1973-10-18

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed, from Tuesday, July 24, consideration of Bill C-2, to amend the Criminal Code, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.
Mr. Allan Lawrence (Northumberland-Durham):: Mr. Speaker, this has been a long, drawn-out debate. The issues are well known to the House, to the media and across the country, and I am afraid that as far as members of this parliament are concerned convictions have hardened and people have already made up their minds.
The reason I am boring the House today with a short contribution to this debate is simply that I have not spoken on the matter yet in this chamber. Frankly, I feel somewhat uncomfortable for that reason since, as usual, my own views and experiences do not parallel those of anyone else in the House. I feel I have a duty to indicate those views and experiences in the course of this debate, especially so that my constituents may be able to judge them. As a matter of fact, I think we all have a duty and a responsibility as elected representatives to voice the opinions, desires and needs of our own constituents not only on this issue but on other issues that come before us. I ask you rhetorically, if I may, Mr. Speaker: Why are we all here if it is not to represent the views of our constituents? I ask a further question: Is there anybody here who believes he has been elected to come here because, in the opinion of his constituents, he knows better than they what is good for them?
I think there can be no doubt whatever respecting the feelings and opinions of by far the larger number of people in this country on the general issue of capital punishment. A great number of public opinion polls have been taken on the subject, some of them scientific, others unscientific. I have yet to see one of them which indicated there was a majority of opinion in favour of the abolition of capital punishment in this country. I have seen a great number of these polls and the number of citizens expressing a desire to retain capital punishment for the crime of wanton, premeditated murder ranges from a low of 60 per cent to a high of more than 90 per cent. I believe that especially on an emotional issue such as this the opinions, the sensibilities, the conscience of the average citizen are every bit as reliable as those of any member of parliament, and that we
in this House have a responsibility to conform to the clearly expressed wishes of those who elected us.
Because of the intervention of the recess may I take a moment to remind hon. members of what we are discussing. I point out to hon. members that prior to the Criminal Code 1967 Amendment Act a planned and deliberate capital murder in this country was punishable by death, but since 1967 the killing of police officers and prison authorities acting in the course of their duties have been the only murder offences punishable by death under the law. We have gone through the period of the so-called five-year moratorium.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I hesitate, of course, to interrupt the hon. member. I understand that his comments at this stage are of an introductory nature, but I am wondering whether we may all be labouring under a difficulty now in the sense that what is before the House at the present time is the amendment standing in the name of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert. I assumed when the hon. member took the floor that he wanted to address the House on that amendment rather than on his own amendment which is the next item of business. Perhaps I am mistaken and the hon. member is actually speaking on the hon. lady's amendment. If that is the case I apologize to the hon. member for having interrupted him.


Allan Frederick Lawrence: Mr. Speaker, I was acting on the assumption that debate on the amendment moved by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert had been completed and that the vote on it was being held over until tonight. Perhaps Your Honour would like to clear up a possible misunderstanding on my part.


Mr. Speaker:: I suspected that this was the misunderstanding and certainly it is not the hon. member's fault. We have had a long adjournment on this item of business. What was called for consideration at this time was the motion standing in the name of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert. When we adjourned that debate the hon. member for Brandon-Souris had the floor and was speaking to that particular motion. Since no member sought the floor except the hon. member for Northumberland-Durham he was recognized, obviously on the mistaken understanding that he would be addressing himself to the motion before the House.
I assume again that there are no further contributors to the debate on the motion before the House and I will therefore put the question on the understanding that the vote will be deferred until eleven o'clock tonight, along with the division on the motion standing in the name of the hon. member for Northumberland-Durham. The order of the House is clear that these votes will be taken at eleven o'clock this evening.
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Mr. Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: At 10.45.


Mr. Speaker:: The question is on the motion moved by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert. All those in favour will please say yea?


Some hon. Members:: Yea.


Mr. Speaker:: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some hon. Members:: Nay.


Mr. Speaker:: In my opinion the nays have it. I understand that according to the special order of the House the recorded division will be deferred until ten forty-five o'clock this evening.


Allan Frederick Lawrence: That Bill C-2, an act to amend the Criminal Code, be amended in clause 2 by deleting on page 1 the comma in line 15, by inserting an "(a)" immediately before the word "in" in line 16, by renumbering paragraphs (a) and (b) as (i) and (ii), and by adding immediately after line 5 on page 2, the following new paragraphs:
"(b) in respect of any person, where such person causes the death of a human being while committing or attempting to commit an offence under section 76.1 and
(c) in respect of any person, where such person causes the death of a human being and has been previously convicted of murder, whether or not such murder is punishable by death."


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Northumberland-Durham.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Allan Frederick Lawrence: What some people will do to get extra applause, Mr. Speaker! In any event, I was indicating that over the last five years the killing of police officers and prison authorities acting within the course of their duties have been the only murder offences punishable by death under our law. This, as I said, was the period of the so-called five-year moratorium. But under the bill we now have before us, the amendment we have just finished discussing as well as the amendment we are discussing now, the issue to be decided by us, all of us, is whether that moratorium should be continued, whether offences calling for capital punishment should be widened, or the further alternative of whether we go back to the pre-1967 state of our law.
Whether we go back to the pre-1967 state of the law or not, for me this debate and the time we have all devoted to it has had a real air of futility and frustration about it. I say that because, even though we know what the law is, since 1967 no police killers and no prison guard killers have been executed in this country despite the fact that in the four years from 1967 through to 1970 16 policemen in this country were murdered in the course of their duties. All of the killers, when convicted of capital murder, had their penalties commuted by the cabinet under the procedure known as the royal prerogative of mercy.
The royal prerogative of mercy is a further appeal that is built into our system under which, after all the trial and appeal procedures in the courts are completed, the cabinet discusses whether or not the penalty should be carried out. I feel that the royal prerogative is a protective, sensible

and needed provision in our legal system in case there is new evidence or other factors that indicate a miscarriage of judgment at the trial and/or the appeal processes of our court system, or some other honest doubt has been created about the guilt of the accused. But I say to you, Sir, that this procedure was never designed to subvert the law. It was never designed to subvert the opinion of parliament and the people. It was never designed to undermine the morale of our law enforcement agencies or the processes of our judicial system. Yet under successive governments, not just this one but successive governments, the law of this country has not been upheld; commutation of these death penalties has been automatic and has been expected.
I suspect that despite this debate today, what has gone on before and what will follow, and no matter what the decision of parliament is, no matter what people's opinions may be and no matter what the laws says, under this government we will continue to have the death penalty commuted. Therefore this debate is frustrating and futile because it will have no realistic effect whatsoever. Nevertheless, there is a bill before us. It was drafted by the government, approved by cabinet and is supported unanimously by the ministry. We are now debating it and will vote on it as if it could change the situation.
The purpose of the amendment we have just finished discussing, introduced by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin), calls for the institution of the death penalty where death results from capital murder committed during the course of a rape. If the hon. lady were in the House I would say to her that I certainly intend to support her amendment. My own amendment deals with two matters. It deals with a murder, a killing, a death as a direct result of an act of air piracy or, as we familiarly call it, hijacking. Second, it provides that the death penalty will be instituted where a second conviction for murder occurs. My intention obviously is to vote for my own amendment as it is to vote for the amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert.
I hope the hon. lady will not mind if I tell her that even if her amendment is carried and even if my own amendment is carried I intend to vote against third reading of the bill. My logic or the lack of it, as some may claim, is simply this. I do not believe that the bill before us is complete. Obviously, this is one of the reasons why I introduced an amendment. I believe we should go back to the pre-1967 law where for all cases of capital murder the death penalty is instituted. In the case of the amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert and my own amendment, if the bill is defeated on third reading, we go back to the pre-1967 law which includes the offences that are before us today and, of course, a great many other offences. It will not include air piracy or hijacking, of course, but I hope that is something the House can clear up in another manner after third reading. However, in respect of the rape provision and the double murder provision, obviously the pre-1967 law will include both of these offences and others.
May I now speak for a moment on the question of air piracy or hijacking. I wish to quote some statistics that have not been quoted in the House before because the matter was not before us. Hon. members may be surprised

to learn that the first recorded attempt, and a successful attempt at that, to hijack took place in 1933. According to the Lloyd's list, between 1933 and 1968 there were in all 100 international attempts to hijack aircraft in the world. All of those attempts were successful.
In 1967 the problem suddenly worsened. It accelerated drastically. All governments, airlines and airports began improving security. In 1969 there were 86 recorded attempts in the world in respect of the hijacking of planes of scheduled airlines. In 1970 there were 80 recorded attempts, 62 in 1971 and 60 in 1972. In actual fact, the number of recorded attempts to hijack in the world has declined very slowly, but I wish to point out to the House that as time went on hijackings became much more dangerous, violent and difficult.
Up to the middle of August there have been this year seven internationally recorded attempts to hijack. These statistics show that while the number of acts or attempts at air piracy is decreasing, the property damage, the number of aircraft destroyed and the number of persons killed or injured are increasing quite rapidly. In the period 1968-71, there were 12 passengers or crew members and 18 hijackers killed. An additional 71 people were injured. In 1972 alone there were 13 passengers or crew members and 22 hijackers killed. The number of fatalities in 1972 was more than the combined total of the previous four years. In 1972, 29 other people were injured as the result of hijacking attempts.
The figures for this year are incomplete and therefore I cannot give them. In May, 1973, a Russian Aeroflot TU-104 was hijacked over southern Siberia. The aircraft crashed, presumably killing all aboard, after a gunfight between the hijacker and an armed guard. The number of casualties has never been announced by the U.S.S.R.
The statistics and the trend of the figures are there. This is a serious problem. It is getting more serious. Strong, deterrent action is needed because with the trend toward larger aeroplanes and more air miles covered each year there is potential danger to a growing number of innocent people who use the airlines of this country and the world.
To date, Canada has been remarkably free from hijackings with only a few attempts, but the situation can change. Hijacking is an international offence or, if not, it should be, and we in this country are in danger of these matters flopping over or slopping over into our jurisdiction. If the House does decide that the death penalty is required, I think that strong deterrent action and statutory law are necessary.
May I now move on to the other thrust of my amendment, namely, that in the case of a second conviction for capital murder, the death penalty should apply. I think this is obvious and I do not intend to speak long on it. Certainly our penal and police records show that some in this country who have committed murder have done so more than once. Many have done it more than twice. For example, we all got rather excited just last May when there was an escape from the Laval Correctional Development Centre. One of the persons who escaped at that time and who had broken out twice from an institution was described by the minister at that time as the meanest and toughest type of inmate. That escapee was a confessed double murderer.
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Surely there can be no doubt about a repeater. If the death penalty is to remain for anyone surely there should be no doubt that on a second conviction the ultimate penalty should be applied. I say that because surely it is a wrong toward our fellow man and society in general to allow a dangerous undesirable criminal to remain in that society with the probability of causing further harm. This is the basis of my thinking in respect of the whole issue of capital punishment. When the Solicitor General, as he so often has in the House during this debate and in committee and through the media and elsewhere, asks how can we possibly help the victim by executing the offender, my answer to him is simply this: Mr. Solicitor General, you are on the wrong tack completely. When a man or woman has been killed no one can possibly help them. What we should be worried about is the protection in the future of other innocents.
Let me give you my own historical background, Mr. Speaker, in respect of this whole question, because at one time I was an abolitionist. I felt and still feel that hanging is a repugnant act. I still feel that the execution of my fellow man is a terrifying admission of our own failure. Nevertheless, at one time I had some responsibility for the safety and public security of our citizens. At that time I must admit to you, Sir, I went through a real evolution in my mental processes and attitude toward the whole question. I am now a retentionist in respect of capital punishment.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Allan Frederick Lawrence: May I take the time of the House merely to say to you, Sir, that the final element in my conversion took place in the spring of 1971 as a result of what we now call the Kingston riot and the subsequent trial of 13 inmates of Kingston, more familiarly known in the legal profession in this province as the infamous Kingston 13. Let me take you back to the evening of Friday, April 18, 1971, at Kingston penitentiary, Kingston, Ontario. At approximately 8.30 p.m. on that evening the ringleaders, a portion of the inmates of that institution, overpowered their guards and took over the institution. For three days within that federal institution there was utter chaos, utter confusion and absolute rampage. During the first two days savage beatings took place and indescribable acts of sadism and bestiality. Some of these matters have never been made public.
On the second night, Saturday night, the segregated prisoners from the first floor of the institution were taken from that floor into the middle of the dome of Kingston penitentiary. Kingston penitentiary, for the information of members, generally speaking is built in the form of a cross with a wing extending out on either side. In the centre of this cross is the area called the dome which extends from the first floor to the ceiling. You can look into the dome area down on to the floor below. The segregated prisoners, what the inmates call the finks, the diddlers and the stoolies, were gathered together by the ringleaders. They were taken to the main floor. The area is about 50 feet across. In the centre of that well is a circular radiator. Fourteen of the inmates were dragged to this radiator ostensibly to be used as a bargaining lever in respect of
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the whole riot. They were tied facing inward on steel chairs and then all of the chairs were chained together.
At this time the whole institution was controlled by and in the power of the ringleaders. All of the inmates of the institution were then called by the ringleaders to come out on to the balconies to watch the show that was about to take place. At about 2.00 a.m. on Sunday the show started. I do not intend to indicate to you, Sir, all of the details of what took place. I merely say that it started by the beating of these 14 men with steel locking bars taken from the doors which lock the cells in the penitentiary itself. As the turn of each of these 14 poor individuals came about the ringleaders would call out to the assembled crowd, "Do you like this guy?" Invariably, because of the nature of the offence for which that person was in custody, the answer was a resounding "no".
In almost every case as the ringleaders went about the first thing that happened was that the kneecaps of the individuals were smashed. That was just the beginning. Their noses were then smashed. Later indescribable acts took place with straight razors and instruments such as that. That went on for four hours. It was all over by five o'clock. Most of the 14 inmates were terribly lacerated and horribly mutilated. Some of them will never move again under their own power. It is a miracle that only two died, one almost immediately and the other several days later as a result of his injuries. These two people were Ensor and Robert. They had cranial injuries. Others were maimed. Thirteen inmates were charged, all of whom were between the age of 18 and 39.
In the ensuing investigations that took place at Kingston there were very great difficulties in identification. Some of the people who came forward to identify those who took part in these acts are still in security and solitary confinement today because the Solicitor General and his officials, quite rightly, cannot allow these people to intermix with the rest of the prison population for fear of what would happen to them. The difficulties of identification were immense. All prisoners were interrogated and all the prisoners who were charged, the Kingston 13, were people who were in Kingston as a result of rape charges, robbery with violence charges, gross indecency charges as well as other offences. One of the 13 had previously been convicted of manslaughter. Two of the 13 had previously been convicted of murder but had had their sentences commuted.
The purpose of bringing these matters forward is to indicate the mentality of a small portion, a very infinitesimal minority, of the people of this country. There are people whose mentality is such as I have just described. They are not safe, whether they are in prison or outside of prison. As a matter of fact, one of these people has since escaped from Mi'lhaven. I believe there are some members of the prison population of this country whom it is not possible to rehabilitate. They can be identified by medical tests and they are known to the counselling staff. They have been given every psychiatric and sociological test in our prisons, and our prison authorities know who these people are.

I spoke to one very well known member of the Ontario legal profession after a trial. My job was to supervise legal aid at the time to ensure that prisoners had access to it. I asked him what he thought about his client and he said: "Al, that man was pure brute". Another well known counsel came to me after the trial and indicated that his client was all animal. I simply say that when there is such a prisoner, the other prisoners and even the prison staff live in perpetual fear for their lives and safety. Some of these people are in solitary confinement. They are isolated from the rest of the prison population not for purposes of punishment or for the purpose of rehabilitation, not for revenge or retribution, but solely and simply for the purpose of protecting everyone else in the prison.
There are people in our prisons today, some of whom were involved in the Kingston riot, whose only seeming purpose in life is to kill others. One Kingston guard said to me that one of those individuals who was involved in the Kingston riot would obviously kill anyone who came within three feet of him. If anyone came within striking distance of him, that prisoner would strike. As long as there are such people alive today, whether they are in prison or outside of it, there is a real danger that other persons, in some cases innocent persons, will be in danger because of the mentality of that individual.
I say to you, Sir, forget the philosophical discussions in which we have all been engaged in the House on whether capital punishment is or is not a deterrent. Forget these claims about how hanging brutalizes our society. If you want, even forget the horrifying execution practices that still exist in this country. Forget some of the statistics that have been fed to us ad nauseam about the increase in violence and murder in this country. I ask you, Sir, and hon. members to think for just a moment of the future and of the innocent people who can still be killed, tragically maimed or injured by people who have a mentality such as I have described. There will be people who will be brutally killed in the future if people like this are left alive today. They constitute, obviously, an infinitesimal minority, but if we do not retain the death penalty for these people I think we will be abrogating our responsibility so far as the future is concerned.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Allan Frederick Lawrence: There are some people who choose to ignore the laws of society or fail to comprehend the standards of civilization. They simply cannot, will not or do not want to be rehabilitated. I say to you, Sir, that the only way to deal with the situation is for an assurance to be given to our citizens that the crime will not be repeated. In a small number of cases where the crime is murder there can be no such assurance so long as offenders with the mentality and attitude I have described are alive.
I say to the House that by abolishing the death penalty, by continuing the abuse of the commutation prerogative, we are condemning innocent children, innocent women and innocent men to future death at the hands of this small number of people. I urge support of the amendments before the House. If the bill passes, those amendments will make it a better bill. But I also urge hon. members to vote
October 18, 1973

against the bill on third reading so that the law will return to its pre-1967 state.


Mr. J. R. Ellis (Hastings):: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the amendments placed before us this morning I wish to go on record now as saying that unfortunately I will not be in the House this evening at 10.45 to vote. I have voted for the bill in the past, but there will be one less vote this evening. However, I am about to do something that six months ago I would not have thought possible. I intend to change my vote on third reading of Bill C-2. In so doing, I wish to point out with every ounce of energy I possess that I have not changed my principles. First, last and always, I deplore the taking of the life of a human being in any way, shape or form. I cannot, and will not, change this basic principle and cannot envisage any situation which would alter my determination. Coming to the decision to change my vote, however, has been a long and painful process, and I intend to delve into that process briefly to justify this action which is so unfamiliar to me.
When the bill was introduced I studied it very carefully, fully realizing all its shortcomings. I realized that similar legislation had been in effect for five years, that it had not been followed, to the everlasting discredit of the government composed in part of those opposite me-had it been followed, there would perhaps have been a real analysis of the worth of such legislation-that the bill continued discrimination between classes of people, giving protection to those who carry firearms and none to those who do not, that it did not provide the public with protection from disturbed persons with a tendency to kill, and that it did not protect the public from the abuses of the Parole Act or change it in any way. I was fully aware of all these things, and I know the feelings of my constituents. I too listened to the people in my riding and talked to them about this sort of thing.
With all this in mind, I still felt I had to support the bill at second reading for two main reasons, both of which support my initial, basic principle. I believed, first, that it was the best legislation we would get from this weak government. Second, it was my understanding that legislative safeguards would be introduced which would protect the public and put at ease the minds of ordinary men and women who read time after time of atrocities committed by parolees, of the hotel-like atmosphere of our penal institutions, of repeated leaves, and of the pampering of convicted persons, all without any visible improvement in the crime rate or the penal system. So I voted for the government bill. I did so, content that some of the men and women from both sides of the House whose opinions I respect most highly voted as I did. I did so asking for the understanding of my constituents, both those who supported as well as those who opposed my stand. I did so knowing how emotional the subject was and yet how basically unimportant the bill is at this time of frightening inflation and unemployment, at a time when amongst our native peoples more persons are in danger of death from starvation, under nourishment and neglect than from violence.
I did not speak on the subject prior to the second reading of the bill. I could have and perhaps have added a
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tiny bit to the debate. The nonsense with regard to a referendum could, I feel, be shot down easily. The weight of evidence, to a reasoning person, indicates that capital punishment is not a deterrent. I could have used the Bible as a reference manual, as both sides have done in their presentations. I could have but I did not because I felt that the time being taken could be put to a better purpose having regard to the vital necessity of discussion and legislation on economic matters. I do not intend to dwell on the amendments, although support of the motion of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) and the motion of the hon. member for Northumberland-Durham (Mr. Lawrence) would make as much sense to me as the two classes of people named in the bill as it now stands. I could, but for that reason I am not going to do so.
Given all the foregoing, Mr. Speaker, 1 am now prepared to change my vote, for three reasons. The prime reason, the overwhelming compulsion to go contrary to my initial instincts and vote against the bill, is that the fumbling and bumbling of the government have not only not produced any safeguards for the public but have allowed the continuation of practices which have produced the intolerable situations that are so evident today. We still find totally unrehabilitated criminals on the loose, either with the blessing of and at times financed by the government, or having escaped because of incredibly inept administration of our penal institutions.
There are still laws on the books that allow a man to kill two teenagers and get off with only a fine of $125, excused simply because he was intoxicated and driving a motor vehicle. If this man had soberly stopped his car and bludgeoned them to death his fate would have been far different. To me this does not seem to be any safeguard for the public. In short, instead of taking into consideration the obvious and frequently voiced requests of the majority of Canadians, the government has gone blindly and blithely on its way. It has not taken a single, serious, considered step toward penal reform that will either protect the public or, for that matter, benefit those within the institutions.
Second, in voting against this bill I am content in my own mind that I am not jeopardizing the life of anyone. Since the cabinet in defiance of its own legislation has not seen fit to carry out the death penalty, even when called for under the experimental act of the last five years, I see no imminent possibility of a reversal of its attitude. How much easier it would have been for those of us who favour abolition of the death penalty if the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and his cabinet had followed the act, because then we would have had something on which to base our decision instead of the farce we have had up to now.
Finally, and I dislike intensely using this argument, I feel that the bungling, inefficient handling of this legislation in every phase does not deserve support. That argument alone would not change my mind when the life of anyone, even of a convicted murderer, was at stake. But since, as I have said, I see no danger, it must be considered. 1 cannot believe that the minister was so naive as to allow the debate to go on as long as it did without giving any indication of his intention to alter the bill drastically in committee if there had not been some intention to deceive not only members of the House but the public at

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large. If the minister has no better appreciation of the problems of our penal system, of the mood of the country, or even of the rules of parliament than to make such a stupid, blundering attempt, his legislation does not deserve my support.
As I said at the beginning my principles have not changed. I still believe strongly in the futility of taking any life. In voting against the legislation I do so in the anticipation that, hopefully, with a good deal more com-monsense and perhaps with an entirely new minister we may have legislation presented that will clean up this sorry mess. Hopefully we will have legislation that will provide for the people of Canada the safeguards that they expect and deserve, that will provide for those within our institutions a rehabilitation process that must surely be less costly than our present methods of incarceration, that will provide for the humane segregation of incorrigibles in institutions, thus not allowing either escapes or riots such as we have experienced in the last few years.
My family, my friends and constituents are aware of the difficulty I have had in making this decision and, while they may have tried, my colleagues have in no way influenced my change of heart. I have made my decision freely and hopefully in expectation of a new approach to this very difficult problem.


Mr. Real Caouette (Temiscamingue):: Mr. Speaker, we are now considering the amendment of the hon. member for Northumberland-Durham (Mr. Lawrence) on capital punishment.
Before the adjournment I had the opportunity to state my views to the House. Since then, we have got acquainted with those entertained here and there in Canada. As the mover said a while ago: Canadians in general object to the abolition of capital punishment. There are some exceptions. We hear sometimes that we do not have the right to hang someone in revenge. I think that we must upheld the principle of-


Mr. Lambert (Edmonton West):: The abortionists have the right to do so.


David Réal Caouette: Pardon me?


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: The abortionists have the right to do so.


David Réal Caouette: The abortionists, as mentioned by the member for Edmonton West (Mr. Lambert), have the right to do so, but to punish a gangster or kill him if he has committed a murder, this is not allowed.
Mr. Speaker, I think that the principle is not based on revenge and I would be sorry if it were. It is not an emotional issue either but a matter of protecting the community. If, for example, an individual has a piece of land which is dangerous, he is compelled to set up a fence. For example, at my place in Hull I have a swimming pool. The law requires me to put a fence around my swimming pool so that young children for instance might not fall in it and drown. That is altogether normal and in order. And so capital punishment, in my view, is precisely a fence which sometimes keeps people from committing deeds that they would not commit if there were a barrier, a fence. In my
[Mr. Ellis.)
view, capital punishment is the barrier which invites a criminal to refrain from committing murder. It is especially in that spirit that we oppose the abolition of capital punishment. We claim that the amendments now before us are not serious enough to enable us to adequately protect society.
I have received in the mail two letters and one telegram in favour of the abolition of capital punishment. One telegram from Ottawa, for instance, was sent to me by a Mr. Rodrigue Tremblay who sends me his impressions.
Mr. Caouette in regard to your meeting in Ottawa since your last three days relative to the death penalty for prisoners accused of murder you are hereby advised that I myself and my community-

I do not know what community he wants to refer to.
[ English]
-shall fight against you because five years ago it was taken off for a good psychological purpose. I myself and other people of my community are telling you not to exercise your powers so much and keep on salesman for selling cars. Yours truly, Roderick Tremblay.

Mr. Speaker, if people in favour of capital punishment or its abolition all reason like that I think it is a rather faulty line of reasoning. On the other hand, the two other letters I have here express views against capital punishment on religious grounds: Thou shall not kill, etc. But when I consider the truly serious mail I receive from various points in Canada I see that some people are in favour of capital punishment. For example, I have here a letter from Miss Irene Bird of Regina. That person is all in favour of retaining capital punishment. Somebody sent me a newspaper clipping from the Quebec L'Action of July 24, 1973, where the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) is reported as saying in the House, on television and elsewhere, and I quote:
"How in God's name do we pretend to help the stricken family by killing another person".
That is a most nonsensical line of reasoning. We hear things like that but where is the seriousness in them?
The minister received a letter from a lawyer who is certainly as important as he is. Incidentally, I will tell the Solicitor General that there are Liberal members seated behind him or on his side who do not share his views at all. They found deplorable the approach he took with respect to capital punishment and the amendments before us.
I have here a letter from a rather influential lawyer in Montreal, Mr. K. H. Brown, Q.C. For the information of the Solicitor General, I will quote it. And that letter is dated September 25. So it is rather recent.

-I very much appreciated your thoughtful letter of July 26, 1973, answering mine of July 24 with which I had sent you a copy of my brief dated June 11, 1973 to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.
That brief was in fact a retitled version of a memorandum dated March 9, 1973, which I had sent to a number of members-
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I am not the only one who received this letter. Some Montreal members have also received a copy.

-from whom (notably Mr. Woolliams and Mr. Nielsen)-

-two Progressive Conservatives have also received it. [English]
I had received appreciative replies. More formal replies were received from several other Conservatives, and some Liberal members to whom I had sent copies of the memorandum because they had spoken in the House in favour of capital punishment.

As I said, this letter has not been written by a nobody, but by a lawyer, an experienced man from a very important law office which employs at least twenty lawyers, Lafleur et Brown, in Montreal. The Solicitor General is certainly not aware of that.

I now note that the matter is to receive top priority when parliament reconvenes on October 15 and, since you and those to whom I am sending copies of this letter are clearly interested in the matter to the point of taking positive action, I venture to suggest that, apart from the obvious course of persuading as many members as possible, regardless of party, to vote against the bill, these members (or some of them) might consider advancing the arguments which I am mentioning below, which I have not seen pressed very hard so far.
I realize that Madame Morin's two amendments are still under debate, and of course they are desirable as far as they go, but I still think that the bill itself should be relentlessly attacked, and defeated if possible.
[ Translation]
This is what we are going to help to do, that is defeat this bill.
[ English]
I would first refer to Mr. Allmand's constant theme, last expressed I think in the House of Commons on July 23, 1973 (see Hansard of that date, page 5902) as follows:
How in God's name do we help the victim or help the family by hanging the murderer? If any hon. member ... can show me we can help the victim or the family of the murdered person by hanging somebody, I would be happy and willing to change my position.
[ Translation]
I for one would feel uneasy to stay on such a position. [English]
It seems to me that the best attack here would be to challenge Mr. Allmand, directly, to produce one single instance of anybody ever having said that killing a live man could help a dead one or his family. If he cannot (and of course he cannot because obviously nobody ever said anything so silly), it might be suggested that he stop talking as though anyone had ever said such a thing, and trying to make a case for himself by demolishing a non-existent argument.

I repeat, these are empty arguments.

That line of attack would of course lead directly into the argument about deterrence, and the usual figures, criminologists' reports, etc., would no doubt be invoked by Mr. Allmand.
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At this juncture it might be helpful to draw an analogy based upon something which every member of parliament must have experienced in his own personal life. Often it is more useful to bring the matter "close to home" in this way than to debate on a higher but not necessarily more theoretical level.
It could first be pointed out that deterrence is obviously almost entirely a subjective area in which actual proof is next to impossible to obtain (though I did point to specific, proven cases in my brief) because people are simply not going to come forward and say "I was deterred from committing murder".
That much having been pointed out, it becomes evident that the figures, if they prove anything, can only prove that there does exist a hard core class of criminals who cannot be deterred by the death penalty or by anything else.
This is where the analogy might be brought in and I suggest that members be invited to cast their minds back to their school days, as I have done, and I think my experience was typical.
I was in a class of say 30 boys. Punishment for misconduct ranged from the strap as a maximum, down through detention after normal school hours for various periods, deprivation of certain privileges, etc.
Now in that class of 30 there always was a hard core of, say, two or three who were not deterred by the strap or anything else, but surely that would not have been a reason for eliminating it as an effective deterrent for the other 27 or 28 in the class, which it certainly was.
I think that the analogy is complete but in any case I submit it for whatever it may be worth.
As I said before, it is my hope that your evident interest, and that of the gentlemen to whom I am sending copies of this letter, in this matter may make it possible for you to think up some way of making a co-ordinated, organized attack on the bill by members, regardless of their party affiliations, who will have fortified themselves by searching out all possible sources of information and arguments beforehand. I am certain that a fully organized attack is of critical importance because there is certainly a powerful organization supporting the bill.
If my brief to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, or this letter, or any other material which I can furnish, will be of any help, please let me know. Copies of the brief are of course available from the secretary of committees of the House, and if you would like any further copies of this letter you can telephone me or my secretary "collect" and the copies will be forwarded at once.
Yours sincerely,
K. H. Brown, Q.C.
Copies of this letter were sent to the hon. member for Calgary North (Mr. Woolliams) and to the hon. member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen).
[ Translation]
Mr. Speaker, this letter comes from a Montreal legal firm. I have received, from Montreal also, a letter written by Mr. Bouthillier, which ends as follows:
I believe that it was necessary to give these arguments in order to shed more light on the study of the bill which will be brought before the House of Commons and which will probably have serious consequences for the welfare of the Canadian citizens.
It seems necessary to maintain capital punishment in order not to abolish the equal rights of all citizens to life and death, especially since the extenuating circumstances stipulated in the Criminal Code have already reduced to a minimum the number of executions.
I was saying, Mr. Speaker, that the law must be amended so as to eliminate risks and uncertainties. When there is any doubt as to the guilt of a murderer, he should be given the benefit of the doubt. However, if there is no question

October 18, 1973
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concerning his guilt, if the case is absolutely clear, accurate and f roven, then society should be protected against criminals.
In fact, certain countries, like England, who had abolished the death penalty a few years ago, are seriously considering re-establishing it. I have right here a newspaper article stating the position taken recently by the State of California. I quote:

California returns to capital punishment on a limited basis. [Translation]
Some countries will resort again to capital punishment. In Canada, it is right to say that "for the sake of humanitarianism", "for the sake of the individual" the one who killed, even if he were fully conscious of the seriousness of his act, he should not be sentenced to hang.
Mr. Speaker, the law is not applied or established only after someone has committed a murder. The law exists, and nobody in unaware of that. The citizen is free to respect the law or to break it. But should he transgress it, should he commit a murder, he will know in advance that the law will punish him.
Mr. Speaker, the minister says capital punishment should be abolished "in the name of God", but if Marcotte the "Santa Claus" who fired point-blank and coldly at policemen, were released today from the Montreal penitentiary after having served a seven, eight or ten year sentence and if the Solicitor General needed an honest and loyal employee, would he hire Marcotte? Surely not. Not a single business man, not a single employer would trust a murderer.
But for the sake of society and of humanitarianism, the minister says capital punishment should be abolished "in the name of God" in order to help a family. Those are false arguments, that is stupid reasoning.
Mr. Speaker, the Creditistes will not make a political stock argument out of that. Let us not play politics with it. When it was decided in this House that there would be a free vote on the bill on capital punishment, we were pleased to hear the government give us that promise and that is why Mr. Brown, the lawyer, advises us to get together, Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, NDP members-if there are some against abolition-and Creditistes, to prevent this bill from being passed by the House.
Mr. Speaker, those are the remarks I wanted to make. I have letters, another one here from Chatham, Ontario-

We support your stand on capital punishment-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. I regret to interrupt the hon. member but the time allotted to him under the special order has expired. He may, however, continue with unanimous consent.


Some hon. Members:: Carry on.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I gather it is given.

[ Translation]


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to my colleague for at least letting me conclude my remarks. I shall be brief.
I received another letter favouring the retention of capital punishment. It is from Mr. Lawrence P. Ripley, 7730, 23rd Avenue, Montreal. Mr. Ripley also talks about the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand). Would Mr. Ripley not be living in the minister's constituency? I quote:

Mr. Allmand described the cruel form of execution used in Spain. He did not describe the many cruel ways that a murderer uses such as a gun, a knife, strangulation, a club, rape or, worst of all, death by fire.

The minister ought to know that when a bandit armed with a submachine gun enters a bank, it is neither to say his rosary nor to do the stations of the cross, in God's name. When he does, his mind is set on killing if his robbery fails. The minister should think about this for a while. When he reasons this way, I cannot help wonder who his advisors are or whether the Holy Ghost is inspiring him in his sleep.
At any rate, we are investigating this matter everywhere in Canada. I was in western Canada during the last weekend, specifically in Edmonton and Vancouver, where I was asked lots of questions about capital punishment. I claim that 90 per cent of our population favour retention.
I have before me a letter from Mrs. Katherine Cordaro, from Georgetown, Ont., which is not even my riding. I quote:

There are many, many people who will back you all the way in your comments on capital punishment.

Mr. Speaker, I could quote letters all day long and pursue the debate until next week to demonstrate how much the people are in favour of maintaining capital punishment. Again, I shall repeat it: I hear New Democratic Party members speak about the humanitarian feelings we should show towards murderers and say that we should not kill those murderers but when we speak about abortion or the murder of a young child in his mother's womb, a child who never committed a murder, who never harmed anyone, who never asked to be born, they blame us. In the one hand, they say: kill the baby who did nothing wrong but protect the bandit who killed his fellowman.
As far as capital punishment is concerned, logic was certainly not born in New Democratic Party ranks.
Mr. Speaker, I have here another letter from Mr. Alvin S. Nemetz, Mississauga, near Toronto. The Solicitor General and the member for Peel South (Mr. Blenkarn) received copies of that letter. I quote:
Sir:
I regret that more urgent matters have kept me from commenting earlier on the matter of capital punishment.
October 18, 1973

I cannot possibly express adequately my disgust and disappointment upon finding that our government has sunk so low as to be guilty of a flagrant breach of ethics. Mr. Allmand's action in radically altering the bill after it received second reading strips him of any right to ever discuss or comment on ethics, morality or justice. In permitting him to do so, you have once again revealed your utter contempt for parliament and the Canadian public.
[ Transla tion]
That letter was sent to the Prime Minister, the Right Hon. Pierre Elliott Trudeau and copies were sent to three other members of parliament, including the Solicitor General.
Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, I could quote letters all day long. I would like to quote a leading article on capital punishment:
He who infringes social order deprives himself of the right to live or to be free, by committing his offence;
It is not the government, it is not members of parliament. It is he who infringes social order who deprives himself of the right to live or to be free. He is aware of it. Therefore, if he is aware of it, he must act consequently. I go on quoting:
-through the execution of the punishment, it is the property of life or freedom to which he was no longer entitled that is taken away from him in fact".
And many comments, articles, editorials, support the retention of capital punishment.
I would like now to quote a circular coming from Toronto:

This letter is from Miss Rita Hogg, president, Concerned Residents Action Committee:
We urge retentionist members to keep up the excellent work they are doing for we are more than ever convinced by the trend of events in our society today that it is indeed time to reinstate capital punishment.
Then a postscript:
Your leadership and solidarity have accomplished a very great deal. We are grateful to you. Keep up the good work.

This circular letter was sent to many parliament members. Probably the Solicitor General received it also. Perhaps he will speak during the debate on the amendments before us but many competent people spoke in the past; today they speak again in favour of the retention of capital punishment.
I am looking at the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe (Mr. Wagner) in his seat. When he was Minister of Justice for the province of Quebec, he was in favour of retaining capital punishment and after it was abolished, five years ago, he still was for retention. The hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe is as good a lawyer as the Solicitor General. He was Minister of Justice in Quebec; it is a position as important as that of Solicitor General but the latter is speaking in the name of God. In the name of God we want justice to be rendered; we want a murderer to be punished for his crime against society. It is not as a vengeance but for a better respect of law and for the respect of the human beings who want to live in peace and order in our Canadian society.
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Mr. Allan B. McKinnon (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, this is the first occasion that I have spoken on this measure and I trust that it will be the last. I am now speaking to the amendment moved by the hon. member for Northumber-land-Durham (Mr. Lawrence), and as I intend to speak only the once I trust I shall be able to exercise some leeway in regard to the aspects of the bill with which I wish to deal and also the amendments.
First of all, this bill is a very confusing piece of legislation. There is no need for it to be confusing. One would think the simple question whether or not certain persons should be put to death if they commit certain offences is straightforward. Yet we find ourselves in a peculiar position when we take a look at Bill C-2.
The legislation states that a certain section of the Criminal Code in the Revised Statutes of Canada will be repealed and the following substituted therefor:
214. (1) Murder is punishable by death or is punishable by imprisonment for life.
If you gave the bill to a person not used to the intricacies and the tortuous method of passing legislation through this House, I am sure that person would assume that this bill calls for capital punishment. "Murder is punishable by death", says the bill. Only through the machinations and confused operations of the present government could they have managed to bring forward a bill that calls for punishment by death and yet places parliament in a position where the retentionists are going to vote against the bill and the abolitionists are going to vote for the bill, which as I say calls for "murder punishable by death".
Given the premise that we start with a bill that says exactly the opposite to what it is supposed to say, a lot of extra difficulties have been created as a result, and totally unnecessarily. The original amendments which were submitted received a fair amount of forethought, I believe. I am sorry that the amendment asking for a plebiscite was ruled out of order because I would have voted in favour of it had it been possible to do so.
The hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) has asked for an extension of the classes of murder which could be punishable by death. I am inclined to agree that if one accepts the philosophy that murder should ever be punishable by death, then one death is not greatly different from another provided there is the intention to murder someone. While I respect the right of a policeman on duty and penitentiary guards to ask for extra protection, I feel it is possibly a more heinous crime to murder defenceless children than it is to have a shoot-out with a policeman. But this is a matter of personal opinion and I would find no difficulty in supporting the amendment moved by the hon. lady from Louis-Hebert. Having accepted the principle that it is possible to put a person to death for certain types of murder, I do not see the logic of trying to be quite as narrow as this bill is in regard to what types of murder should be punishable by death.
For the most part, the debate so far has been conducted with a fair amount of reason. Members appear to be divided into roughly three divisions. Retentionists are
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quite happy to retain capital punishment. On their outer fringe, they appear to want to have people put to death. On the other extreme are the abolitionists who appear to have been born that way. They have never been required to search their conscience on that matter. The third group is centered between those two. They do not wish people to be put to death, but they see no reasonable or possible alternative. Others will not vote for retention.
I am disappointed in the amount of intolerance both in the corridors and in the speeches by members of all parties. One would expect the abolitionists to be a little more tolerant of the views of their colleagues than has been evidenced. I say this with a great deal of regret.
I sometimes believe that I must be the only individual in Canada who did not spend his time talking about capital punishment before becoming involved in politics. I can honestly say that I never expressed an opinion on whether we should have capital punishment until the election campaign got under way. The first few times I was asked for my view about capital punishment I was inclined to say it was my own business. That is not so. I was a candidate for political office and people presumed they had a right to inquire into my views on the subject. On consideration, I believe they were correct. They have a right to know how a candidate is going to vote on a matter such as this, although I am surprised people would change their votes for candidates for the House of Commons depending on how they were going to vote on capital punishment. I would think a voter would be interested in how a candidate was going to vote on capital punishment but, with all the other important issues with which we are involved, I was surprised to hear many people say that if I voted for abolition they would not vote for me or if I voted for retention they would not vote for me. There seemed to have been an equal division. My letters indicated they would or would not vote for people because of their vote on this measure. I am also sorry to report that.
A member of parliament must decide whether he is better qualified than his constituents in this matter, if we are going to go by the results of polls and letters. If a member of parliament is convinced he has a more highly qualified opinion on this matter than the average constituent, he should have no hesitation in voting whichever way he feels. I, personally, do not feel that way. I have no qualification that would enable me to say that I have better judgment on whether a person should be put to death for certain crimes than anyone in my constituency. The person with a menial job and perhaps very little in the way of education might very well be right on this issue and I might be wrong. Consequently, I do not hesitate to accept the wishes of my constituents in this matter as I can determine them. I make no apology for so doing.
I feel that democracy is exercised all too seldom in this country and surely the basis of democracy is rule by the people. In a matter such as this, I have no hesitation in accepting the advice of the overwhelming majority of my constituents. There are other issues on which I do not hesitate to go against the wishes of the majority of my constituents. I have done so on two occasions in this parliament. It is a matter of what you consider to be your qualifications.

I have travelled a great deal in Canada and have rubbed shoulders with many different groups of people in various parts of the country. In certain matters of national import I believe I am better qualified than the average constituent in Victoria. I hope I will not be thought too conceited for that remark. One of the measures I am referring to is, of course, the official languages bill.
During this debate we have heard a great deal about Edmund Burke. For many years I have been fond of reading his speeches. I have always considered that he put words together in a manner that should be an example to everyone using the English language. I recommend his speeches to all. However, I think they have been used during this debate in a manner he would not have defended.
Mr. Burke was born an Irish Catholic. In 1774, he was elected to parliament at Westminster to represent the constituency of Bristol. He represented it very well for six years. In 1780, he found to his horror that the people of Bristol were not likely to renominate him. He then made his famous speech in the Guild Hall in Bristol, a speech that is often quoted and frequently misquoted in this House. It is often said that because Burke was willing to vote against the wishes of his constituents we should do the same. However, Burke did this on the very type of matter I have been talking about, a matter on which he was an expert. He went against his constituents on matters where their prejudices were prevalent, the Irish question and the American revolution.
I always thought his best speeches were on the American revolution where he took a very tolerant attitude early in the revolution and suggested there should be some compromise. He also voted according to his wisdom on the Catholic relief bill and the Irish trade bill. I think he was quite right in doing so. He had more wisdom and knowledge on these matters than his constituents, so he voted the way he felt. He pointed this out to them.
Early in his so often quoted speech in the Guild Hall he said that by all means he should consider the wishes of his constituents wherever possible and on those matters on which his constituents were knowledgeable he should consult their opinions. However, in matters where he had superior knowledge and intellect and had studied and worked, he felt quite at liberty, as do I, to vote according to his own knowledge and intelligence. As a footnote, I should add that after Mr. Burke's great speech that is so often quoted he lost the nomination and was never again truly elected. He did not get the nomination and from then on represented a private constituency owned by the Duke of Rockingham. So while he went down in history in respect of this one speech, he was a failure in a political sense.
Another thing that happened in the early stages of the debate on capital punishment was that capital punishment was linked to the question of law and order. At first I rejected this and said that the two were different subjects. I said that capital punishment is a subject by itself when we consider whether or not we will take the life of a human being because the state wishes us so to do. The matter kept coming up and I began to wonder if perhaps I
October 18, 1973

might be wrong and that the two are rightly linked. I was impressed by a column written by Richard Needham who regularly writes for the Globe and Mail. I refer to an article that was syndicated in a Victoria newspaper on September 17, I believe. He was speaking of the lack of religion in our society. I think the article was headed "Nothing Is Sacred". He mentioned that in this day and age more and more crimes, such as murder, robbery, rape and so on, occurred in churches. There was the case of a Canadian minister who was set upon in New York City while walking from one church across the street to another. Mr. Needham quoted Dostoyevsky. His version was quite abridged. I believe the entire quotation is worthwhile. It was written some time in the mid-19th century. Dostoyesky wrote as follows:
If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be permissible, even cannibalism.
In his abridgement I believe Mr. Needham said, "if there is no God, anything is permissible". I believe we have a situation today in this country that the strictures and standards that had been set for so many years, based on the law of Moses, the Ten Commandments, and which served as a structure for our social and moral life, are considered today by younger people and some not so young as being irrelevant. However, there is nothing to replace those strictures that were impressed upon people with the effect that they believed if they were evil they would suffer damnation thereafter. Several other people have been quoted on this subject. I suppose one of the best examples is Voltaire who said that if God did not exist we would have to invent him. When so many of our people appear to no longer believe in or accept religion, the lawmakers must bring in some kind of philosophy for the people to replace these strictures. We have failed miserably in this regard.
I spoke to a friend of mine in the New Democratic Party yesterday, who unfortunately is not in the House today, who said he has no problem in this regard because he believes in the rule of law and that he has almost made this belief the equivalent of that held by people who believe in the law of God. In other words, if you worship the law then you need no other strictures on your behaviour. I find that this goes a bit far, but we are faced with this dilemma and I do not know how to solve it to everyone's satisfaction. I am sure there are greater thinkers than I who are worrying about this problem. When we look round the House we realize that there are 264 members who are placed in the position of trying to represent the collective wisdom of the country. I think there may be better judges of the problem facing us or of the rightness or wrongness in respect of this matter. But it is now our responsibility.
Many members of the House have participated in state killings. I am speaking of world war II when we were sent out and, after a certain amount of what modern-day persons refer to as "being psyched up" to something, found ourselves able to take lives on behalf of the state with no particular qualms of conscience. I suppose years later some of us worried about it. However, it was done at the time. Incidentally, I was chosen to participate in the execution of General Kurt Meyer which was to be carried out
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by the Canadian forces in 1946. I approached this as another job. It did not bother me a great deal. I am sure, had we gone through with the execution, it would not have bothered me a great deal. As I say, we were psyched up, and we were young.
This debate has bothered me a great deal. I am sure it has bothered most members. I am glad it is coming to an end. I intend to vote against the bill on third reading. I shall vote against the amendment which is before us now largely because I do not care for its wording. The part I am most unhappy about is the part in which a second murder is not spelled out as murder but as the death of a human being. It seems to me this amendment would have to be further amended to indicate that the second taking of life must be murder. I suggest to the hon. member for North-umberland-Durham (Mr. Lawrence) that since the second part of the amendment states, "in respect of any person, where such person causes the death of a human being and has been previously convicted of murder, whether or not such murder is punishable by death", it seems to me that this would not cover the situation where a person convicted of murder, not punishable by death, was involved in an automobile accident which resulted in the death of a person. Such a situation, I suggest, should be excluded from this provision. Had the word "murder" been included I would have supported the amendment. However, I do not think it has much chance of being passed. I shall vote against the bill at the third reading stage. I hope we can then forget the quarrels and bitterness and go on from there.


Mr. Don Blenkarn (Peel South):: Mr. Speaker, I propose to speak very briefly. I shall confine my remarks entirely to the amendment. The amendment presented by the hon. member for Northumberland-Durham (Mr. Lawrence) represents a conscious attempt to try to pull some reason out of a bill with which even the minister was not satisfied. When he appeared before the committee he tried to amend the bill all over again by changing its very nature and status. I am indeed surprised that the minister, having proposed to the committee that the whole concept of capital punishment should have been taken out of the bill in the first place, did not withdraw the bill completely and start again from scratch and really produce what he intended to produce in the first place-legislation which would provide that nowhere in the Criminal Code of Canada would there be a provision for the taking of life as a penalty. Having confused everybody in the committee and having stirred up the country the minister decided to carry the bill through. It was forced through the committee and reported to the House.


An hon. Member:: It was not forced through, it was passed.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Let me tell hon. members what they already know, that very close to 90 per cent of the people in Canada demand that capital punishment be put into the Criminal Code as the maximum penalty for heinous murder.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
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Donald Alex Blenkarn: That bill was forced through the committee because, in terms of ideology, the committee did not present a true reflection of the opinions of this House or a true reflection of the opinions of the people of Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Donald Alex Blenkarn: The committee was really stirred up. An effort was made to put forward an amendment in connection with euthanasia. The hon. member for Northumber-land-Durham tried to put forward that amendment. He said: "Let us get rid of the rope. Let us not be cruel in exercising the death penalty." That is not before us, unfortunately, because again it was blocked by procedure. At that time there was no reason whatsoever why the minister should not have admitted that there is disagreement and confusion in the country and that this legislation will affect every citizen in Canada. But what did the minister do? He said that in no way is he forcing it through but that it has to go through in the way he says it should and that what the people of Canada are saying does not matter.
I commend the hon. member for Northumberland-Dur-ham and the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) for their amendments because both these hon. members have been trying to present to the House some form of compromise. It is well known that right across Canada people demand the reinstatement of the maximum penalty because they are disturbed and incensed at the fact that some people can go out and murder and get nothing more than a nice sentence to a comfortable jail. We know that something must be inserted into our criminal law that will satisfy the people of Canada. Those hon. members have tried to do that in their amendments.
I hope that the hon. member for Victoria (Mr. McKinnon) will change his mind and vote for these amendments tonight. I hope that hon. members opposite and members of the NDP who have been adamant against capital punishment will say that at least we have reflected to some extent the opinion of our constituents. We have said that those who murder in the course of airline hijackings, which is a heinous crime, should be subject to the death penalty as well as those who have murdered again following escape from those nice, tight secure jails of the present Solicitor General. Surely these people have lost their right to be in our society.
These amendments are not good amendments; they are makeshift amendments because the bill is a makeshift bill. It should have been withdrawn and rewritten from scratch. The hon. member for Northumberland-Durham and the hon. member for Louis-Hebert have put forward these amendments to try to make some sense out of the bill and to try to solve the problems because it does not do so. But what does the minister do? He does not want these amendments. He does not want the Criminal Code of Canada to reflect the morality of Canadians and the desire of Canadians for the kind of punishment which they feel should be in their statutes.
I do not intend to say much at this time about the concept and the reason for capital punishment being in the Criminal Code. I may speak about that later in the debate on third reading of the bill. But at this point let me plead with hon. members to realize that these amendments, particularly the amendment of the hon. member for North-

umberland-Durham, do make sense and will at least allow some hon. members who really do not want to see capital punishment contained in the Criminal Code to say to their constituents and to the people of Canada that they as members of the House were at least responsible regarding the matter of double murder and murder during airline hijacking. The minister cannot refuse to listen to the people. This House is not an ivory tower, although members to the left of me continue to think it is. Surely we can accept this small compromise, this small bone, if you want to put it that way, tossed out by the hon. member for Northumberland-Durham. At least we will have shown that we pay attention to the people of Canada. If we do not do so as members who represent the people of Canada I suggest that some of us had better find another job, perhaps join the ministry or become social workers. They had better not continue being members of parliament because obviously they do not really want to listen to the people of Canada.


Some hon. Members:: One o'clock.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Perhaps I could interrupt the hon. member at this time. It being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair until 2 p.m.
At one o'clock the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Mr. Walter C. Carter (St. John's West):: Mr. Speaker, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, I rise to present a motion on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. Mr. Speaker, on June 17 and 18, the Atlantic area, and particularly the east coast of Newfoundland suffered the loss of fishing gear and property, the estimated value of which was $1.4 million, as a result of storm damage.
In view of the fact representations have been made to this government by the individual fishermen from the province of Newfoundland, the premier of the province and, as well, by myself on numerous occasions in attempts to determine what this government is doing to compensate the fishermen; and in view of the fact compensation has not yet been granted, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate (Mr. Lundrigan):
That this House direct the Minister of Fisheries and the Minister of Finance to submit immediately to cabinet all findings relating to the storm damage of June 17 and 18, and further, that the cabinet and particularly the Minister of Fisheries release
October 18, 1973

immediately to this House their findings and the actions they will undertake in order to help alleviate this situation.


Mr. Speaker:: This motion requires unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: No.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: There is not unanimous consent.


CONSUMER AFFAIRS
Hon. Herb Gray (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, under the provisions of Standing Order 41(2) I should like to table, in both official languages, copies of a report on the effects of the tariff sales and excise tax changes set out in the February 19, 1973 budget, on consumer prices.



VETERANS AFFAIRS


Mr. Elmer M. MacKay (Central Nova):: Mr. Speaker, I also rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 to seek the unanimous consent of this House to move a motion of urgent and pressing necessity with regional as well as national connotations. It has to do with the widespread unrest of nurses employed by the federal government which has been exacerbated by a recent arbitral award.
I move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. McKenzie):
That the Treasury Board, in general, and the Solicitor General and Ministers of Veterans Affairs, Health and Welfare and National Defence, in particular, review present government policy in respect to national wage parity for federal government employees in this case, nurses, across the nation, with the object in mind of phasing out, in an orderly fashion, the inequities and confusion which now exist across Canada and to thus ensure with regard to the nurses that their different status, regarding salaries, compared with what is available elsewhere, in no way affects their capacity, willingness and efficiency to care for our veterans, regardless of where in Canada they may be.


Mr. Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: There is not unanimous consent.



UNVEILING AND DEDICATION OF NEWFOUNDLAND BOOK OF REMEMBRANCE

Hon. Daniel J. MacDonald (Minister of Veterans Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform the members
Veterans Affairs
of this House of a highly significant and solemn ceremony which will take place this Sunday afternoon in the Confederation Room of the West Block. I am referring to the unveiling and dedication of the Newfoundland Book of Remembrance which, after the dedication, will be placed, along with the four other Books of Remembrance, in the Memorial Chamber of the Peace Tower.
It was more than six years ago that the government of the day approved the plan to produce a Book of Remembrance which would commemorate the names of the Newfoundland men and women who gave their lives in the defence of freedom between 1867 and 1949, the year when Newfoundland became part of Canada. The committee which was set up to complete the project has worked tirelessly and efficiently, and the results of its work will be a lasting testimonial to the 2,327 Newfoundlanders whose names are inscribed.
I am sure hon. members will be pleased to know that 110 Newfoundland veterans and their wives will be among the invited guests at the ceremony. This delegation will be headed by the Hon. Joseph Harnum, Lieutenant-Governor of Newfoundland and Mr. Frank Moores, Premier of Newfoundland. The dedication will be made by the Chaplains-General of the Canadian Armed Forces, Brigadier-General James A. MacLean and Brigadier-General Joseph Cardy.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Jack Marshall (Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe):: Mr. Speaker, I can do no less than commend the minister and his committee for bringing to completion their work. The Book of Remembrance has taken more than six years to compile. I am pleased to have attended many of the committee meetings which were held over those six years.
I think we should commend, too, all those who played a part in the completion of this book which is nothing less than a lasting memorial to the veterans of Newfoundland. I might add that the forthcoming dedication arises in a sense, of course, from the union of Newfoundland with Canada.
I can assure the minister that I and my colleagues from Newfoundland will be very happy to participate in this ceremony on Sunday.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to join with the hon. member for Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe (Mr. Marshall) in offering our commendation to the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. MacDonald) on the significant announcement he made this afternoon. We are glad to know that the names of Newfoundland veterans who gave their lives are to be, along with the others in the various Books of Remembrance, kept in the Peace Tower of this building. Like the hon. member for Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe, we welcome this further evidence of the unity of Canada from coast to coast.
[ Translation]


Mr. Rene Matte (Champlain):: I am pleased, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Social Credit Party of Canada, to join my colleagues of other parties to commend the minister

October 18, 1973
The Canadian Economy
for that initiative which surely deserves all our attention and particularly all our congratulations.


Mr. Erik Nielsen (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, this gives me a unique occasion for bringing to the minister's attention the fact that, notwithstanding that the Yukon is part of Canada, it is not represented in any significant way, as are the provinces, in the memorial chamber, although the first motor machine gun brigade to go into action in the first world war came from the Yukon.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The hon. member for Yukon says this gives him a unique occasion. It is unique in many ways, particularly from the point of view of the Standing Orders of the House.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!



FEDERAL-PROVINCIAL AFFAIRS PROVISION FOR OBSERVERS AT TRI-LEVEL CONFERENCE-REQUEST FOR UNANIMOUS CONSENT TO MOVE MOTION

Mr. Douglas Roche (Edmonton-Strathcona):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to propose a motion under Standing Order 43 concerning the important national tri-level intergovernmental meeting to be held next week in Edmonton, which is to be open to the press but closed to official observers for reasons of space. I move, seconded by the hon. member for Calgary North:
That the planning secretariat be instructed by the federal government to permit one official observer from each political party in the House of Commons to attend this meeting, thereby ensuring the right of Members of Parliament to inform themselves on public issues.


Mr. Speaker:: The motion proposed by the hon. member under the terms of Standing Order 43 requires unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: There is not unanimity.



THE CANADIAN ECONOMY


Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, I rise on a matter which I believe to be both important and pressing. In light of the takeover by the Capital and Counties Property Company, Limited of London, England, of a Canadian company, Western Realty Limited of Vancouver, recently for some $48 million, and in light of Western Realty's large land holdings in western Canada and its plans to merge with Great Northern Capital Corporation, with large holdings in eastern Canada, I move, seconded by the hon. member for New Westminster (Mr. Leggatt):

That this House instruct the government to prohibit any new foreign takeovers until this House passes adequate takeover legislation.


Mr. Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: There is not unanimity.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Robert L. Stanfield (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources whether he received any additional information between the time he answered my question in the House yesterday with regard to contingency plans in the event of oil from the Middle East being cut off, when he said "I think it will depend very much on the exact arrangements each company has, to be able to predict the contingency arrangements we should have", and his going out of the House immediately afterwards and saying in response to a question about the same subject in the event of "an interruption for a period in excess of 60 days, then, of course, we would have to look at some form of rationing, that is to say, rationing of less essential use of oil products in favour of more essential uses". Did the minister get some additional information from the companies in the meantime as to their plans which enabled him to go considerably further outside the House than he went inside the House?


Hon. Donald S. Macdonald (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: No, Sir. It was a different question asked me outside the House.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: That's a great way to run an oil policy.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Robert Lorne Stanfield: I should like to ask the minister whether he has been in direct contact with the governments of the Arab states in the Middle East, or their representatives, to discuss the cutback formula that has been announced. If so, can he inform the House whether it is intended by those states that these cutbacks will affect Canadian supplies, or whether this policy will, in fact, affect Canadian supplies?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: The international community generally is attempting to get a clarification of the announcement made by the Arab petroleum exporting countries as well as the statement made by the oil minister for Abu Dhabi regarding reduction of supplies. At this moment, we have not had a more precise interpretation of
October 18, 1973

the OAPEC statement that the output reduction will not affect any friendly states which will help the Arabs in a fruitful and effective manner, or the statement of the Abu Dhabi minister that the cut-off was directed to the United States and that similar action will be taken against any state which supports Israel. As I say, the international community is seeking further clarification of these announcements. As soon as we have ascertained its impact on Canada I will, of course, be happy to let the House know.


PRICE FREEZE ON OIL-POSSIBLE REQUEST FOR PRICE INCREASE AS RESULT OF INCREASED PRICE OF OFFSHORE CRUDE
Robert Lorne Stanfield: supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps we will be fortunate enough to get this supplementary information immediately after the question period outside the House.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: When better questions are asked.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: I wish to ask the minister one further supplementary question relating to the voluntary freeze the government has requested the oil companies in Canada to adopt and the traditional exemption mentioned at that time, namely that an increase might be considered in the event the cost of crude landed in eastern Canada is increased. Has any request for an increase been made as a result of an increase in crude prices from Venezuela? If so, what decision has been reached?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Yes, Mr. Speaker. A number of eastern refineries have sought an increase, not confined to those dependant on Venezuela crude, depending upon the source of their crude feedstock. Officials of my department have been seeking more information from the companies on the cost effect of this, but at the moment no decision has been taken by the government in this regard.


OIL-POSSIBLE EFFECT OF ARAB CUTOFF ON ANY VENEZUELAN-CANADA AGREEMENT
Mr. Gordon Ritchie (Dauphin):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. In view of the minister's attempt to get Venezuelan assurance for the supply of oil, in the event of an Arab cutoff, will any Canada-Venezuela agreement or offshore agreement be over-ridden by OECD which would be forced to initiate worldwide rationing?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: The objective of Canada, of course, would be to co-operate with the other members of OECD in having the best possible arrangement to protect our supplies, as well as those of other countries. Therefore, I would have to say that any arrangement we may have directly with Venezuela would be subject to those other arrangements.
Oral Questions


OIL-POSSIBILITY OF SUPPLYING EASTERN CANADA WITH WESTERN CRUDE-EXTENSION OF PIPELINE TO MONTREAL
Mr. T. C. Douglas (Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to ask the minister a question arising out of his statement made outside the House that it may be necessary to resort to rationing of petroleum supplies in the event the Arab states carry out their policy of restricting supplies to this country. In view of the fact that Canada is a net exporter of oil, quite able to maintain supplies for its own people, at least at the present time, is it the government's intention to meet any shortage in eastern Canada by curtailing to some extent the export of Canadian crude and making it available, particularly with reference to home heating fuel for the eastern part of Canada?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, the difficulty of that suggestion is that there is not in place a delivery system to bring any substantial quantity of either refined products or crude from the end of the interprovincial pipeline to Montreal. As hon. members know, the government has proposed an extension of the pipeline, but that has not been done as yet.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: In view of the fact that as long as the St. Lawrence River is open, very substantial quantities could be moved by barge or at least by truck to meet an emergency situation, has any firm decision been reached by the government with respect to extending the pipeline? Have the necessary discussions and arrangements been completed and how soon does the government intend to proceed with this project?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: With regard to the comment made by the hon. member, we have determined that except in a very marginal sense neither by shipment on the lakes when they are open nor by rail or truck transport could sufficient quantities be moved to meet the demand. With regard to the second part, the hon. member will recall the government's decision in principle to have a pipeline extension to Montreal was resisted by certain of the provincial governments. We now have under discussion with the officials of the province the possibility of extending the pipeline. I suspect that current events will perhaps have persuaded them more closely to our concern about security.


Mr. Speaker:: The Chair will recognize the hon. member for one further supplementary. I will then recognize the hon. member for Champlain and further supplementaries on this subject immediately after.


OIL-POSSIBLE ESTABLISHMENT OF NATIONAL PETROLEUM CORPORATION-GOVERNMENT POSITION
Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Mr. Speaker, in view of the minister's statement to a convention here on Tuesday to the effect that the Venezuelan government would like to deal with a national petroleum corporation in Canada to ensure a long-term guarantee of supplies, I want to ask the minister whether the government has now decided to set up such a corpora-

October 18, 1973
Oral Questions
tion in line with the preliminary energy report which was diluted by the cabinet. Has a decision been made and when will action be taken in this regard?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, the discussion with Venezuela in this regard concerned the period when Venezuela itself would have acquired full control of its oil industry between now and the end of the concessions in 1983. There is still some consideration to be undertaken in the Canadian context as to whether a national state company is the best vehicle for ensuring the petroleum interests of our economy.

[ Transla tion]


AIRPORTS
René Matte: Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to ask a supplementary. I should, however, like to ask a question of the hon. Minister of Public Works.
Could he tell us if he intends placing at the disposal of those concerned and the general public all the papers concerning the settlement of each case of expropriation relative to Mirabel international airport?


Hon. Jean-Eudes Dube (Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, 3,100 different properties were involved; I think that it would be very difficult and expensive to have copies made of all the papers. However, we have nothing to hide from the population; 90 per cent of these cases of expropriation have already been settled and if the hon. member wishes to consult any particular paper, I shall be happy to make it available.


René Matte: Could the minister tell us if he intends meeting with the people in charge of the Ste Scholastique expropriated owners committee in the near future if he intends meeting them at all?


Jean-Eudes Dubé: Mr. Speaker, I had the pleasure of meeting them about two weeks ago. The Minister of Transport and myself have accepted their graceful invitation to meet with them again during the next few days.


OIL-REQUEST FOR ASSURANCE OF SUPPLY FOR THERMAL POWER PLANTS
Hon. J. A. MacLean (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question related to those asked previously of the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. In view of the fact that many thermal electric power plants in the Atlantic provinces-and in the case of Prince Edward Island I believe all of them-are oil-fired what action is the minister prepared to take to ensure adequate supplies of oil to thermal power plants in that area, which are

totally dependent on offshore oil, in the case of disruption of supply.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, in the case of disruption, obviously that kind of situation would be one of the priority uses for the purpose of the allocation system.


ATHABASCA TAR SANDS-FEDERAL POSITION ON DEVELOPMENT-EFFECT OF FEDERAL PRICING POLICY
Mr. Paul Yewchuk (Athabasca):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. In view of the world energy situation at the present time, I wonder if the minister could inform the House whether he is doing everything within his power to ensure that the Athabasca tar sands will be developed as quickly as possible?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Well, Mr. Speaker, the decision in that regard is not totally within my responsibility, but to the extent it is my responsibility I see no difficulty in that regard. Indeed, we have proposed to the government of Alberta significant federal assistance in developing the oil sands.


Paul Yewchuk: I will be more specific, Mr. Speaker. Could the minister indicate to the House whether during his meeting with the President of the company that is prepared to go ahead with the construction of a plant immediately-the meeting he had a few days ago-he gave that gentleman the kind of assurance he was seeking with regard to price and export of their product.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, I did not have a meeting with the president of the company. I have met with a number of the principals who are the principal shareholders of the company who have indicated that the proposals we have with regard to the price of oil on the Canadian market would be adequate to assure the continuance of the project.


OIL-REQUEST FOR STATEMENT ON FEDERAL PRICING POLICY
Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, would the minister please be good enough to take us into his confidence and tell us what his proposals are with regard to the pricing of crude in the Canadian market?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Yes, Mr. Speaker. The comment made many times both in the House and outside has been that the pricing of oil would be founded upon a price determined by the international price of crude landed at Montreal.


Mr. Speaker:: The Chair will recognize the hon. member for Calgary North on a supplementary, and then the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway.
October 18, 1973


ATHABASCA TAR SANDS-POSSIBLE EXEMPTION OF PRODUCTS FROM SYNCRUDE FROM SURTAX-EFFECT ON DEVELOPMENT OF FEDERAL PRICING POLICY
Mr. Eldon M. Woolliams (Calgary North):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the minister if I am correct in thinking that he left the impression that the surtax would not apply to crude petroleum processed from the tar sands by the Syncrude plant and now, I understand, he has reversed his policy. In the light of the fact that there appears to be a shortage, would the minister take a hard look and assure us that that development will go forward, an $800 million development guaranteeing 10,000 jobs and a sufficient supply of crude petroleum for all of Canada and elsewhere?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: The hon. member is correct in saying that he has misunderstood. As I indicated, the principals of the company concerned agree that with the prospect of the international pricing determining the price in Canada, there will be no difficulty in going ahead and they need seek no exemption from the export tax.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Why were you so evasive yesterday?


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: In the light of the waffling which we get from the minister, I wonder if he would now come clean and tell us to what officials and to what companies he is referring, so that there will be no question in the future as to what he meant today.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: I would be glad to communicate to the hon. gentleman the details of the Syncrude project, the partners, and the role that the government of Alberta proposes to take. I would have thought that, as member for Calgary North, he might have known these details already.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



CONSUMER AFFAIRS


Mrs. Grace Maclnnis (Vancouver Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. In view of the minister's announcement a few days ago that he has assigned top priority to the review of more than 100 cases of alleged merchandising irregularities reported by the Food Prices Review Board, have irregularities been found and, if so, how many? Are charges being laid and prosecutions launched under the Combines Investigation Act and, if so, how many?


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, officers of my department and those of the Department of Justice are continuing their work on the reports given to them, and I would be happy to give
Oral Questions
my hon. friend further information as soon as it is available.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Winona Grace MacInnis: Mr. Speaker, first of all, could the minister tell me when that information will be available and, second, what other steps he has in mind for the protection of consumers during this period of rising prices and rising profits?


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Dealing with my hon. friend's second question first, may I refer again to the steps outlined in the statement of the Prime Minister indicating measures to increase disposable income, measures to create subsidy programs in the area of milk, bread and so on.
With respect to the other part of the question, I will be happy to give the hon. member the information as soon as I receive it from the officers of the Department of Justice.



SUBJECTS TO BE DISCUSSED WITH UNITED STATES

Mr. Joe Clark (Rocky Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, I have another question for that master of diplomacy, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: This gives me some indication of the government's view of diplomacy. Would the minister advise us whether his department is preparing special recommendations on energy matters for the meeting between the Secretary of State for External Affairs and Mr. Kissinger and, if so, will the minister take parliament into his confidence as to the nature of the recommendations he will be making?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, we will be discussing with the United States a broad range of issues on energy questions. Perhaps I could refer the hon. member to the energy analysis for the kind of questions which are most relevant between Canada and the United States.


Charles Joseph Clark: Does the minister intend us to understand that no matters will be raised in discussions between the Secretary of State for External Affairs and Mr. Kissinger that are not referred to directly in the studies to which he referred just now?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: I think it is fair to say that we did not anticipate in June that there would be a war in the Middle East in October, so that the answer to the hon. member's question is, not exactly.


An hon. Member:: You should have been ready.


Mr. Murta:: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The Chair will recognize the hon. member for Skeena, who has a supplementary, then I will see the hon. member for Lisgar.
Oral Questions FOOD PRICES

October 18, 1973



STATEMENT BY MINISTER OF CONSUMER AND CORPORATE AFFAIRS-GOVERNMENT POSITION

Mr. Frank Howard (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, my question is supplementary to that of my colleague, the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway, to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs about food prices. Was the minister stating government policy a week or two ago when he said with respect to food prices that an average family today has only two choices: to readjust the household budget to allow more dollars for food, or to stretch the food dollar by shopping more wisely? Does that represent government policy?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The question asked in those terms is not in order.


Frank Howard: May I pose that question then to the Acting Prime Minister and ask him whether the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs was expressing government policy a few weeks ago when he made the statement which I just read.


Hon. Mitchell Sharp (Acting Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I have heard the hon. member read some words. I do not know whether that is what the minister said, and I will have to check.


Frank Howard: May I ask a further supplementary?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member for Lisgar.



TRANSPORT


Jack Burnett Murta: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Transport. Is the government acting upon what has become a very serious problem in connection with grain movement in a good many parts of Manitoba where some points have not had grain cars for quite some time and as of today the prospects of obtaining these cars are very slim indeed. Has the minister been in touch with officials from his department in connection with this matter of grain movement, and what is the government preparing to do about moving grain out of Manitoba?


Hon. Otto E. Lang (Minister of Justice):: Mr. Speaker, both my colleague, the Minister of Transport, and I have been discussing this matter. We have had discussions at the official level throughout the period of, and after, the strike concerning the difficult problem regarding the availability of cars. There is a shortage of cars in relation to the demand for many products in addition to grain, and we are doing everything we can to try to facilitate the movement of products so as to get back to normal as quickly as possible.



BACKLOG OF FREIGHT AT NORTH SYDNEY- GOVERNMENT ACTION TO LESSEN-POSSIBLE USE OF HERCULES AIRCRAFT

Mr. John Lundrigan (Gander-Twillingate):: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Gleave:: I have a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I believe the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate has a supplementary question, and he has been recognized for that purpose. I will see the hon. member afterwards.


John Howard Lundrigan: My question is related to the backlog in the movement of goods. In view of the fact that exactly a month ago today there was a backlog of 650 cars in North Sydney, at which time the minister said it would be cleaned up in two weeks, yet today there are still 650 cars there at this very minute, can the minister indicate whether he is now prepared to go along with the co-operative spirit of the Minister of National Defence expressed on Monday when he indicated he would be willing to place more department of National Defence Hercules aircraft at the disposal of east coast terminals in order to move this freight? Has he taken concrete action to put that into effect immediately?


Hon. Jean Marchand (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the strike in Saint John, notwithstanding the collapse of the bridge, and notwithstanding the rail strike, right now there is a backlog of a little more than 100 cars in comparison with the number last year at which time the hon. member never said anything. Last year at this time there was a backlog of 520 cars; now, there is a backlog of 670. So, I think we have brought the situation back to about normal, despite the increase in freight movement. So, I do not know what the hon. member is trying to ask. No need has been expressed by the government of Newfoundland which has not been met.


John Howard Lundrigan: I cannot understand why the minister is getting so upset.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Turner (Ottawa-Carleton):: We have a new statesman here.


John Howard Lundrigan: Without getting into a fight with my colleague, who is noted for that in the House of Commons, may I place before the Minister of National Defence a question. Perhaps he can give me a more rational answer, being in charge of defence. I wish to ask him if he is prepared to uphold a commitment made on Monday, which is recorded in Hansard, that the government is willing to place certain aircraft at our disposal to help us clean up the backlog, a backlog which is exactly the same today as it was a month ago, whereas you said it would be cleaned up in two weeks. Here I am pointing to the Minister of Transport.
October 18, 1973


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I will recognize the minister, but I would remind both amiable members that they should address the Chair as much as possible.


Hon. James Richardson (Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, I know that the hon. member realizes that this is not a military operation. It is a problem of transport. I said in the House two days ago, and I repeat again today, that the Air Forces are prepared and ready to be of assistance whenever they can be of help in this case, but the request must come from the Minister of Transport-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


James Armstrong Richardson: -and he has just answered the hon. member.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The Chair will recognize the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate on a last supplementary, and then I believe the hon. member for Saskatoon-Biggar has his own supplementary. I would hope we would try to make some headway with questions.


John Howard Lundrigan: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is very straightforward. In view of the seriousness of the situation will the Minister of Transport please co-operate with his colleague, the Minister of National Defence, in order to have some more planes placed at our disposal-perhaps seven or eight planes for a couple of weeks? I am sure that would help us get 400 or 500 of these cars moving.


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, everybody recognizes that it not just with the Hercules aircraft that we will substantially reduce the backlog. The Hercules aircraft were brought there in order to meet the urgent cases.


John Howard Lundrigan: And the cement.


Jean Marchand: And the cement, which you misrepresented to the House, because it wasn't cement from Newfoundland but cement brought in for Nova Scotia. Anyway, that is another subject.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, we have a co-ordinator nominated by the government of Newfoundland, and if he indicates there is any urgency then I have the undertaking of the Minister of National Defence that Hercules aircraft will be brought there in a very short time to meet the urgency. But right now if the hon. gentleman wants to indicate some urgency, outside of the furniture car he tried to put on a priority list, we are prepared to listen.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Howard Lundrigan: On a question of privilege-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Howard Lundrigan: The minister's answer isn't really as concrete as the product he is moving. But on the question
Oral Questions
of privilege we all, as members of parliament, have had occasion to try to help local business firms in our areas by trying to get products moved, and that is what is reflected in the particular circumstance mentioned by the minister. We are not talking about all of the backlog being of an emergency nature. We are talking about the very inefficient nature of the operation. We do not feel we should have to call on DOT because of that. We are just asking for ordinary freight deliveries.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Saskatoon-Biggar.



ALLEGED OFFER OF RESIGNATION OF MEMBER OF WHEAT BOARD

Alfred Pullen Gleave: Mr. Speaker, I would like to return to the original question. I direct my supplementary to the minister in charge of the Canadian Wheat Board. In view of the fact that the grain movement has been delayed to the extent that it has, and that the block system and the operation of the quota system have become almost totally paralyzed and are in a state of disorder, and in view of the statement carried in the press the other day to the effect that at least some members of the Canadian Wheat Board were offering their resignations, may I ask the minister if he has received any offer of resignation from any member of the Board, and whether or not he is considering accepting it?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to inform the hon. member that I have heard nothing about resignation from any member of the Board.



FINANCE


Hon. Paul Hellyer (Trinity):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. In view of the fact that several indicators, including the gross national product and the real domestic product, for the second quarter indicate a substantial reduction in the growth rate, does the minister intend to continue to follow a restrictive monetary policy parallel to that predicted for the United States by Arthur Burns?


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, the monetary policy of the United States is keeping their monetary supply growth at a negative rate. Our monetary supply is expanding at an annual rate of 15 per cent.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: On a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker, that does not seem to be indicated by the rate of unemployment. In view of the statement by Arthur Smith that "1974 is likely to be a year not only of slower over-all growth in output and employment-

October 18, 1973
Oral Questions


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: "-but also of some increase in unemployment-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: "-during the year, relatively high continuing levels of over-all price increases-


Mr. Speaker:: May we have order, please.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: "-accelerated wage and salary advances-


Some hon. Members:: Order!


Paul Theodore Hellyer: "-generally reduced profit margins-


Mr. Speaker:: Will the hon. member resume his seat?


Paul Theodore Hellyer: "-and possibly of some further increases in interest rates-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member is entirely out of order. I have been calling the hon. member to order for some time, asking him to resume his seat. He is an experienced member of this chamber, and he knows that the question he is asking now is entirely out of order.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Paul Theodore Hellyer: On a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker, I regret very much that I could not hear your intervention at all because of the catcalls.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: I accept the hon. member's explanation, but the question still remains out of order when asked in those terms.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Now, Mr. Speaker, I would like to pose my supplementary question, if I may.


Mr. Speaker:: I certainly do not want to be difficult, but again I refer to the hon. member's experience in the House and seek his co-operation. The hon. member knows very well that he cannot ask a question which is clearly out of order and then claim a right to the automatic privilege of asking a supplementary. It is clear that if a member asks a question that is out of order he does so at the risk to his right to ask a supplementary. But to show that I do not hold this incident against the hon. member, I take it as certain that he will heed the Chair's advice in the future, and so I will recognize the hon. member, not on a supplementary but on another question which I hope will be in order.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: I appreciate your co-operation very much, Mr. Speaker. I regret the long preamble but it seemed necessary to ask the Minister of Finance if, in view of all of these indicators, he does not worry so profoundly that he would now fire some of his advisers and hire contemporary economists who would help him prepare a rational policy?


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Fraser Valley West.



CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS


Mr. Mark Rose (Fraser Valley West):: Mr. Speaker, I have given notice of my question to the Minister of Transport. In light of the fact that CN management policies have contributed to significant numbers of experienced Vancouver area yardmen, machinists and truck drivers quitting their jobs in recent months, thus adversely affecting rail service for all of British Columbia, I would like to ask whether the minister and his colleague, the Minister of Labour, are engaged in efforts to solve this problem and, if so, what specific steps are being taken?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, I think it is quite true that this is a very difficult situation in British Columbia. As was the case in the movement of grain, there is definitely a shortage of lumber cars in British Columbia, which is due to many reasons, such as the increase in the activity and the strike at the National Steel Corporation where cars that were supposed to be fabricated were not fabricated. Because of the seriousness of the situation, I propose to call in as soon as possible the President of the CNR and the President of CPR to see what they intend to do in order to correct the situation.


Mark Willson Rose: I thank the minister for his answer. Certainly, there are problems. They are not single problems, they are multifaceted but these have resulted in low morale-


An hon. Member:: Question.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Perhaps the hon. member might like to ask the supplementary.


Mark Willson Rose: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. I did not hear your intervention because there were so many catcalls to my right. I should like to ask the Minister of Transport, since these problems resulted in poor service and certainly low morale as well as a shortage of boxcars especially for interior forest products, if he is considering supporting a House order for the Standing Committee on Transportation to visit Vancouver for an on-the-spot investigation and a close look at the situation?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, I think before considering or making a decision on this I will wait until I see the report of the representatives of the Presidents of CN and CP and see if they can correct the situation. If there is still a problem after that, maybe we can have a discussion on the subject brought forward this afternoon.
October 18, 1973



MEETING OF MINISTER WITH UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE

Mr. Sinclair Stevens (Yorh-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. In anticipation of Dr. Kissinger's visit to this country in the early part of November, I was wondering if the minister could indicate if he plans to meet again with Secretary of the Interior Morton of the United States so that the wounds might be healed that were opened in their last meeting 18 months ago by the minister?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, I will be meeting with the President's energy co-ordinator next week.



AGRICULTURE


Mr. Heath Macquarrie (Hillsborough):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the concise and laconic Minister of Agriculture. Can the minister reveal when the federal milk subsidy will be made applicable to and operative in Prince Edward Island? Can he indicate the reasons for the delay on this serious matter concerning which Premier Campbell made strong public criticism yesterday?


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member confused me with some of his complimentary remarks and I did not hear what subsidy he was talking about.


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: Mr. Speaker, may I say the subject is milk, the province is Prince Edward Island and the problem is delay.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Fairweather:: As is usual with that government.



VETERANS AFFAIRS


Mr. Dan McKenzie (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Veterans Affairs. In light of the fact that the award of the Public Service Arbitration Tribunal pertaining to the nursing groups in veterans' hospitals has been totally unacceptable to the professional institute of the Public Service and morale and nursing attention will now only deteriorate, will the minister withdraw his public statement that the nursing groups who register complaints with members of parliament are only practising gimmickry?


Mr. Reynolds:: Mr. Speaker, to the Solicitor General-
Oral Questions


Robert Gordon Lee Fairweather: Wait a minute; the minister was answering.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Obviously, the minister wanted to reply to the hon. member's question, but I suggest a question asked in those terms is out of order and the Chair cannot allow the minister to respond. If the hon. member wants to rephrase the question he will be recognized for that purpose, following which I will recognize the hon. member for Burnaby-Richmond-Delta.


A. Daniel McKenzie: Mr. Speaker, the minister made a statement on a television show last night that the nurses were only practising gimmickry when they made complaints to members of parliament. I think this has to be explained, Mr. Speaker.



PENITENTIARIES


John Douglas Reynolds: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Solicitor General regarding the riots last week in the British Columbia penitentiary and it relates to the resignation of the inmates committee. In view of the fact that the prison staff-[DOT]


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: They all want out.


An hon. Member:: It is a walkout.


An hon. Member:: There is no one left.


John Douglas Reynolds: In view of the fact that today the prison staff announced that they would work to order, would the minister advise if he will speed up his promise for an independent inquiry into the administration of the British Columbia penitentiary?


Hon. Warren Allmand (Solicitor General):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member asked me if I would conduct an independent inquiry into the situation at the British Columbia penitentiary and I told him I would consider that. We are presently having an internal investigation of the situation there. I might say that I am not convinced that the solution to the problem at the B.C. penitentiary is another inquiry or study. The major problem is over-population and we are looking for a resolution of it. We are building a new penitentiary at Mission, British Columbia and are looking for a site for another penitentiary in British Columbia.



BRITISH COLUMBIA-SUGGESTED ADJUSTMENT OF RECREATIONAL TIME

Mr. Stuart Leggatt (New Westminster):: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question deals with one of the real problems at that penitentiary which is a lack of recreational time for inmates. Can the minister advise if any adjustment has been made in regard to the recreational

October 18, 1973
Oral Questions
time, particularly for winter, which is one of the causes of riots?


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell the hon. member right now that there has been any adjustment in the recreational time for inmates but I will look into that. Again, I must say that the lack of time for recreation for the inmates is due to the very large population in the B.C. pen and the number of staff available to handle that population. We are getting resources now to deal with that but it will take some time to resolve the problem.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


Mr.  R. Gordon L. Fairweather@Fundy-Royal: Mr. Speaker, I have a housekeeping question for the President of the Privy Council. I wonder if the House leader would discuss with the vice-chairman of the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairte the need to call the committee on an urgent basis to complete consideration of the right to privacy bill, C-176.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Robert Gordon Lee Fairweather: Will the minister accept our assurance or an assurance from this side that we are anxious to expedite the passage of this bill?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (President of the Privy Council):: Mr. Speaker, the answer to both points is yes.



BUGGING AND WIRETAPPING


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary question to the President of the Privy Council. Will the minister discuss with the Chair and the staff, while we are waiting for the government to get off its backside and get this Bill C-176 back before the committee so that it can be dealt with, the interim security of caucus rooms so that the occurrence that was raised by the Leader of the New Democratic Party yesterday will not happen again?


Mr. Guay (St. Boniface):: It is obvious you cannot understand what you read.


Mr. Muir:: Joe, you are sitting on your brain.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: As is well known, the responsibility for the House of Commons and its operation does not reside within the government; it is a responsibility that is presently ably discharged by the Speaker of the House of Commons.



TRANSPORT


Allan Bruce McKinnon: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. To clarify a great deal of confusion about a point of order that was raised yesterday, does the minister intend to call for tenders for the transportation contracts between Victoria International Airport and Victoria?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, I think that the point that was raised by the hon. member for Esquimalt-Saanich yesterday was well taken. There are a few facts on this that he was not aware of when we discussed the matter. Between the two days when the question was put and the answer was given in Hansard there was somebody who indicated his interest in tendering and that is why we have this apparent contradiction. When the question was put there was nobody to indicate an interest and after that somebody-I do not remember the name-was interested. That is why we indicated to the Vancouver Island Transportation Company that we were going to call tenders, because there was someone interested.


Allan Bruce McKinnon: Are we then to consider that the minister's answer as reported on page 6839 of Hansard, is inoperative?


Jean Marchand: The question was put at the beginning of July and the answer was ready at the end of July when the House adjourned. This is why there has been such a long delay. In the meantime, somebody indicated he was interested in tendering. That is why the letter was sent on September 18, and that is why I think we should consider that the answer given should not be taken as the true answer.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!



INCOME TAX


Mr. H. W. Danforth (Kent-Essex):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to address my question to the Minister of Finance. Can the minister tell us whether the government has made a favourable ruling on representations made to his office that regulations for tax purposes be changed so as to allow corn and soybeans to be classified as grain, thus enabling payments to producers to be deferred and classified as income in the next taxation year as is the case of grains so defined under the act?


John Napier Turner: We are
reviewing this matter very carefully.

October 18, 1973

Capital Punishment BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE



WEEKLY STATEMENT


Robert Lorne Stanfield: supplementary question to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources for the purpose of clarifying a most important matter. The minister said a little while ago that the price of crude in Canada would be based upon the price of offshore oil landed in Montreal. Does he mean it is government policy that the price of crude in Canada will in fact be the price of offshore supplies landed at Montreal, adjusted for transportation costs across the country and that it will move with the price of offshore oil landed in Montreal? Or does he mean simply that the price of crude in Canada will be based upon some formula related to the price of crude oil supplies landed in Montreal?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: The second formulation by the hon. gentleman is the accurate one.


Mr. Speaker:: Orders of the day.


Walter C. Carter: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have been trying to get Your Honour's attention for the purpose of asking an important question of the Minister of Fisheries, one which affects the livelihood of a large number of Canadians.


Mr. Speaker:: Of course, as usual I can tell hon. members I have no objection to a question being asked, not as a point of order, but as a straight question, if it is the wish of the House.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: I appreciate that the hon. member has been trying to get the floor during the whole of the question period, but so have other hon. members. I try to be as fair as I can.



FISHERIES


Walter C. Carter: My question, Mr. Speaker, is directed to the Minister of Fisheries. It follows the motion I sought to move under Standing Order 43 this afternoon and it concerns the request by the fishermen and by the government of Newfoundland for compensation to help overcome the severe losses suffered in the storms of June 17 and 18. Has a decision been made in this connection and, if not, when can we expect one?


Hon. Jack Davis (Minister of Fisheries):: As the hon. member knows, the payments will be made by the provincial governments. The provincial governments are aware that the federal government will be making a substantial contribution toward these payments. The payments could, in fact, be made now, but the precise amount of the federal contribution to the province has not been determined. It will be announced in the next few days.


Mr. Bell:: I just wish to ask the regular question about House business, Mr. Speaker.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: As hon. members know, we are under a special order today dealing with the amendments to the Criminal Code. If the debate on the report stage should terminate earlier than 10.45 this evening, I would call the CNR financing bill to occupy the House until voting time. Tomorrow we shall consider third reading of the amendment to the Criminal Code. My present plan is to keep that item before the House until it is completed. Early next week I shall be able to consider with my counterparts what further business we shall undertake.


Thomas Miller Bell: Would the minister interpret the resolution of the House and say whether private members' hour would come up if we were discussing the CNR resolution? And if the debate on capital punishment, on Bill C-2, ended very much earlier than we all expect, what would we do?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: My expectation is that we would not face such an issue before Monday, even in the most favourable circumstances. But in such an eventuality I would probably call the Foreign Investment Review Act, depending on the availability of the minister. I will inquire whether he will be back from Moscow.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill C-2, to amend the Criminal Code, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, and motion No. 3, of Mr. Lawrence.
Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, when the House took recess at one o'clock I had almost completed my remarks and I have only one or two further comments to make. I have in mind the amendment which calls for capital punishment in the case of a person who commits a second murder having already been convicted of murder.
The issue here is a question of security for the people of Canada. When we consider the way in which the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) has been managing the prisons of this country, we can only conclude, I submit, that the amendment has a great deal of merit. There have been so many escapes from our prisons that a great many people have written to me from various parts of Canada expressing alarm and concern. In these circumstances, the amendment must surely commend itself even to the Solicitor General. In my view, the amendment offered by the hon. member for Northumberland-Durham (Mr. Lawrence) in connection with those who commit a second murder

October 18, 1973
Capital Punishment
deserves considerable attention even by hon. members who would be inclined to vote for the bill as it now stands.


Mr. Stan Darling (Parry Sound-Muskoka):: Mr. Speaker, once more I rise to take part in the debate on Bill C-2 and to support the amendment in the name of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) and the one in the name of the hon. member for Northumberland-Durham (Mr. Lawrence). We have heard a great many speeches since this bill was introduced last winter; in the neighbourhood of 200, I would say. I doubt whether at this point our speeches are likely to change the minds of many hon. members of this House.
We can address ourselves to our constituents, or to those in the gallery; we can speak to the fourth estate or to the public at large, but it boils down to one factor-the 264 members of this House who will be making up their minds and deciding what is to happen to the measure before us. Many of us could be quoted as saying, "My mind is made up. Don't confuse me with the facts." I believe I have mentioned this before. Everything that can be said has been said many times. It might be a good idea for each of us to address Your Honour and say, "Mr. Speaker, my remarks can be found on page 3964 of Hansard of May 22, and again on page 5895 of Hansard of July 23." We could certainly cut down a great deal on printing and time, and get down to other business.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Stan Darling: Those of us who feel that capital punishment should be retained should not consider themselves obliged to go into each detail of their reasoning. Those of our abolitionist friends who are misguided in their thoughts, in the minds of some of us, do not have to trot out the gory details of executions going back to the Middle Ages, and so on. I feel we should try to get this bill through as soon as possible.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Stan Darling: As one favouring retention, I am against hanging. I believe it is a terrible and barbaric way of execution. But in the final analysis, when crimes have been committed such as those outlined in the motion of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert, such as rape killings, capital punishment must be applied and it must be administered as painlessly as possible. I think this is the feeling that should be presented to members of the House. I am aware that this is an emotional subject. I am also aware, as are all hon. members, that the overwhelming majority of the people of Canada are in favour of, and in fact are demanding, the retention of capital punishment.
There are some very fine members, even some not in our party, who are abolitionists and I should like to see some of them come back after the next election. This is why I hope they will give second thought to the amendments to this bill when they are finally voted upon. Whether they realize it or not, our constituents are very concerned about this question. It is all very well for the most knowledgeable members to speak at great length and to say they know a good deal better than their constituents what is good for the people they represent. That is possibly so in

certain complicated cases. But there is nothing complicated about this capital punishment bill, or as our friends in the for th estate and on television call it, this hanging bill. This is not a hanging bill; it is a not hanging bill.
The press and other members of the media would by a great majority favour abolition if a poll were taken of them. As a result, their news forecasts have been slanted, and let no one think that is not so. I have not yet seen today's newspapers, but I am sure that in some papers across Canada we will be seeing grisly cartoons portraying the terrible aspects of capital punishment. We have all seen cartoons of the cold, grey dawn, the noose and the scaffold. A great many of us who are in favour of capital punishment are at the same time opposed to hanging. We just want to see murderers dispatched as painlessly and as quickly as possible once they are found guilty of murder in the first degree.
One newscaster earlier this year, when reading the news made no mention of Bill C-2; again there was reference to the "hanging bill," and portrayed behind him was the noose and the scaffold. In all fairness, he might just as well have portrayed a murdered child or elderly person on the screen behind him. Let us not kid ourselves; the media can shape public opinion and they have done so. As I have said before, and as many hon. members have agreed, the media have never been able to sell the Canadian people on abolition of the death penalty in Canada: about 90 per cent of the people are still in favour of capital punishment.
Some members of the House to whom I have spoken since returning here indicated that they have received a great deal of flak, shall I say, or criticism from their constituents. One of our members this morning said he had had a change of heart, that he would be supporting the amendment and voting against the bill. If my memory serves me correctly, 138 members voted in favour of this bill on May 29, and 114 voted against. That is a difference of 24. So those of us who feel that law and order is necessary, and that we must retain capital punishment in the law of Canada, have only to talk to 13 people and get them to change their vote in order to defeat this bill, which is the wish of the people of Canada as the government is well aware. I am sure the Solicitor General knows the feelings of the ordinary citizens of Canada. The percentage in favour of retention runs anywhere from 90 per cent to the most conservative estimate, with a small "c" of 60 to 70 per cent.
Millions of words have been printed on this subject. Whether or not the people in the cities are aware of it, people in rural Canada are very concerned about their safety, about the fact that law and order is not what it should be in this age of permissiveness. As a result, I am sure if this parliament in its wisdom decided to defeat Bill C-2, this would truly reflect the wishes, indeed the demands, of the people of Canada.


Mr. Arnold Peters (Timiskaming):: Mr. Speaker, the two amendments now before the House are an indication that some modification must take place in relation to those in society to whom the death penalty should apply. I listened to the speech made by the mover of the second amendment and was surprised to hear him say that if he were able to get it accepted, he would vote against the main bill that he was amending. What he is suggesting is
October 18, 1973

that if a person commits murder, following which he serves a term of imprisonment, having been tried and convicted, and is released and commits a second murder, he should be hanged. Since he has already said that he wants them to be hanged the first time, that seems to me to be an anomaly.
His second point concerned the hanging of people who hijack aircraft. If there was ever a field in which more hysteria has been developed, with less justification, it is in the field of hijacking. In a very short period of time many countries passed a convention which was acceptable to most.


Mr. Gilbert:: But it is unenforceable.


William Arnold Peters: The hon. member says it is unenforceable. That is true. It is a bit like riots. You can make a lot of pious statements about prohibiting riots or you can read the riot act. You can do that with hijacking. The point I want to make is that hijacking is carried out for many reasons. The first is monetary. Some hijackers have held up aircraft for very large ransoms. That is the worst possible type of abuse. In my opinion countries should not bargain on that basis. The company that owns the aircraft should not be permitted to pay the ransom. The safety of everyone on board is sacrificed because the aircraft is worth $5 million, $7 million or $10 million. No price is put on the lives of the people on board. A great deal of hysteria has been built up around hijacking; therefore it is very easy to include this matter as an amendment to the bill before us. It involves something that is fundamental to this debate: either you are in favour of the death penalty or you are not.
When the five-year moratorium on the death penalty for murder in Canada was originally introduced, protection was given to prison guards and policemen. That was a bit like saying, "We are going to have a war, but we must provide special protection for the soldiers." However, it is the civilian, the innocent bystander who is not trained to protect himself. Civilians are not involved and in many cases are not even familiar with the problem. I was never in favour of providing that kind of protection even to satisfy those trying to put a stumbling-block in the way of total abolition. I always felt the prison guards knew what they were doing. Also, a policeman knows what he is doing. He would not command the salary he is receiving today if it were not for the fact he is taking a risk. Anyone who is afraid of being shot at should not be a policeman. Most policemen are not shot at, but they know there is that possibility. Soldiers do not think they will be killed; very few would go to war if they thought they would be. We originally had these exceptions, and now we are dealing with more exceptions in this bill.
What really bothers me is the attitude of the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand). If he had minded his own business and did what he started out to do, namely, asked that the moratorium be extended for another five years, that would have been fine. I am sure there would not have been this great hue and cry. There certainly would not have been the two amendments that are before us today. There are other amendments that have not yet have been reached which are just as foolish. One is the female
Capital Punishment
chauvinist amendment. Each amendment adds another exception and I object to them.
I was prompted to rise today by the statement of the Solicitor General. He calmly told this House that because of the great problem of overcrowding he is prepared to build more penitentiaries. However, he does not have the guts to fire Mr. Street, the man responsible for the overcrowding. The parole board is inoperative. Instead of doing something about the parole board, the minister is asking parliament to add more people to it. You can have all the people you want on the parole board, but unless a certain percentage of prisoners are released on parole in an orderly fashion it does not matter a hoot.
The minister said an additional penitentiary will be built in British Columbia and that he is looking for land for another one. He must have a hole in his head. The minister should be the last to bring forward this type of legislation. An easy way for him to get rid of some of the people in penitentiaries would be to hang them. Why has he brought forward this piece of legislation? By regulation, the minister has made it mandatory that a person convicted of murder be committed to the penitentiary for ten years. It is also suggested that the judge will be allowed to add to that an additional ten years. The minister talks about building more penitentiaries. If he continues with this kind of legislation we will have the biggest building boom in history; we will not be able to keep up with building new penitentiaries because of the numbers waiting to get into them.
By providing a mandatory prison sentence we do not allow the parole system to operate. If we are really that backward, we should do what the retentionists say-let's go back to an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If a person does something wrong, put him in jail. I presume the Solicitor General is in favour of bringing back the paddle, the lash and all the other things that go with an obsolete penal reform system.
The question is, not how many exceptions there should be but whether anyone should be hanged. It hinges on whether society believes in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If so, it means there is no penal reform. It means the Solicitor General will be right in saying that more penitentiaries will have to be built. In that case we may accomplish something in this country which no other civilized society has ever done; we may have the largest percentage of persons in penitentiaries of any country in the world. That is a possibility. If Mr. Street remains in control of the parole board, we will certainly be heading in the direction of accomplishing that. Also, this Solicitor General has done more than his share in that regard.
Surely, in a country as advanced as Canada we do not believe in the argument of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Surely, we believe that people can be rehabilitated. One of my colleagues told me today that he visited the penitentiary in Prince Albert. He told a very interesting story about a man who had been in solitary confinement, and segregated from the other inmates for a number of years. He said when the man got out, he was crazy. Obviously, the court did not decide he was crazy or he would not have been sentenced for the crime. However, from a layman's point of view something is wrong with this person, yet he is released and may do whatever he did

October 18, 1973
Capital Punishment
before because we have not really helped him. We do not help him by punishing him. We help him by attempting to fit him back into society. I am sure no one would suggest that we have penitentiaries for any other reason than to contain people who stray from the norms of society. They are contained there not for their own sake but for the benefit of society.
We place a person in segregation, we leave him there for a period of years, then at the end of his sentence we allow him to come out of segregation-where he was kept because he was considered too dangerous to mingle with the other inmates-and we put him on the street. When we do this, something must be wrong with our heads. If there is a mad dog in a pound it is ridiculous for the poundkeep-er to say, "We cannot train him, therefore we will put him on the street." I do not think anyone in this House would agree that a man who for years has been segregated in a penitentiary because he is dangerous is suddenly eligible to be put on the street. However, that is what we do. In many cases we put on the street a man who is considered by all the guards and most of the prisoners in the institution to be mentally unbalanced.
The minister has done very little in this regard. He has not done anything about classification officers or improvement of psychiatric treatment. He has not done anything in co-operation with the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lang), who plays with wheat instead of looking after the Department of Justice. The Minister of Justice should be making a decision in respect of changes in sentencing people. He should be taking steps so they may be refitted into society. This is what the parole board is supposed to do but it is not what it has been doing. The members of the parole board have been going around talking to these people. It is like a premiere performance in a theatre. The man has been waiting for the day when the parole board will interview him at the penitentiary. He has rehearsed and thought about what he will say. He has been doing this for weeks and weeks. He has a command performance before the board. If there is anything more phony than this situation, I fail to see it. The inmate puts on his grand performance and the members of the parole board say, "Sonny, you can go home because we think you are reformed" or, "We do not like the show you put on, so you had better go back and try again later".
Surely we should look at the problem. There are members of the Conservative Party who say they stand for law and order. They stand for law and order like Spiro Agnew. The case of Spiro Agnew is a very good example of law and order. This is a man who should have kept his mouth shut because he had his hand in the till. I am not suggesting that the Conservatives are in that position, but they may be looking at the past rather than today in respect of this problem. It is a fact that very few people murder a second time. It is also a fact, with the exception of political terrorists, that very few people have been killed in hijackings. Hon. members know that with relation to the number of people carried by international airlines, the number of people killed is infinitesimal.
They must know that very few people have been murdered in Canada during the last 20 or 30 years. They must also know that most of us believe in law and order. Most

Canadians are proud of the fact that one can walk down the street in most of our communities at night without any danger of being robbed, mugged or raped. This is not true in other countries. It does not have anything to do with the death penalty, the penitentiary system or anything else. It is an attitude of society. It is interesting that in places like England where there are large populations in concentrated areas, the members of the police forces are not armed and very seldom are the gangsters armed. We also find that robbery with violence is seldom carried out.
I suggest that the people of Canada who stand for law and order should not relate this to belief in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. There is a more enlightened way. If the authors of the Bible were to return today, I am sure they would write it in a different way. I am sure they would not be in favour of stoning people and many of the other things which took place. We are asking for public hanging again, in the name of law and order. There is no record to indicate that this has an effect on law and order.
I suggest these amendments only add to the two or three exceptions we now have. The issue, really, is not whether more murderers should be given the death penalty; it is, rather, that we should face the problem in respect of law and order. We should face these problems as they develop. This the Solicitor General has not done. We should start to rehabilitate people on the day we put them in jail. We should provide them with sex in the penitentiaries and all the other amenities of society before we release them.
If there is anything that bothers the average Canadian, it is the differing treatment given to people in penitentiaries. What happened in respect of Mr. Ballard? He was a white-collar prisoner so he received the best treatment. What does the blue-collar prisoner get? He does not get the same treatment. He does not receive the type of legal counsel provided for Mr. Ballard, because the legal advice provided to him is free or almost free. Now we have the situation where Mr. Ballard gets out. He does not give the money back. Perhaps the income tax people will collect some of it on a sliding scale. We give him all the advantages. He is not asked to go into the ordinary penitentiary; the penitentiary people placed him in a halfway house, with a quarterway house just down the street. I do not know whether the minister is a good friend of Mr. Ballard, but what was done by the parole board in that instance was not normal. It was done because Mr. Ballard is-


William Warren Allmand: I rise on a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: May we have order, please. The minister rises on a question of privilege.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has spoken a lot of nonsense this afternoon. I was waiting to reply to him later, but on this point I feel I must reply right away. To begin with, Mr. Ballard went through the same process for parole as anyone else. He was eligible only after serving one-third of his sentence. Then he was granted parole by the board, which granted it to him as a quasi-judicial body. In addition, he paid back the debts he owed. The parole board encourages an inmate to pay back the money
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he owes after having committed a crime such as the one that Mr. Ballard committed whenever that is possible.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I suggest to the minister, and I think he will agree with me, that this is hardly a question of privilege, although I appreciate why the minister wanted to rise at this time and make his point. However, this gives me the opportunity to remind the hon. member for Timiskaming (Mr. Peters) that in any event his time expired at 4.41. He may continue only with the unanimous consent of the House.


William Arnold Peters: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I should like to accept the correction made by the Solicitor General. I am certainly happy to learn that the information which I obtained from the newspapers is erroneous. I am also happy to learn that the parole board was responsible for the arrangement made respecting Mr. Ballard. However, I am surprised that the Solicitor General has not made this information available to the national press so the general public could be informed.
[ Translation]


René Matte: Mr. Speaker, I am still puzzled about the amendments to Bill C-2, because they apparently show that we are far from agreeing on the basic principle of the legislation seeking to abolish the death penalty. It is wished to abolish capital punishment while admitting criminal liability in a larger number of cases so as to punish with capital punishment the truly capital murders. Therefore, this dilemma always brings us back to the basic questions which we must ask ourselves in order to decide how we should consider this bill.
Of course, I shall repeat what I said at an earlier stage of the debate on this bill: does our present society deserve to have capital punishment abolished? Is our society prepared to admit that we should abolish capital punishment? It is most important since it could be demonstrated ad absurdum that if an individual does not commit any murder, there is no need to discuss capital punishment. This, of course, is what we would like.
Even if capital punishment were maintained, even if we could improve society to the point where capital murder would no longer exist, it would not be applied.
Therefore, since the great majority of Canadians are in favour of retaining capital punishment-this seems obvious and a referendum would actually prove it no doubt- and even though we should ask ourselves whether our society is prepared to agree to abolition, we should choose retention instead while shaping the law so that crime would disappear from our society.
Mr. Speaker, this has not yet materialized. We have not yet passed enough measures in favour of the true freedom and development of the individual so that crime may disappear, but unfortunately we have not yet reached that point. But we must judge in a concrete way and say: Well, since in society, even modern society, wanton crime still exists, therefore society does not deserve the abolition of the death penalty. And it is society itself which can alone determine whether it must be abolished or not since all society has to do is to ensure that there are no more murderers, and even if one law maintained capital punishment, that law would obviously never be enforced.
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In my view, it would be a mistake to abolish capital punishment on all kinds of more or less humanitarian pretexts. We would be ill-advised; we should follow rather the very evolution of society.
On the other hand, the study of the amendments now before us shows that we want the abolition of capital punishment, but that it should be maintained in such and such a case. Judgments would then have to be much more accurate and complete, which means that all the cases in which there really is a capital crime, where the crime is really foul and truly deserves the supreme punishment, should be accurately described. They would all have to be listed. Since there is the danger of forgetting some, it is much easier not to list all the cases and instead of reestablishing capital punishment, to amend the legislation so that each murder case be judged on its own value and that the judge may consider all the facts and decide whether there really was a crime, whether it was a capital or a foul murder or whether it was simply a case of self-defense, of accident, or manslaughter, etc. In fact, only judges can pass judgements in such cases once they are aware of all the facts. If they rule that the accused does not deserve capital punishment, they will simply pass judgement in consequence. And when they decide that a murder warrants capital punishment, they will give the sentence accordingly.
I think that presently that is the only logical way to consider capital punishment, that is to judge each case on its own true merit, under the real circumstances, so we will not continuously be forced to amend the law. That would make it truly possible to punish those who commit the most heinous crime there is.
The examination of those amendments leads us to that type of reflection, and that is why I say that we are getting lost in all that. In fact, why inflict capital punishment on a double murderer, as the amendment says, that would mean doing away with only one person who has already done away with two. It could be in both cases that they were not real capital murderers but because two crimes have been committed the supreme punishment would be approved. I find that still ambiguous. That is why we try by all possible means to bring the government to specify a few cases that could satisfy public opinion, the great majority of which favours the retention of capital punishment.
I think that we are simply losing our time and that it would be much simpler to do what most people want, that is maintain capital punishment and have each case judged in all justice to avoid forever misunderstandings or errors-we must come to that-that could lead to somebody being sentenced unjustly. I fully agree with that but, on the other hand, I think in today's society we must really punish those who deserve to be, and I would even say want to be, since when we deal with real murderers who are very dangerous, one can say that the role of society is nothing else than to get rid of them. We must not either establish a distinction that might be unfair, because when we say, as this legislation does, that capital punishment is maintained in cases of murders of prison guards or policemen, we are being unfair, in my opinion, to all other groups of people who have the same value and

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who, besides, Mr. Speaker, may happen to find themselves in situations similar to those of policemen and prison guards. I refer in particular to bank managers, cashiers, all these people who never know when they can expect to face gangsters. In my view, these people run the same risk and even more-since they usually do not carry any gun- as policemen or prison guards who expect such a situation and who therefore carry a gun and may defend themselves more easily, as part of their job.
Therefore, this provision in the case of murders of policemen and prison guards is, in my view, unfair to all other groups of citizens and I do not believe that our role in this chamber is to establish such distinctions. And if we look at statistics, Mr. Speaker, we realize that there are no more murders of policemen and prison guards than of any other group of citizens. For instance I referred to one particular group: bank employees. Even a businessman may at a given time be subject to the cupidity of gangsters and his life can be even more jeopardized than that of policemen.
I wonder then why he should not have the same advantages or he would not be under the act in the same way as policemen and prison guards. Thus the law contains something abnormal if not unfair and the only correction we should bring now would simply be to reinstate or maintain capital punishment but we could spell out for the judge the way prosecutions would have to be conducted in order to discover among all the murderers in general those whose crimes deserve the supreme punishment. I think this is the part we should play, and so we would agree with those who accept it. As our society breeds murderers, we have to respect the view of the vast majority of citizens and maintain capital punishment. Consequently, I do not think the amendments refine the act in any way and if they did, we should introduce many other amendments in order to determine all cases of murder deserving death punishment. But then we risk forgetting certain categories of crimes and, once again, to be unfair. This is why by simply maintaining capital punishment and judging each case on its own according to the circumstances, we could be fairer towards everyone and we could faithfully reflect the general views of all Canadians.


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: Mr. Speaker, I would have liked this morning to take part in the debate and I would have thought that we could perhaps have discussed the two amendments which were before us, since there is a rather close connection between both. However, we must accept the Speaker's decision, but it was ignored as soon as it was given, since almost anything has been discussed. The hon. member for Timiskaming (Mr. Peters) launched a scathing attack against the Parole Board. We have heard many other things. Several of my colleagues in the House have spoken to the bill as a whole rather than to the amendments. I would have liked to speak during the debate, because I could have easily-and I am going to do so-supported the amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) as well as that of the hon. member for Northumberland-Durham (Mr. Lawrence) although I find some difficulties in its wording, especially concerning the proposed paragraph c) on the second death.


I did not speak on second reading of this bill, Mr. Speaker. Some people may complain that this debate has been going on for a very long time, but I point out that it has taken place bit by bit. It started in January with the minister's speech proposing this amending bill. Then there were possibly two days of debate in February and, lo and behold, some debate in April, some in May, some in June and some in July. The government introduced the bill in January and I cannot for the life of me understand why it did not continue to deal with it at that time.
Probably these comments should be made on third reading. However, I believe that in dealing with this bill the minister has been flying kites, testing the wind and then retreating in face of the violent reaction of public opinion. Canadians, in the great majority of cases, disagree wholeheartedly with this bill and with the manner in which the administration of justice has been carried out by the government. It is like a man trying to test the temperature of his bath. He puts in his big toe, but the water is too hot so he removes his foot. He dances around a few times, as this government has done, and then puts his toe in again. This House went by dribs and drabs, and then we had that ludicrous performance in the committee hearings. I say that in all seriousness.
I know the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) is very serious and is dedicated to his job, but I suggest to him and to the administration, if it was in support of his move, that the amendment the minister put in committee was in violent contempt of parliament. I am not casting any reflection on the minister as to his own personal qualities, but he did not have the political guts, or the administration did not, to put that amendment or proposition to the House instead of asking the House to vote on a bill which was to be a mere extension. In addition, he then offered suckers or lollipops to soothe the objections of some of the abolitionists and also perhaps throwing a sop to those who believe the system was releasing convicted murderers and putting them back into society.
There were some unfortunate incidents as a result of that policy of sort of trial and error. Some uninformed, unintelligent ad hockery has been the history of this bill and what preceded it. Then there was the attempt in committee to totally abolish the death sentence. Why did they think the committee was going to be pressured, that it could be packed, that there was not to be any free vote, that party pressures would be on? Since one party in the committee, as a party position, had decided to abolish capital punishment, were government representatives going to be pressured into voting for the Solicitor General's amendment? This is where I find that this line of conduct was totally unacceptable and less than respectable.
The hon. member for Timiskaming (Mr. Peters) made sense with some of his remarks this afternoon, but unfortunately his ideological blindspots took over and he went on a trip. He is right when he says that somewhere, somehow, in the minds of a lot of people this is a debate about the abolition of capital punishment. Of course, it is
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not, because since 1967 the amendments to the Criminal Code have retained capital punishment.
People are wrong when they say that decision with regard to the abolition or retention of capital punishment is an exercise of the royal prerogative. I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, with all due deference, that this is not flaunting the law, it is flouting the law-that this is no reflection upon the royal prerogative as such. Yet we know who exercises it. For a short time I was a part of the system and I think it is wrong. But I will talk about that on third reading. This has been said before; the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield) said it in his remarks on second reading even though he is a convinced abolitionist.
We could remove all restrictions on capital punishment, those that exist in the law that goes back to 1961, or only those that were in the amendments of 1967: we could go back prior to 1961 and it would not make any difference with an administration that says there shall be no hanging. They will rationalize and find every excuse, legitimate or otherwise, to justify a commutation. All the documentation is privileged and no one can really judge objectively whether the commutation was legitimate or not.
I am not attacking the personality of any past solicitor general. The cabinet members were entitled to their views and I do say that they held them honestly. But, Mr. Speaker, I do not think the system is right and therefore I come back to my charge. When the newspaper editorialists, columnists and the media in general refer to this as a debate on the abolition of capital punishment, they are wrong. This is merely a bill for restriction of the categories of crime for which capital punishment shall be the penalty or may be the penalty. That is all, so let us be honest.
If there is abolition de facto, it lies in the exercise of the royal prerogative. I know what the law was before 1961, and certainly the occasional death was carried out, but the pattern was evident before that: it depended upon the views of those who sat in cabinet-not upon the views of parliament but upon the views of the men who were the dominant personalities. I do not like a system of justice which has that basis, Mr. Speaker, but be that as it may.
The amendment put forward by my colleague, the hon. member for Northumberland-Durham (Mr. Lawrence), tries to respond, as does the amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin), to public demand for a widening of the categories of murder to which the death penalty shall apply. This is a reduction of the so-called privilege of position, the privilege of right to life that is given to categories of persons in rather more hazardous walks of life, policemen on duty and prison guards. I will withhold my argument on that philosophical stance until later.
I fully agree that the amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert is merely trying to reassert a portion of the law that exists today, that of capital punishment, for the unlawful taking of life during the commission of a crime of violence. The amendment refers to rape or attempted rape, but surely there could be added other crimes of violence. My colleague from Northumberland-Durham suggested hijacking, and I agree in a way with the hon. member for Timiskaming who said that this is in response
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to public outcry. True enough, the crime is new and if it is a heinous crime let us recognize it as such; and if capital punishment is the answer to it in part, then so be it.
There is nothing so cowardly as a hijacker, whatever his motives may be. It may be a case, as the hon. member for Timiskaming (Mr. Peters) suggested, where some economic justification is supposed-a poor guy trying to get into the money. But I have never heard of that as a valid argument in favour of theft. Or it may be someone who feels that a political consideration justifies harming, threatening and even killing innocent persons who have no recourse. To this extent, I agree.
As to the second portion of the second amendment, I find the language a little difficult, though this might be corrected. The proposed amendment reads: in respect of any such person, where such person causes the death of a human being and has previously been convicted of murder-
Very well. Suppose a man has been convicted of noncapital murder and has served his sentence. He might be out on parole, or even that period of supervision might be over. And then he is convicted of manslaughter. Well, manslaughter certainly fits into the category of cases where a peson causes the death of a human being; the amendment does not say whether voluntarily or involuntarily, and to this extent the language is infelicitous. Be this as it may, it seems to me my hon. friend is responding to a public outcry which does not want society to be unprotected in such circumstances.
I can assure hon. members that the question of capital punishment loomed large as an issue on public platforms during the last election, at least in my part of the City of Edmonton. Unequivocal answers were demanded from candidates. The feeling was overwhelmingly in favour of the retention of the present law, that is, the 1961 amendments categorizing capital and non-capital murder. If the present administration were not so blind it would know this but, of course, the election results showed it was blind to public feeling, though the climate of opinion in western Canada was obvious. Thus, to the extent that these two amendments open up the bill-an ill-devised bill, in any case-1 intend to support them.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: Mr. Speaker, I think we can all agree with the hon. member who preceded me that, on paper, the bill before us is not one which abolishes capital punishment. But I recall very well the remarks of the Solicitor-General (Mr. Allmand) when he introduced it on second reading. I think he used the words "de facto abolition". At least, we inferred from his remarks that the bill was one along the road to total abolition. I think it is more correct to put it in that way. He said the bill before us took us along the road to abolition.
I agree with this. I believe we should be moving along the road to abolition. Most of the debate which has taken place has been concerned with the narrow issue of the death penalty or its abolition. That is as it should be. I think that is what the public are interested in and what they wish us to discuss. Before us today are two amendments. The first would impose capital punishment on

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those who commit a second murder. I think I am correct in saying that in the history of this country there have only been two instances where a convicted murderer has subsequently repeated his crime. So the number of people the amendment is attempting to catch is really quite insignificant.
As to the second portion of the amendment dealing with hijacking, the security precautions now in force, causing some inconvenience at airports, appear to be proving effective. Since they have been imposed there has not been a single hijacking incident in this country, and very few internationally. Therefore, I submit that the proposed amendment does nothing to increase public safety. Nevertheless, I agree with those who say the public are justifiably concerned about this issue because of the fear they have for their own safety. The difficulty is that capital punishment does nothing whatsoever to increase the safety of the Canadian people. Remember that as a society we originally decided to give up our right to defend ourselves as individuals. We gave up this right to another authority. It was in the nature of a bargain. We said: We will no longer defend ourselves; we will give that task to the police. At the same time we made a bargain with the police, and said: We shall obey the laws if you give us protection.
One of the causes for anxiety when we consider the rising crime rate is that every level of society has violated this bargain. Offenders range from the man who tries to beat a parking ticket to the man who flashes the lights of his car to tell others that a radar trap is ahead. The law has to apply to all of us, not just to some of us. This is something Spiro Agnew has just found out to his chagrin. It is for everybody. It is not "law for you, and I will give the orders." The great authority on law and order has been found with his hand in the cookie jar.


Harold Warren Danforth: Trial by newspaper.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: He was not tried by a newspaper but by a court. It is not a coincidence that most of the hard line law and order defenders are also advocates of capital punishment.
Capital punishment is not a solution. It is interesting to note the stages by which this debate developed into an emotional orgy in which members lost sight of reality. I am sorry the hon. member for Annapolis Valley (Mr. Nowlan) is not here. This is what he said in July about his decision to become an advocate of capital punishment. He said the case of Tanya Bush was the one which finally swung his opinion from abolition to retention. He said:
My friend, a learned criminal lawyer, fully knows the facts on Tanya Bush. They fit directly into the amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin). Three child killings and then, while the culprit is out on weekend leave from a penitentiary, because he has a grudge against Tanya Bush's father, he kills Tanya Bush, who is eight or nine years old. Four child killings, three girls and one boy.
As I say, I wish the hon. member for Annapolis Valley were in the House today, because if he would examine the facts he would find that the murderer of Tanya Bush murdered only once. Yet I have received letters from people insisting that this man was repeatedly a murderer. No one will defend that kind of monstrous conduct. He was a dangerous sexual offender. With the kind of emo-

tional orgy we are engaging in we have lost all sense of logic and reason. I hope when the hon. member for Annapolis Valley finds out the real facts of the Tanya Bush case, the case that apparently convinced him to be an advocate of capital punishment, he will equally be persuaded to return to the sensible position that he once took, that of abolition.
The real facts are that capital punishment does not increase public safety; it reduces it. There is every reason to believe this. First of all, the kind of person who murders is one who often has a suicidal tendency. The question of penalty is immaterial; he may commit a murder in order to seek death.


Paul Yewchuk: Where did you get that from?


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: From 16 years of experience. That is one instance where capital punishment reduces public safety. A second, and perhaps more important one, is the refusal of a jury to convict when they know that the death penalty will compound their error if they make one. Put a person in a dock for a week, then try to convince the jury over and over again that they must be certain beyond reasonable doubt of his guilt before taking the man's life, and the chances of his being released are much greater when there is a death penalty hanging over his head. Therefore, if you want to increase public safety you do not vote for capital punishment. Under capital punishment there is all sorts of evidence that the guilty go free.
Let me give the House another example. Let me go back to the Tanya Bush case to which the hon. member for Annapolis Valley referred some time ago. This was the case that convinced him to change his position. The evidence against the accused was circumstantial. There was evidence that two Crown witnesses changed their story. There was no eye witness to the crime. The chances of that man's being freed on the basis of the case they made out against him would have been much higher had capital punishment been hanging over him and the jury had to be sure within moral certainty that they would not take his life in error.


Paul Yewchuk: What about keeping him in jail for life then?


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: There is no doubt that if you are to sit in judgment on a man you are much more ready to send him to jail where a reasonable doubt exists than you are to take his life. Although the argument that the public are concerned is a valid one, the argument that capital punishment increases public safety simply will not wash.
I suggest we have to get back to respect for the rule of law. That means that we do not walk against a red light at Wellington and O'Connor. It means that we do not try to beat a parking ticket. It means that we do not speed. This principle must be adhered to by the whole of society. A society with a low crime rate is a society where laws are obeyed by every level of that society. One of the real problems in this country is that we are breaking society into sections and classes. Where advantage can be taken, it is being taken. It is just as wrong to beat the income tax as it is to beat your wife. You do not draw divisions on this
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question. What we need to come back to is a cohesive society where we all obey the law, and capital punishment will not do anything to encourage that.
As far as increasing public safety is concerned, six million people in this country have a gun. Under the present law, any person, regardless of mental history, can walk into a store and buy a gun. He may very well have been beating his wife for the previous three weeks and have a paranoid delusion that she is about to kill him. There is no law to stop him purchasing a rifle. I suggest this is one area where we can make a positive contribution to public safety. The very minimum that we should require, surely, is that a person who wants to buy a gun should have a certificate of competence, that he be without a history of mental illness or criminal activity, and that he should be a person who knows something about the law relating to guns and their use. We do not have such a minimum standard in this country.
I rather agree with those in this House who have expressed their view that the majority of the people in this country favour retention of capital punishment. There is no point avoiding public opinion when it seems to be so obvious. Certainly, my mail reflects the fact that the majority of those in my riding favour retention of capital punishment. If this view is so important to them, if it is the most important subject on their minds at the moment, then they will defeat me in the next election, and they will have the right to do so.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: You had better believe it.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: I respect the democratic process.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: You had better make that clear.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: I made that clear before I ran for office. The hon. member for Peel South (Mr. Blenkarn) says I should make it clear. I made it perfectly clear before I was elected. I make it perfectly clear now, and I will make it perfectly clear in the next election. I do not think the people in my riding do believe that this is the only issue in this country. I do not believe they think this debate the most important issue facing us today. Therefore, when we stop blowing this issue out of all proportion and look at all of the issues facing us, I think the majority of the people in my riding will recognize that their member of parliament does not have to agree with them on each and every subject.
Let me give an analogy to show what I mean. In my riding the number of people who are Roman Catholic is very small. When a Roman Catholic holds a view on abortion that is different from mine, I respect that view. If he wants to run for election and holds the view that abortion is wrong, that it should not be committed under any circumstances, and he makes this clear to his constituents, after which he is elected, then I can say at least 80 per cent of the people in my constituency will disagree with him. But I would respect his right to come to this House and to vote as his conscience dictated, just as I will vote on this issue as my conscience dictates.
What we in this country need to do is to continue to seek a humane, compassionate and civilized society. Within such a society this kind of penalty has no place whatever.
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I remember the emotional speeches that have been made in this House, and I still think one of the most moving statements came from the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby (Mr. Broadbent). He asked, what did Christ say when He was on the cross and was being murdered? He did not cry: "Hang them", though certainly they were guilty. No; He said; "Forgive them, for they know not what they do". That is an attitude this House should consider.


Mr. G. H. Whittaker (Okanagan Boundary):: Mr. Speaker, in addressing ourselves to Bill C-2 and these amendments, once again before us, we realize that there are as many shades of opinion on the abolition or retention of capital punishment among members of this House as there are degrees in a compass. However, attention should be focused on the fact that there is a common link in both arguments. It is based on the fact that the compassion for human life is a basic, all-embracing tenet of western civilization, and thus the common concern in both arguments is the preservation of life itself.
Advocates of abolition, however, imply that a retention-ist is not concerned with life and that his argument in favour of the death penalty is a barbaric and uneducated one. Typical is a speech by the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Rowland) who said:
The outcome of this debate will reveal the level of civilization, sophistication, compassion and understanding in Canadian society.
Thus, abolitionists would have those who argue for the retention of the death penalty feel that their view is a retrogressive one, not compatible with the temper of the times. Abolitionists would have those who argue in favour of the death penalty feel that they have only to wait and they will see the light.
From those intellectuals who are seized with the problems of the higher civilization, an occasional tear might be looked for over the savagely mutilated bodies of victims and their mentally ravaged kinfolk. There are those who say that corpses don't talk, but as Molly Lefevre pointed out in her book entitled "Evidence for the Crown", corpses talk. They talk of stupidity, depravity, perversion. They talk of crimes of every kind and they talk of easy living in pleasant homes, of hard lives, of joys that ended in sorrow, of tragedy and of broken hearts. That we are living in the super-civilized 20th century is indeed a fact. Unfortunately, the fellow with the gun does not seem to know one century from another.
It is one of the stock arguments of anti-capital punish-mentarians that the threat of the death penalty is an empty threat and frightens no would-be murderer. However, while arguments and statistics have been stacked on both sides of the balance, the deterrent effect of capital punishment remains unresolved. On these grounds, Mr. Speaker, I challenge the dogmatic assumptions of those who say the death penalty serves no purpose, as the statement has obvious imperfections.
The categorical assertion that "the death penalty serves no purpose" is contradicted by a number of self-evident facts. There is no shortage of reported instances wherein more than one homicide was committed by the same culprit, either as a result of not being apprehended on time

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during an escape or after being erroneously acquitted. This being so, it is at least indisputable that a killer, once he has been liquidated, is forever incapable of killing again. Considered under this aspect alone, it would seem that the death penalty has in the past achieved at least one purpose.
With the passing of years, the character of the prison population is being increasingly tainted by a continual infusion of more belligerent inmates. It is perhaps the too-ready acceptance of the dogma that the death penalty serves no purpose that has helped to give rise to a situation in which the maintenance of discipline within prison walls is an increasing problem.
Under the morality of our time, severity in dealing with those guilty of bloodshed is stigmatized as revenge and this is looked upon as a greater crime, or at least as great as the motivating offence, but the alleged sinfulness of vengeance, revenge, or retribution-call it what you will- has never been established.
There are those who seem to think evil deeds ought to be resented, but not punished, or at least not punished to the extent of the death penalty, but should it be a wrong doctrine if we seek to impose it on those who will have none of it? To us, the legislators who urge that this moral precept be converted into an act of parliament, the following question could be asked: whose cheek is it that we are so ready to turn to the hand of the smiter? Is it your own cheek or those of the other people? Shall we admonish a distracted widow, crying out for the law's vengeance, there, there, now, you musn't be so vindictive.
Those opposed to the death penalty frequently argue that there is always the possibility of some innocent person being destroyed, either through malice or error, and that to avoid such tragedies, it is better that no one be executed. It should be pointed out, however, and this cannot be too strongly maintained, that there is not a single human enterprise or sphere of activity that is not marred at some time or another by a deplorable episode. Although much-is made of the comparatively remote possibility of some innocent person being put to death for a crime he did not commit, hardly any note is ever taken of the lethal aftermath that can follow an erroneous acquittal. It is a false and utterly unattainable idea of perfect justice and unerring accuracy. It would sacrifice a hundred real and present advantages to society through the permanent removal of men who are and can be at times really no better than noxious animals, thus obviating the possible infliction of wrong upon some unknown victim at some unknown future date. To insist that the execution of specific enemies be forbidden on humanitarian grounds makes neither moral nor political sense.
In an ideal society, war would not be one of the normal activities. Violence would not be one of the normal activities of even the smallest minority of its members and there would be neither need for prisons nor for punishment. It is not to crush optimism that I say there will never be a utopian society, but that being so, it is not necessarily the best policy to endeavour to approach its imagined conditions.
What is wanted is the best possible society, and there is no reason to assume, given the knowledge that such a society will contain and endorse violence, that the best

possible will exclude the death penalty. In fact, the Canadian people have indicated that they believe otherwise. Although here and there triumphant, the movement for the total abolition of the death penalty has by no means been greeted with universal acceptance.
If our parliamentary democracy is to respond to the people, our fellow Canadians have indicated-and we have heard numerous constituency polls cited in the House- that capital punishment should be reinstated. In the October 1972 Weekend Magazine poll of readers from urban and rural centres, some 30,139 indicated that retention is necessary compared to 3,383 who think it is not. In April 1966, 255 people voted in this House in favour of the retention of capital punishment. However, in 1967, Bill C-168, introduced by Solicitor General Pennel to confine for an experimental period of five years the possible imposition of the death penalty to the murder of police officers and prison guards while on duty, was passed by a reasonably comfortable majority.
On July 4, 1972, the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Goyer), then Solicitor General, said:
It is difficult in the present situation to make an accurate assessment of the five year trial period since it has not ended.
He added that the required statistics which would make retrospective analysis possible would not be available until one more year had lapsed.
The year has now lapsed, the July date has come and gone and again we find before us a request for the introduction of a five-year ban on capital punishment. We find ourselves once again at square one because this government circumvented the will of Parliament by commuting death sentences in cases to which capital punishment still applied, and which in normal circumstances would not justify the exercise of the prerogative of mercy. Because it is a question so fundamental, it is the last of issues upon which a nation's leaders should abdicate, as has been the case.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, in rising to speak on the amendment before us which proposes that this bill be amended to provide for capital punishment in the instance where a person already convicted of murder commits a second murder, and in the instance where someone has been found guilty of air piracy or as it is sometimes called skyjacking, I do so because I feel there are certain matters which perhaps are not properly understood by certain members of this House.
Surely, the question of the abolition of capital punishment or its retention is something on which the government in power has a responsibility to take a stand. We see in this instance that the government has chosen not to stand up and be counted, but indirectly to give the impression that there is a free vote in this House. It is granted, Mr. Speaker, that there is to be a free vote in the technical sense, but I suggest when the vote is taken later this evening concerning the amendment before us we will see the whip will be present and that, for example, every member of the cabinet will vote against this amendment. Surely, if members of the cabinet are so uniform in their
October 18, 1973

view in respect of the amendment and the bill itself, they should have the courage to endorse this measure as a government measure.
I mention this because I feel perhaps their handling of this legislation, including the unfortunate performance by its sponsor during the committee hearings, is so typical of the government's mishandling of matters generally. I see, for example, that the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Macdonald) graces the chamber today. Surely, there is no other department which more clearly illustrates the lack of foresight of this government than his department. Here we are situated with a minister who, because of lack of foresight, is jumping from country to country and from province to province in an effort to solve various problems which he should have been solving months and even years ago.
To come back to the question of capital punishment, I mentioned lack of foresight because I sincerely believe that in respect of capital punishment this government again is out of step with the world. Others in the world know there is an energy crisis. It was foreseen five or ten years ago. Many governments took steps to minimize its effect, but not our government. In the case of capital punishment, we know that the world, rather than going abolitionist at the present time, is actually becoming more retentionist. Yet we find an instance here where the government indirectly-and I emphasize that-is attempting to bring in an abolitionist measure which it does not have the courage to sponsor. In doing so, it is out of step with the main trend in the world. Our honourable friends to the left have said, "Where?"
Most of us have heard of the United Nations. I think most of us have great respect for that body. I believe it would be interesting to read a current publication put out by the United Nations which indicates, contrary to the public view which people like to express, especially the academics, that the world in fact is not becoming more and more abolitionist.


John Gilbert: Give us an example.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: The hon. member asks for an example. I would refer him to a publication by the Centre for Economic and Social Information dated March 29, 1973. It reads:
Because published studies on capital punishment have tended to concentrate on the developed world, particularly the Western nations, the world has a misleading picture that there is a general trend towards abolishing capital punishment when in fact only nine States Members have totally abolished the death penalty in their legal systems, according to a new report by the Secretary-General.


An hon. Member:: Tell us who they are?


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, the members of the NDP are anxious to hear this report, but I think that after I have finished quoting from it they will not be so eager if they are as sincere abolitionists as they have been implying they are. The precis to which I refer goes on to state:
In its survey . . .
The survey done by the United Nations.
... of the world situation, the study points out that periods of abolition or non-use of the death penalty in a country may be
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succeeded by widespread executions in a revolutionary situation or by a sudden return to the death penalty.
Then, it is pointed out that there is often an unfortunate repercussion. After the death penalty is abolished, it is restored with harsher methods of execution being introduced as a supplementary means. In dealing with this matter, I think it is interesting to note what is said in paragraphs 23 and 24 of the report of the United Nations Economic and Social Council which is dated February 23, 1973:
An important consideration in any truly international appraisal. ..
That is of the death penalty.
... is that most published studies of the death penalty have taken their data and orientation from the developed world and largely from the western world. The result has been a rather misleading picture which has frequently given an unwarranted universality to values, theories or practices prevalent in the west. In academic circles it has sometimes become unfashionable to support capital punishment: civilization is tolerance and severity in punishment a sign of backwardness and regression, and so liberal thinking and the abolition of the death penalty are expected to coincide.
Again, as an aside, I would point out that that, of course, is not so in the most genuine liberal or socialist or communist countries such as Russia or China.


An hon. Member:: You're in good company.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: As the study says:
Therefore the writing available on the death penalty leaves the impression that there is a certain inevitability about the movement to more "civilized standards" and fewer executions. A reader could be excused for concluding that throughout the world there is in fact an irrestible and ineluctable trend toward the abolition of capital punishment or that even where death is still a last legal resort, the penal codes have fewer offences leading to capital punishment or that methods of execution are becoming more humane or that the persons liable to the extreme penalty will usually have the benefit of the best legal safeguards.
Paragraph 24 then states:
In fact, the world picture provides no such assurances. If one spreads consideration to include developed countries of both the east and west and the wide range of developing nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the picture changes appreciably. It is extremely doubtful whether there is any uniform progression toward the restriction of the use of the death penalty; progress is discernible only in the very long run and it is usually marked by many ups and downs.


Mr. Orlikow:: Why don't you give us the names of the countries?


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: I would be very pleased to give the hon. member the names of the nine countries. They are in the publication. I might say to the hon. member that one of his colleagues earlier asked the same question, and at that time I gave him the list of the countries.


John Gilbert: When?


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: During an earlier debate of the bill. But if the hon. member insists on having the list of countries read out, I will be able to read them into the record.


Some hon. Members:: Let us have it now.
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Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, I may come back to it. I will refer to the nine countries that are totally abolitionist in due course.
I mentioned this because I believe it is important that Canada does not unintentionally get out of step with the rest of the world. At a time when the world is at least having second thoughts concerning the abolition of capital punishment, it is wise for this nation also to have second thoughts concerning any rapid turn to an abolitionist or near abolitionist state.
The hon. members to my left have asked: What about countries such as the United Kingdom? As they know well, that country is a partially abolitionist country. It is not one of the nine countries to which I have referred. But I would draw the hon. members' attention to the fact that even in the United Kingdom members of the ruling party, the Conservative party, perhaps much to their dislike, have recently passed a resolution at their conference calling for the restoration of the death penalty in England.


David Orlikow: Their members of parliament will ignore that resolution.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: I see that hon. members in the socialist ranks know more about England than the Conservative members in this House.


John Gilbert: Was it moved by Enoch Powell or not?


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: For the record, and to protect the socialists to my left from any further anxiety, I must name for them the nine countries listed by the United Nations as being totally abolitionist. I know they expected me to read out the name of the United Kingdom, but the sad fact is that they are wrong. The truth is that the only nine countries that are totally abolitionist as listed by the United Nations are: Austria, Columbia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Finland, Iceland, Uruguay and Venezuela.


John Gilbert: Give us the crime rates also.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: I suggest to the members to my left who advocated that we should not only accept the partial abolition proposed by the government but that we should adopt total abolition in this country, that what they are suggesting is that Canada should become the tenth member and join the ranks of those countries I have just read out.


David Orlikow: Yes, and we will leave you China and Russia.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Surely, those who propose to vote for abolition should ask themselves whether they truly believe that there is no crime so heinous that it does not warrant the supreme punishment, that is the loss of one's life. I would like each of those members, when they ask themselves that question, to read the gruesome details of, for example, the candy store murders which were recently in the public news in the United States. The fact that one or more persons systematically murdered relatively young people, had their bodies mutilated and buried, numbering as many as 20 at a time, indicates that although we may wish to do away with capital punishment, although we think that it is a desirable goal to never be put in a

situation of having to take another person's life in the name of the state, we would be wise to ask ourselves how we in this country would react if such a heinous crime occurred here. Is that not at least one case where the convicted person who is responsible for this crime should be asked to pay the supreme penalty, that is the loss of his life?
Having said that, I feel that it is important that we bear in mind that one of the most heinous crimes is that of air piracy where a person, for reasons of his own, is willing to murder the occupants of an aeroplane. There is little imaginable that could be worse than that type of activity. That is the partial effect of the amendment that is before us. It proposes that capital punishment be applied in the event of murder connected with skyjacking. I think it is important, in view of the general trend noted by the United Nations which is not toward abolition but toward retention of capital punishment, that we in this country make sure that Canada does not become a haven for those who conduct skyjackings in any place in the world.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: I say that the laws will toughen up on this subject worldwide, and it is not the time for this incompetent government to be taking Canada in exactly the opposite direction to the general trend in the world.
If I may conclude my comments on this amendment, I will simply refer to a statement made by the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand). On July 23, as recorded at page 5902 of Hansard, he asked:
How in God's name does one help the victim of help the family by hanging the murderer?
With all due respect, I suggest that that is not the question. It is quite true that neither the victim nor the family is aided by capital punishment, but it is not the purpose of capital punishment to do so. The state ought not to be concerned with providing retribution for the victim. The punishment is given because the murderer has broken the law. Punishment is a transaction between the offending individual and the state, in which no one ought to interfere and which should be carried out by the state solely with reference to its own laws which have been broken and without reference to anything extraneous to that fact.
I suggest that the Solicitor General's question obscures the distinction between why one punishes a person because he has broken the law and what purpose the punishment is intended to serve, that is, deterrence, reformation or some other reason. I believe the victim or family ought never to enter into the consideration with respect to punishment. Were they to so enter, what argument could the Solicitor General provide to prevent one from applying his question to all forms of punishment? It could be asked: How in God's name does one help the victim or help the family by jailing the criminally negligent drunken driver? Punishment surely is not handed out for the benefit of certain individuals. It is the action of a state for the general benefit of its members. I believe the Solicitor General obscured this fact when he asked how it helps the family or the victim. That, I repeat, is not the question.

We need laws in this country. We need stronger laws to deal with some of the criminal activity in this country. It is up to the government in power at the time to introduce those stronger laws and to see that the penalty, be it the death penalty or otherwise, is executed. In that connection I would suggest that the present government, perhaps more than any government since confederation, has brought our legal system into disrespect through its commutation of death sentences without exception.
I see that my time is almost up, Mr. Speaker. I simply conclude by urging hon. members, before they vote on this matter, to give it serious second thought if they choose to vote against the motion proposed by my hon. colleague, because I believe that by voting in an abolitionist way we are in fact going against the world trend, and I know we are going against public opinion in this country.


Frank Howard: Mr. Speaker, so far I have not spoken at any stage of this debate except in committee, and then only with respect to details of the bill and not on the fundamental question that we are being asked to deal with here. At this stage of our proceedings I do not expect that anything I say will overly influence anybody one way or another, either on the amendments or on the bill itself at third reading, but I feel it necessary to express my feelings on the subject as I have done in previous parliaments.
First, I think there was an element of extreme weakness on the part of the government in taking the course that it did; in other words, trying to have it both ways. I wish the bill before us were absolute in one direction or another so that it either proposed to endorse the concept of capital punishment for all murders, or proposed not to have capital punishment for any murders. In that way parliament could give a clear response to it.
It is to be regretted that the government, which was in office last year, knowing the five-year experimental period was coming to an end, sought to play a little political game and hide from the five-year termination period with the hope that the October election would return the Liberal Party with a comfortable majority so that this year it could do as it saw fit with respect to capital punishment. But that did not happen. In any event, we are now faced with this bill.
I do not favour the concept of capital punishment. I never have. I look upon this bill as posing a difficult question to hon. members, because to vote for it now and on third reading is to vote for capital punishment in a limited way, and to vote against it is also to vote for capital punishment in a limited way. Either way, yes or no, parliament is endorsing in a limited manner the concept of capital punishment. That is why I wish the government had been more determined in its approach and had proposed a bill clearly one way or the other. But it did not.
We can look at the question of murder and of capital punishment in relation thereto from the point of view of capital punishment being a deterrent, or from the point of view of it being the state responding in a vengeful manner to the taking of life. I, for one, cannot condone the idea or concept that the state-meaning the entire nation, the country, the government and parliament-can possibly think in terms of revenge. I cannot believe that the state
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can possibly adjust its thinking in a mass way to say: We are going to reflect the view of the injured party and wreak vengeance on the person who committed the offence of murder.
I think, with respect to what the state is, the nation is and the government and parliament are supposed to be, that we have to think in terms of the potential of a deterrent. Is the threat of criminal law sanction sufficient to deter a person from committing a particular crime? That is the way I try to look at it and that is the way I feel about it. I do not believe the threat of capital punishment is any more a deterrent to the commission of the crime of murder than is the threat of a long jail sentence-neither any more nor any less.
While we are on the subject, Mr. Speaker, let me point out that the law for the past five years has said that a person convicted of murdering a police officer while on duty, or a prison guard, shall be subjected to capital punishment. As much as I abhor the concept of capital punishment and think it is not a deterrent, as long as that provision was on the statute books then those people convicted under it should have been hanged. The government had no right whatever, and either did its predecessor nor the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefen-baker) when he was prime minister, to avoid a law passed by parliament by the use of the royal prerogative of mercy. If parliament passed a law to the effect that if you murder a policeman while he is on duty, are convicted and sentenced to hang, then you should be hanged, much as I detest that concept. The law should not be brought into disrepute by an action of government.
I am as sure as I am standing here, knowing the position of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield)-he has declared it and he is an honourable man-that if he became prime minister, regardless of the speeches made by members who want to retain the death penalty, he would exercise this so-called royal prerogative and commute the death sentence. He has said he would do that. Is that flying in the face of the potential law any more than the present government is? No. It is the same situation. I have the view that when parliament passes a law it should expect it to be carried out, not subverted, not distorted, not put to one side.
If we want, as a parliament, to declare that there shall be no capital punishment, then we should do so. However, we should not be hypocritical and say we are going to vote for or against a bill knowing full well that nobody is going to be hanged because of the declarations on the matter by people in responsible positions. But, Mr. Speaker, that is aside from the general question.
Let us look at some circumstances, Mr. Speaker. This is the way in which I tend to relate my feelings about whether the threat of capital punishment is a stronger deterrent than is the threat of life imprisonment. If we look at the emotions of human beings, we see that these are inflamed or distorted or advanced as a result of family quarrels, lovers quarrels or mix-ups in family life. We see that they are inflamed or distorted as a result of excessive drinking, whether it be in a tavern or a home. We see that the emotions are anaesthestized by alcohol or some other
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chemical and perhaps a murder takes place. We are entitled to ask ourselves if the threat of capital punishment would deter a person, under these circumstances, from committing murder. It would not be a deterrent, it would not even be a factor in a person's thinking.
If two individuals get into a squabble after sitting in a tavern all night and retire outside to settle their differences in a physical way during which one kills the other, he has not considered the possibility of the death penalty. It was not a factor in his thinking at all. An emotional disturbance in a home, a shooting as a result of all night drinking or a reflection of what poverty does to a family, are not factors when it comes to the question of murder.
The amendment proposed by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) referred to rape. I suppose, but I do not know, nor I am sure does any other member of this House know from personal experience, that in the process of an act of rape the emotions of the aggressor are so distorted, inflamed and out of touch with reality, that that person is not thinking about the threat of capital punishment or any other kind of punishment but is influenced by the immediacy of the situation.
Let us put it in reverse. I do not like to do this in any unkind way to the hon. member for Louis-Hebert but I think her amendment distorts the relationship between man and woman, because it speaks in terms of a male person committing rape upon a female person. The reverse is true, Mr. Speaker; the reverse circumstances have happened. I know of an instance some years ago where a woman forced a man at gunpoint to perform the act of cunnilingus on her. That is rape. It is not rape in the pure legal sense which, as I understand it, is a penetration of the vagina by the penis. It is not that kind of rape but it is certainly forcing an individual to perform a sexual act. The hon. member for Louis-Hebert did not take that into account obviously, but it is a fact of human behaviour.


An hon. Member:: She has not been around as you have.


Frank Howard: My smart-assed friend says she has not been around as I have. Mr. Speaker, I am trying to speak on a matter that is pretty serious and not reflect upon comments anyone else has made during this debate. If the hon. member wants to make that comment during the course of a speech, all right. He may have done so, already, but let us not cast aspersions against the feelings that one individual has about something.
What I am trying to get at, Mr. Speaker, is that the amendment on the question of rape referred to a highly emotional situation. I submit that the threat of capital punishment or a life sentence would not have any relevance whatsoever in the circumstances. Even a person about to commit a bank robbery or some other kind of criminal offence is not thinking of the threat of capital punishment or of a life sentence. The criminal mind says "I have looked at all the circumstances. I can perform this robbery and if in the course of it I am about to be apprehended by a policeman and I shoot him, I can get away with it. They are not going to catch me".
The criminal sets out a careful plan for avoiding apprehension. He looks at the possibility of a life sentence but feels he is going to get away with the bank robbery because he has laid it out carefully. In the city of Mont-

real, the criminals have bank robbery almost down to a science and have it timed to a minute and 15 seconds or something. The bank robbery is laid out so carefully that the robbers know it takes a certain number of seconds from the time they get into the bank until the police get there-unless the police happen to be just around the corner. It is a carefully laid plan, and the threat of capital punishment or a life sentence is not a deterrent to the commission of the crime.
The psychotic, the person completely out of touch with reality, the dangerous sexual offender, the person who attacks another and cuts him in pieces, who buries him alive or performs some obscenities on the body or commits all sorts of atrocities-that person is not considering the threat of capital punishment. I do not know what factors such persons consider, and I do not know whether, even psychiatrists know, but the threat of capital punishment is not any more of a deterrent than any other form of punishment that carries with it some strong sanction, such as life imprisonment.
I can think of one set of circumstances in which the threat of capital punishment might be a deterrent. That is the case of an individual who has been sentenced to imprisonment for life, which means 20 to 25 years. The death penalty might be a deterrent in that instance because he can only receive one life sentence; he can only spend the rest of his life in jail. Perhaps in that situation the possibility of losing his life might be a deterrent to committing murder.
On the other hand, depending upon the individual, it might be attractive to commit murder. Talk to people who are in jail, people who are subject to sentences of 45 or 50 years. Talk to people who have been sentenced to life imprisonment because they have committed murder. Talk to them about a life-term jail sentence. They say; "I would just as soon be dead as face the prospect of life in jail." So this person might ask: What have I got to live for? And if I die, I might as well take one of those screws-prison guards-or one of those finks or informers with me.
I cannot myself think of picking and choosing instances and circumstances and saying to myself, guided by my own conscience, yes, it is all right to impose capital punishment in circumstance (a) but not in circumstances (b) or in circumstance (c). Yet this what we are seeking to do in the bill before us. This is what the minister was seeking to do when he introduced this bill. He was saying it was acceptable to impose capital punishment in two sets of circumstances but not in others. And in my view he picked the two that are meaningless, the two which have no consequence.
Is there a world trend in this regard? Does it matter to the conscience of people here whether or not Great Britain retains or does not retain capital punishment? Does it matter whether Iceland does or does not retain capital punishment? Capital punishment might be in force there one week, and the next week it might not. Attitudes throughout the world, in every jurisdiction are subject to change. Attempts have been made to deal with the question of criminality, to deal with the question of taking of life. All it proves to me, both from a logical and a statisti-
October 18, 1973

cal point of view, is that in every jurisdiction where an attempt has been made to use capital punishment as a deterrent to murder, they cannot prove it has succeeded. And in every jurisdiction where capital punishment has been avoided, they cannot show success either. In other words, it is a draw. In other words, no great deterrent to murder is achieved by the threat or imposition of capital punishment.
I had the idea that I might discuss the question of unrest in prisons, a point touched upon by one of the earlier speakers. I think, now, I shall not do so. It is beside the point. There is a reason for it, but the situation can be dealt with without the threat of imposition of capital punishment. The problem of the anger and unrest in prisons can be dealt with by a little straightening out in the department itself.
I know we all have a tendency in certain circumstances, at the moment of a heinous crime, at the instant of an atrocity against a person, to look at the circumstances and say, "My God, isn't that terrible? That person should be hanged."


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I regret interrupting the hon. member. Perhaps I should just ask the House to give unanimous consent to the hon. member's going beyond the 20 minutes limit. Is that agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Frank Howard: That is extremely kind of the House, Mr. Speaker. Let me conclude by saying I hope the general public will tend to think of this issue in terms of what the state should do to advance the respect we must have for life itself, and whether or not capital punishment is a deterrent to the crime of murder. When we read of some dreadful crime, our response, in a vengeful, sudden mood might be so strong that we might want to strangle the criminal ourselves. I hope the general public would want us as legislators to look at the question in light of the deterrent effect of capital punishment and in light of the state helping to strengthen respect for life itself, and not the state operating from a sense of revenge. If society moves strongly out of a sense of vengeance and kills people out of revenge, we are helping to degrade the respect for life we should all possess and try to develop. Regardless of how this vote goes, regardless of whether the bill passes or fails to pass, because of the lack of guts on the part of government a parliament will be back again considering the same subject and engaging in the same sort of wrenching discussion and examination five years hence. I just hope that because it is the lesser of two bad situations, the bill passes, and I hope it will have some value in influencing the conduct of society and the conduct of parliament from now on.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, having spoken at length on the principle of this bill on second reading, I shall refer only at this time to the amendment put forward by the hon. member for North-umberland-Durham (Mr. Lawrence). That hon. member has offered two amendments in one package for our consideration. In one part of the package he suggests that a person be subject to capital punishment if he causes the death of a human being after having been previously
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convicted of murder. In the second he suggests a person be convicted of capital murder if he commits murder in conjunction with a hijacking. The wording of the second part of the amendment uses the following terminology:
. . . any person, where such person causes the death of a human being and has been previously convicted of murder, whether or not such murder is punishable by death . . .
With all due respect, I point out that the situation envisioned by the hon. member is an extremely rare occurrence. The commonly held view of the average murderer as being one who either repeats his crime or commits other crimes is simply erroneous. The recidivism rate of murderers is among the lowest of all types of crime. Indeed, in the entire history of Canada there have been only three individuals who have ever been convicted a second time of murder. That being the case, I feel the amendment suggested by the hon. member seeks to effect a cure for a disease which is so rare as to be almost non-existent.
It is also conceivable that a case could arise where a person falling under the provisions of the amendment would have been guilty of a first murder which was considered much more heinous than the second murder. As a matter of fact, the second event might not even be a case of capital murder at all in terms of the present law. According to the hon. member's wording, he says "where such person causes the death of a human being". I suggest that that wording is very bad from the legal point of view, but I presume that according to that wording a person could be convicted of capital murder after having committed manslaughter in the second instance, or having committed non-culpable homicide according to the terms of the present law. Yet he would be executed because of the second event. I do not use the word "murder" because the hon. member who put forward the amendment did not use that term either.
With respect to the second amendment which deals with skyjacking, the hon. member seeks to extend capital punishment to the case of, again using his words, such person who "causes the death of a human being"-again he uses those words instead of "commits culpable homicide", or something to that effect-"while committing or attempting to commit an offence under section 76.1 of the Criminal Code." Section 76.1 deals with hijacking.
Before getting into the entire hijacking question, I suggest that from a legal point of view merely to say "causes the death of a human being" without defining the type of murder or offence is not satisfactory.
With regard to aircraft hijacking, I agree that this subject has sparked considerable debate throughout the world. The fact that all nations consider aircraft hijacking to be a severe threat is reflected in the fact that many nations, including Canada, have moved to take strong action to prevent such incidents from occurring. For example, in Canada in recent years we have had amendments to the Criminal Code and the Aeronautics Act; within the RCMP we have set up special constables to deal with airport security, and we have mandatory checks made to prevent hijacking. So, we have taken considerable steps to try to prevent hijacking or terrorism on aircraft.

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As a further expression of this concern, the amendment offered by the hon. member is certainly understandable. However, I would argue that the benefits that may at first glance seem to accrue from this amendment are illusory. Perhaps the main objection to this amendment on purely legal grounds is the difficulty of interpretation that might ensue.
Another argument that I feel offers sufficient grounds for rejecting the amendment arises from a consideration of the very different circumstances in which hijacking has taken place. I have in mind recent examples where the hijacker was very disturbed and the hijacking was almost entirely the product of his mental disturbance, although his mental state was not such as to make him unfit to stand trial. If by some mischance his action had caused death, it would not seem that his case should be one to which the death penalty should be automatically applied. James A. Arey, who has written a very detailed book on the subject of skyjacking, offers us his opinion that skyjackers fall into five major categories, which he defines as, first, losers and misfits; second, emotional disaster cases; third, criminals on the run; fourth, individuals with personal, political reasons, and fifth, people or groups with organized political motivations.
With specific respect to hijacking, I feel it vital to emphasize again that it is the almost unanimous consensus of the experts that hijackers are best deterred by preventing them from getting on an aircraft in the first place. That is the best deterrent to the hijacker and the best prevention of the problems he may cause.
In the past year, as hon. members will recall, elaborate ground security installations have been made in airports across Canada and the United States, as well as Europe. I think it should suffice to say that since those security checks were begun there has been only one Canadian hijacking: the attempt by a man to divert a Quebecair flight from its scheduled Wabush to Montreal run on December 14 last. Before those measures were introduced there were seven hijackings over Canadian territory. Mr. Ted Abrams of the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal was quoted as saying that "1973 was a good year" with respect to hijacking. He said that hijackings have decreased mightly around the globe. And a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman in Washington, D.C. confirmed that since January 5, when the FAA made pre-flight security checks mandatory for all passengers and baggage, there have been no hijackings of U.S. planes.
In the light of these facts, I think it is fair to say that the amendment offered by the hon. member for Northumber-land-Durham is again a case of much too much too late. The problem of hijacking appears to have been controlled by much less severe measures than those which he advocates. Furthermore, the usefulness of a death penalty in connection with hijacking offences is seriously questioned by experts in the field. Mr. Arey, in summing up the opinions of experts with respect to this problem, finds "general agreement in regard to a multilevel approach." He suggests that a consensus can be found concerning the following important points:

The act of skyjacking must be recognized as a crime by all aviation bodies and all governments; severe punishment should be swift and inevitable.
I stress the next sentence of Mr. Arey's conclusion most emphatically:
Punishment should not include the death sentence, because that penalty is unlikely to have any effect on extremely unbalanced or desperate individuals. It should consist of long incarceration in a prison or a mental institution. Sentences should be made as uniform as possible throughout the world.
Again, Mr. Speaker, I call upon hon. members to heed the words of experts in the field, experts who feel that the death sentence would simply have no effect on the sort of person who engages in the crime of hijacking in the first place. In view of the fact that some of the skyjackers are severely unbalanced individuals bent on suicide, a death penalty may actually serve as incentive to the commission of the crime.
With these arguments in mind, I feel that an overwhelming case can be made that the suggestions offered by the hon. member for Northumberland-Durham, while offered for our consideration with the best of intentions, simply cannot stand up to examination on legal, psychological, or statistical grounds. I stress again that these arguments can be made against the amendment irrespective of one's view on the general question of capital punishment.
Before I close I should like to respond to a few of the remarks made earlier this day in the debate on these amendments. The hon. member for York-Simcoe (Mr. Stevens) was quoting from a document which pointed out that there were only nine countries in the world that have completely abolished capital punishment. I think that is probably true if it applies to all crimes; but if he considers the complete abolition of capital punishment for cases of murder, which is what we are considering in this House, then he will find that there are many more than nine countries. For example, the United Kingdom has completely abolished capital punishment for murder but not for treason, and this is why it is not included in the group of countries that he put forward. Many of the states of the United States have completely abolished capital punishment for murder, but in the United States generally they have capital punishment for treason and perhaps other offences, very rare offences, against the state.
In Canada, with this bill, we are only considering capital punishment for murder. Whether the bill is carried, or defeated, we will not touch upon the question of capital punishment for treason which exists under another section of our Code, or the old crime of piracy which also still exists: it is sort of an anachronism in our law, but it still exists.
In quoting the cases, I think the hon. member may have misled the House to a certain extent. The important question is, how many countries have completely abolished capital punishment for the crime of murder? He also referred to my statement in which I asked, "How in God's name does it help the victim or the family of the victim if we maintain capital punishment?" In stating that, I was merely replying to some arguments of members of this House who suggested it was helpful to the family of the
October 18, 1973

victim and maybe to the victim himself. That is why I phrased my reply in that way. That certainly is not my principal argument on the question of capital punishment.
The hon. member also wanted to know why we had not taken a position as a government. The bill before the House is a government bill; it was put forward by the cabinet. Under our constitution, the cabinet is legally the government. This is a cabinet bill, approved by cabinet. In that sense it is the same as the bill put forward in 1967. However, it is different from the motion of 1966 which was put forward by four private members of this House. In all cases there was a free vote, but in 1966 there was not a government bill. In 1967 there was a government bill. This is a government bill. For the members of our party and all other parties, as far as we are concerned it is a free vote, but not for the government, meaning the cabinet. This is a cabinet, government bill. Cabinet discussed this question and we decided to put forward this bill. I put it forward on behalf of the government.
The hon. member for Edmonton West (Mr. Lambert) and the hon. member for Temiscamingue (Mr. Caouette) referred to the amendments I attempted to put forward in committee. They referred to that as contempt of parliament. In one other case the hon. member suggested that it was unethical. There is nothing in our rules to suggest amendments cannot be put forward either in committee of the whole House or in one of our special or standing committees. As a matter of fact it has been done many times, not only by members of the opposition but by members of the government and its ministers.
If I remember correctly, during the tax reform bill several amendments were put forward by the government. The hon. member for Edmonton West did not complain at that time. No one has complained about the other amendment I put forward in committee, the one to restrict the parole eligibility provisions for murderers. If members are against the principle of ministers putting forth amendments in committee, they should object to that amendment as well. They object to the amendment they do not like, but not to the one they like. It has not even been mentioned in this debate.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. During his remarks, the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) suggested that I had sort of misled the House by my reference to the fact there are only nine abolitionist countries in the world. Those are total abolitionist countries and do not include countries which have abolition with respect to murder in the sense that we are contemplating in this amendment and the bill.
I would like to reply, to clear the record. If the Solicitor General wishes to take the expanded definition to which he referred, there are still only 23 countries in the world in that category. This is in table 2 of the United Nations' list. Very few of those countries have brought in abolition in the sense the minister is speaking about. Those countries are the United Kingdom, in 1969; Malta, in 1971; and Peru, in 1971. I simply make the point that I do not want the House to believe that my reference to nine countries was misleading. If the minister wants to extend it to 23 for all crimes, the fact is the same; we are out of step with the rest of the world.
Capital Punishment


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, there is quite a difference between nine and 23, but the fact is this: I do not have the list before me, but I know that in western Europe, where most of the people of this country originate from, only three countries have not completely abolished capital punishment for murder. Many of them have it for other crimes. The three countries are Ireland, France and Spain. Africa, Asia and many communist states have capital punishment for many crimes. In South Africa they hang people by the dozen from month to month; but I do not think we should emulate that country.
I wish to refer to some of the remarks of the hon. member for Peel South (Mr. Blenkarn). He said we must support the amendment of the hon. member for Northumberland Durham (Mr. Lawrence) because the government had not done anything to deal with the question of security in penitentiaries, and that murderers were escaping on a large scale. I wish to point out that since the rash of escapes in April and May-one of which was an escaped murderer-namely, in June, July, August and September we had a 75 per cent decrease in escapes from Canadian penitentiaries in comparison with the year before. This is because we took very serious measures to deal with the problem of security. We increased the number of guards, the perimeter of security by erecting extra fencing, and so on. We have dealt with that problem. If that is the reason the hon. member is supporting the amendment, it is not very good because we have already taken steps. I regret we had to do that, but it was necessary.
The hon. member for Timiskaming (Mr. Peters) said he supports the bill. I thank him for his support. He made some points in his speech with which I should deal. He referred to answers I made today in the House in which I said we were looking for new penitentiary space in British Columbia. He thought that was a very bad move. In the penitentiary at New Westminster, B.C., there were approximately 630 inmates last week. This is in a penitentiary that is supposed to hold approximately 550. It is a maximum security prison. The hon. member seemed to imply that we should put these maximum security inmates on parole. He blamed the cutback in parole on the chairman of the parole board. I should point out that under the present chairman paroles reached an all-time high in 1970. They increased at a very extensive rate between 1965 and 1970. However, after 1970 they found there was a very high rate of violation. The people who are back in penitentiary are for the most part there as a result of violation of parole.
Over the 14-year period the parole board has been in operation, the failure rate has been about 20 per cent. However, last year it was 56 per cent. We are very concerned about that failure rate, as is the chairman of the parole board. He is re-examining the position he took in 1968, 1969 and 1970 to try to see what went wrong during those years in order to correct some of these matters. In the meantime we are faced with a situation in British Columbia where the prison population last year increased by more than 14 per cent when the usual increase is only 4 per cent. Many of these people are maximum security risks. We cannot place them on parole. We must find institutions in which to put them. That is what we are trying to do. I think I have dealt with some of the remarks made in the debate. I suggest again to the House that the

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Canadian National Railways and Air Canada amendments before us at this time are poor in law and in social policy. I ask the House to reject them.


Some hon. Members:: Question.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: If a division arises from the motion I shall now put, it will take place at 10.45 p.m. this evening. The question is on motion No. 3 (Mr. Lawrence). Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some hon. Members:: No.


Some hon. Members:: Yes.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Those in favour will please say yea.


Some hon. Members:: Yea.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Those opposed will please say nay.


Some hon. Members:: Nay.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The recorded division will take place, as agreed earlier, at 10.45 p.m. Since the House has concluded the consideration of the report stage of Bill C-2, with the exception of the division to take place later today, and since it is understood that the required recorded divisions have been deferred as noted until 10.45 p.m., the House will proceed to another matter of government business, namely government order No. 26.


Mr. Lefebvre:: Mr. Speaker, may I call it six o'clock.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: At the time of adjournment the hon. member for Regina-Lake Centre (Mr. Benjamin) had the floor on the bill. Is it agreed that it is six o'clock?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I now leave the chair until 8 p.m.
At 5.55 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed, from Monday, April 16, consideration of the motion of Mr. Turner (Ottawa-Carleton) that Bill C-164, to authorize the provision of moneys to meet certain capital expenditures of the Canadian National Railways System and Air Canada for the period from the 1st day of January, 1973, to the 30th day of June, 1974, and to authorize the guarantee by Her Majesty of certain

securities to be issued by the Canadian National Railway Company and certain debentures to be issued by Air Canada, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Transport and Communications.
Mr. Fernand E. Leblanc (Laurier):: Mr. Speaker, the CNR financing bill has appeared on the order paper for several years, and for reasons that need not be repeated since most members are aware of them, it has yet to be called and passed. Now during that period, it has been impossible to submit to the consideration of the Standing Committee on Transport and Communications the annual reports of the CNR as well as those of Air Canada, because under the law, before being tabled in the House, those reports must be audited by firms of accountants recognized throughout Canada. Now, precisely on that point the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance who introduced the bill in April 1973 mentioned that it might be advisable to make some changes in the appointment of auditors. I think that the first change that we should make-and I am pleased to see here the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) responsible for the bill-would be to delete in the legislation the provision requiring Parliament to appoint the auditors of the books of the CNR and Air Canada.
I believe, Mr. Speaker, that among all Crown corporations that come directly or indirectly under the federal government, this is the only case where Parliament has to appoint a firm of auditors in order to have these two corporations' books audited in an efficient way.
In my opinion, the first change that should be made would be to remove from Parliament the responsibility for appointing auditing firms in order to let private enterprise and other firms of auditors the opportunity to enter into competition with the auditors appointed by Parliament.
If we go back several years, we notice an anomaly: the auditors appointed to audit these corporations' books were always employed by English firms, which means that there was never an opportunity for a French firm to get the auditing contract for the CNR or Air Canada.
I think that this is an anomaly that should be straightened out as early as possible because we certainly cannot by an act of Parliament rule out the possibility that qualified French firms, which have expanded in this country, might compete with these two firms.
As I said earlier, the fact that Parliament has to appoint auditors is delaying the procedures of the Transportation committee, including consideration of the annual reports of these two firms, and I believe that passing of this legislation is urgent. By my action tonight, I certainly do not intend to delay referral of the bill to the committee, which should take place at the earliest opportunity, but rather to point out that this bill contains an anomaly which should be straightened out as soon as possible.
Let us now take the examples of some Crown corporations, the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the Industrial Development Bank, to name only two. We note that the auditors are appointed alternately, as suggested by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Comtois), but the alternance is based on bilingualism, in that an English-speaking firm alternates
October 18, 1973

with a French-speaking one, which means that those firms which have reached a certain level of maturity and importance in respect of their personnel may hope to obtain contracts for auditing the accounts of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation or the Industrial Development Bank or the Bank of Canada, which is not the case for two large corporations, namely the CNR and Air Canada.
I should like to deal also with the competition on the commercial routes of the CNR. As it had done many times before, the Canadian Trucking Association and the Quebec Trucking Association have stated recently that because there is no separate accounting for the money received by the federal government and the CN and that paid within their own operations, it is very difficult to determine whether the federal government is now advancing money to help competition against private enterprise. If such were the case, I believe that it would constitute another injustice to be rectified.
If you refer to the 1972 Canadian National Railways annual report under consolidated income statement, you will note that the net revenue of separately operated trucking companies amounted to $1,766,180 in 1971 and $2,464,306 in 1972, which means that at the present time, the CN are competing more and more against private trucking companies which are not subsidized by the federal government. For instance, I believe that we should perhaps obtain figures showing how the National Railways spend the subsidies which they receive, and if these subsidies are used to promote competition with private businesses, we should rectify this failing of the legislation and propose an amendment. Obviously, this amendment should be submitted by the Minister of Transport (Mr. Marchand) when the bill concerning the Canadian National Railways is studied, and not in relation with financing. Such amendment should be submitted in order to stop this organization from having trucking activities and, consequently, to prevent it from competing against private enterprise.


Mr. J. H. Horner (Crowfoot):: Mr. Speaker, this is the first time I have risen to speak on this particular CNR financing bill. I have reviewed the debate that has taken place on it, going back to last April when it first came before the House, and so far as I can gather an adequate explanation has not been given, to the House and the country, on the need for this bill, or of how the CNR and Air Canada operated without a financing bill being passed by the House of Commons for over two years.
At one time we were presented with Bill C-4, dealing with loans and expenditures with respect to CNR and Air Canada, for the period January 1, 1971, to June 30, 1972. It was not passed by the House, yet both companies managed to continue their operations. Now, we have Bill C-164 which deals with CNR financing from January 1, 1973, to June 30, 1974. What has happened to the intervening six months from June 30, 1972, to January 1, 1973? What is the explanation for that gap? How did the CN and Air Canada finance their operations during that period? I suppose
Canadian National Railways and Air Canada there is an adequate answer, and members of parliament are entitled to the explanation.
There is a further question with regard to the audited statement of the companies. Ever since I first came to the House of Commons, the annual reports of the CNR and Air Canada have been referred to the Standing Committee on Transportation. Now, the story is that the annual report was tabled but the auditors have not been assigned. The Auditor General, because of some mix-up at the time of the change over, brought about to satisfy the new Minister of Transport (Mr. Marchand) -


An hon. Member:: Now, don't get political.


John (Jack) Henry Horner: I am just asking for an explanation of this. The government switched the auditors. The Auditor General has not examined the CNR statement, so it is not an officially audited statement. Yet, it has been laid before the House without any full explanation.
Now, we have Bill C-164 before us, providing for capital expenditures of $75 million, including $8 million for branch lines. We want to examine the details of that $8 million for branch lines. In western Canada we are continually told that branch lines are to be abandoned, but here we find $8 million allocated for construction of branch lines. Then, there is the provision of $167 million for new equipment and $140 million for Air Canada. These expenditures have not been fully explained in the debate to date.
When parliament was called back to settle the railway dispute the Minister of Transport made a great speech about labour trouble. It was a very emotional pitch. He referred several times to blackmail being threatened. Blackmail is not a very common or polite word, but certainly political pressure was placed on the government for eight weeks and it failed to act quickly to settle that strike. As a result, the revenues lost to the railroads were greater than would have been the case had parliament been convened earlier, or had a suitable settlement been reached prior to that. I only hope that judge Hall, in his review of the matter, will find a settlement satisfactory to both parties.
When we talk about CNR financing, we are often told about the heavy burden of debt, that nobody has yet lifted from the back of the CNR. We are repeatedly told that it is an old debt, the debt incurred in the building of the defunct railroad which were taken over by Canadian National in the period 1917 to 1922. The fear is that this debt is too great a burden for the CNR to carry, and that is why they have to come to parliament for financial assistance from time to time and why the final accounts are in the red.
This thought, I believe was best expressed by the hon. member for Regina-Lake Centre (Mr. Benjamin) on April 16, 1973, as recorded at page 3353 of Hansard:
Under successive old style governments it has been a tradition since 1923 to establish a public corporation to which they pay lip service and then refuse to let it function as it can and should. They handicap it with a debt structure that makes it impossible for it to succeed in any meaningful way . ..
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Canadian National Railways and Air Canada
He goes on to suggest that this debt was incurred in the building of the Grand Trunk Railway and, as a result of the union of the Grand Trunk with the Pacific Railway and so on. If one stopped in the middle of the sentence in which he referred to the debt structure, one might think he comes very close to Social Credit thinking that group always accused the old style governments of operating in a debt structured economy. What he was really referring to, however, was the burden of debt incurred by the CNR during the early years of settlement in western Canada between 1917 and 1922.
What was the amount of that debt and where is it now? In 1936, the debt of the CNR stood at $2,435 million. The Dominion of Canada reduced that debt by roughly half to $1,184 million. That is the outstanding long-term debt brought about by the creation of the CNR. In 1951, the House of Commons passed the National Railway Revision Act, and the long-term funded debt of the company was again cut in half. I am rounding off these figures, Mr. Speaker. In 1951, the long-term outstanding debt of the CNR was cut from $1,472 million to $615 million. Then, that amount was further reduced by another $121 million.
Accepting the long-term debt of the CNR in 1951 as $615 million, we must still ask why it is as large as it is today. What is the problem? Shortly after Donald Gordon took over, he brought in what was called the complete dieselization of the Canadian National Railways. That was embarked upon in 1950-51 and cost the CNR $630 million, more than the long-term debt at that time. Mr. Speaker, any efficient business should be able to pay off its own capitalization, and it is important that this fact be pointed out so that we realize it is not necessarily the long-term outstanding debt of the CNR that causes it to finance as it does.
When Mr. Gordon took over the CNR in 1950, he complained about the outstanding debt until he got the House of Commons to reduce it by more than one-half, but as he pointed out succinctly at that time, much of this indebtedness arose out of bad bookkeeping. That may be so, but what are the bookkeeping practices of the CNR today? A close examination of the ledger would show how it is done.
When the dieselization program was inaugurated, many steam engines had been purchased and some had only served 10 years but were being amortized over nearly 40 years. Naturally, when they were retired after only ten years the bookkeeping debt against them was quite large. Mr. Gordon revamped the bookkeeping system of the CNR. He did not want the same thing to happen to the diesel engines, so they were amortized for one-third of their expected life of 35 years. Amortizing the purchase of machinery over one-third of its life expectancy makes the bookkeeping and the debt look very bad. One could almost call it creative bookkeeping and, in effect, that is what it is. The CNR financing system is programmed to show a gross national revenue of a little over $1 billion. By the time expenses are deducted, the revenue will exceed the operating expenses, but along comes a $42 million interest on debt and that puts the company in the red. They do not mind being in the red because the federal government picks up the tab.
I do not necessarily say this should not be so, but I do say that it was to Mr. Gordon's advantage to bring in a

creative bookkeeping system. It did not bother him to do that because he knew if he painted the picture in the red the government would pick up the tab. That is part of the motivation and it should be understood. The men charged with the operation of the CNR were motivated to conduct the bookkeeping that way because of the lesson learned in having to scrap the many useful steam engines and the heavy expenditures caused by dieselization.
I think we are coming to the point in our society where many people are suggesting that governments can run things as well as private enterprise. That feeling is apparent in some of the socialist provinces. Somewhere along the line we have to look at that picture and decide whether it is true.
It is interesting to note that in Kenneth Galbraith's book on the new industrial state he makes the statement that in the western world, the United States and Canada, highly skilled executive types have been developed and that they probably work just as hard for a government as for private enterprise because they feel that they can thus maintain their stature as the elite of executive management. This is not borne out when one studies the other great railroading problem of recent times, the wreck of the Penn Central. This company was the result of a combination of two great railroads in the United States, the New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroad. All the facts were fed into a computer and it took ten years to make the decision that those two railroads should work well together. They complement each other. Why, then, did Penn Central go bankrupt shortly afterwards? It was because the personalities managing the two railways were not compatible. The trackage may have been, but the personalities were not. It is still people who in the end decide what will happen-people and what motivates them. Some of the brilliant men on the one railroad would not co-operate with those on the other.
In Canada, in 1967, the National Transportation Act was passed, designed by people who thought they had the answer. It was, indeed, a common notion in Canada, Britain and a number of other countries that if we could simply free the railroads from controls of one kind or another they would become competitive with other forms of transport and all would be well. Since 1967, the railroads have been given a great deal of freedom. Ask the minister a question about freight rates or schedules and he replies by saying the matter is out of his hands; parliament has passed the legislation and all he can do is ask the companies about it. It seems the idea of competition will not work in connection with a national transportation system which is supposed to serve the whole country.
The railroads were getting a subsidy of $108 million a year back in 1967, and the legislation passed in that year was designed to reduce the amount of that subsidy by about $14 million, so that inside of eight years no subsidy whatever would be forthcoming. This reduction would be accomplished by allowing the railways to charge whatever rates they wished. Well, we have seen the reduction of subsidies in one form and the building up of subsidies in another. It is time Canadians realised that we have to do much better than we have done so far in managing the railroads. We have to accept the fact that living in a
October 18, 1973

country four or five thousand miles in breadth, a country which needs to be tied together, the subsidy idea was not bad at all.
If we study the operations of some of the finest railroads in the world, we find they are subsidized. Even in Japan, with its heavy population, railroad operations have to be subsidized to a large extent. This is true of railways in the United States, too. I have already referred to Penn Central. I should like to read what Mr. Perlman, one of the brilliant railroaders of his day, had to say about the decline of that railroad.
I say that under the present system of regulation, under the present system of subsidies to the other three forms of transportation, under the system where we are not allowed to make rates competitive with other modes, it is a dying system. I still say the steel wheel on the steel rail is the most efficient form of transportation in the world. And it is being killed. We are not letting it die, it is being killed. I think it is a tragedy today to see it being killed that way. All I say, as a taxpayer, is: Treat them all alike. Don't give any of them subsidies-or subsidize them all.
Those views are still current in the minds of many people. Recently the government held a western economic conference and one of the subjects discussed was the transportation problem we encounter in the west. The act of 1967 has proved a colossal failure. It might have worked all right in other parts of Canada, but in the west it has been a colossal failure. The government has not even attempted to wrestle with this issue. Railway finance bills are brought before parliament. None of them are getting passed. No logical answers are given to explain how the railways are financing their operations without them. The government is reluctant to amend the transportation legislation of 1967 in any way. At the same time, the indebtedness of Air Canada has grown and parliament has yet to conduct a searching examination of the direction in which the corporation's affairs are going.
In 1967, the interest on Air Canada's debt amounted to $13.9 million. Today, it is $20 million. It is time we took stock of the direction in which we are moving, both in railroading and in air transportation. I spoke earlier about the long-term debt of Canadian National which has grown to around $1,894 million. In 1951, it was down to $615 million. Then, with the heavy expenditure during the years of dieselization in the 'fifties it rose by $630 million. Today, as I noted, it is $1,894 million, another $600 million between the 'sixties and now.
I see the purpose of this legislation is to provide funds for the building of more railway track and the purchasing of more equipment at a cost of $167.5 million. As late as last year, we were concerned in the Transport Committee about the accident rate of the CN and I was surprised to learn that only 19 per cent of the rolling stock of that company has Timken bearings in it. There is still 81 per cent of the CN rolling stock-or it might be this figure relates to all railroads-which has the old hot box problem, and most accidents are caused by this defect. Where has the company been spending the money? We do not seem to be getting value for it when, on examining the expenditure made by the CNR on equipment, we find we are still with the old hot box problem.
We see the CN developing turbo trains. Every now and then they make an experimental run from Montreal to Toronto to determine whether or not any improvements
Canadian National Railways and Air Canada have been made. No one appears to have questioned this expenditure and considered whether this form of turbo train is feasible. The Japanese are experimenting with the magnetic train. The power of magnets is used to run these cars; there are no wheels on the trains at all. I note that the CN is taking a look at the possibility of running such trains at speeds up to 300 miles an hour between Toronto and Montreal using the magnetic track principle. If this turns out to be feasible, surely we do not need two airports in Montreal and two in Toronto. But no one has really examined the proposal yet.
Recently some new bilateral air agreements have been completed with the United States, and it is of interest to note that the U.S. got the first jump at servicing Canadian cities. The odd thing about these agreements is that because of shortage of fuel in the U.S. they may not be able to take advantage of this part of the agreements. Certainly we should have had the opportunity of servicing American cities to the extent the United States has of servicing Canadian cities. I think the whole series of agreements was a mistake and should be re-examined as soon as possible.
At times I wonder how Ait Canada operates. A few years ago it introduced what was called a regional air policy, which I thought was a good concept. But the surprising thing about it has been the growth of regional air lines. We gaves these regional air carriers all the short, non-profitable runs with perhaps one or two good ones thrown in, yet they made a real success out of these short and mostly poor runs.
Why, then, is Air Canada still piling up its present debt structure? Pacific Western, an airline operating between Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver and places in northern Canada, has developed into the third largest airline in Canada. It is almost of national status. That airline operated an airbus service between Edmonton and Calgary that was so successful that Air Canada quit running between those two cities completely; they just could not compete with the managerial expertise of private enterprise.
I am suffering under the illusion that if we allowed private initiative to develop a similar airbus service between Montreal and Toronto, it would immediately prove to be a successful arrangement and Air Canada would have difficulty competing. A few years ago Air Canada declared it would commence an airbus service between Montreal and Toronto, but it has never come about. At least, any time I have tried to get on it I have been unable to do so.
The old story that has been running around here for years is that we should sell Air Canada. It was never explained whether or not Air Canada was to be taken over by the Canada Development Corporation. Is the financial structure of Air Canada to be separated from that of the CNR? That question has not been answered either. If Air Canada continues to relinquish some of its routes within Canada to some of the regional airlines, I would not be a bit surprised if the growth of the airline industry of this country proved to be second to none in the world. I say this because we are fortunate in having fuel for our
26635-14}

October 18, 1973
Canadian National Railways and Air Canada planes. The United States might have to shut down a lot of its big jet routes this winter owing to shortage of fuel.
Another matter that has always bothered me is this. Generally speaking, when aircraft become too small for the national airline they are sold to one of the regional air carriers. Why was not the Viscount sold far earlier to some of the regional air carriers? Air Canada kept the Viscounts flying until they could hardly fly any longer. The regional air carriers never bought them. As soon as they came up for sale, the regional carriers said that although it was a sturdy aeroplane to fly, it was the most expensive aircraft to keep in the air anywhere in the world and therefore they would not touch it. They said it was uneconomic and they would go broke trying to run it. Yet Air Canada kept them for 22 or 23 years; they were their real workhorses. Was this contented socialism at work, or is it a bad example of a contented management that was not prepared to scrap an aircraft and to use initiative? I really question the motivation of the management of that airline in regard to that particular decision.
Then instead of getting rid of the Viscounts earlier than they did, Air Canada bought a bigger Viscount, the Vanguard. They could not sell the Vanguards at all on the North American continent; they had to give them away, almost, to a country in Africa. The aircraft just could not compete economically. It was not a bad plane to fly in, but it just could not compete economically with other aircraft that were for sale. So the Vanguards had a very short life. They should never have been purchased in the first place; that was a colossal error. Here again, was this the action of a contented executive that was not prepared to look around or try a little harder?
These are some of the questions that arise when we examine air policy. Perhaps the regional air carriers should have a little larger share. According to an article not long ago in the Montreal Gazette, Mr. Pratte said, "We can do better", meaning that Air Canada can do better. I am glad he thinks so, because it is obvious to a lot of people that they should be doing better.
Then the government built the No. 2 air terminal at Toronto, and every member of the House of Commons has had a kick at this one. Most people consider it an inefficient terminal, difficult to manage and expensive to run. Again, was this government interference in the management of an airline which is government-owned but which should be run independently of government?
I think it is high time the officials of Air Canada and the CNR appeared before the transport committee of this House so the committee can examine their operations very carefully. Just recently Mr. Baldwin, one of the chief managers of Air Canada, took an early retirement. Was this the result of disagreement or disharmony within the executive of Air Canada? To me, his action was suspicious and requires examination.
There is one other point I want to make before closing. I return to the concept of socialism with which I started. It is high time we examined this concept, and for two reasons. We know that the present government is able to do things with the help of its partners on this side of the House. The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and his cabinet are able to do more with the present marriage in the House of Commons so far as socialism is concerned than they

could prior to the marriage. The socialist transportation experts of the NDP say that the trouble with the CNR is its national debt. The national debt of the CNR is 2.2 per cent of its gross operating income.
I ask my friends to our left whether they would advocate that any corporation cannot give up 3 per cent of its gross income and not go broke, but can continue to operate with a profit. They are always talking about the large corporations making a big rip-off, but 3 or 4 per cent is peanuts to them. That does not bother a big corporation at all. Yet the members of the NDP try to say that the long outstanding debt of the CNR is the cause of the CNR's poor financial showing. It amounts to only 2.2 per cent. The CPR's interest on debt is greater than that. Those members must examine the whole problem a little further.
The CNR is very labour-intensive; labour plays a very prominent role. In his book "Canadian National Railroad History," G. R. Stevens suggests that almost $2 out of every $3 that the railroad earns is spent on labour. That gives us some idea of the prominent position that labour plays in the success story of the CNR.
During my remarks a while ago hon. members to my left were worried when I referred to Penn Central problems in the United States. They said the railroads in the United States do not have a public conscience. That party and the main support of that party, the unions, must also display a public conscience if they seriously want the CNR to come up with a better financial picture. Having said that, I will allow someone else to continue this debate. Before the debate closes or the bill is allowed to pass, surely we should have an explanation as to how CNR and Air Canada have been financed without a bill such as this, for three years.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mark Willson Rose: Mr. Speaker, in participating in this debate I wish to say that a number of the questions put forward by the hon. member for Crowfoot (Mr. Horner) are most pertinent. Many times I have a little difficulty agreeing with the hon. member's questions. Where I have my difficulty is dealing with the conclusions he draws from them. I think the hon. member for Crowfoot is one of the most knowledgeable members of this House of Commons on railway matters. In fact, I have so much confidence in his ability, knowledge and experience in this field that I nominated him as chairman of the Standing Committee on Transport and Communications. Someone across the way says the committee was a disaster. I would not disagree with that too much.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mark Willson Rose: However, I would not suggest that the disaster can be laid completely at the feet of the hon. member for Crowfoot. One of the reasons for the disaster, if that term is to be applied to the Standing Committee on Transport and Communications, was the fact that the committee had very little work referred to it by this House precisely because an opposition member was chairman of the committee.
October 18, 1973

The hon. member for Crowfoot is knowledgeable. He is from western Canada where we have severe transportation problems. In fact, that was the motivation behind my nominating him as chairman of the transport committee. If it did not work out that way, we can blame the government or this parliament because the committee, in spite of the massive transportation problems we have in this country, had no work to do except examine some piddling little bills on which weeks were spent.
The committee did not have an opportunity to look at the CNR financing bill. It was never brought before it for debate. We are only on second reading of this bill. This is the first such bill we have had for 2Vi years. The hon. member for Crowfoot asked the germane and crucial question, how have Air Canada and CNR been financed in the intervening months not covered by either previous legislation or this legislation? What are they doing-going into debt even further?


An hon. Member:: You know that.


Mark Willson Rose: We do not know how they are being financed. We do not know why there was never an audit of the CNR financial statement. Because there was no audit, the annual report could not be referred to the committee for discussion. I said that I agree with a number of questions asked by the hon. member for Crowfoot, but I have a lot of difficulty with his conclusions. He spent a good deal of his time making what I felt to be a snide attack on the concept of socialism and socialistic thinking. He was very gentle about it, in contrast with his usual stand; he was most gentle about it tonight.
To back up his argument he used some quotations, out of context, from Mr. Gaibraith's magnificent book entitled "The New Industrial State". I read that book past page 2. What Mr. Galbraith was principally concerned about was the fact that the multicorporation, the private enterprise business corporation, was stronger than national governments. It was not that socialism had the upper hand, but the multicoporation, operating with massive capital in various countries, was going to be a threat to the national or sovereign governments of those countries. He was concerned about the fact that private enterprise, which has no democratic roots, was going to be stronger than freely elected governments.
The hon. member said-this amused me-that individuals, industries, concerns and enterprises paid out of the public purse lacked incentive and because of that were not efficient. He cited a number of examples which he used to explain why Air Canada and CNR might have had some problems. If that argument is going to be applied to those industries or crown corporations paid out of the public purse, it might as well be applied to the hon. member for Crowfoot. Outside of his cowboy business he is paid out of the public purse-and no one would want to suggest that the hon. member for Crowfoot lacks incentive.


An hon. Member:: He lacks sense.


Mark Willson Rose: October 18, 1973
Canadian National Railways and Air Canada fail so that our private railway could become more successful. I think that is an essential question we should be studying. Are we looking into the problems in the Committee on Transport and Communications? Of course not! Why not? Because the hon. member for Crowfoot is chairman of the committee. Because he is the chairman, the government refuses to send any kind of issue of importance to the committee.


John (Jack) Henry Horner: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of privilege. The member has referred to my chairmanship of the CNR-of the transportation committee.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John (Jack) Henry Horner: He suggested that because I have in some manner been less than diligent in chairing that committee, the government has refused to co-operate with it. That certainly has not been the case. I could not let that reflection upon the manner in which the chairman of the committee has carried out his duties pass.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Boulanger):: I do not suppose the hon. member wishes me to make a ruling, but if I were to do so I suppose I would say that it was very improper for the hon. member to refer to himself as president of the CNR. However, this was accidental. I do not see any real point of privilege, but there could be a point for debate.


Mark Willson Rose: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member for Crowfoot knows I would never question his diligence, his competence, his conscientiousness or anything else publicly.
As a result of the meeting with a number of men who have had up to 30 years experience with the railway, I think I can say with a good deal of sincerity that they want the railway to run successfully. I was a little disappointed to hear the hon. member for Crowfoot, at the conclusion of his address, suggest that the men also had a responsibility to see that the railway is successful, almost implying that somehow because of their lack of co-operation they were responsible for the problems associated with the railways. I think the situation is quite the reverse. I believe it is the errors of management which have caused the difficulty, and now management wants the men to bail it out and subsidize transportation by means of the payment of lousy wages.
We tried to correct that situation through a special debate and found that when the vote came there was a difference between 34 cents and 38 cents. We know how the Conservative Party voted. However, that was better by four cents than the Liberal Party proposed. I do not have any figures, because it is almost impossible to obtain a statement from Canadian National in terms of a cost accounting, certainly on a regional basis, but it has been suggested that because of problems in respect of transportation in the Vancouver area the CNR in that region has lost $3 million.
The Canadian Pacific Railway is working to overcapacity and Canadian National Railways are not able to deliver the goods. We are concerned about a shortage of boxcars for B.C. interior lumber and for prairie grain. Do you

know where those boxcars are? They are on the sidings, loaded. There is no room in the Vancouver yards and they are stored in many small, out of the way places because they cannot unload the cars in Vancouver.
Management is blaming the rail strike for the delay. The cause is not the rail strike at all. The cause is the wages paid to the truckers which are so low, about $1 an hour below the prevailing rate, that fully one-third of the truckers who would unload the cars have resigned in the last four months. This is why they cannot unload those cars. The truckers went to work for private industry and private truck lines under a Teamsters Union contract which rewards them a good deal higher.
Where are the 200 cars we need so desperately in the interior of British Columbia? My answer is that they are sitting on the sidings, loaded. That may not be of any concern. In the last few months 90 switchmen or yardmen, experienced men who can achieve the productivity which we need, have resigned because of poor morale. I have a list of these experienced people and the number of years they have been on the job. If I had time I could read out their names and when they joined the company.
When you lose such people, how can there be high productivity? How can the company retain these experienced people if the working conditions and pension benefits are so poor? I will deal with that matter in a little while. I have another list of employees, machinists in the Vancouver port yard, 20 per cent of whom have quit their jobs in the last few months. They include machine apprentices. Also, 18 per cent of the electricians in the Vancouver port yard have quit. There are 40 carmen of whom 10 have quit, or 25 per cent, after a minimum of four years and a maximum of 15 years experience.
I asked today whether the standing committee on transport could go out to look at this one problem. Of course, there are many other problems. All you have to do is ask the Minister of Transport or the Minister of Labour (Mr. Munro). We have had the Harbours Board problem and many other problems. We also have many benefits. Just living there is a benefit. But we must not forget the problems.
Four months ago I put forward a motion in the standing committee on transport that we appoint a travelling committee to go out to hear these concerns and complaints. We are still considering it. The minister did give us some hope. He said he will contact the CNR management and ask them for an explanation. I know what kind of an explanation he will get. No more than a week ago the CN management told the union representatives that nobody was quitting and that they really did not have any problems. Yet I have a list of the men who have quit. At least 100 of the approximately 400 men in the Vancouver yard have left the work force.
We have no money for the men, but we can pay the hotel expenses of management personnel, those snoops, those promoters and master mechanics, who come out of Edmonton, Regina, Moose Jaw and other places to supervise and spy on the men. Do you know what they are doing? They are working to rule. The rules are the uniform code of operating rules. If the men break those rules, they get demerits; but if the company breaks those rules they get profit, because the company is its own policeman. There is
October 18, 1973

constant pressure and harassment of the men to break the rules to improve productivity. There are officials following the men around. They are just waiting for Chief Justice Emmett Hall's report and the Deutsch report, and I predict that if the reports are not favourable we will lose a lot more of them.
How can you increase productivity, have the boxcars unloaded, and provide boxcars in a boxcar-short country if there is that kind of low morale and lack of experienced people working in the yards? The philosophy outlined by the hon. member for Crowfoot is all very well, but these are practical problems that are bothering these people every day. They are resentful, bitter, and they are right; no one will get around that one. They also have other problems. They are in a minority in Canada. The railroad workers in British Columbia are in a minority among railroad workers in Canada. It is impossible for them to have any say in such unions as the IWA, the United Auto Workers, and perhaps the steel unions as well. It is impossible for them to gain their own autonomy, to gain control of their own union in Canada.
There are impediments in making any move under IRDI to get any kind of reasonable and meaningful Canadian autonomy in their union or even to influence their western chairman or national officers. They have to win a 25 per cent referendum among all the UTU workers or, in general, all the workers in both Canada and the United States, and they cannot even get the list of membership from the grand lodge. So what have they done? They have stopped paying their dues. They said to themselves that the only way in which they could get these people to listen to them was to hit them where it really hurts, which is in their pocketbooks. When they stopped paying their dues, CNR became worried because they have had a happy relationship with some of these rail unions. So the management said, "All right; if you do not pay your dues you do not get your seniority rights." So they will have to go back to paying their dues or they will lose the better jobs.
That is not all. The international office in Cleveland, Ohio-the international president, in fact-decided that some of these dues payers, or non-dues payers, are all in one locality and they should be disciplined. So they wrote the members of the CN local 1747 and the treasurer of CP local 442 and said that from then on all CN yardmen and yardmasters would be transferred to CP local 422. As if that was not enough, they said that none of the present officers on CN local 1747 would be permitted to seek office in the expanded CN-CP local 442 unless specifically approved by the Cleveland office. The officer who is in charge of CN local 1747 has never held back on his dues, yet because those two locals have been merged in a highhanded, bureaucratic and foreign manner he cannot even seek office.
I have outlined the litany of complaints against management. Here is their problem with their own union. So we see that they have a lot of trouble and no chance of winning any kind of change within 18 months because they are prevented from doing so by national legislation. Therefore they are fed up. That is why they are leaving, and that is why there is loss of productivity on the railroads. That is why they are embittered. They have agreed
Canadian National Railways and Air Canada to work to rule and to withdraw their dues because they have no other way of fighting.
In addition, they have had an increase of only 34 cents in the last package, and we directed them back to work as if they were slave labour. The best estimate is that the men are subsidizing the CN by about $500 million a year in underpaid wages. In addition to that, CN has $900 million of the men's pension money. The board of directors has invested this matter. I do not think there are any CN men on the board of directors of the CN pension plan. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre will certainly correct me if I am wrong on this, because he is our expert on pensions as well as on many other things. That money is invested at 8 per cent to 14 per cent interest by the CN pension board. But anything over a 3 per cent return to that fund reduces CNR's obligation. That is criminal and fraudulent. It is the men's money, $900 million, yet they have a niggardly pension.
.
The other day the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) pleaded with the Minister of Transport (Mr. Marchand) to abase himself before the CNR pension directors so that the retired men can get a little bit more. All he got was a lecture about the work being done by Mr. John Deutsch. That indicates lack of understanding of the question asked by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre.
People get extremely angry about this subject. The union officers in the western region can sign on behalf of the men for anything, and their contracts can be legal without any ratification of the members. That is not good enough. How on earth can you ever have any kind of morale, spirit, joie de vie or anything like that in such a situation? The whole thing stinks, and it is time we did something about it. That is why I am trying to do something about it now. I want to apply some pressure, if ever this little diatribe of mine gets out of this building, on the CNR management in Vancouver. Incidentally, I hear that a committee of parliamentarians is going out to Vancouver this weekend. Perhaps there is something that 60 or 80-member committee could do.
Much more could be said about the CNR. I do not know how long I have been speaking, perhaps for half an hour-
Mr. Papro^ki: Carry on.


Mark Willson Rose: The hon. member for Edmonton Centre (Mr. Paproski) is always pleased if I get up to throw a rounder at the unions. I don't blame him. I do not think they have the answers to everything. No one has. But there are things here that, as Canadian nationalists, we should be doing something about, and there are things we should be doing to satisfy these people's grievances.
For a few moments I would like to speak about the Air Canada situation, following the general line of the hon. member for Crowfoot. I am not going to discuss the technicalities of the archaic Viscounts and Vanguards. With respect to the reluctance, I suggest that maybe the management was a bit gun-shy when it came to a decision on spending money because it felt some parliamentarian would get up and say the public corporation was wasteful, or maybe management was just being thrifty; it may have

October 18, 1973
Canadian National Railways and Air Canada
been a bad decision by management. Mr. Speaker, if there were no bad management decisions, why would we need bankruptcy legislation? We need it to assist private corporations to bail themselves out when they make bad decisions. No company, private or public, has a monopoly on bad decisions or on good ones. Nevertheless, there is concern about Air Canada among some of the people I represent on the west coast.
In this connection I would like to read from a letter received from an Air Canada pilot. Naturally for reasons best known to myself, I would prefer to make him anonymous. I might say that I have had conversations with others who are a little concerned about the situation, especially people who live in the west. Here I am speaking not only of pilots but of the general cabin staff. This pilot is concerned that the "gravy runs" are not going to Air Canada. That is one of the reasons Air Canada's profit picture is' not as bright as it might be. He suggests that when it comes to passing out new routes, whether to Milan or China, Air Canada is usually last in line. In fact, it could be argued that regional air carriers are getting good routes and are skimming off the profit. I am not making that statement in this context but I know it has happened in other fields. I know that the cable companies serving our cities get their profit by skimming the populous regions and not giving service where the population is scarce.
This pilot also says that aside from Air Canada being last in line when it comes to handing out the juicy routes, it is "a very eastern-oriented airline, as demonstrated in the latest aircraft and pilot assignment list." He enclosed that list. Obviously, 1974 is going to be a big expansion year for airlines. According to this list, 28 crews are to be added to Toronto and 28 or 29 crews to Montreal, bases which are just 400 or 500 miles apart. But in terms of expansion there is not one extra crew member going to Vancouver for the 1974 season.
Pilots with three or four years training can operate out of central Canada, if they care to live there; but people with that kind of experience can never become much above a first officer in western Canada. This is basically inequitable and unfair. I think the Toronto and Montreal bases tend to be favoured. Whether this is because representatives from those areas have more political clout than westerners, I do not know; but we do know there are 23 representatives from the city of Toronto and 27 from Montreal and we cannot match their voices in western Canada.
The pilot I have referred to writes:
While countries like New Zealand and Australia ponder the right of CP Air flying into their countries, possibly Air Canada should have the door of the Orient open to them via the Vancouver airport. This leads us to wonder how and why the China run was ever awarded to CP in the first place. Using the reasoning that they already fly to the east is not valid. It might apply to a shipping company, but not an airline flying 550-mile an hour jets.
This and a number of things I have said this evening will indicate why we are not very pleased about seeing this Air Canada financing bill only from time to time. It is like the magicians' card trick-now you see it, now you don't. It is used as a sandwich-filler. If there is nothing more to talk about, let the boys whack away at it. I am sure the President of the Privy Council (Mr. MacEachen)

must say to himself, "Let the boys hammer away and get it out of their systems, as long as we do not have a debate that is too concentrated."
The government does not really care whether we deal with this bill or not. But in the meantime the CNR is losing 18 per cent of its work force, some 7,000 men, each year. As a result of recent attrition, 23 per cent of the CN work force have been on the job less than two years. There is no way in which we can increase productivity of this national railway and provide Canada with the services it needs if we have an inexperienced work force. Here we have a work force that is inadequately equipped, that is bitter and has low morale.
The new training scheme for engineers is an example of the frustration which is experienced. For the past three years I have been trying to get an answer from the regulatory body known as the CTC on the question of who is in charge of a train when a student is abroad with the engineer, along with a master mechanic. We cannot get that answer from the CTC. Mr. Speaker, you may recall that every winter we lose railroaders in the Fraser Canyon because of snowfalls. There is an example now of a man being charged because he refused to hand over the running of his train. He was the engineer, and the master mechanic ordered him to hand over to a student. He refused because it is not clear who would have been responsible had the train been involved in an accident while the student was at the controls. You would think that would be an easy thing to straighten out. Just call the CTC and get an answer: find out who is in charge of the train, the engineer or the master mechanic. But we cannot get an answer, Mr. Speaker, so these frustrations pile one upon the other. These molehills build up into mountains of dissatisfaction and are bound to have an effect upon the railroad.
If we put the two systems together we might find that we have a rationalized transportation system, half private and half public, and it might work to the advantage of the Canadian public. It is certainly not working to anybody's satisfaction, today.


John Howard Lundrigan: Mr. Speaker, after the last two speakers it looks as if we might make the vote at a quarter to eleven by the time I get through, if things go as they normally do. It is no coincidence that we have the CN financing bill before us tonight at the same time as the fifth game of the world series. It seems to me that nobody wants to interfere with the world series, so it is a case of let's bring on the CN financing bill and maybe make a few frivolous remarks and pass a few jokes, then get on with more serious business tomorrow. Indeed, it seems that some members treat the occasion of the CN financing bill as an annual joke. When we speak we know that not much is going to come out of it. At least, that is the feeling I get this evening. Even the Minister of Transport (Mr. Marchand) has not thought it necessary to be here.
A couple of evenings ago I was in the company of some friends from western Canada and one was asking, "Where is my wandering bull tonight?" I am wondering where the Minister of Transport is tonight.
October 18, 1973


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Howard Lundrigan: He should be here taking part in the CN financing bill. I wonder if the government is trying to switch the ministers around again. They got into all kinds of trouble when they had the Minister of Transport and the minister of DREE occupying their previous roles, so they were switched. I do not know what is happening now, but transportation is becoming a colossal joke in the House of Commons day after day. We see evidence of this every day with the Minister of Transport.
A few weeks ago when the strike was on I saw a clip on one of the national television programs. I believe Norman DePoe was doing the voice-over. It was bits of an old film about the original railroading days. It gave me a feeling of nostalgia and identification with the railwaymen, and a remembrance of the old cowboy movies and the part the railwaymen played in them. Do hon. members remember the sounds and the music of that era? Even today you can turn on the radio and hear Johnny Cash or the blues singers with their beautiful railway songs about the times when people were building something. People across the nation were opening up our frontiers, allowing the country to grow and develop.
Today one TV commercial talks about building "the Canadian dream". Mr. Speaker, if you say that and were from some other country, you might believe it. You might believe they are building the great Canadian dream, seeing the prosperity and involvement across the nation, with CP and CN building that dream. I would like some of the people who get hundreds of thousands of dollars for such advertising to go to some parts of Canada that have made the headlines, and see the extent of this great Canadian dream. I think we are going to get a revival of the blues for a different reason-people are going to mourn the passing of the great transportation days. The blues singers are now singing the blues about what is happening today. When we talk about transportation, we talk about the future of our country, Mr. Speaker. I doubt if an industrial nation has ever grown to greatness without a transportation system that was modern in that day and age.
At a meeting of the Atlantic Advisory Council last week the chairman said something to the effect that the transportation system in the Atlantic provinces in no way impedes the economic growth of that area. I can speak with some knowledge of the Atlantic area, Mr. Speaker, and I say we cannot reach any great level of economic growth unless we take issue with the present transportation system.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Howard Lundrigan: I have listened to members from the Prairies and British Columbia speak, and it seems to be the consensus that we are wasting our time with all our talk about economic policies and DREE programs unless we are willing to provide the country with a modern transportation system. I believe it was in 1885 that the last spike was driven in the national railway. Mr. Speaker, almost a century ago we had a national transportation system, a brand new system. It had taken the imagination of our greatest leaders of various political stripes decades
Canadian National Railways and Air Canada to put it into effect in face of the financial difficulties, scandals and political upheaval that surrounded it.
Imagine the railwaymen of that day. The railwayman's cap is to me a symbol of the workingman and the growth of industrial development. These people put together a system that must have been a hundred years ahead of what we have today, in terms of the comparative economic needs of the country. We hear talk of the Department of Regional Economic Expansion, their industrial incentive programs and loans programs, but we hear nothing about transportation except that a province is willing to negotiate an extra bit of blacktop somewhere on a road in an Atlantic province. Our transportation system is archaic compared to conditions of a decade ago. If I may be forgiven for being a little parochial, I will tell hon. members something of our own transportation today compared to ten years ago or longer. I would like to get this on the record and in some small way try to tell the Canadian people of a problem we have. I do not think it is unique, but it is an indication of the seriousness of our transportation problem.
In 1949 we became part of Canada. Under term 32 of the Terms of Union we concluded an agreement with the federal government which was signed by our Fathers of Confederation who certainly could not look forward many generations. Nor can anybody look ahead, today, to the future with any great certainty. But in that day and age they realized transportation should remain some kind of government responsibility and they placed in the act, under term 32, a provision that Canada should provide a link between mainland Canada and the island part, the province of Newfoundland, and arrange for the existence of a transportation system carrying goods and services commensurate with the needs of the province.
This was spelling out in the Terms of Union between Newfoundland and Canada, the marriage contract, if you want to call it that, in 1949. In that day and age we did not depend very much on a modern transportation system. We were more involved in coastal trade because we had literally hundreds of our own freighters, schooners and other *ships which used to provide us with goods from Europe, the Caribbean, the New England states and even from that foreign country which was called Canada. But we did have a fairly adequate transportation system. As a result of our entry into confederation we got a "Go" ferry operation which provided a link over 100 miles of water from North Sydney to Port aux Basques. Today, in 1973, we are almost totally dependent on outside sources for all the goods which are needed to serve 500,000 Canadians on the east coast of this country. I should like mainland Canadians to recognize this.
If we were arguing in support of a transportation system to ship goods in from Japan or some other foreign country, I would expect some Canadians to get their backs up. But today we are almost totally dependent as a province on goods shipped from central Canada. We are the most captive of all the parts of Canada in terms of consumer demand. We are virtually non self-supporting in all areas of consumer goods. We are an exporting province. We export a variety of raw resources. We export a large amount of mineral resources, mainly from Labrador and

October 18, 1973
Canadian National Railways and Air Canada some from the island part of the province, and a tremendous quantity of fish products which go mainly to places in the United States. We are beginning to export a variety of wood products, paper from both the east and west coasts, and linerboard which, by the way, is going to Montreal now and serving the needs of some of the strike-ridden parts of Quebec.
We are an exporter of raw resources to other parts of Canada and North America. We are an importer of every type of consumer goods. We get up in the morning, and all the dishes we have come from Ontario; the knives and forks come from Ontario. The stoves we use come from somewhere in Ontario or Quebec, or some other part of this industrial nation of ours. We go to bed in the evening, and all our bedclothes, the bed, television set and furniture come from central Canada. Everything we have in our provinces is imported. We are a captive market, and our imports from mainland Canada over the last ten years have about doubled. I calculated a few weeks ago that we have in the last 12 months increased our imports from central Canada by about 15 per cent.
We have a transportation system today which is grossly inferior to what we had in 1969. First of all, in 1969 we had a passenger service which ran across the whole of the 580 miles of the island. At that time the minister of transport was Jack Pickersgill who used to be the member for the riding I now represent. He afterward became the czar of transport as chairman of the transportation commission. I have admiration for him as a parliamentarian, but I lost a great deal of respect for him as a result of transportation decisions which he made.
The CNR, under the calculated guidance of the minister, cooked the books in such a manner as to enable Canadian National to argue that the rail transport service was a non-paying venture-as if it was a paying venture anywhere in Canada. The end result was that they abandoned the rail passenger service and gave us a bus system. Every time I talk about the bus system I am reminded of an old colleague of mine with whom I had a bite to eat about a week ago, the former member for Grand Falls-White Bay-Labrador, Mr. Ambrose Peddle, who sat in this House and made a tremendous plea. I would call him the father of the effort to get back a rail system when he spoke out in almost his first speech against the decision of Canadian National to abandon this service. We did everything in our power, next to short-circuiting the whole activity of parliament, to get that system back. But we lost.
The CN had decided, with all the inside track it had with the Canadian Transport Commission, that the service was going, and it went. I can remember rolling a barrel full of signatures collected from 31,000 Newfoundland people-the biggest petition ever taken up in Canada-protesting the abandonment of the rail passenger service. The petition could not be presented to the House because the rules provide that petitions must be presented in such a magnificent fashion, under such formal conditions, that it is not feasible to do so. So what we did was to present a token petition to symbolize the 31,000 petitioners who protested the abandonment of the service. And we still lost, because CN decided that we were not going to get any rail passenger service in the future.

I have perhaps put my finger on one of the most significant aspects of the matter we are discussing today. Do you think, Mr. Speaker, that we in this chamber have any control over the transportation system in this country? Do you think that even the Minister of Transport is able to exercise any control? So we get ourselves a big department of government. Most of us haven't enough ability to run the average office. I find myself struggling from day to day to keep two people functioning efficiently, let alone manage a department of government. Yet a minister takes office; and if he is in office for 25 years he might know about railway operations as much as an experienced railway worker, let alone the manager of the corporation. Consequently, this being only one of a minister's responsibilities, he is bamboozled into believing whatever he happens to be fed.
I found myself during the last few days trying to get some kind of responsible reaction from the Minister of Transport. But he is so defensive of CN you would think his grandfather owned it. He stands up in the House of Commons and loses his temper. Have you seen him? We had a little Pekingese one time. He would bite your legs off if you looked at him the wrong way. That is what the Minister of Transport reminds me of. When you ask him about the CN you would think you were asking about his closest relative. This is as a result of what they are feeding him. I remember last Thursday. By the way, I have been the best dispatcher the CNR has had for some time. In the last six or seven weeks I have been involved in trying to route a carload of goods out of North Sydney over to Newfoundland. I think there would have been almost an economic standstill on the northeast coast of our province if I had not become a CN dispatcher. The only thing is, I didn't get paid for it.
Last week a businessman phoned me and said, "We have a hotel ready to move into. Our move has been delayed for over a month. Is there any way you can put a spark under the rear ends of CN people to move a carload of freight for us?" I phoned and I said, "Boys, can you move this carload?" And they moved it. They phoned the minister immediately and he said, "Look, if he ever throws anything at you, just tell him that the only thing he has ever had moved, or the thing that he classifies as an emergency, is a load of furniture." This is what is surprising to me- that the communication I had with the North Sydney agent got up to the Minister of Transport to the point at which he was to be armed with his defences-"You moved a carload of furniture". He also had the statistics on the number of backlogged cars in North Sydney a year ago.
This is the way they have armed him, and instead of saying to those fellows, "Look, you bunch of beggars and you deceitful fellows who are trying to sell me this line of goods, we want something done about it," he stands up and tries to protect the Canadian National Railways. I would like to see people in other countries like Japan, which has one of the most modern transportation systems in the world, especially the monorail system, and even England, which has a railway system which would put us to shame, come in and analyse what we have got going in this country of ours. I think that even Newfie jokes would have nothing on that. These people would laugh at us for weeks; indeed, it might almost stop the war.
October 18, 1973

We are not able to handle goods and services adequately with the present transportation system in the Atlantic provinces. We are not able to develop economically as we would like. Yet in this part of Canada there is one of the highest unemployment rates in the western world, and this has been so since day one, 1867. You would think that one government at least would have the imagination and vision to recognize that lack of economic growth is the reason for our high unemployment rate. This is why the government should harness a program that would not only give us the transportation facilities we need but would in the process help us overcome our unemployment difficulties within five or ten years.
I just want to set the record straight on a few things, Mr. Speaker. I am disappointed that the Minister of Transport has not had the decency tonight to be here and take part in this debate, placing on record the argument for CN. He is the spokesman in this House for CN and his absence is a disappointment to every member of the House. Ten years ago CNR guaranteed three-day delivery of express goods from points in Toronto and Quebec to Newfoundland. I know this is a frivolous subject to the sophisticated members from the large centres of Canada. One of the problems in this House is that we have now become such a great nation that divergent parts of the country are almost like ruptured appendices: they should be cut out.
I have gone off at a tangent and I will get back to my point, but first let me say there does not seem to be any responsiveness on the part of the federal government to the different needs of the regions of this country. If there is a problem in a major area with a large population which would have a tremendous effect on the political fortunes of a particular party, then the attention paid to that problem is magnificent. But if the member from the Yukon raises a problem, or there is a problem in the riding of Skeena, in Prince Rupert, in the Athabasca area, in Timiskaming or in some other part of northern Ontario-it almost seems to be out of order these days to talk about northern Ontario-then the situation is entirely different. One almost hears a groan from the House these days when northern Ontario is mentioned. There are only four members from P.E.I.-and do they have a real voice in this House?
I have talked about problems till I am black and blue in the face. I am getting completely frustrated and so are the people I represent. I see the Minister of Transport making a momentary appearance for 60 seconds. He will be back again in a moment because I see he has his notes all ready, prepared for him by Mr. MacMillan of Montreal, no doubt.
I am concerned that the problems of my region are not being properly received or transmitted. I am sure that in the last five years the seven members from the province I represent have had their say in this House; I am convinced of that. I am convinced they have told their stories about our problems. But I am equally convinced that there has not been much reception of those problems. Unless there is a better way in this federal system for the government to recognize the legitimacy of what we say, then I do not feel like tearing around the countryside in my eagerness to be a Canadian.
Canadian National Railways and Air Canada
Recently a little strike took place. As a Canadian, I was embarrassed to see the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) get up in the House and try to say the reason for the strike was that the workers would not move our goods. Even Newfoundlanders can go on strike, he said. No one bothered to tell him that at no time was there any agreement during the strike to move goods across 100 miles of water. Unfortunately there was an agreement with regard to passenger service, but because of some upheavel that agreement was broken and as a result personal hardship was caused. But there was no agreement to move freight. Along with the Premier of P.E.I. we argued constantly that the federal government had an over-riding responsibility, under the constitution, to see that goods were able to move between the provinces of Canada. As a result of a three-week strike there will be a backlog of freight until the spring of 1974.
I know it is a waste of time talking about this. I am not saying it is the media's fault, but I am sick and tired of going outside this House and finding a cubbyhole to talk into the tape machines they have about this problem. For one reason or another the government will not recognize that we do have a second-class system, one that is worse than the system we had 50 years ago. Then today the minister had the absolute gall to say that if there is an emergency he will make some special effort. He does not recognize the fact that goods have been tied up in our transportation system since September 3, six weeks ago, which in itself is an emergency.
I can tell hundreds of stories concerning the impact that the transportation system of this country has had on the economy of our coast in the last number of years. It got to the point last year where one small businessman who had been receiving fresh goods shipped in from Toronto found they were arriving so late so frequently that the shipper decided not to ship to Newfoundland any more. The only compensation he was offered was that CN or Air Canada agreed to pay if the goods were spoiled. But we have to wait so long for our money that these goods are now shipped south of the border where the market is just as good.
Ten years ago, in 1962 or 1963, we were guaranteed three-day delivery of goods sent express to Newfoundland from central Canada. Today the minimum time express goods from central Canada take to get to Newfoundland is ten days. I have been told by people on the firing-line, people right in the sheds who receive the freight, that they are lucky to get it under two weeks; usually it takes much longer than that. That is the quality of the service we get.
I am disappointed that "his nibs" was not in the House earlier to hear some of the complaints that we have brought to his attention as the eminent Minister of Transport. We are not standing up in this House because we like to hear ourselves talk; we have legitimate complaints to make about the quality of CN service. Instead of attacking members of parliament who say they have a problem, why does not the Minister of Transport call some of the fellows in charge of this great national system into his office and start asking them some questions?


Jean Marchand: It sounds like playing games.

October 18, 1973
Canadian National Railways and Air Canada


John Howard Lundrigan: They are playing a political game. If we had not kicked up the fuss we did, we would have 1,500 cars in North Sydney today. Can you imagine CN officials saying to the Minister of Transport that they want a special effort made because they are not moving the freight fast enough? September 19 was the day the minister told us to learn to swim, and since then I have been taking swimming lessons every day. He said the backlog would be moved in two weeks. That was on September 19. Today is October 18, one month later. There are exactly the same number of cars today in North Sydney. Cars are sitting in the Moncton system.
Hon. members may be interested in knowing what happens to goods leaving Toronto or Montreal destined for the Atlantic region. The Atlantic region is able to accommodate only so many cars. The first delay is in Montreal. The cars then go to Moncton, where they are again delayed. That is the second stage of delivery. I have been told by businessmen that cars have been sitting in Moncton since September 3. They eventually move to Truro and then to North Sydney. Halifax is another terminal point. After that, someone eventually recognizes the problem and they get to Port aux Basques, a western terminal, then on to the southern centres of distribution.
No matter what is done with the existing boats and existing facilities, there is practically no way of improving the transportation system into our province. That is a fact. The only thing that could be done in the short haul, and this could not last very long, would be to keep it at the level it is now, with a backlog of 500 or 600 cars. If 10 or 12 Hercules aircraft were put into operation for a couple of weeks, we might be able to move the non-essentials. They are non-essential in the sense that people will not starve if they are not moved, but they are essential because people demand and need the service. Also, many things are important for our economic growth. This would clear up the problem in the short haul.
Some fairly major decisions will have to be made with regard to the province I represent. More ports will have to be opened. Some will have to be winter ports such as there are on the south coast, perhaps at Bay d'Espoir. Others will have to be built on the east coast. There is a harbour facility which was hardly completed when the government took out Clarke Steamships. Clarke Steamships was receiving a subsidy which was taken away three years ago. There are multimillion-dollar storage facilities there, with nothing moving through them because neither this minister nor anyone else is willing to go there and find out what is the problem unless people like myself take up the time of the House to bring it to the attention of the minister. Tomorrow there will be 15 people from CNR feeding the minister junk and garbage about the quality of service they are providing. Sometimes I do not blame him for accepting that. As I have said before, he is one man, with a big department.
If the minister would recognize the urgency of what we are saying, I would be very happy. Some major changes have to be made if our province is going to survive as an economic entity in Canada. For the past five years CN have let the whole thing slide. It has become one big mess. No one bothers about it too much unless there is a real

logjam like there is at the present time. That is why we are in this House every day, crying about the problem. We will be here every day until someone does something about it. I cannot wait to get my teeth into some of those CNR fellows when they appear before our committee to explain the mess on the east coast today.
I am very serious when I say that our people are becoming extremely frustrated. The situation is becoming almost contradictory. We should be, and have been, the most exuberant Canadians in this nation. We have the spark and fire of Canadianism throughout our whole province. However, we are getting to the point where we feel ours is a voice in the wilderness. No one listens to us and, even more important, nobody gives a damn. I hope the minister will consider our economic problems and look into the serious backlog that will take until the spring of 1974 to clear up. If we were a powerful part of the country with 50 or 60 members, we could handle ourselves easily. We would defeat this government and get in somebody else. If they did not handle our problem, we would get rid of them as well.
We have the most problems and the least amount of power. Our problems are almost boring because they affect so few people. It is like someone talking about the Indian problem or problems in the Yukon. People are bored because it affects too few people. Because of psychological irritants, some patients end up going batty. It is these little things that are causing a tremendous amount of damage to the fabric of confederation.
My time is almost up. I want to say something which I have thought about for some time. What would happen to some central Canada industries if we were not a market for them? What would happen if we could negotiate our own trade deals with the European Economic Community and other parts of the world? What if we had our own currency and controlled our imports? I wonder how much would be lost to central Canada. I suppose no one has ever done the research to find out the impact that 500,000 people have on the market. What would happen if this market were lost to central Canada? What would happen in Oshawa? Cars stream into Newfoundland every day. What would it do to the employment situation in that part of Ontario? I do not know how much 500,000 people consume in food and material goods, but obviously this is a fairly important factor.
Every now and again we hear about equalization payments. Some members from Ontario get their backs up. It is as though we are the welfare part of the country. One fine day they will recognize the value of our great untapped resources, minerals and oil, to the economic security of North America. Perhaps then the mentality will change. In the interim, it might be wise for the government to have a bit of vision. We do not see this in governments today. Governments do not think a decade or two ahead. Most think about and react to yesterday's problems.
Has anyone ever given serious consideration to some form of subsidized freight rates in order that we may buy a car or other goods at the price they are being sold for in central Canada? Is this what Premier Lougheed talked about at the recent western economic conference? He talked about the need for major changes in transportation
October 18, 1973

costs to points divergent from central Canada. Not only do we buy our goods from Ontario, such as cars from Oshawa and washing machines from Toronto, but we have to pay substantially higher prices because of the freight costs involved. We are thankful that we can provide jobs, but we feel freight rates should be equalized so that goods cost the same in one part of the country as in another.
This is a big country, 5,000 miles wide and thousands of miles from north to south. Something should be done about our transportation system so that people in all parts of the country will feel they are part of Canada. At present, this is a real disadvantage. On the northeast coast of Canada, the north shore and possibly northern Ontario, people feel they have to pay a price for being part of confederation, without receiving the benefits.
I know I am wasting my breath in speaking to the minister along these lines. If he would even solve the problem of the backlog in North Sydney he would feel as good as Napoleon did after his escape from Elba. That would be an achievement for him. I do not expect him to become involved in the matter of monorails and cross-subsidies, because that would be an exceptional challenge. But he might keep this matter in the back of his mind, and some day when we stand and ask a question about the backlog, he might recognize it is legitimate and start talking to the big guns in Montreal who manage the great system of CN and are building this great dream for us in Canada.
Why does he not call them all in, put his finger in their mid-sections and say he is not satisfied? Why does he not look at the legislation to see whether he can pull a few strings in respect of these people? He must have some control. I get the impression that in talking about the railway we are talking about some little prince in the wilderness over whom no one has control. I should like to think that this spirited minister from Quebec, for whom I have great respect, would manifest some of that spirit when dealing with the great monopoly called Canadian National Railways and drag these people into his office and lay his cards on the table, so that some day he would be able to come here and tell us that these things will be done. I can tell him that if he did this we would have much more respect for him as the spokesman for Canadian National Railways.


Jean Marchand: I did so many times.


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, Bill C-164 contains some recommendations regarding the state-owned corporations, the CNR and Air Canada, and when you study those recommendations you find that they are a bottomless pit able to swallow up any amount of money. We are given a forecast of possible expenditures between now and June or July 1974, but it is added that Parliament may be asked to vote additional moneys should those state-owned corporations be unable to finance themselves through their operating revenues. I would like to quote the following recommendations:
His Excellency the Governor General has recommended . . .
Canadian National Railways and Air Canada ... to extend the limit of refunding under the Canadian National Railway Refunding Act, 1955, to one billion dollars; to authorize Her Majesty to make loans to the Canadian National Railway Company and Air Canada to meet deficiencies in operating revenues to June, 1974 . . .
This means that should the amount now being requested, namely $669 million for the two State-owned corporations, be inadequate for their operations, we are empowered to vote additional amounts to meet the requirements. And I quote further:
. .. any such loans to be repaid from revenues of the Railway Company and Air Canada or, if revenues prove insufficient.. .
When the 669 million have been eaten up ...
... if revenues prove insufficient by subsequent deficit appropriation by Parliament.
This means that there are no limits. Therefore, if it is considered that there are no limits, then why give the figure of $669 million?
However, we are asking Parliament to standardize freight-rates throughout Canada so that western people do not have to pay more than the eastern Canadians for transportation from one area to another within Canada. If it costs a little more, what can the minister say for himself?-We have the power to vote supplementary credits! There is nothing to prevent us from doing it, but let us let justice prevail in all areas of the economy with respect to freight rates in Canada. That would solve the problem concerning the famous feed grains we wish to carry from west to east, that would solve the transportation problem from the east to central Canada as far as fish is concerned. Even if the minister said: We need $225,500,000 for extension and improvement purposes, etc. Out of that amount, $75,000 are allocated to new construction. I refer here to branch lines, etc. In clause 3 the government gives the estimated amounts for 1973 and I quote:
Road property	$138,978,000.10
Those 10 cents are important.
Branch lines Equipment Telecommunications Hotels
CN Tower Limited
13,000,000
31.897.000
25.946.000 5,679,000 8,800,000.15
As far as hotels are concerned, they have precious little to do with transport: Parliament is asked to vote $14 million to complete what is connected with hotels in Canada.
We are no longer dealing with the CNR or Air Canada but, after consideration of the government we must still compete with private entreprise and with the hotel trade in general. Thus, with respect to transport by the CNR or Air Canada, we are asked to vote such fabulous estimates to compete with private entreprise which is faced with increases in prices, taxes and cost of materials. Mr. Speaker, the bill now under consideration is an impediment to private entreprise. It is not honest competition.
Those who must buy trucks worth $40,000 or $50,000 to pull trailers have seen the price of their licence plates triple in the past seven or eight years; diesel oil now costs about twice as much as it did five years ago. The carriers must incur cost increases, while they have no other

Canadian National Railways and Air Canada income than the freight or transport rates they charge in their business. In addition, they must balance their budget and also pay fantastic amounts in income tax to the federal government which introduces a bill designed to compete instead of walking on one's feet, I wonder what it is, if not an unfair competition for private enterprise in the field of transportation.
As regards the services provided by these means of transportation, we have been asking for years that more suitable trains be put into operation between Ottawa and Montreal, Montreal and Quebec City, Montreal and Toronto, that the Trans-Canada, for instance, which runs between Halifax and Vancouver, be improved. Mr. Speaker, there is room for improvement and I feel that we should not be satisfied to provide hundreds of millions, even almost $1 billion a year at present, to enable them to pursue their unfair operations as regards private enterprise. This is where politics comes in, of course. Whether you call it the Canadian Transport Commission, with its control over the Department of Transport, those state-owned corporations have too many employees compared to private enterprise. Employment security is given as a pretext! Employment security paid by the Canadian people, no way! When there are too many employees in an area, they should be allowed to go and work somewhere else. It is simple as that. Mr. Speaker, one cannot always try to make his way through the economic conditions that prevail in crown corporations. Where there is one man employed in private enterprise, there are five in a crown corporation, in an attempt to secure votes for the next election. It has reached such a point that people must wear steel-tipped shoes so that their toes are not crushed when they tread upon one another's feet. We do not have anything against employment but this is an undertaking that is not economic, and the proof of this is that we are asked $100 millions every time to make up deficits. Moreover, they meddle in almost every field, including the hotel trade.
Mr. Speaker, the Creditists want better railway services across Canada. Let Parliament not only pass votes. For example, some say that useless expenditures are made. I will merely give you an example. Air Canada has three daily northbound flights: two Viscounts fly during the day and at night a DC-8 leaves Montreal flying directly to Val d'Or and then Rouyn. There, the aircraft empties and passengers embark for Montreal at 8:55 p.m. That is flight 553. It leaves Rouyn, stops again at Val d'Or and then flies to Montreal. When one knows that the take-off is the major cost element in a flight why does Air Canada not schedule a flight that would go directly to Val d'Or letting off passengers at that point and flying back to Montreal with new passengers. The Rouyn-Montreal flight would be shortened by at least three quarters of an hour and the corporation would save thousands of dollars.
Air Canada tells me that the Rouyn runway might not be long enough for a full plane. I talked to the Minister of Transport but he says that the runway is long enough. The pilot up in the air tells me that the runway might be a bit too short. I ask that that runway be extended, and I am told that there is no money available. It would cost less to extend the landing strip in Rouyn then it would to make the repeated stops at Val d'Or, Rouyn, Montreal, Val d'Or,

*
Rouyn, and Montreal. That is the kind of economy practised by Crown corporations.
Quebecair serves Val d'Or and that company makes money. Air Canada and the CNR make deficits. They are asked to improve their service in our areas. The CNR complains that people no longer use its trains to go to Quebec City or Montreal. Mr. Speaker, let them come with me on the CNR in the North and it is clear that they would not do it again. Only one trip would suffice. In fact, the service is not improving. There is the whole staff, all the employees who are travelling from Noranda to either Quebec City or Montreal. The train is divided first in Senneterre, and then in Hervey-Junction. One part of the train proceeds towards Montreal, while the other goes to Quebec City. The cars are almost empty, except for lumberjacks in the Clova area, but there are hardly any at all now.
Still, there is the transport of wood supplies towards either Montreal or Quebec City. Mr. Speaker, if the passenger service were better, the CNR would operate at a profit in these areas.
As for freight, the CN operates at profit. This is perhaps one of the most profitable activities of this Crown corporation in the field of lumber or mineral ore transportation from the North West. The Minister of Transport (Mr. Marchand) is not aware of that and neither is the Canadian Transport Commission. And that Crown corporation, the CN, does not realize the possibilities-in that area, especially with the James Bay development which will last for more than 3 years. It may be a matter of 15, 20 or 25 years considering the new mines which will be discovered in that area. The CN might do well to get off the pot and ensure that their services improve rather than content themselves with asking for votes-to pay their good-for-nothing people or make up for their deficits due to poor management. To ask that votes be passed to improve services would be more encouraging.
I maintain, Mr. Speaker, that these Crown corporations should not be used to compete unfairly with private trucking enterprise, which is a viable and a worthwhile industry. Because it is that, it is made to compete against an unfair rival which depends on moneys voted by Parliament.
Every year, the same thing happens. I have been here for 15 years and every year we are asked to make up the CNR and Air Canada deficits yet we hear my socialist friends attack the Canadian Pacific and CP Air because these two concerns are making profits.
Private enterprise carries on a profitable business while the Crown corporation registers deficits. And yet, we are not convinced. Rather than say: Let us improve the Canadian National services, we say: Nationalize the Canadian Pacific to make it like the Canadian National.
For our part, we say: Either abandon the Canadian National or force it to continue its operations in the same manner as the Canadian Pacific. Then, we shall have fewer budget allowances to vote and we shall not have to support the insatiable spenders that government corporations are.
Mr. Speaker, enough is enough and I sincerely believe that there are abuses as concerns the expenditures of
October 18, 1973

government corporations such as Air Canada and the Canadian National. I think that the time has come for the government to accept its responsibilities and protect private initiative and enterprise in Canada.
It is not by giving billions of dollars to deficit ridden corporations that we shall promote the normal development of a country like ours. We often hear complaints such as those expressed a while ago by the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate (Mr. Lundrigan). He speaks of Newfoundland and says that it is a new Canadian province and that Newfoundland alone is different from other provinces. The same thing is said about other areas.
In western Manitoba and Quebec, you can hear the same complaints. Things will continue to go badly as long as we do not have a uniform policy for all Canada, including Newfoundland and British Columbia, and as long as we do not realize that when you step on the tail of the dog owned by the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate, the same dog barks in Vancouver.
Do you understand? This means an equal and uniform policy, one that is beneficial to all Canadians, and that is what the Creditists wish with all their hearts for Canada.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, I was very happy to hear the hon. member for Fraser Valley West (Mr. Rose) indicate to this House that men were leaving the CNR to work for private truckers because private truckers manage their businesses well, as private enterprise can, and provide better working conditions and pay. I hope this indicates that the the NDP are finally seeing the light and realize that some of the management techniques of public ownership are not very good and the working people of this country would be far better off if they did not have to put up with some of the things that happen in the public management of business. I was also happy to hear the hon. member for Fraser Valley West talk about American control of unions and control of pension funds, and to hear him criticize the unions. That was a refreshing theme to hear from the NDP who so often seem to be under the thumb of the unions. In our debate of just a month ago in settling the railway dispute, that party did everything possible to prevent the settlement of the dispute by voting against the bill and against the amendments produced by this party.
To give some further information and light with respect to the pension fund held by the CNR, I want to tell the House that in the financial statement of the Canadian National Railways the total amount of reserves in the pension fund as of December 31, 1972, was $1,454 million, a considerably larger amount than indicated by the hon. member for Fraser Valley West. Further concerning pensions, I note that in 1971, while $261,800,000 was put into the pension fund only $75 million was paid out to workmen who are retired or have otherwise left the CNR. Clearly, the pension fund is growing like a monster, and clearly retired workmen are entitled to something better. I hope the investigation by John Deutsch will show that this kind of money should not lie dead and that men who contribute should get a decent pension.
Canadian National Railways and Air Canada
This bill, which is of a similar nature to those produced by ministers of finance in the past, permits more money to come from the public till to Canadian National Railways and to Air Canada. In analysing the need for money, I think it is high time we said something about what appears in the balance sheets of the CNR and Air Canada. For a moment I would like to deal with those balance sheets and put on record some of the financial facts as they really are. They are pretty hard to find in the balance sheets, but let us see what we can do.
Before I do that, however, I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that when I was a young fellow going to high school and eventually to university, they kept telling me it was no wonder the CNR kept losing money. After all, it had to take over all these bankrupt railway lines, bail out these foreign capitalists and take over all this property that wasn't worth a darn. They had to run horrid transportation lines through uneconomic areas, through towns that were not "making it," and areas that were no good for agriculture, mining or anything else. My investigations show that that is not so.
We all have had something to do with real estate. Just look around at some of the real estate held by the CNR, real estate in downtown Toronto, not cheap real estate but about the most expensive you can possibly buy. Mr. Speaker, the debt of the CNR is more than covered, many times more than paid off in the inflated values given to the CNR in the enormous properties they hold in every city in Canada in downtown locations. There is absolutely no reason, if those assets were used properly, why the corporation should have any debt at all.
Let us get into the debt factor. From the CNR's financial statement we find that the corporation has gross assets with a book value-remember, the land we are talking about did not cost a dollar in many cases and the rights of way were given them free; a great amount of the property they have is totally depreciated and was written off long ago-of $4.2 billion and it owes approximately $1.9 billion. You can say that that is a lot of debt. It is a lot of debt. But of that $1.9 billion, $1.1 billion is owed to the government of Canada and much of it on terms that bear no interest whatsoever. So when we talk about the real debt of the CNR, it is about $800 million and the highest interest rate paid on that debt to the public market-that is the only real debt there is, the public market debt-is 534 per cent per annum. Any other debt of the CNR, if interest is paid on it at all, is paid into the consolidated revenue fund of Canada, as I say, at rates that bear no relevance to the cost of money. Having analysed that, we find that the interest paid on this $1.9 billion debt was only $66 million.
Let us go on to the next question. Look at the revenue of this national railway. I am rounding the figures off because there is no point in filling Hansard with long, detailed figures. We find from the financial statement that the CNR took in gross revenue, from its operations last year, $1.4 billion. As was pointed out by the hon. member for Crowfoot (Mr. Horner), the debt charges, compared with the gross income of the corporation, for the year ending December 31, 1972, were 2.1 per cent of the gross revenues. Any corporation can certainly afford to carry that small debt factor.

October 18, 1973
Capital Punishment
But what does the CNR do? What do these directors do with their fancy annual balance? They produce a table and show that if they did not have to pay any interest, they would make a profit. And what interest do they have to pay? They pay $66 million in interest, and they say that is why they lost $17 million. They did $1.4 billion worth of business. Their debt and their interest costs represent only 2.1 per cent of their total revenues, and they cook their balance sheet to show that that crushing debt is hurting them.
When analysing the situation, Mr. Speaker, I think we should look at the balance sheet of that other railroad in Canada which for some strange reason always makes a very good profit. I went to the library and got the balance sheet of the CPR for the year ending December 31, 1972, and found that it had a gross revenue in that year of $709 million-half the gross revenue of the CNR-and it had a debt of $267 million on which it paid interest of roughly $25 million. The debt ratio to the gross business done by the CPR was not 2.1 per cent of the gross but 2.8 per cent. In other words, Mr. Speaker, the CPR did not complain about the fact that it had to pay interest. It showed a profit. The cost of money borrowed by the CPR was 2.8 per cent of the gross revenue, but the cost of money borrowed by the CNR was 2.1 per cent of its gross revenue. That clearly indicates to me, as it should to every member of this House, that it is not the debt that causes the problem in the CNR but is, perhaps, inept management. The CPR, paying a greater share of its gross revenue to service the interest on its funded debt, makes a profit; and the CNR, which ever since I can remember has been screaming about the horrid cost of its debt, has only 2.1 per cent of its gross revenue going to service its debt.
In making this interesting comparison between the private railroad and the public railroad regarding profit and revenues and other business aspects, I found it is very difficult to discover the right figures because of the way the companies set up their balance sheets. Some adding and subtracting is necessary. Consolidated balance sheets of corporations reflect the consolidation of a number of operations, and consequently one has to realize that what is treated as one item in one balance sheet may not be the same item in the next balance sheet. As I mentioned, Mr. Speaker, at the last year-end Canadian Pacific Railway had done $709 million worth of business.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. It being 10.45 o'clock p.m., it is my duty, pursuant to the special order made July 27 last, to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the report stage of Bill C-2, an act to amend the Criminal Code.


CRIMINAL CODE
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill C-2, to amend the Criminal Code, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs; and

motion No. 2 of	Mrs. Morin and motion No. 3 of Mr.	
Lawrence.
Mr. Speaker:: The question is on the motion standing in		
the name of the	hon. member for	Louis-Hebert (Mrs.
Morin). May I suggest to hon. members that when the vote is called, those supporting the motion vote as we do in committee of the whole, starting with the first row to my		
right, followed by the other rows to		my right, then the
first row to my left, and so on consecutively.


Mr. Speaker:: I declare the motion lost. The Chair will now put the motion standing in the name of the hon. member for Northumberland-Durham (Mr. Lawrence). I gather it is the wish of the House that we proceed with this division as we did on the first division, with those in support of the motion rising by rows, starting with the first row to my right.


Mr. Speaker:: I declare the motion lost.


William Warren Allmand: that Bill C-2, to amend the Criminal Code, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, be concurred in.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Mr. Speaker:: Is the hon. member rising on a question of privilege?


John Howard Lundrigan: Just to indicate that I was present for both votes but did not register a vote.


Mr. Speaker:: It being after eleven o'clock, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow until 11 a.m.
At 11.25 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to special order.

Friday, October 19, 1973