such a system as this which would enable students to pay their way through university we would be accomplishing something.
This brings me to another aspect where we are badly adrift, as I see it. I am referring to the guidance counsellors at the high schools and universities. I do not feel they are in tune with what is ahead for our young people, and perhaps the young people are not getting the guidance which they should have. It seems to me that guidance counsellors at high schools and universities are the most important people on the staff and they should be paid the highest salary.
The program that the government introduced 15 months ago called the Opportunities for Youth program is one that I support. I agree with the principle of the program, but I am not satisfied with the way in which it has been operated. First of all, there is the matter of selection of the programs. The selection is being made by someone here in Ottawa, in an ivory tower. How can someone here in Ottawa know which is the best program for a community? Surely, the government should say to the community that they will support an Opportunities for Youth program but they would like the program to have the blessing and the approval of the community. Surely, there are groups of people who should either endorse or reject such a program.
One such program was adopted in my riding. I think the selection was made from an application on a piece of paper which was received here in Ottawa. This particular program happens to interfere with the work of the YM and YWCA. They got $7,000 for this program, and what was the result? The YWCA was operating the same kind of program before the Opportunities for Youth program was introduced. As a result of the acceptance of the OYP, the people working on the YWCA program lost their jobs, so four people were hired and four people lost their jobs. The net result was zero.
The principle of the program may be all right, but the selection and supervision of these projects leaves much to be desired. Last week I spoke briefly about supervision. I was informed that any expenditure below $15,000 for these programs would not have to be audited. In other words, when a group of people get $8,000 or $10,000 for a program they are not asked to account for the money; they are not required to produce vouchers. If this is a fact, then it is very serious and I for one will make a request,
June 19, 1972

which I am sure would be supported by the public generally, that all the money granted for OYP must be accounted for and audited as all public money should be. Even if that cannot be done for all the programs, certainly spot checks should be made so that the OYP people would know they were being held accountable for the money given to them under the program.
Let us now take a look at the Manpower offices and see what they might do to assist the young people in finding employment. I, for one, give the Manpower offices full marks for what they do in the summertime to assist young people to obtain employment. However, this work should be continued throughout the year, even though primarily it is just a summer program. Speaking of the Manpower offices and of the regulations under which they work, I give those officials full marks for removing the three year attachment to the labour force clause which meant that training allowances could be granted and the period shortened. This is a good thing.
Since we are speaking primarily about youth and their problems today, I would just like to repeat that the Department of Manpower and Immigration is focused mainly on summer employment for post-secondary students and the needs of young job seekers 16 and 17 years old appear to be neglected. Young workers need special attention and counselling to assist them in finding suitable employment. It is doubtful if this can be accomplished in the broad approach taken by the Canada Manpower Centres.
The Canadian Council on Social Development conducted a study on this matter, and I wish to quote from its report at page 253 as follows:
Only 10 per cent of the respondents interviewed for this study had good things to say about their contacts with Canada Manpower Centres. Perhaps they expected too much, perhaps they deserved better. Some displayed a mixed reaction. The majority were critical of the treatment and help received. Sixty per cent resented or were critical of the attitudes projected by Manpower counsellors.
There is much more at stake than Manpower's search for job orders when the employment needs of new, young workers are under consideration. A more personal, sympathetic and conselling intensive approach is required if widespread discontent and despair among youth is to be avoided.
As a short-term measure, the Department of Manpower and Immigration should develop a network of youth manpower centres, separate and distinct from, but closely co-ordinated with existing Canada Manpower Centres. These should be staffed by carefully selected, specially trained personnel with an understanding of and respect for the needs and values of young people. The youth centres should be oriented to youth and should conduct continuing aggressive outreach programs with both youth and employers.
I think this would be a step in the right direction. The counselling in the Manpower offices leaves much to be desired. Many people are misdirected to the upgrading courses which Manpower conducts. People are put into the wrong courses. Sometimes after a person has taken a course there is no job available for him. I wish to quote one example that is given in the study to which I have already referred. It is typical and bears out many of the things people have told me. The young fellow involved is called John. Here is his story:
Unemployment among Youth
John, aged 20, was raised on a farm and completed Grade 12. He came to the city two years ago to take a commercial art course at the community college. He received no counselling on graduation from high school or on admission to the community college. John completed his art course but then found that there was no demand for his services. To his chagrin he learned that only a very small proportion of any commercial art class ever found employment in that field. John has registered at Canada Manpower for any kind of job but has failed to obtain a position as yet. He shares accommodation with friends in a commune and feels their friendship and support keeps him going. He doesn't like to be dependent on those who are working and so applied for social assistance. His parents are still on the farm and he feels they would welcome his return as they were disappointed that he did not want to make farming his way of life. But it appears to him that they have always just barely "got by" and he can't see any future there. When interviewed he was discouraged and depressed.
Why would he not be discouraged and depressed? There are many others like him. Mr. Speaker, I see my time is up. I would have liked to develop my argument, but I am grateful to have had this opportunity, short as it was, to participate in this debate.


William George Knight: Mr. Speaker, I rise to take part in this debate because of the immense importance of the motion introduced by the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom). I was somewhat intrigued by the remarks of the hon. member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) who made some ridiculous statements concerning the fact that the motion was somewhat abrasive. I want to point out to the hon. member that if we had introduced a motion that could have been agreed to by all hon. members, a wishy-washy kind of motion, we would have been attacked for that very reason.
The hon. member referred to the Opportunities for Youth program. He could not understand why we were offering criticisms of it and yet suggesting that it be expanded. May I refer the hon. member to a report of the National Council of Welfare on guaranteed incomes and guaranteed jobs, at page 9, where it states:
The hopeful developments of the past year, as embodied in the Opportunities for Youth and Local Initiatives Programs, is that this re-definition can be seen to have begun. It has begun, however, through programs designed only as ad hoc and short-term responses. Instead of building new permanent concepts of work in terms of community service, these programs have created only insecure, short-term, filler jobs. Thus, someone may for years have carried out various community service activities on an unremunerated volunteer basis. In June of 1971 under the Oppor-tunites for Youth program that activity suddenly became a "job" and the person doing it received pay for this employment-till September when it suddenly ceased to be employment and again became unpaid volunteer activity-until December when the Local Initiatives Program again declared it a "job" and provided remuneration-until May when this program substantially expired and it again became unpaid non-employment. The May 31 expiry of the main part of the Local Initiatives program not only saw more than 70,000 Canadian workers "laid off," with all the attendant affects upon them and their families, but an end to thousands of projects providing valuable community services. That many projects were continued beyond this date is commendable, but they survive on the same insecure basis of facing a guillotine which has merely been postponed till September.
That is why the Opportunites for Youth and Local Initiatives programs are very much open to debate in this House. My colleagues have done an excellent job in spelling out the difficulties therein. I would like to deal with the problems facing youth in our rural society. Often, we fail to develop opportunities for young people who do not

June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth wish to live their lives in the urban centres. We need to develop a program that will allow these people to live in our rural society. What is the situation in this day and age, Mr. Speaker? In terms of unemployment, most of the 512,000 unemployed in Canada are between the ages of 28 and 44 years. I point out that the average age of the farmers in rural Canada is 57 years. He will soon reach an hour of decision with respect to what kind of people we want to live in the rural areas, and with respect to whether young people will be involved in farming.
According to the 1971 census, there are 15 per cent fewer farms in Canada than there were in 1966, a mere five years ago. The 1966 census showed that there were 85,686 farms in Saskatchewan, and the 1971 census showed only 76,970 farms there, a negative variation of
10.2	per cent. This illustrates the fast dwindling population of the rural areas. Most of those who are still there are in the age bracket over 50 years. The loss of these farms is directly related to the loss of jobs in the small communities, towns and villages that serve the rural areas. We also find a loss in the populations of these small towns and villages. You find, for example, that the 1971 population of Saskatchewan was 926,000 while in 1966 it was 955,000. Further studies of the figures for farm population show that the age groups 20 to 24 and 25 to 29 were lowest in 1966. The urban population in this country has increased to 73.6 per cent in 1971 from 69.6 in 1966. There is an ever-increasing number of people living in urban areas, quite often in urban squalor, having abandoned the rural way of life. It is well known that the move to large urban centres has been the trend over the last number of years, not only in Canada but in all parts of the world.
The policies introduced by the federal government following the task force report on agriculture have accelerated the depopulation of the rural areas because they introduced the concept of the elimination of two out of every three farms in Canada by 1990. This was proposed in the name of efficiency. The agriculture industry is expected to be self-sufficient, though it competes on the international market, while the industrial sector is subsidized through grants, forgivable loans, grants for research work, while at the same time having its markets controlled through administered prices. Not only does that situation affect the interests of young people who want to go into farming, but it affects young people in other government programs.
One of these policies is related to the Farm Credit Corporation. This Corporation has been very useful in the past in helping farmers get a certain amount of credit but the kind of collateral needed to get a loan puts young people, farmers and others, out of the running. There is no provision for the non-farmer who may have grown up on the farm, who now works in an urban setting but wishes to return to the land. Perhaps the third or fourth son of the family works in a co-op or a steel plant in Regina. He may grow tired of an eight hours a day job with no control over his production, and faced with a certain amount of boredom, may wish to take up farming. However, under these policies he does not have the option of going back to the land.

Speaking of the federal government policy to accelerate the depopulation of rural areas, I need only point to the small farm consolidation plan introduced by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Olson) under the guise of amendments to the Farm Credit Act. This is a program to further rationalize the agricultural sector. It should be called the "bigger farm consolidation plan"-take two farms and make one or take three farms and make two. There are no options in the plan for a young man who wants to take over his father's farm. If he wants to expand a half section to one section, there is no option for him within the plan. The only option is for the young farmer to move off the land and to sell it to people presently in the farming industry. There is no option to go back on the land, Mr. Speaker, and I think this is an important point.
I need not go into detail about the difficulties facing a young man who wishes to go into the dairy business or the difficulty he has in getting a quota from the Canadian Dairy Commission. He must get this from a farmer who is selling out and usually he must buy the herds as well. The task force report talked about the elimination of farms, the need for larger farm units and this puts small farmers and young couples who want to go into farming at a distinct disadvantage.
It is often stated in this House that it is the duty of the opposition to oppose, but what I want to do today is to point out to the government some of the real dangers in their philosophy and policies and try to change this trend toward depopulation of the rural area. What is needed is a new rural development policy, a policy of "back to the land and a rural setting". Though it may sound conservative in some ways, I suggest this is a radical approach to the problem of unemployment in Canada. The world population trends are toward the development of large urban areas at the expense of rural areas. A rural development policy should contain a positive provision for income maintenance to show there is a future in farming, creating the incentive for a young man to go into farming. There must be a kind of quarantee that he can earn a reasonable income on the farm. There is no need for cases such as those in my constituency in which a young man with a wife and family finds it necessary to go to work in the mines in order to supplement the income from five quarters of land.
What is needed is an over-all income support program and guaranteed price levels for grain and other commodities. For the young man who wants to go into farming, there should be easy credit facilities to enable him to return to the land. This could be done if less collateral were needed to obtain a loan from the Farm Credit Corporation, and if there were a subsidized interest rate. A young man working in a plant in Moose Jaw or Regina who goes to the Farm Credit Corporation is asked what kind of collateral he has. Coupled with that kind of loan program, what is needed is a national land bank scheme to make land available to young farmers who have no capital. This program is being worked out in the province of Saskatchewan. I suggest that a land bank scheme across Canada, aided by the federal government, would be of benefit to young people interested in going to rural areas.
June 19, 1972

Most people who are not familiar with rural areas think only of farmers in that setting, but we need to develop options for professional people as well, those who wish to live in small communities where the air is cleaner. That can be developed through a system of special grants for medical students who wish to practice in rural settings. Nurses, dentists, teachers and lawyers who go into the educational system can say that when they have completed their education they wish to practice in a rural setting. On that basis we would enhance the development of a rural area for the production of goods by people on family farms, and not other interest groups.
Further to that, at the national level we need legislation which prevents foreign ownership of land. We need strong legislation, not the piecemeal kind of legislation we see in the foreign takeovers bill now before the committee. We must prevent foreign ownership of land. We want to prevent situations where you have an Oklahoma lawyer buying 45 sections of the top land in Saskatchewan. Further, we must prevent the corporate ownership of land by such companies as the National Grains Company. We must prevent corporations in the food processing industry buying large tracts of land for their own purposes.
It is not, as some people suggest, a selfish motive on the part of those of us who represent rural areas to speak of the development of/ a kind of option for unemployed young people and young couples to move into rural areas. If you develop a strong rural community with support services to take off the pressure from already overpopulated cities, as well as creating a domestic market for urban manufactured goods you attack the problem of unemployment in the age group about which I spoke at the beginning of my speech. This enhances the number of people involved in the rural areas and at the same time creates purchase and demand power for goods manufactured in the cities. This further enhances the employment situation in the large urban industrial areas.
It is very easy to speak in that manner. Even with the loss of 15 per cent of our farmers in the past six years, the farmers of this country still use more horsepower than Canadian industry. They need the equipment with which to operate. In terms of the entire food industry, farmers constitute 35 per cent of the work force in terms of employment; they purchase 30 per cent of the fuel requirements within the boundaries of Canada, 40 per cent of the tires and 40 per cent of the iron and steel sold in this country. In this way they keep the farm machinery workers employed in the city of Brantford and people working in iron and steel production areas. They create employment throughout this country. They create consumer demand which helps reduce the unemployment problem throughout this nation.
If we continue the present trend of depopulation and the federal government accelerates the trend in respect of rural areas, markets for domestic goods will further decline and there will be more unemployment in urban areas. When we developed this nation at the turn of the century-I do not like mentioning his name because of this political allegiance-Mr. Sifton produced an over-all policy of developing the west as a market for eastern
Unemployment among Youth goods. Essentially, we still live in the kind of society where rural areas are important trade areas for industrial goods.
We sometimes complain about eastern tariff protection, and justly so, unfair freight rates and the unfair prices we pay for farm machinery; but what could hold confederation together through the development of a strong rural population which produces the grains which keep our balance of payments in order as well as creates a domestic market for manufactured goods. We must change agricultural policy so that the age of the average farmer is 27 or 37 and not 57. We must come to grips with this kind of rural development policy in the seventies or eighties, before it is too late.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Boulanger):: It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 40, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles)-Veterans Affairs-Consideration of increase in basic rate of war disability pension and veterans allowance; the hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie)-External affairs-Denmark-Denial that Danish fishing cause of depletion of Atlantic salmon stocks-Government position; the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Rowland)-National Defence-Request for assurance that fourth training squadron based at Esquimalt will be operational this summer.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom):
That this House regrets the failure of the government to produce a comprehensive and coherent program to deal with the growing unemployment among our young people and its disregard of youth's legitimate aspirations.
Mr. Barnett J. Danson (Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, it is rather interesting to follow the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Knight). I sympathize with the concern that he has, particularly when he represents a constituency that has produced great men like himself and his late and very respected predecessor who served on the other side of the House.
The lack of youth working on farms creates a great problem. I wonder whether the hon. member is trying to

June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth
turn back the laws of economics to the time when 70 per cent of the population in this country lived and worked on farms at the beginning of the century. It is now about 10 per cent of the population. I would hate to question these economics, when the hon. member for Vancouver-Kings-way (Mrs. Maclnnis) and others of her party get up on the "late show" and question the cost of food, if we hope artificially to stimulate in a non-economic way the cost of producing food. I do not know about the dairy farmer: I think he faces some "udder" frustrating situations; I suggest he is on the horns of a dilemma.
The hon. member spoke about foreign ownership of land. That is an interesting point, because his Saskatchewan government considers any land owned by people outside that province to be foreign owned. That would make Rene Levesque look like a federalist. The hon. member for Wellington (Mr. Hales), who preceded the hon. member for Assiniboia-


William George Knight: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Boulanger):: Is the hon. member rising for the purpose of asking a question?


William George Knight: Yes, Mr. Speaker.


Barnett Jerome Danson: I would like to continue, Mr. Speaker, because my time is so short. If there is time at the end of my speech, I would be delighted to answer the hon. member's question. The hon. member for Assiniboia and the hon. member for Wellington referred to an ad hoc approach. I suggest it is a very flexible and responsive approach, responding to the reasons w'hich the hon. member for Wellington gave, such as lack of ability to project into the future. I disagree with him that the Company of Young Canadians has disappeared. I think it has found its role. Mistakes were made, they were seen to be mistakes by the government and the CYC was reorganized. We think it has disappeared because it is operating efficiently and quietly. These are the flexible and sensitive approaches which a responsive government takes.
The hon. member pointed out that there may have been some conflict in municipalities. I know that when the Opportunities for Youth and LIP programs were first presented I spoke to the community leaders in my constituency. They were delighted not to interfere. They realized the scope of the project and that we could achieve co-ordination as we developed more experience in these types of programs. We cannot expect perfection, but we are making progress.
The hon. member for Gander-Twillingate (Mr. Lundri-gan) referred to the book entitled "Future Shock." It is interesting to note that in "Future Shock" Toffler says: "In dealing with the future it is more important to be imaginative and insightful than to be 100 per cent right." I think it is terribly important that that be the principle. If we work until everything is perfect and we cannot make mistakes, we usually end up, to use the cliche, with too little and too late. We must be prepared to experiment and make mistakes.
I wish to quote from a lead editorial which appeared in the June 10 edition of the Financial Post. It refers to LIP
which was started in a hurry and mistakes were made. The article reads in part:
The success of LIP is now well documented and it is easy to understand why manpower minister Bryce Mackasey should want to see it continue in some form far into the future ... At a time when jobs were needed, it created an impressive 92,000. Perhaps even more significant, almost half of the people involved in the program were removed from the ranks of those drawing unemployment insurance or receiving welfare.
It is interesting and significant that a financial journal should say this. The editorial continues:
To a whole generation of young adults who had been bombarded with anti-establishment views, here was the establishement coming to them on their own terms and providing the funds needed to carry out projects that the young felt were important and valuable. Young and not so young found themselves working side by side, and getting satisfaction from it.
I think this is very significant, because I have the impression that when the history of the period is recorded, one of the greatest accomplishments of this government will prove to have been its ability to participate, to "tune in" a whole generation of youth which had been disenchanted by and alienated from the structure of society in all its forms, including government. Now, instead of opting out they are opting in. Government was responsive to their needs and they in turn responded nobly.
I hope this is not a caucus secret among my hon. friends, but when this matter was discussed in the early stages I know many of us felt severe criticism would be forthcoming, that mistakes would be made, that misunderstandings would arise. And I was proud of my colleagues in caucus when, having recognized that mistakes might be made, they agreed to go ahead nevertheless because they believed it was right to do so, and take the flak if the flak came. And the flak did come: it came at the beginning; but as the program developed and the thoughtful people saw what was happening-I am not talking about the stupid people who refuse to look further than long hair and shaggy beards and floppy hats-they applauded these projects.
When I hear of a project in my own constituency or in the Toronto region which is criticized in the press, in letters written to the editor or in letters which I receive, I investigate each case individually; and I have yet to find one which was not serving a very worth while purpose, not to perfection but doing a useful job.
I agree with the hon. member for Wellington in two respects. As the father of four sons, I believe counselling is of primary importance and I like the priority he places on it. I agree, too, on the importance of trying to determine the direction in which the whole of our society is moving. As to our ability to project future trends, there are areas in certain disciplines in which we can forecast when shortages will arise. But there are many other areas where projections made today would not be valid in ten years. The velocity of change has been so great that we can well remember when society seemed to turn itself around every 20 years, then every ten years and, later, every five years. Now the rate of change is so fast that I suggest it does so in even less time.

June 19, 1972

Governments alone do not change faster than they did: good governments even more so. I suggest that future shock is current shock, and I do not mean that in the hydro electric sense of the word. It is constantly with us. This change is what disturbs us, and it is reflected in the mail we receive from our constituents, especially from the older people. Those who are most capable of dealing with change are, in my opinion, the younger people whom we are dealing with now.
I agree we have a great responsibility to project to the greatest extent possible, to listen to Toffler and what he says in "Future Shock," to try not to be 100 per cent right. It is better to make mistakes through bad planning than to fail to plan at all. It is better to make mistakes in an effort to progress than to settle for the status quo.
It seems to have been forgotten, Mr. Speaker, that youth is part of the total economy and that many things have been done to stimulate the economy. Our economic growth has been quite admirable, our exports have reached record levels. After a temporary decline last month, business is again picking up, strengthening our dollar to almost embarrassing levels but showing confidence in the Canadian economy. More jobs have been created than at any other time in our history, more than have been created by any other western nation-more, in fact, than almost all the European Common Market countries combined, with 12 to 16 times our population.
This does not excuse our high level of unemployment, of course, but there are stimulating programs being employed in this regard. For example, there is PAIT from the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce, and IRDIA for research and development. The Industrial Development Bank is answering a need-I think it could do even more if we extended its terms of reference-in extending half a billion dollars in loans to the private sector. Then there is the general adjustment assistance program, with $60 million at its disposal.
I would also call attention to the use of tax reductions. We must not forget that tax reductions, particularly as applied to the lower income groups, unemployment insurance and welfare payments are made to those in our society who need them the most. For these it is disposable income and it goes primarily in food, clothing and shelter. It finds its way directly into the economy and thereby helps stimulate the entire economic scene. In my opinion it is the greatest stimulant possible. It is not money just given out; it comes back almost at once. The velocity with which money expended in this way moves around is clearly of importance. More people get into the middle income or the upper income group, so we can really scream about our taxes with more legitimacy.
The recent budget, in serving to channel funds to the senior citizens and veterans, a move which everybody applauds, in turn provides a stimulus to our manufacturing sector of the economy. I have seen examples of this in my own constituency as well as across the country. It is amazing to realize what has been done. I recall that after provision for rapid depreciation of capital investment in 1952 we saw the greatest growth in our economy we had ever witnessed, though I am sure there were other factors at work just as there are other factors at work now.
Unemployment among Youth
Our concern today is about unemployment, particularly as it affects the youth of the country. Mr. Speaker, a few months ago I took a survey in my constituency. I would not pretend that it was in the form of a scientific study, and I did not publish the results for that reason. However, it did serve to give me a reading of the feelings of the people in my constituency with respect to unemployment and, more specifically, the nature of the unemployment affecting youth, particularly as I was receiving complaints from firms that they were unable to get people to fill the vacancies which existed.
The greatest response I received to my questionnaire was from youth up to about 24 years of age. They had left school and had never held a job or had held a job for only a short time. I think it is tragic, but we must accept it as something which happens in our society. I do not think we should wring our hands unduly, because this group is the most flexible in our society. However, I agree it is a problem we must deal with.
The next largest group from whom I received a response was that comprising married women. The tragic group which the member from Davenport (Mr. Caccia) mentioned earlier today consisted of men over the age of 45. I think these men deserve a great deal of consideration because they were caught up, perhaps, by the Peter principle as the post-war boom occurred. They may have got into jobs over their heads, and when cutbacks came they were the first victims. Maybe this should have happened; perhaps they were capable at a certain level but found employment which took them beyond that point. There is nothing to be ashamed of there. There are many of us here who must admit that. But the fact is that these people will have a very difficult time ever getting back into the labour force. I would like to see priority attention given to this group. However, that is not the purpose of the debate today.
Incidentally, Mr. Speaker, I believe it was the member for Wellington who mentioned the Manpower offices. According to the results of the survey I have referred to, I do not believe there was a single complaint registered among the many hundreds of responses I received with regard to Manpower offices and the attention applicants received in them. It is interesting to note that 15 per cent of those who replied to the survey had jobs to offer which they could not fill. Somehow we are not meshing. This is part of the approach taken by the hon. member for Wellington.
I am glad this subject has been raised, even though I do not accept the premise of the motion. I think that suddenly people have begun to listen to what is said on this side of the House; perhaps not only what is being said in the House but also outside. They took it as an excuse for high unemployment. We recognize that, and no one can be happy or satisfied about it until it is overcome. But we have to recognize that with this great change in society we are taking new approaches through programs such as Opportunities for Youth and LIP.
However, we are in the post-industrial society, a technological age, an age in which we are producing more with fewer people, and our economy must be adjusted to face

June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth that fact. When I talk of unemployment caused by this period of change, I am not talking about hard-core unemployment or saying all unemployment is caused by this change. Leisure time will be expanding as we move into the four-day week. But leisure time does not necessarily mean wasted time.
As pointed out this afternoon, people are entering the educational system today and emerging with training for jobs that do not exist any more. So there has to be retraining, and it might happen that people might have to be retrained several times in the course of their lives. Hence our educational approach might have to be shifted on to a more general basis.
With regard to early retirement, the age of 65 is now perfectly acceptable as the age of retirement. We must look at the structure of our society and not categorize something as employment or as unemployment. There is nothing disgraceful about being unemployed, about doing something that is not necessarily in the productive process; but I would challenge youth to get into the productive process.
When I speak to students at schools and universities, or young people in my constituency or elsewhere, I often ask how many of them are going into business and management-at this stage of the discussion we are usually talking about foreign ownership-and at most two or three hands will go up. Then you point out that someone has to operate this particular segment of society; if someone in our country does not do so, someone from another country will. This is why we have to look at youth training and motivation. It is a two-way street.
I suggest that if our youth do not move into the productive and economic processes of this country, these processes will be managed by somebody else unless we are satisfied simply to live in our commune. Again, when I talk to students and we are discussing all this doom and gloom about foreign ownership, if it is a university group I usually ask them how many of them have cars and 50 or 60 per cent of the hands go up. Then I ask them how many have cars built under the automotive trade agreement. They look a little perplexed at that question. Then I ask how many of them are driving Datsuns, Toyotas, Volk-swagens, Fiats or Morris Minors, and probably 99 per cent of the car owners put up their hands. They buy those cars because they are cheaper. I tell them that that is the price we would have to pay for economic nationalism.
We all remember the baby boom just after the war which started a great run on cribs, diapers and things like that. Then we needed nursery schools, day-care centres, elementary schools, high schools. Now this baby boom has found its way into the labour market. I do not know why this projection was not made sooner, but it was not. Let us just project the picture a little further, to the end of the century which is only 28 years away, or perhaps as far as 35 years from today. At that time these youngsters will be our senior citizens. If we do not have a society that is structured to look after our senior citizens, we will be having a baby boom of old age pensioners. At the moment I do not think the Canada Pension Plan is properly funded. We must invest the funds properly to compensate for inflationary factors that may come into play at that time.
There are a lot of challenges facing our youth today, and youth are responding to them in a way that I think is most encouraging. We are challenging them in a way they can understand, in a way that is relevant. This is the job that we as parliamentarians must do. Even with all their imperfections, I believe all parties agree that these are good programs. But they must be explained carefully. I know it is difficult not to try to take a political advantage in an election year by pooh-poohing programs such as these or underlining their defects. But we have a special responsibility to make sure that these programs are understood and appreciated for what they are.
They are the forerunners of what might in the future be make-work programs. I know we all have the idea that such programs consist of someone digging a ditch and then filling it in again. But let us have programs of a stand-by nature that we can keep on the shelf, as it were, until they are needed and which can be developed with the co-operation of all over the years. Then in a period of unemployment the programs can be put to good use and enable our people to play a useful part in society.


Mr. Marshall:: Mr. Speaker, in order not to break the thread of my remarks this afternoon, may I call it six o'clock?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Boulanger):: Does the House agree to call it six o'clock?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Boulanger):: It being six o'clock, I do now leave the chair.
At six o'clock the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege at the first possible opportunity, which is according to our rules. This afternoon the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Sharp) advised me and the House that Greenpeace III was not a Canadian ship. I have since been advised that it is indeed, by the appropriate laws and conventions governing such things, a craft of Canadian registry, a Canadian ship. I am further advised that for a worrisome length of time there has been no communication from Greenpeace III and disturbing rumours of her apprehension by vessels of the French navy.
I therefore urge the government to move with utmost dispatch to concern itself about the safety and well-being of Canadian citizens aboard this ship in grave danger, and

June 19, 1972

I urge that the House by unanimous consent allow an opportunity for a representative on the government side to set the record straight since this matter concerns Canadian citizens in a dangerous area abroad.


Mr. Paproski:: They just don't care over there.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Laniel):: Order, please. The hon. member has raised a question of privilege before the House. I must refer him to Standing Order 17 which provides that whenever an hon. member has a question of privilege not related to the debate taking place, he should provide notice of one hour to the Chair before raising the question. Because the hon. member did not follow up his question of privilege with a motion, I think I should call upon the hon. member for Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe (Mr. Marshall).



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Jack Marshall: Mr. Speaker, when I called it six o'clock the hon. member for York North (Mr. Danson) was speaking about the Opportunities for Youth program. I fail to follow his line of reasoning or the reasoning of the government in dealing with an Opportunities for Youth program for Canadians. I am happy to be able to speak on the NDP motion put forward by the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom), who happens to have the honour of being the youngest member in the House. Certainly he is concerned about employment for youth.
Unemployment in Canada during the four years I have been here has, unfortunately, faced the most important component of our working society, that is, the young people. Figures released just last week show that almost half of Canada's unemployed in May were under the age of 25, even though this age group forms only one quarter of our total labour force. The Economic Council of Canada has estimated that only about one quarter of the total increase in the labour supply during the first half of the 1970s will come from the 14 to 24 age group. However, because unemployment rates are so high in this group, the growth in employment needed to reduce unemployment to a level consistent with an over-all national figure of 3.8 per cent of the labour force remains extremely high. In fact, the council estimates a need for 364,000 new jobs for youth the 1970-75 period if the goal of reducing unemployment is to be met.
The record of the government in coping with the challenge outlined by the Economic Council has been extremely poor. In the first two years of the 1970-75 period only 78,000 new jobs were created for Canada's young people. This is only one-fifth of the total requirement of
Unemployment among Youth
364.000	jobs forecast by the Economic Council. At this rate, barely half the jobs needed for Canada's young people will be created by the target date of 1975.
The Opportunities for Youth program and the Local Initiatives Program have been the government's main answer to youth unemployment. Both these programs fall incredibly short of filling the demand. For example, this past winter the Local Initiatives Program provided nonconstruction jobs to only 25,500 young people during the November to May period when unemployment for that group averaged 253,000.
One must also consider the fact that slightly more than
100.000	jobs will be provided by the federal government in the program for the summer of 1972. This can hardly be expected to meet the demand of 1.3 million students hitting the labour force this summer. To date, the government's initiatives in dealing with youth unemployment have fallen far short of meeting the need.
In my region, the Atlantic region, the need is certainly great. In May, 1972, 9.9 per cent of Canada's youth labour force were in the Atlantic region but over 12 per cent of the unemployed youth lived there. Last summer, the unemployment rate for students intending to return to school in the fall was 21.5 per cent, far above the national average of 17.9 per cent.
The problem of youth unemployment and the failure of the government to deal with this problem has resulted in a great deal of human tragedy. Across the country thousands of young people are being forced to apply for welfare when no other channels of support are open to them. Unfortunately, there is too much suspicion today that young applicants for welfare are scheming to gain an easy life at the expense of society and the taxpayer. Cries have been raised that welfare benefits should be withdrawn from most young people or that their requests should be severely scrutinized and assistance, if granted, kept to the bare minimum.
To get an objective, factual view of this problem and attitudes toward it, the Canadian Council on Social Development interviewed some 300 young applicants for welfare across the country. A major conclusion reached by the council was that the current high rate of unemployment was a significant cause for the rise in the number of young people applying for welfare. It is not a case, as many people think and as the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) has stated publicly, of youth actively choosing a new way of life that negates the work ethic and accepts, instead, the desirability of the full-time pursuit of leisure and non-material goals. There is a strong contrast between the reasoned and factual study by the Canadian Council on Social Development and the erratic, misinformed whinings of the Prime Minister. The council said:
A lot of young people cannot find employment; and many of them complain that they cannot find meaningful work. In a highly industrialized society, where relationships are becoming more and more depersonalized, young people are desperately trying to find someone who will care enough to try and understand the ordeal of looking for jobs that seem non-existent, of having to face the humiliating experience of asking for the means of subsistence, and, moreover, of struggling with the feeling of unworthiness that comes after repeated failure.

June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth
Compare with this compassionate appeal the arrogant approach of the Prime Minister who said in London last November:
Isn't it true that perhaps more and more people are turning away from the work ethic and they don't accept that meaningful employment is employment necessary to produce more material goods ... More and more of the young people are sort of saying, "Well, it's the quality of life more than the abundance of material goods". And some of them are unemployed, but their life is more meaningful being unemployed-that's their judgment-than somebody else who works a 40-hour week and produces something which in their judgment is of no use to society and perhaps may even be of negative use-
Not only is the Prime Minister lacking in compassion but he has used a non-existent youth anti-work ethic as an excuse for glossing over a major problem which he lacks the desire or ability to cope with. Youth is not content to live a passive life, nor to live on welfare, the council found, but instead are just as zealous in their job-seeking and just as intent on being self-sufficient as are older generations. Unlike the Prime Minister, who believes that unemployment among youth is meaningful, according to the just quoted excerpt from his speech in London, Ontario, the council found just the opposite. The report of the Canadian Council on Social Development states:
-the young social assistance applicants who were interviewed have by no means rejected the concept of work and its central importance to their development and self-fulfilment. Most of the young people interviewed bitterly resented being forced to apply for welfare ... The need for meaningful activity and the desire to be self-supporting are deeply ingrained in them.
The Prime Minister's opinion that youth have rejected the work ethic is not the only fallacy of his that is destroyed by the council's research project. The Prime Minister has frequently moaned about the apparent refusal of people, particularly young people, to move to new locations where jobs are supposedly available. Again, the evidence shows the Prime Minister is wrong. In Niagara Falls on April 2, 1971, the Prime Minister made a claim that he has repeated often before and since that date:
We would make sure that the unemployed in Canada is much lower if you were to allow us to send you, or your young children to work where there is work in Canada. And there is indeed a lot of work in Canada which is going without being filled. Several members of northern Ontario have told me ... any number of young people who want to go and find jobs up there in the mines, they can find them. So, there's unemployment in one area, perhaps because some of the young people don't want to leave their homes or their girlfriends, or I don't know why-
The Canadian Council on Social Development, like all other responsible analysts of the situation, rejects this charge against unemployed young people. It says:
Young (welfare) applicants seeking employment cannot be reproached for lack of mobility. Of those who had turned down a job only 8.7 per cent did so because it was in a place where they did not want to live. These individuals represent only 2 per cent of the total population of young (welfare) applicants.
The Prime Minister's slurs against Canada's youth are therefore shown by the council to be ill-founded. The cause of the problem, according to the council, is not that young people are inherently lazy or anti-establishment; instead, it states:
Collectively these young people are largely victims of circumstances over which they have virtually no control. Among these circumstances are rapid technological and social changes and the trade-off between full employment and inflation.

The figures on the number of unemployed young people victimized by federal economic policies and forced to apply for welfare are appalling. In my home province of Newfoundland the number of welfare cases in the 15 to 19 age group jumped from 626 to 1,425, and in the 20 to 24 age group the number increased from 1,044 to 1,311 during the period March, 1970, to March, 1971, even though the total number of short-term social assistance cases decreased by 6 per cent over this period. These young people do not opt for a welfare way of life; they are, quite literally, forced into it.
According to the report of the Canadian Council on Social Development there is evidence that some young people are prepared to go hungry before they apply for welfare. The values ingrained in them by their upbringing have made them consistently hostile to the idea of welfare, and they are difficult to shake off even when the young people are faced with hunger and deprivation.
Most of the young persons told the council's interviewers that they rejected welfare as a way of life; 97.3 per cent said welfare was only a temporary form of relief for them, and more than a third considered it "a big trap". But most had no other option. The majority came from homes with large families and below average incomes and were unable to return home. For most, a low level of education was also a major handicap. Canada's young people do not want to live on welfare. As stated in the Ottawa Journal of June 12, 1972:
This is a most depressing and worrying situation. Somehow our society in the private as well as government sectors must shape itself so that the young can go to work. If they do not it will mean far more than so many statistics about unemployed-it will mean the people who will compose the future of this nation are soured and frustrated, and their spirit no less than their citizenship will bear blighted fruit.
One of the things that really surprises me about this government, Mr. Speaker, is how they can destroy a good idea instead of capitalizing on it. I am referring to the Department of National Defence student summer programs. Last year the government conducted reserve force and cadet training with some innovations that were excellent. I refer mainly to that part of the program which afforded work at defence establishments for thousands of youths and which taught them leadership, citizenship, first aid, pollution prevention, and gave them other valuable experience which would stand them in good stead in their adult years besides providing them with a few hundred dollars to further their education.
The Department of National Defence went so far as to conduct a survey of students and parents and found that in 90 per cent of cases the results were tremendous and the programs were acceptable to both students and parents. One of the oldest fundamental lessons of military leaders is to reinforce success. I do not know how many times I have commended the government on this program and asked them to expand it, but all to no avail. This year, again, there are three levels of training for the army reserves. First and second year courses will follow the seven-week format of last year, and a new course will be offered to those who passed the second year training program last summer.
June 19, 1972

Civilian leadership and citizenship training will again be offered, as was stated in the department's news releases. This year, however, the emphasis will be on community assistance projects such as anti-litter and antipollution activities and applicants are to apply again to Manpower Centres. What happens in my province of Newfoundland which, as everyone knows, is one of the regions where unemployment is always the highest in the country? A quota of 50 has been allotted to the whole province of Newfoundland, in the city of St. John's where it is needed, when last year there was a quota of some 300 for the province.
This is a program designed to provide employment for students in the 17 and 18-year age group to work toward community assistance, to clear debris on beaches, to provide recreational facilities, to teach them first aid, safety and leadership. They earn about $500 for the summer, which enables the matriculating student to pay for his education at a higher grade or helps him pay for university education. So what did they do? They cut the Newfoundland quota by more than 50 per cent and they allocated it to one city.
The most surprising thing about this program, however, is the fact that it is limited to just over 2,000 youths across Canada. Again, who suffers? It is the student in the outlying, remote and isolated areas who also wants to further his education but who is discriminated against. For some reason or other we discriminate against people outside the larger cities and fail to realize that they are Canadians also.
The same situation has occurred with regard to the approving of Opportunities for Youth programs. The government failed to realize that we have a rural Canada whose citizens are Canadians also, and these Canadians want to take advantage of the quality of life and of the participation that this government talks about repeatedly. In my province the government has selected only one in ten projects without giving any consideration to the people who should have benefited. They are so concerned about moving 80 per cent of our Canadians to three or four urban centres that they have lost all consideration for the needs of the people. The rural youth of our country and their parents are asking Members of Parliament why their projects are being turned down continuously under the bogus proclamation of equality of all Canadians regardless of the part of the country from which they come. These words are meaningless, Mr. Speaker; they are empty and false.
One of the major policies of the Opportunities for Youth program is that priority will be given to post-secondary students who submit programs. I feel that this specification conflicts with the idea that regional disparity be given major consideration when assessing a project. Little allowance has been made for young people between the age of 14 and 24 who, because of social deprivation due to poverty, have had little opportunity to achieve postsecondary educational status let alone achieve a postsecondary education. Where poverty is intense, aspirations for further education are stifled by the primary need for food and shelter.
Unemployment among Youth


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Laniel):: Order, please. I regret to interrupt the hon. member, but the time allotted to him has expired.


Mr. Adrien Lambert (Bellechasse):: Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the hon. Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. Mackasey) who apparently wanted to speak but as he waves me on, I thank him. He is a real gentleman.
The motion of the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom) is very interesting. I congratulate him for giving the House the opportunity of studying once again this sad problem of unemployment, which is so distressing for young people who want to enter the labour market.
I would like to consider this problem very objectively because it is very serious. And I must say that every one of us is trying to help the government solve it so that society will fare better.
It is a fact that unemployment leads to misery. Statistics have shown us that where unemployment is high, problems are numerous, including poverty which often leads to disorder, one of the most difficult issues we have to face. Despite all the government's efforts and those of the private sector, the fact still remains that unemployment is stubborn and its seriousness is becoming very disturbing.
On top of unemployment among students who are looking for summer jobs, a great many young people regularly enter the labour market and wish to contribute and make others benefit from the results of their studies because, for the majority, they are educated unemployed. Yet, they were told that education was the solution of their problems.
I have here evidence submitted by someone highly qualified in that field, former university rector Davidson Dunton. He made a statement which should give food for thought, saying:
The 60's were the golden age of enthusiasm for universities. After the relative shrinkage in attendance during the previous decade, universities then went through a period of extremely rapid expansion, moreover with the blessing of governments which launched policies of general availability of education and of financial support for learned institutions. But a major change was to come about at the turn of the decade, with the appearance of the phenomenon called educated unemployed. It was realized that the university can no longer be considered as the most reliable passport to good jobs and a high standard of living.
That is a fact which we are now experiencing.
It is extremely deplorable to meet people-which happens very often-who have studied for years, who have obtained a degree, who have made efforts, who have been subsidized as students by society so that they could earn a living and be useful to the community, but who cannot find a job once they enter the work force because of an economic context that will necessarily have to be changed. All sorts of things have been proposed to help them and prepare them for a working life but nevertheless they remain unemployed. Some of them are disgusted as a result of this.
Very often representations are made to me by young workers who could get a job but lack an identification
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June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth
card and work permit. I will admit this is not a matter of federal responsibility, but the same people have nonetheless to come under both the federal and the provincial jurisdiction. They are asked to meet requirements beyond their power, in the sense that they must have been part of the labour market for a certain number of hours before they can apply for a permit to work in the building trade.
Nowadays, the construction field covers so much that it involves most of the sectors of Canada's economic activity. That is how these people have to travel from one office to another, they are told to report at such a place, at such a manpower centre, and after having been through all that, they return home flat broke, without a building trade permit or any identification card which would have been their only key to the labour market.
A few months ago, the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) declared during an interview, and I quote a newspaper article entitled "Apparently more jobs available than people to hold them".
If people are not found for all the jobs, he said, it is because they are not prepared to work for lower salaries or to move.
This is fact, he was telling the truth. Most people do not want to work for a salary lower than the benefits paid to those who do not work, people who are on welfare or who receive unemployment insurance benefits. It also happens that some workers do not want to move because they have no assurance that they will be able to establish themselves permanently and make a home. These are problems that all arise at the same time and which make life extremely difficult for them.
As a solution the Prime Minister suggested that it might be a good thing for the students to attend classes 12 months a year. But since education falls under provincial jurisdiction, he let the door open for the provinces to arrange the academic year in accordance with the present context.
Here is that part of his comments which I think is quite appropriate and I quote from a newspaper:
Were it not for the type of school year set-up that now prevails, a school year related to rural life where schools and universities are attended during the winter months and where summer work on the farm is provided to pay for winter expenses, and so forth, we would certainly not have this sudden thrust of young unemployed people seeking work in summer-time.
There was a time when farming was one's last chance. There was plenty of room there. Those who could do nothing good elsewhere, would be told: "Find a job on a farm".
However now, farming has become a noble profession, but it is not profitable enough to allow farmers to pay wages as high as those paid in other industries. The farmers have a real problem: how to secure the necessary manpower. Jobs are available, but farmers can't hire workers because of their inability to pay them fair wages or, at least, wages equivalent to those paid in industry.
Therefore, there are two problems in Quebec: The farmer is unable to hire the necessary manpower for his operations and the farm help refuses to work because wages are not high enough.

The other day I was flabbergasted when I heard the Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Manitoba say at the committee on agriculture that the same phenomenon existed in Manitoba. And I imagine the situation is the same all across Canada.
At present, large herds are being auctioned. In fact, agriculture is being destroyed throughout Canada because of the problem of manpower which prevents mature people from continuing to operate their farms.
Some attention will have to be paid to this problem to make agriculture more profitable and to enable farmers to pay higher wages in order to meet the labour market requirements.
Mr. Speaker, much could be said in this regard, but I must, of necessity, summarize my remarks to submit certain proposals to the attention of the government.
If students are to attend school for longer periods, they will have to be guaranteed a minimum income to face their main obligations; parents do not generally have the means to provide for their sustenance over a 12-month period because of the high cost of living.
I have here an article published in L'Action on May 29th, 1972 and whose author is not without distinction since he is Mr. Fernand Dumont who knows what he is talking about. I quote:
Pointing out that one fourth of all families with children of eighteen or under are poor, Mr. Dumont deplored the absence of a federal family policy and forecast difficult days ahead for the working force of tomorrow which will have to support a heavy load of dependents, children and aged people.
That amounts to what a Liberal member was saying this afternoon, namely that a middle-class man who is operating a business or an industry or who holds a rather lucrative job will necessarily and increasingly bear the costs of a disorganized community suffering from unemployment and where destitution will soon be rampant.
And Mr. Dumont added the following:
"I do not understand why more emphasis is not laid on the family aspect of the financial policy" stated the speaker who maintained that "lack of concern" of the state for the family is one of the main causes of poverty in Canada.
This is why I urge the government to have the family allowances bill passed as soon as possible so that needy families may enjoy increased benefits. This is a modern way of increasing family incomes without affecting either salaries or the income tax of the persons I referred to earlier.
I keep on quoting:
"Undeniably, starting with an awareness of poverty, we will have to undertake a thorough social reform", he added.
And this social reform, according to the sociologist, must be something more radical than the $100 minimum weekly salary requested for public servants by labour unions.
"We are not truly wealthy and our standard of living rests upon extremely precarious foundations" Mr. Dumont said, noting that among industrialized nations Canada has the highest rate of unemployment.
This afternoon, I heard a member say that the number of jobs in Canada had increased more proportionately to the population than in any other countries.
June 19, 1972

This is possible; I do not challenge this statement but I suggest that the number of jobs is not increasing fast enough to meet the demand of qualified persons that could work and participate in the economic development of our country and insure greater prosperity to all of us.
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, as I have said before and say again tonight, we should reconstruct our policy if possible and if it is the government's wish. We have put all our eggs in the same basket; as of 1960, we have witnessed a rush towards education which was supposed to solve all problems. We would say to the young: Get an education. Once you have your diploma you will be able to enter the labour market and earn a decent living.
At that time, we were able to use data from previous years to make such statements. I think these were made in good faith, but I deplore as I did at that time that provinces spent the most part of their budget on education and that they neglected to develop industry and the public sector so as to create jobs for young people who would complete their education. Unfortunately, they have been caused to miss the boat, because we neglected to act in that field.
One of the solutions that we would implement right away in order to allow young people to enter the work force as soon as possible would be to lower the age of eligibility to pension from 65 to 60. Of the numerous letters that I have been receiving about this subject, only one was written by a person who asked not to lower the age of eligibility to 60 because he wishes to continue working. He will always remain free to work until he is 72, if he wants to.
Saturday, I met a man of 74 in Saint-Michel-de-Belle-chasse in my constituency, who is a plasterer and will not "give up". He wants to do plastering. That is his business, but it does not prevent him from receiving an old age security pension. However, there are 60-year old people who cannot do that type of work, and who are in need.
My eminently practical suggestion should be accepted, and the act should be changed in order for people 60 years old and over to receive an old age security pension so that jobs may be freed and young people may have a chance to enter the labour market.
I feel this would be good policy, as young people are full of energy, and if they do not do good they will do bad. This is the way I was, and I do not think that today's youth is any different. Once you reach a certain age your experience of life makes you a little more settled. You can be idle without putting your time to bad use.
This is why I feel we should change the act as soon as possible.
Mr. Speaker, here is another means to solve this serious problem: to increase the budget for public works. Several projects could be carried out and used to advantage by the people. We have several at present under the Local Initiatives Program, a program which in most cases has been welcomed by the population, although it is only seasonal. We should try to make it more permanent, to the extent that it meets the needs of the people.


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


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Mr. Speaker, I apologize for not taking the opportunity of staying in the House all day and listening to the contributions made by various hon. members on the opposition motion proposed by the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom) which reads:
That this House regrets the failure of the government to produce a comprehensive and coherent program to deal with the growing unemployment among our young people and its disregard of youth's legitimate aspirations.
In introducing the subject I think the hon. member has given members from all parties an opportunity to express their opinions on what I believe to be one of the most serious problems of the day and certainly of the decade. In the four or five speeches that I have listened to, however, I have noted that not too much distinction has been made between university students, young people, young married people, between unemployment as a whole and unemployment as it relates to certain categories of the population, in this case young people.
Statistics bore me, as I am sure they bore most people, but there are a few that I should like to put on record in light of some of the statements that have been made. Before doing so, however, I would like to take the opportunity of enunciating my own philosophy as Minister of Manpower and Immigration.
In his opening remarks the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville quite properly and quite astutely anticipated what argument would be advanced because it is a logical argument, and that is, the peculiar, unique fact that in Canada at the present moment we are, and for a few more years we will be, experiencing the largest growing work force amongst young people in the world. This goes back to the years after the war when so many of our young people came back to set up family life. The fact remains that the growth in young people in the work force in Canada is greater than in any other industrialized society. This by itself is not a very good excuse. As a government, as a nation, we have a responsibility in light of this peculiarity, I might say, in the work force to try and meet the challenge.
In 1965, the House leader piloted through the House of Commons the Department of Manpower Act, which department I now have the privilege of administering. As far back as 1965 the department was fairly well oriented toward the work force as it was then composed. I do not think the characteristics and problems of the work force today are quite the same. This is reflected in my bringing forth Bill C-195 which is presently in committee and should be before the House any day for third reading.
Before we talk about manpower in the future, the potential of the department and where we should and might be going with a proper degree of co-operation, I want to point out that the growth in employment over the past ten years of those between the ages of 14 and 24, which is the group of youngsters we are talking about today, has been 57.8 per cent, compared to a rise of only 33.4 per cent in employment for all other ages. This is hardly a record of a government that has been callous, negligent or unaware
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June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth of the problems of the particular group of Canadians mentioned in the notice of motion, the young people of Canada. I repeat that over the past ten years we have increased the number of young employees by 57.8 per cent, compared to 33.4 per cent in the growth of employment in all other age groups.
When we get into the question of Manpower programs, in their scope they embrace the whole work force from age 14 on, in some cases past age 65. These Manpower programs have been quite properly tilted in favour of young people. Although the young people form 24 per cent of the labour force, under the occupational training program no less than 40 per cent of the courses are placed at the disposal of this 24 per cent of the labour force. This indicates, once again, that we are quite logically devoting a disproportionate number of courses under the Manpower occupational training program to the young people of Canada.
With regard to Canada Manpower mobility programs, the young man who introduced the motion claimed that we have not done anything at all about youngsters with legitimate aspirations, or have not in any way taken into consideration their particular problem. We find that the young workers under age 24 have taken advantage of this mobility program, and that 35 per cent of all Canadians relocated through the mobility program in 1970-71 were youngsters under age 25, again well above the 24 per cent of the work force which they represent. I could give a lot of statistics. Each and every case indicates that a disproportionate amount of money, number of places and emphasis has been placed on the youngsters coming into the work force for the first time.
Opportunities for Youth is not the type of program that I consider to be particularly geared to alleviate unemployment. I think its main purpose is to provide a quality of life and some diversion for our youngsters in high school and university. It provides them with an opportunity to travel, to see this country, even to virtually loaf, if one wants to use that expression, and at the same time contribute usefully to society. It has been a very imaginative program but its main thrust is not solely to create jobs. The winter employment program introduced by my predecessor early last winter was definitely instituted for the specific role of alleviating unemployment. It was highly successful and provided 100,000 to 150,000 jobs and training opportunities. This is a considerable number of jobs and placements.
In addition to the Local Initiatives Program and the programs inspired by the municipalities with their funds, we embarked for the first time on an experiment called on-the-job training-at least for the first time in this country. We allocated $30 million to this program and quite rapidly raised that amount to $50 million. Of those who participated in the program known as on-the-job training, 64 per cent were youngsters under the age of 25. What is even more surprising is that of the $180 million which went to the Local Initiatives Program, or LIP as it is commonly called in this place, 40 per cent went to participants under the age of 25.
If hon. members have the chance tomorrow to review Hansard and these statistics they will see that practically every project or program that the government has devised

in recent years to offset unemployment, as well as the permanent programs which flow under the Department of Manpower, have all been geared to take into consideration the special characteristics of Canada's work force, namely, the heavy participation in that work force by youngsters under the age of 25. We are very heavily committed to the future along these lines. For the most part, Manpower programs are devised in conjunction with the provinces. We have certain commitments to carry them on from year to year, after consultation with the provinces, according to formulas that are built into the act. So it is safe and logical to say that over the next few years, as the economy improves the emphasis in my department will continue to be directed to the young people of this country.
Reference has been made several times today to the study which was carried out in 1969 to discuss the aspirations of young people. This report, which was entitled, I believe, "It's Your Turn" was submitted in 1971. It was based on extensive interviews with youth across this country, ascertaining their demands and desires and taking account of their suggestions. It is now receiving detailed study in order that our future programs may be based on the desires and suggestions of this important segment of Canadian society.
In Ontario, as other speakers have already mentioned, a similar task force has been carrying out a study on employment opportunities for welfare recipients. We in the federal Department of Manpower were pleased to assist in the preparation of this report by supplying at least two of our senior officials as well as by preparing statistical and other information. This report deals extensively with young people and their problems.
I might mention the work of our special Canada Manpower centres set up to assist students seeking employment. Hon. members might be interested to hear that last summer these special centres were instrumental in finding work for 89 per cent of those who registered for employment. Every fall we survey students to inquire about their summer employment experience, their earnings and their degree of satisfaction with what they had done. Last fall, for example, we learned from students that 80 per cent were satisfied with their summer employment and that 70 per cent felt the work was valuable in relation to their future studies and aspirations. I believe a report based on this survey is now available.
Although our activities among young people have been heavily oriented toward students, they are not limited to students. The department is engaged in a number of pilot projects related to the special problems encountered by young people seeking satisfying employment opportunities, and each year hundreds of thousands of young people come into contact with the counsellors in our Manpower centres across the country. Last year, for example, our counsellors interviewed some 300,000 young people and discussed with them matters of common concern.
I believe I have quoted enough statistics to rebut the insinuations of the sponsor of this motion and to refute the suggestion that we have been callous, that we have disregarded the problems of the young people. However,
June 19, 1972

it is wrong to think the government is complacent or that the problem will disappear along with growing employment. I feel very strongly that we are living in an age in which the young people of Canada rank among the finest ever produced in this nation.
I have said on many occasions publicly that I sense this to be a time at which, in essence, civilization, if one may use that expression, pauses to take stock, almost as though we had reached another plateau and begun, from that plateau, to question values which had hitherto been accepted uncritically. The young people of this generation are very wonderful people. They have made the politicians of our generation, not only in Canada but in the United States and other countries, pause to take stock, to consider where they are going, what their philosophy should be. Most of the young people I know, in Montreal at least-and I spend a lot of time with them-are looking for jobs. They want jobs, but they need an education as well. In addition to finding employment, they are interested in the quality of their lives. They are questioning the continued existence of slums. They are wondering why there should be so much unemployment when there are so many things to be done to improve the quality of life. They are wondering why in a day of advanced technology we should tolerate poverty and pollution.
It is my belief that the present generation, having posed these questions, will not tolerate a generation of politicians in the future who fail to provide the solutions to those problems. It is because we find before us a myriad of opportunities for improvement in this country and in the world that I am not one of those who endorse the concept of obliging people to retire prematurely in order to give a chance to the young. If we marshall our forces properly and know where we are going as a nation, we can do a great deal to improve quality of life while at the same time reducing unemployment. There is a lot of work to do.
One of the greatest successes of the Local Initiatives Program this winter, regardless of whether projects were initiated in big cities or in small hamlets, has been the willingness of so many young people to accept jobs at moderate rates of income because they felt they were achieving both their goals-first, a quantum of purchasing power as a result of their work and, second, the making of a contribution to the quality of life by the very nature of the project upon which they are engaged. This is to the everlasting credit of these young people and of people in general.
Some of the studies to which reference has been made this afternoon disclose that more than 52 per cent of the people who worked on local initiative programs this winter previously had been in receipt of unemployment insurance or welfare assistance. In other words, despite what reactionaries say-there are still a few of them around-these people could very well have remained on unemployment insurance or on welfare without going beyond the norms of social behaviour. Instead, they felt morally bound to go off the welfare rolls or the unemployment insurance rolls and become involved in projects of the type which they feel are of help to the community.
In conclusion, I shall again mention Bill C-195 which will be before the House very soon and which has
Unemployment among Youth
received unanimous support in the committee. In addition to this support we have received the benefit of ideas from the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate (Mr. Lundrigan) and spokesmen for other parties as to where the department should be directing its efforts over the next five years. Bill C-195 will remove the three-year rule for the first time since the department became engaged in occupational training. When it is passed we shall be able to provide financial assistance to youngsters who have been in the work force for only one year.
This is in line with one of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women; the change will benefit young ladies entering the work force or, perhaps, widows who need retraining to help them adapt to the requirements of modern-day living. The other main feature of the bill will be to provide on-the-job training for the first time as a permanent feature rather than as an ad hoc program attached to the winter employment plan with the consent of the provinces, as was the case last winter.
Generally, on-the-job training has been a huge success. It has provided jobs, for the most part for young people who are coming into the work force for the first time. The criteria are very stringent, demanding that these people at least be paid the minimum wage and other fringe benefits such as unemployment insurance. It was readily and happily endorsed by industry. The fact that we spent $50 million in a short period of time indicates the ready acceptance of on-the-job training.
I believe that the thrust of Manpower in future will be toward this type of vocational, on-the-job training rather than the traditional type of training in the classroom which the Department of Manpower has been doing very effectively for the last five, six or seven years. I see Manpower in the future adopting the strategy of taking young people at the age of 16, 17 or 18 of perhaps subnormal, or abnormally low levels of education and over a three, four or five-year period giving them an accelerated high school course, a year or two of vocational training and perhaps another year of on-the-job training, hopefully as part of an industrial strategy. Then when we turn out these well rounded young people all across Canada, jobs will be available for them. At the same time, the program will maintain a degree of flexibility so that in its last year or so we may be able to redirect or reorient their final year of training so that jobs are readily available to them and they are readily available to fill the jobs.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I see that two hon. members wish to ask questions of the minister. I should indicate at this point that there have been discussions directly between a number of hon. members in an attempt to apportion the time remaining between now and ten o'clock, namely, 45 minutes. There are three members who wish to take part in the debate, the hon. member for Peterborough (Mr. Faulkner), the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Carter) and the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Rowland). If all hon. members agree, perhaps 15 minutes might be allocated to each of these three members before we call it ten o'clock. If that is done I think it

June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth might be difficult to take time for questions, but that is up to hon. members.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Doug Rowland (Selkirk):: Mr. Speaker, may I remind you of the motion now before the House which reads as follows:
That this House regrets the failure of the government to produce a comprehensive and coherent program to deal with the growing unemployment among our young people and its disregard of youth's legitimate aspirations.
It is with the latter part of the motion that I want to deal in my remarks. My colleagues from Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom), Brant (Mr. Blackburn) and Assiniboia (Mr. Knight) devoted considerable time to documenting the disastrous level of unemployment which affects the young people of this country, the lack of opportunities that such a level of unemployment represents, as well as the degrading effect that continued lack of employment opportunities has upon a young person just entering the job market in a work-oriented society.
To be without work in a society that tends to judge a person on the basis of his or her income, to be forced to seek social assistance in a society which tends to believe that it is lack of application-laziness, if you will-rather than lack of opportunity which makes people accept welfare, to be short of cash in a society which tends to equate worth and material possessions, to be unsuccessful in finding employment in a society which still believes in the great myth of Horatio Alger, in a society which tends to forget that circumstances, as well as ability and application, affect the degree of success that a person may achieve, is truly soul destroying.
Many people, I have no doubt, on reading this motion would be totally puzzled by it. Is there not an Opportunities for Youth program which singles out for special attention young people who have already had opportunities for secondary and post-secondary education? Are there not programs to permit groups of young people to visit different parts of the country? Is not the government even offering assistance to kids who are spending their summers hitch-hiking throughout the country rather than seeking gainful employment?
What more do today's youth want? They have been given everything they wanted since the day they were born. They have never wanted for anything. They have never experienced a war or a depression. More government catering to their whims can lead only to more of them becoming bums, living on welfare and taking advantage of the efforts of the already overtaxed working population.
It is almost impossible to avoid having considerable sympathy for these kinds of arguments, especially when they are presented, as they most frequently are, by people who have worked hard all their lives at jobs which may not have held a great deal of intrinsic interest for them in order that they could provide for their families and contribute to the well-being of the nation, as they believed and as they continue to believe is their duty. To them, the young people who are so obvious on our highways in the summer, who are so free in their criticisms of our society, are saying that the people who have taken pride in hard

work are patsies to be exploited, and government programs to assist young people simply confirm such impressions.
Just what is happening, Mr. Speaker? Is the able-bodied young man or woman who is living on welfare payments doing so simply because he or she is lazy, or self-indulgent, or both? Are such young people living on welfare because jobs are simply not available, or is it that the jobs which are available are not to their taste? And do people have the right to refuse work because they do not find it personally appealing, when their refusal means that other people must support them? Or are such young people cynically exploiting their society and justifying that exploitation on the basis that society is hypocritical in the extreme; that while it pretends to honour effort and application, it simply honours wealth, however obtained; that there is no reason to give way to such hypocrisy and that to exploit a society based on exploitation is no sin?
I do not pretend to know the answers to those questions. Like most human phenomena, I do not suppose that it has any single explanation. But I do know, Mr. Speaker, that if there is no change made in the employment pattern that is available to our young people, if as a result increasing numbers take the course of exploiting the welfare system, and if government programs to assist youth continue to be presented in a manner guaranteed to make the public think of them as special grants to a special group rather than as part of an over-all scheme for social development, then very shortly, probably within the next two or three years, this country will be faced with a confrontation, certainly angry, possibly violent, between the working people who carry the tax burden in this country and those young people who, for whatever reason, will refuse to assist or have been denied the opportunity of assisting in bearing the cost of running this country.
We are in the midst of a social revolution of the magnitude of the Renaissance or the Reformation. The major difference between our social revolution and the other two which have now passed into history is the time span in which our revolution has taken place. The Renaissance and the Reformation took place over centuries. Our social revolution is being compressed into decades. Old value systems are being destroyed and rejected with such rapidity that new value systems which might have the potential for providing society with some stability have not yet had time to become fully articulated and understood, and thus remain incapable of acting as replacements.
Values shift so rapidly that I would venture to guess that the gap between the way a person of my generation thinks and the way a person of my grandfather's generation would have thought is a great deal narrower than the gap between what a person of 40 years of age thinks and a person of 18 years of age thinks. Indeed, it may be narrower than the gap between what a person of 25 years of age thinks and a person of 18 years thinks.
Probably just because the majority of young people have never known want, to which I referred earlier, and probably just because the majority of young people have had made available to them opportunities which would have been beyond the wildest dreams of their parents,
June 19, 1972

young people are challenging the values of the society which provided them with these benefits. I am not suggesting they are unjust or ungrateful, rather, I submit that is an entirely logical result. Because these young people are secure and have not known want, they are sufficiently without fear to be able to devote their energy to a critique of society's values, and when they find them wanting, to undertake many forms of rebellion against these values. They are free, as no previous generation has been, to say they just do not want to work, or the work must be worth while both in terms of its contribution to society and in terms of its contribution to the development of their potential as individuals before they will accept it.
What many of the young people are really engaged in is a redefinition of what constitutes a worth-while lifestyle and what constitutes a worth-while contribution to society; in fact, it is a redefinition of the meaning of work itself. It is becoming increasingly clear that to growing numbers of young people work is not to be the principal and dominant factor in their lives, as it is with most of the working population today. Increasingly, work is seen as providing them not with their principal role but with an avenue to a better life and the wherewithal to exploit what has heretofore been called leisure time.
Perhaps I could give an example of the sort of thing which indicates to me that this is the kind of thinking among the young people of this country. May I suggest to hon. members that they look at the decrease in the rate of anticipated enrolment in universities as compared to the completely unexpected rise in enrolment in junior colleges. This suggests that the young people are not going to be deliberately seeking to entrench themselves in occupations which must dominate, by definition, their entire lives but, rather, they are trying to seek meaningful employment which will give them enough free time to engage in other occupations and avenues of interest.
Growing numbers of young people tend to define quality of life not in economic terms or in terms of numbers of material possessions, as we have been accustomed to do, but rather in terms of humanity, in the liberation of the human spirit and in man's relation with nature. Quality of life thus becomes a sort of social ecology. Therefore, among many young people there is concern for our environment and that is why in any environmental group by far the majority will be persons under 30.
A lot of what I have just said may appear to be lacking in substance, vague, woolly and avoiding reality. Each of these charges might have some validity. But I submit that the very nature of the phenomena with which we are dealing, a social revolution, a destruction of old ways and thinking and a replacement of them by new ways, a change in society's system of values, simply does not permit one to speak with any great precision. As an aside, I might suggest that it is this very fact which helps to account for what is often perceived to be an exasperating inarticulateness on the part of young people attempting to explain their thinking, because for the most part the young are in the forefront of the social revolution we are experiencing.
What is becoming increasingly apparent to me is that the changes taking place in our value system, especially the abandonment of the protestant work ethic, will find
Unemployment among Youth
their first concrete manifestations in changed attitudes toward employment and corresponding changes in our institutions of commerce, industry and government. There will be increasing pressure for shorter working days, combined with a shorter work week. Both have already been achieved by limited numbers of workers, especially in the craft unions. Experiments are being carried on in a number of industries, a good example of which is currently under way in the Imperial Oil refinery in my constituency where shift workers in the processing unit are working 12-hour shifts three or four days a week instead of an eight-hour shift five days a week, so as to give them larger blocks of time to devote to their families, hobbies and avocations as opposed to their work. It appears they are successful at the moment.
Such demands are being made and such experiments are being conducted not because people want to get away with doing less, but because they want to live more. A life arranged around the demands of the factory is no longer, if it ever was, considered to be very attractive. Public policy can either encourage or discourage this trend, or it can remain indifferent to it. I think it is this government's attitude to ignore the trend if, indeed, it is aware such a trend exists. My feeling is that the trend should be actively encouraged.
I would remind hon. members that federally and provincially there are laws on the statute books governing hours of work, conditions of employment and vacations. They are there because legislators eventually, after much effort was expended by trade unions and other organizations to convince them of the fact, became persuaded that such laws were necessary to the health of the working population. Surely it is as much our concern to ensure that the working population has the time available to it to live a meaningful life as it is our concern to legislate for the health of that same working population.
I see a need for revision of legislation governing hours of work and I suggest that the government, if it were doing its job, would be actively concerning itself with such considerations at this moment. In any event, it will soon be forced to do so because the young people now entering the labour force in such great numbers will demand that it do so, and that demand will be strong enough to necessite a response.
I see as a second major trend in new employment patterns arising out of the changing value system, increasing demands on the part of the organized labour force for participation by the worker in the making of decisions, long thought to be the prerogative of management, about such things as the introduction of new technology, about production, about the allocation of capital, about the nature and price of products and about the distribution of profits.
Once again there are immense implications for public policy involved, and once again the government should be actively preparing itself to meet these demands as they arise, as they surely will, if social and economic chaos is to be avoided. The degree of education, both formal and informal, which our young people have simply will not permit industry and commerce to continue to operate, if I can exaggerate slightly, on the basis of the master and slaves principle. The labour force will not permit that, and

June 19, 1972
Unemployment among Youth
the government should realize the fact. The government should be preparing itself to act because these demands will become clear and will have to have a response.
A third major trend I see developing in response to changing attitudes toward work are demands for altering the organization of our places of work so that they suit, not the demands of machines which they contain but, rather, the needs of the men who are operating those machines.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Boulanger):: Order, please. I understand that by a special arrangement I am to call hon. members to order after 15 minutes. I regret to inform the hon. member that his time has expired.


Mr. James Hugh Faulkner (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State):: Mr. Speaker, I suppose if this debate so far has served any useful purpose at all it has served at least the purpose of exploding the myth, I hope once and for all, that the Opportunities for Youth program is this government's total response to youth unemployment. Not even the hon. member who moved the motion subscribed to that notion, a notion that is as silly as it is false but one often perpetrated in other parts of the country as a means of criticizing the government.
The brunt of our argument today was handled by the Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. Mackasey); the motion deals with youth unemployment and that is precisely as it should be. The Opportunities for Youth program is not central to this debate at all, but is only one part of the student summer employment program. To the extent it has been brought into the debate it should perhaps be referred to briefly. The government has met a relatively small section of student summer employment through Opportunities for Youth. It has never been presented to this House or the public as more than that; it is simply part of the student summer employment program.
I congratulate the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Rowland), who made a very thoughtful speech about the malaise among non-youth or non-students and the degree of attention which students are receiving from this government. He raises, I think quite rightly, the sort of uneasiness and frustration which exists in these people's minds. He uses terms like "special grants to special groups." Frankly, I do not know how any government can possibly avoid at least giving the impression that special grants and special groups exist so long as our educational system is so structured that on May 3 in respect of universities, and on June 30 in respect of high schools, a whole lot of our youth are out looking for jobs.
How can we avoid dealing with special groups with special grants when our educational system is so structured? The government would not be very responsible- and I am sure the member who introduced the motion would not subscribe to the idea-if it did not provide special grants to special groups, if it ignored the students and let the Manpower offices deal with both the army of students as well as those who represent the heads of families. It would be an abdication of responsibility to do this. No government can fail to recognize that so long as our educational system thrusts these students out of

school all at the same time, it would be an abdication of its responsibility not to try to meet their legitimate needs for summer employment.
Another myth was not very effectively destroyed today. It was, in fact, further perpetuated by the hon. member who moved the motion and who said that jobs had gone, not to students who needed them but to students who did not need them. I strongly suggest to the hon. member that he get out and meet some of the students who have been working on Opportunities for Youth projects. He will find, after talking to them, that they do need the summer employment, that they are not all sons of wealthy parents and that they do have financial obligations. I say, with deference, that his statement this afternoon was made out of ignorance.
In point of fact, we have made a greater effort this summer than we did last summer to get to the disadvantaged families and to the rural areas. I think it will be demonstrated that the Opportunities for Youth program this summer will be much more successful than in the past-although it has been successful in the past-in getting to the sort of students who are financing themselves through university and whose families in many cases do not have the necessary resources to support them.
I think it is a disservice to suggest, as the hon. member did this afternoon and as his party has in the past, that somehow this is a middle-class operation pampering the children of the wealthy, and so on-implying that it is a waste of money. The facts do not bear this out. Even a cursory visit to any of these projects would establish that this is not a charge which could be made with any credibility against the Opportunities for Youth program.
The Opportunities for Youth program is simply a summer employment program. It is not the total answer. I suggest, however, that the summer student employment program demonstrated a considerable degree of courage and leadership on the part of the federal government. Although the federal government gave the leadership, this program elicited the support of not only the provincial government but of most municipalities and the private sector. I think it is fair to give the government credit for having led the way and for having launched such a program so that this particular problem of student summer employment could be met.
I find the position of the opposition to be somewhat contradictory. On the one hand they condemn or criticize the program, yet pretty well uniformly say that what they really want, despite their criticism, is more of the same. I might go back to the position formerly adopted by the spokesman on these matters of the Progressive Conservative party, the official opposition, the hon. member for Egmont (Mr. MacDonald), who issued a statement following the announcement of this year's summer employment program contratulating the Secretary of State (Mr. Pelletier) on the early announcement of summer programming for young Canadians and pointing out specifically:
-the many criticisms and suggestions offered by various concerned groups as well as the opposition have obviously been heard and incorporated by the minister in OFY 72; this type of approach cannot but be in the interest of young Canadians everywhere.
That is a very encouraging statement. I do not know why they criticized the program in the beginning. It may
June 19, 1972

not have had very much political impact. The leader of the New Democratic Party (Mr. Lewis) said in a statement made on January 11, 1972:
Opportunities for Youth is a worthwhile approach and I cannot think of a single good reason why it should be limited to students-


Douglas Charles Rowland: That is the problem.


James Hugh Faulkner: The hon. member says that that is the problem. It is a little difficult to detect, from the range of criticism I have listened to in committee from various spokesmen of that party, that their hearts are really in the statement that it is a good program and should be available to everyone. However, I will take them at their word that they think it is a great program which should be made available to everyone.


Douglas Charles Rowland: An "E" for effort.


James Hugh Faulkner: I want to deal briefly with Opportunities for Youth as a program-because, as I said, it had been brought into the debate-some of the thinking behind it and, more particularly, some of the criticism as well as some of the doubts expressed by members of this House about the young people.
It was in the first instance an attempt to get away from simply make-work projects which could be made available in the public service. I think both the government and the young people were agreed that make-work projects were not particularly useful to either of them.
The government has shown wisdom in getting away from the more conventional, more comfortable and more easily administered summer-type program. We went into something far more experimental and innovative. It was simply a response by the government to the claims young people were making across this country that there were things to be done in communities which private enterprise could not do, or was not doing, that municipalities could not afford to do or were not doing, and which voluntary agencies did not have the funds to do.
The young people suggested that if these projects could be undertaken, not only would they provide meaningful work for students but they would benefit the community in which the projects took place. That was the principle behind the Opportunities for Youth program. It is open to certain criticism because not everyone agrees what constitutes useful projects in any given community. No one is more aware of that than I am, because I have had wide-ranging discussions on the philosophical meaning of usefulness with members of all political parties. I realize that between some members and myself there is a rather large gap in our understanding of what that term means.
The point is, however, that despite that apparent risk and despite the differences of opinion which are bound to arise, the government conceded as an act of faith and as a commitment to the young people that their contention was correct and that given the resources they needed to carry out these projects, the community would benefit, they would benefit generally and they would contribute to the growth and development of the country. That is what Opportunities for Youth fundamentally is all about. It is certainly a student summer employment program, but it is not simply a make-work program.
Unemployment among Youth
It is a program designed to provide resources to young people to carry out the sort of things they believe are important within their community. It is very easy to knock it, to enter into a discussion about the Opportunities for Youth program in general on the basis of one particular failure. But that type of argument is counterproductive because it tends to ignore the tremendous number of very good projects that are going on across this country.
Let me turn to another charge often made, the charge of alienation which is often incorporated in this type of debate. It is a glib and easy charge to make. The whole matter of alienation has never been more seriously challenged than it has been by two government programs, Opportunities for Youth and the Local Initiatives Program. If there are two government programs which we have introduced that have been understood, supported and welcomed by young people across this country, it is these two.
I suggest that the charge against this government that somehow we are contributing to the alienation of our young people is a phony charge that cannot be supported. If anything, this government has done much more than any other government in the western world to recognize the priorities that exist in the minds of young people. The concerns they have about their country are different, not simply because they are young but because their whole upbringing has been different, a point which has been made by the hon. member for Selkirk.
The government has recognized this fact and it has therefore provided resources for young people, to prevent not only the alienation which would naturally occur if we did nothing but to allow for the participation of young people in the growth and development of their community and their country. The charge that alienation is rampant among the young people of this country cannot be supported and substantiated by the facts.
I say, further, that this government has gone beyond simply meeting this particular problem through the two programs. Speaking about the priorities that have clearly come through these government programs, I could cite what has been done on the pollution front, the leadership exercised by this country in Stockholm which has struck a responsive chord in the minds of thousands of young Canadians because it is a priority they share with this government.
I suggest that the whole business of redefining the concept of jobs-a matter which the hon. member for Selkirk raised-is implicit in the OFY program and LIP, and something which the Minister of Manpower and Immigration has recognized on several occasions. It is easy to make these charges but I suggest that the record of this government, not only in these two particular programs but in others, demonstrates that the government has provided an opportunity which has been provided by no other government in this country, and no other government that I can think of outside this country, to involve young people in a participatory role within society, not as young people and as a select group, not as pampered children of the wealthy but on the only rational basis, as
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Unemployment among Youth
Canadians contributing to the development of this country.


Walter C. Carter: Mr. Speaker, my remarks tonight will be brief. Hon. members on this side of the House who spoke in the debate earlier placed on record the sorry story of the number of unemployed youths in this country. Having just listened to the hon. member for Peterborough (Mr. Faulkner), I can well imagine how encouraged the vast majority of the unemployed in Canada, indeed the 48.7 per cent of our people who are under 25 years of age, must be and will be tomorrow morning on reading the hon. member's statements.
I can sympathize with the hon. member in his efforts to defend the Opportunities for Youth program. I am sure that we all realize that in some areas the program has had some effect. But for the vast majority of our unemployed young people the program is nothing more than a farce and is of very little consequence to the large number of our youth who this summer are facing the prospect of unemployment.
The position taken by our party has been outlined to the House by my colleague, the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate (Mr. Lundrigan). He has outlined the Stanfield program which we intend to put into effect when we form the next government. We feel that this program will attack the major social ills in this country, particularly with respect to our young people who are unemployed.
I want to impress on the House how crucial this problem is in a province like Newfoundland. Newfoundland, being thinly populated and underdeveloped, is still struggling to find its way economically into the Canadian mainstream. Our young people in Newfoundland are even more frustrated than young Canadians on the mainland because the frustrations faced by young people in the province of Ontario, for example, are even greater in a province like Newfoundland because of its geographic position and the other major problems affecting industry in our province.
It is much more difficult for young Newfoundlanders to go to another part of Canada to look for work. It is not simply a matter of getting out on the Trans-Canada Highway and thumbing your way, because you cannot thumb your way across the 100 miles of water which separate our province from the mainland of Canada. In a province like Newfoundland there are no major industrial giants such as General Motors, Ford, Stelco, Inco or federal government departments such as we have in Ottawa which can absorb a large number of young people for summer work.
Like other hon. members, I am sure, my office files are bulging with letters from young people, letters that come in almost daily from young people seeking assistance in obtaining jobs for the summer. Only this morning one young man from my constituency was in my office looking for a job because he, like many others, will have to work for a year to get enough money to continue his courses at university.
In Newfoundland we have just had graduation day at our very Fisheries College. Hundreds of young men are now ready to introduce new skills and efficiency into our primary industry the fishery. There are thousands of 
young men who want to join their fathers in their fishing boats, but many of our finest fishermen are not able to ply their trade because of the many obstacles placed in their way by the federal government, a federal government which allows foreigners to come to our fishing banks and take all the fish. This government stubbornly refuses to make assistance available to the fisheries under DREE.
The problem of unemployed youth is closely tied to the over-all problem of unemployment. I am sure the same is the case in other provisions, but it is even more so in ours because in Newfoundland we cannot afford to lose our young people. We cannot afford to have university students such as those at Memorial University, with a rapidly increasing enrolment soon to approach 10,000 students who are trained to use their skills, forced to leave the province to find employment. We cannot afford to have our Fisheries College graduate skilled craftsmen, only to see them leave Newfoundland to seek employment on the Canadian mainland.
We Newfoundlanders have just selected a new businesslike government committed to giving the fishing industry a new lease on life. It has also established definite priorities for development. What we need now is an understanding and sympathetic government in Ottawa to work with our provincial government to help us achieve these aims.
More than half of the work force in Newfoundland falls into the category of youth under 25 years of age. They must not be allowed to fall victims of the welfare trap. They must not be made the pawns of a cynical, arrogant federal government which has deliberately created unemployment.
A solution for young Newfoundlanders and for young Canadians in general is an over-all policy developed by governments which will set out the long-term utilization of the skills of the young. Our educational system must be geared to turn out trained young men and women whose skills will be needed. Perhaps we should de-emphasize the attaining of a university degree, especially if the degree is only going to add to the longest list of unemployment university graduates in Canada's history. Our universities and trade schools should be better geared to the manpower market. This trend is already apparent in the United States where university enrolments are down and more and more young people are turning to trades colleges.
There are also some short-term solutions. I endorse the proposal put forth by the Canadian Council on Social Development last week, namely, the establishment of a network of youth manpower centres, setting up a youth employment directorate, improving liaison between manpower centres and welfare agencies, making special travel and settlement allowances to young people and improving manpower training by such steps as removing the 52-week limitation on upgrading courses. These, of course, are just suggestions for improving the facilities available to the young people to assist them in finding jobs. I think it is apparent that the real solution rests with a return to proper fiscal and economic policies by the federal government. When private industry is encouraged to expand and develop, the major problems of unemployment will be substantially reduced.
June 19, 1972

However, Sir, for many years we will still be facing the annual problem of high unemployment among youth, especially during the summer months. Canada's young people are clinging desperately to the hope that the federal government will end its ad hoc efforts to find them jobs-too many of them are not meaningful-and will develop a long-term strategy which will allow them to lend their considerable skills to the development of a thriving and better nation.
It is obvious that the programs introduced by the government have not had the desired affect, especially with respect to our young people. As I said at the outset, there are many hundreds of young people in my riding, indeed in my province and all across Canada, who are facing a very serious problem. Many of them depend upon summer employment in order to continue their education. But too many of them will be faced with the stark reality that the government is unable to provide them with jobs and thereby the opportunity to earn a few dollars during the summer so they may return to university.
In my riding and province the situation is even more critical in that we do not have the industrial giants from whom we can get summer employment for our youth. Many of our young people have been encouraged to go to the trade schools, the fisheries college, and to Memorial University to get an education, only to find later that they are unable to get jobs in their own province. If they hope to get a few months' work during the summer, they must travel to other parts of Canada, thereby denying Newfoundland the benefits of the education they have received. It is a very sad story.
The program which the hon. member for Peterborough (Mr. Faulkner) tried to defend is responsible for employing less than one-tenth of the young people in our country. In my riding large groups of young people were encouraged to apply for assistance through the Opportunities for Youth program only to be refused without an explanation. Some of their proposed projects were extremely worth while, good for the students who applied and also good for the communities in which they live. In all too many cases the programs that were approved were slipshod and badly thought out. They were approved at the expense of other programs that could have had a worth-while effect on the province and local communities.
It is quite obvious, Mr. Speaker, that something has to be done. I think that the program to which the hon. member referred a moment ago was conceived in haste and obviously will not have the desired effect for the young people concerned. I think the program was well summed up by a young man who was a project officer for OFY, when he said that Opportunities for Youth is a human lottery and the most politically partisan job program under federal sponsorship.

The Acting Speaking (Mr. Boulanger): Order. It being ten o'clock, it is my duty to inform the House that pursuant to Standing Order 58(11) the proceedings on the motion have expired.
Proceedings on Adjournment Motion


[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 40 deemed to have been moved.
Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, my question tonight relates to the need for consideration to be given to an increase in the basic rate of the war disability pension and also to an increase in the basic rate of the war veterans allowance. I must say at the outset that in recent weeks we have been getting the right answers to our questions concerning this matter. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. Francis) may therefore wonder why I raise the question again if I admit that we have been getting proper answers.
The fact is that even though we have been given assurances, we have to be on guard to make sure that those assurances are not lost in the scramble to get the present session recessed. And I am also going to be bold enough tonight to make a suggestion of the kind that might not receive the applause of every member of the House if this were two o'clock in the afternoon and all the members were here. But at this time of night, when only the hard workers are still present, I am sure my suggestion will be approved unanimously.
Just to recite briefly what has happened, and without covering all the questions and answers, I would point out that on Friday, March 17, 1972, as reported at page 916 of Hansard, I asked the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. Laing) if consideration was being given to increasing the basic rate of the war disability pension. The minister's answer was an unequivocal yes. I then asked if consideration was being given to increasing the basic rate of war veterans allowance. The minister made an answer which was a little unequivocal but I dare to believe that he meant yes.
On Friday, May 12 of this year, as recorded at page 2233 of Hansard, when the minister was speaking to the bill to attach an escalator clause to pensions and allowances that come under the responsibility of the Department of Veterans Affairs he said very clearly, and we appreciated it, that the escalator clause being put on the basic rate of the war disability pension did not mean that the question of the basic rate had been dealt with; indeed, he gave the firm commitment that it would be dealt with at a later time.
Later in the session the hon. member for Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe (Mr. Marshall) and the hon. member for Norfolk-Haldimand (Mr. Knowles)-a Tory with a good name-started asking questions and eventually got from the Minister of Veterans Affairs the assurance that it would meet with his approval if this matter were referred to the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs. I followed through by asking the chairman of that commit-
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June 19, 1972
Proceedings on Adjournment Motion tee if he would do what he could to get the necessary reference so that the committee could study the matter and he, too, said yes.
So, Mr. Speaker, we have had the right answers all down the line; the only trouble is that time is going by. There is now talk of trying to recess this session on June 30 to an unknown date, with some uncertainty as to whether we will come back on that date, and this raises the question of whether we should not do our best to get action on this matter soon.
A letter has just come to all of us from Mr. J. C. Lundberg, chairman of the National Council of Veterans Associations in Canada, enclosing a copy of the submission of that association to the minister on the basic rate of the disability pension. The letter expressed the hope that this matter might be referred to the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs for immediate consideration, and it also expressed the hope that this would result in a recommendation being made to the House of Commons during the present session.
If there is a recess on June 30 I know that it is going to be difficult to get this matter dealt with by then, but an attempt could and ought to be made. The suggestion that I make tonight, Mr. Speaker, is that if necessary serious consideration be given to holding meetings of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs during the recess. I am not suggesting that those meetings have to be held in the heat of summer or at some awkward time, but I think the members of that committee would be willing to meet at an appropriate time to deal with this matter so that a recommendation could be made while this session is still in existence and, hopefully, while this Parliament is still alive. I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs agrees that it would be most unfortunate if the good will that has been built up and the expertise that the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs has attained were lost and we had to start all over again.
In this spirit of amity that exists between us, I hope the parliamentary secretary will make it clear tonight that the assurances of the minister are being kept alive and that something will be done on this as soon as possible, and that if there is no way to get a study of this matter by the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs before June 30, arrangements will be made for that committee to meet during the recess. Surely we can do no less.


Mr. Lloyd Francis (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Veterans Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the minister appreciates the very complimentary remarks which the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) made about him. I know that all members of the House share the general views that he expressed in regard to the legislation recently put before this place and now being considered concerning improvements in veterans pensions. As the hon. member pointed out, the statement of the minister was abundantly clear. The escalation of pensions did not deal with the problem of the basic rate of pension. The minister indicated that the government was reviewing this matter.
At the present time, Mr. Speaker, the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs has before it a reference by this

House concerning prisoners of war, and it has had testimony presented to it by associations representing former prisoners of war. Until the committee has discharged the terms of the present reference I do not believe it is the intention of the government to place before it any other reference.
However, the minister has indicated his basic sympathy with the objectives expressed by the hon. member. He has indicated that he has an open mind concerning reference of the basic rate of pension. At this stage I think that is all I can say on the matter. I do know that the government is considering it.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS-DENMARK-DENIAL THAT DANISH FISHING CAUSE OF DEPLETION OF ATLANTIC SALMON STOCKS-GOVERNMENT POSITION
Heath Nelson Macquarrie: Mr. Speaker, on May 4 I asked the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Sharp) if he shared the view of the Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Davis) regarding that gentleman's suggested boycott of Danish goods. The minister replied that his colleague had been expressing a personal view. Although subsequent events and further failures of Canadian diplomacy in fisheries matters may have obscured this episode, it still merits attention.
Apart from the serious issue of the depredation upon our fisheries, there are two interesting aspects: one concerns the fundamental principle of cabinet solidarity and the other is the question of the separation of the public and private personality of ministers of the Crown. On May 2 the Minister of Fisheries was widely quoted as suggesting that a boycott on Danish goods by Canadian consumers was probably a good idea. He said:
Such action could be very effective.
Interestingly enough, the minister noted that there could be no official boycott of Danish goods because such action would be in violation of GATT. He went on to recommend that the people of Canada should do what the government would not do. However, the brave boycott of May 3 became something less than a major theme as days went by. It became a personal opinion.
Many years ago the premier of Ontario, Sir James Whitney, said that any public man who has no public view on public issues is a public fool. Being less abrasive than Sir James, I would avoid such polemics, but after a good many years in the study and practice of politics I am puzzled when a public official, as a minister surely is, speaks of a public matter and still remains a private person.
A minister has, of course, a private life and a private capacity. He does not speak ex cathedra at the breakfast table or at private gatherings. However, it is a bit subtle to suggest that some press conference dicta are private utterances and others public proclamations. One is inclined to believe that the minister's call for a boycott did not win the endorsation of his colleagues and his chieftain, the Prime Minister. Indeed, who knows, he may have felt the condemnation of someone from on high. If that is the case, if he was overruled as his colleague, the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Munro), was some
June 19, 1972

months ago, why not say so? It is disquieting to have the device of private opinion used in such cases.
It is likely that the minister would prefer a stronger stand than that taken by the government as a whole. Truly, in our dealings with Denmark we have been mealy-mouthed and passive. Not only in reference to Denmark but to many other countries trespassing on our rights, the same pusilanimous attitude is being revealed. The fishing industry in our country is in grave danger; our fishermen face grave hazards. As my colleague for South Shore (Mr. Crouse) put it some weeks ago, Canadian fishermen are the sacrificial lambs in governmental negotiations. He and my colleagues from Newfoundland and the maritime provinces have pressed vigorously for a more alert, aggressive and articulate attitude on the part of Canada on behalf of its long suffering fishermen.
Polite notes have not been productive. Perhaps the time has come for some straightforward action and assertion of our rights. It is passing strange that we are unable or unwilling to slow the verve and stamina of such countries as Iceland and Peru. Surely we can produce something more than failed and frustrated efforts at international gatherings, and publicly-proclaimed private boycotts which are phased out as mere personal opinions.


Mr. Paul St. Pierre (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie) is in full flight tonight with phrases such as "mealymouthed" and "passive". I cannot agree with him that that has been the government's record. We are all aware that the recent meeting of the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries in Washington did not accept the Canadian view that there must be an immediate ban on high seas fishing for Atlantic salmon. The strenuous efforts we have made over the past months and years to achieve this goal will therefore continue.
The hon. member for Hillsborough inquired in recent weeks whether the views of the Canadian government had been presented to the government of Denmark. I can repeat the assurance which the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Sharp) gave him, that we have repeatedly urged the Danish government to co-operate with us. Over the past year the government of Denmark has been made fully aware of our position on this urgent matter, not only through bilateral contacts such as the visit of the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Davis) to Copenhagen, but through scientific meetings at which the matter has been fully discussed.
Canadian scientists attending these sessions have taken the opportunity to present as forcefully as possible to the scientific experts of other ICNAF countries, including Denmark, our information on the decline of Atlantic salmon stocks. Indeed, the recent ICNAF meeting, while it did not accept our call for an immediate ban on high seas fishing, did accept that Canadian rivers especially those flowing into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, contribute substantially to the Greenland salmon fishery and that losses suffered by that fishery may be greatest for rivers flowing into the Gulf. It was also recognized that data for the
Proceedings on Adjournment Motion
Miramichi River shows a steady decline in the stock of large salmon in this river.
In addition to the scientific information which Canada has presented in recent months, the government of Denmark has also been informed of the drastic action taken by the Canadian government in closing commercial salmon operations on the east coast, as well as about the motion on Atlantic salmon adopted by this House on April 25. In light of these actions the Danes were urged to re-examine their position prior to the May ICNAF meeting.
The suggestion of a consumer boycott of Danish products has been dealt with previously in this House. As the Prime Minister pointed out on May 10, such a boycott is not the position of the Canadian government.


Douglas Charles Rowland: Mr. Speaker, Hansard reports that on June 16 I asked the following question of the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Benson):
During the course of the hearings of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence with respect to the defence white paper, it was suggested to the committee that the fourth training squadron based at Esquimalt might not be operational this summer because of the difficulties of finding the four to eight necessary engine room personnel. Since the squadron is capable of training some 500 reservists from all parts of the country during the summer, can the minister assure the House that it will be operational this summer?
The minister's reply was as follows:
I will have to check on its current status and report back to the House.
That answer annoyed me, Mr. Speaker, because we only have about 40 vessels in commission in the fleet and the fourth training squadron represents about one-tenth of the total number of commissioned vessels. I should have thought that in that kind of situation-a fleet of that small size-the minister might have been expected to be aware of what was happening to an entire squadron of ships, especially when one considers that what this squadron does affects directly or indirectly the capabilities of some 2,800 naval reservists in this country.
Beyond that, in the long run it affects the capability of the fleet to respond to a challenge, because the fleet relies upon the reserves to supplement its numbers in an emergency. Since the number of naval personnel now available for manning ships is so low, none of the ships at sea have a full-time war complement. I think it is extremely important to know what is happening to the fourth training squadron, and I should expect that with only two weeks remaining before the peak of the training season the minister might know whether it is to be operational.
I sincerely hope to get an answer this evening. That is the reason I posted the question for discussion. I think the inability of the training squadron, possibly, to go to sea because of difficulties in finding two engine-room personnel for each of four ships and, in addition, one administrative person for each ship-a total of 12 people-is indicative of what is happening to the armed forces as a whole under the direction of the government, and of the govern-

June 19, 1972
Proceedings on Adjournment Motion ment's total lack of appreciation of the needs of the military. The military in this country is currently suffering a desperate lack of resources.
In that kind of situation only a limited number of alternative actions are available to the government. It can ignore the situation, which is what it is doing. It can increase the resources available to the forces through removing the freeze on the budget with respect to armed forces expenditures. It can reduce the tasks assigned to the armed forces. It can undertake a combination of a reduction of tasks and an increase in the allocation of resources. Or it can look at a means of better applying resources now available to the military-for example, more effective use of reserve forces in this country.
I suggest that it is the latter alternative, though not exclusively, that the government should look at first, namely, the effective employment of the reserves. The new assignment of priorities and tasks that the government has given the armed forces in its defence white paper issued in 1970, which listed the defence of Canada and North America as of highest priority, coupled with the government's appreciation that there is a reduction of the possibility of an all-out nuclear war, thus reducing the necessity for a large number of highly trained forces in being, means that use of reserves for more tasks is not only possible in terms of the level of attainment necessary to complete the tasks, but is also desirable in terms of potential savings in the total allocation of moneys for defence, which savings could then be applied to the purchase of new equipment so desperately needed by at least two elements of the armed forces, the land element and the air element.
The government has yet to act on the basis of this kind of analysis. Reserve training, despite recent modifications, suffers desperately from lack of regular force support. When I talk of regular force support I mean regular force personnel who are allocated to reserve units for the purpose of training those units during the course of the winter months. These resources are not being made available to the reserves because the government has not yet seen fit to inform the military that its priorities have altered sufficiently to free men for training reserves.
The most astounding evidence I have yet encountered of government neglect of reserve forces is the possibility that the fourth training squadron might not be available to train reserves this summer. As I have indicated in the course of several questions over a period of two months, that squadron can provide training to 500 reserve force personnel in the form of ship navigation for young officers, seamanship, communications and other tasks allotted to enlisted men. All it takes to make the squadron operational is 12 personnel. I have served in one of the gate vessels, and this squadron is composed of four gate vessels. It takes no more than three regular force personnel to put one of these ships to sea with a reserve crew. In other words, it takes 12 men to make a squadron operational-and the government does not know whether it can find those 12 men. That astounds me.
This evening I am asking for the assurance that the fourth training squadron will be operational this summer. If the parliamentary secretary feels free to comment, I should also like the assurance that the government will give a great deal more attention to training our reserve forces in the future.


Paul St. Pierre: Mr. Speaker, the concern and interest of the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Rowland) in this matter of naval training is well appreciated. I think he will recall that at the time of the briefing of the committee on the summer training program it was indicated that it was becoming increasingly difficult to find the required number of diesel engineering staff with the required engineering certificate. However, this was an indication of the nature of the problems facing the maritime commander in meeting his respective roles; it was not intended, I am informed, to be interpreted as meaning that they could not be provided or that they would not be provided.
I have been advised that the fourth training squadron based at CFB Esquimalt will be operational this summer and that the required technical and specialist personnel will be available for this most important training program for the youth of this country.
Motion agreed to and the House adjourned at 10.23 p.m.

Tuesday. June 20. 1972