1973-07-24

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Yesterday the hon. member for Cochrane (Mr. Stewart) sought to move concurrence in the report of the Standing Committee on Broadcasting, Films and Assistance to the Arts. The Chair expressed reservations about a procedural aspect of the report, more particularly in relation to the form of the recommendation of the committee. I undertook to look into the matter more closely. It now appears that the French language text of the report was correct as to form. The chairman has agreed to make the necessary correction to the English text so that the recommendations of the committee are now couched in the required words to the effect that the committee recommends that the government give consideration to the advisability of taking certain action. The hon. member may therefore proceed with the motion.


Mr. Ralph Stewart (Cochrane) moved: that the second report of the Standing Committee on Broadcasting, Films and Assistance to the Arts, presented to the House on Monday, July 16, be now concurred in.
He said: Mr. Speaker, there is an agreement that there will not be a debate on this motion and as chairman of the committee who put forward the motion it is my duty to make a mis au point with regard to the reporting of this matter in the press because of the importance of this subject. I would commend the body of the report not only to hon. members but also to the press because in it is contained the substance of what was discussed in the cpmmittee. It was the feeling of the committee that, although a complete ban on children's advertising would not be the route to follow, the CRTC will be asked to regulate in such a way that there will be no direct advertising exclusively aimed at children; in other words, that it be aimed at the parents. This is something that should be well understood because, although it was not possible for the committee to prove scientifically that there was actual harm to children, it was considered that an exploitation of children exists when advertising is directed to them, and this is not at all desirable.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. J. P. Nowlan (Annapolis Valley):: Mr. Speaker, I must say that, since the hon. member for Cochrane has moved concurrence in the report, and since there is to be no debate on this motion-I do not know how much consultation there has been with other members of the House-as a member of the committee who attended the committee meetings for over a month, it was unfortunate that I had to be away when the report was drafted, I believe, in one session late Friday afternoon. I did not really have a chance to put forward many of my views on the report. I must say that the report which I finally saw covers many of the interesting points that were advanced in the testimony before the committee, but I cannot agree with what the chairman of the committee just said or what is set out in the report regarding the use of the word "exploitation". If we are to refer to exploitation in connection with advertising, depending on how exploitation is defined, we can say that there is exploitation in any and all forms of advertising.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: I know my friends to the left, and friends farther left than that-


Mr. Baldwin:: Where?


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: -are the first to use the term "exploitation of the masses" and other such terms ad nauseam and ad infinitum.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: What I do not like, Mr. Speaker, is the unseemly haste both in drawing up the committee report after a month's long debate, and in this move for concurrence today. I did not see any notice of any committee meeting, although the steering committee may have met and decided to move concurrence in the report today. But still I do not quite understand why the move has been made today.
If such a term as "exploitation of children" can be applied to television advertising, I would point out no one has a monopoly on children and on what happens to them with respect to television. I have four children myself. That does not quite tally with the numerals of the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) and the hon. member for Cochrane (Mr. Stewart), but I would point out that children are exploited by their parents anyway, at least up to the ages of four or five, so that they may start to learn some of the guidelines laid down for adulthood. I do not believe that eliminating television advertising will necessarily be the cure for this problem. As a matter of fact, I think the committee missed a golden opportunity to put the CBC right on the spot. If it is to act as a public

July 24, 1973
Broadcasting Committee
network I do not believe there should be advertising on the state system. The state pays for that system.
We do not have a distinctive Canadian television system right now. Canadian radio is distinctive, but not television, and if we are ever to have a distinctive Canadian system I think we could have taken a small step forward by having no children's advertising. Let the state system be supplied with funds, either through underwriting or in some other way, to make up for the lost advertising dollar. That applies to the state system. Let the private network show advertisements, but only in conformity with the advertising code that we are told is going to be administered more strictly by the CRTC. Instead of that, Mr. Speaker, we have a hodgepodge in the recommendations contained in the report.
First, the CRTC in some mysterious way is supposed to define exploitation. Second, it is to have the almost impossible task of trying to define what advertising is geared to parents and what advertising is geared to children. I do not know how some of my hon. friends view the realities of the situation, but what of the program called "M-A-S-H"? Incidentally, that is a good word when one starts thinking of committee reports. M-A-S-H is sponsored by an advertiser, and is shown sometimes in the afternoon and sometimes at night. I suggest that children of six years and over, probably under 12 years, will look at this program if their parents let them, and are just as interested in M-A-S-H as they are in Bugs Bunny on Saturday mornings.
Take the case of the program "Man from U.N.C.L.E." or "Girl from U.N.C.L.E." which is shown from five to six o'clock in the afternoon. Mr. Speaker, I will certainly take the girl from U.N.C.L.E. any day, any way, and that program is supposed to be geared to the grey area between adulthood and childhood.


An hon. Member:: Where are you?


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: I suppose there are some very adult things in that program, yet the children seem to like it a lot. How in the world can the CRTC deal with that situation?
The Broadcasting Committee has not even touched the fundamental problem that it should be dealing with this session. A green paper on communications was filed by the Minister of Communications (Mr. Pelletier) three months ago. As I say, the Broadcasting Committee has not even touched it. The committee has dealt with advertising directed at children, something which is important and interesting. Some hon. members deserve a lot of credit for raising the subject, but I believe it has been raised out of all proportion to the fundamental problems of broadcasting and communications. Loading another element of responsibility on to the CRTC to help decide whether a program is designed for adults or children, and whether there is exploitation of children in advertisements, I think makes the work of the committee rather ridiculous. These are the remarks I should like to make now, even though the chairman said there is not supposed to be a debate.


Mr. Cyril Symes (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Broadcasting Committee, I rise in support

of the motion for concurrence. I was interested in the remarks of the hon. member who just finished speaking. He admitted that he was not at the steering committee meeting, or the final broadcasting committee meeting, which drew up the recommendations. His comments obviously indicate his absence because most of them were directed at children's programming. That is not what the committee recommended; it recommended that advertising not be directed specifically at the child. We heard evidence that the child is too immature to make rational decisions on advertising that is designed primarily to make him act as a salesman or, although he has not the money, to make him pressure his parents into buying goods. We found that the child could not gain information from the 30 second or 50 second commercial which was mainly designed to pressure him into buying or to pressure parents into buying.
This is a sound recommendation which attempts to eliminate a serious problem in our society, a problem on which parents have expressed their concern to members of parliament. I would urge that all members of the House support this resolution that the committee has drawn up.


Mr. Real Caouette (Temiscamingue):: Mr. Speaker, I am not a member of the committee in question, but from what I hear, the report deals with advertising aimed at children, and which exploits adults as well as children.
It has just been said that it is not good for children to see such advertisements, and I would add that there are some fifty-year olds who have about as much sense as five-year olds. Television advertisements would be just as harmful to them, as to the children.
If agreement has been reached between the various political parties, within the committee, that the report be tabled without debate by the chairman, who is undoubtedly the hon. member for Cochrane (Mr. Stewart), I will raise no objection. Only it would be very important for the committee to take into account the attitude of the CRTC and the CBC.
It was said earlier that it would be acceptable if no advertisements were televised on the government network. I am in total agreement on this point. The national network, which is financed by the people of Canada, must at least spare us the moronic advertisements one sees all day long on the CBC.
Once again I say that I will raise no objection if agreement has already been reached that the committee report be tabled in this House without debate.


Mr. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, I merely wish to say that I consider this to be a good report. I agree with the interpretation placed on it by the hon. member for Cochrane (Mr. Stewart) who did such a distinguished job as chairman of the committee.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


James Aloysius McGrath: I should also lake to say in fairness to the chairman of the committee, that this report was tabled in the House more than a week ago. The motion for concurrence was placed on the order paper last Friday which I think gave hon. members ample time to consider it.
July 24, 1973

May I say in conclusion that I thank hon. members for the fairness with which the subject matter of Bill C-22 was examined by the committee. As far as I am concerned the report has, unfortunately, been misinterpreted by the press but it certainly meets the objectives of my Bill C-22.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
a (1420)


Hon. Robert L. Stanfield (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Acting Prime Minister on the subject of a pipeline to move oil from Alaska to the main body of the United States. May I ask whether, back in 1970, the government of Canada took the position that this was not even a subject that could be discussed. I ask this question because, although it relates to three years ago, it is of current importance to Canada today.


Hon. Mitchell Sharp (Acting Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, the answer to that question is, no.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. I would ask the Acting Prime Minister what position the government of Canada took, if the position as described and attributed to the government of Canada by a senior official of the United States is denied now by the minister. Perhaps the Acting Prime Minister could tell the House briefly what position the government of Canada took.


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, the position that the government has taken is that we would welcome an application by the American oil companies to build an oil pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley. This application should, under the laws approved by this Parliament, be made to the National Energy Board.


PROPOSED MACKENZIE VALLEY PIPELINE-POSITION OF CANADA ON OWNERSHIP TRANSMITTED TO UNITED STATES IN MAY, 1972
Robert Lorne Stanfield: further supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. As in May, 1972, our position was apparently expressed on a comprehensive basis to the United States authorities, can the Acting Prime Minister tell the House whether at that time Canada's position with regard to the ownership of such pipeline was as set forth in the message sent to the United States embassy early in July of this year? Was that position with regard to ownership put forth as part of our comprehensive position in May, 1972?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I cannot speak as to dates but I do reaffirm what the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources said, that the
Oral Questions
position of the federal government with respect to an oil pipeline was decided by the government last summer. I cannot say in what particular month that was.


TAPS TANKER ROUTE-SUGGESTION CANADA RECOMMEND MOVING CHERRY POINT REFINERY FARTHER SOUTH
Mr. Barry Mather (Surrey-White Rock):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a supplementary question to the Acting Prime Minister. Having in mind the discussions going on or pending in Washington at this time following the green light which has been given by the United States for the shipment of oil down the Pacific Coast by giant oil tankers to the Cherry Point Refinery, which is approximately 13 miles from Surrey-White Rock, may I ask, is the government giving consideration to making strong representations to the United States government aimed at the removal of the Cherry Point Refinery to a point farther south on the Pacific Coast and farther away from Canadian shores?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, perhaps this question gives me the opportunity to clarify a point that seems to be a bit obscure. The Canadian government's principal objection to the TAPS line proposal has to do with the possibility that large tanker's would enter the narrow waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The question of whether the United States should build a pipeline across Alaska and carry oil down to California is not really a question upon which we have much of an opportunity to express a view. However, with respect to the narrow waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, I believe we have just as much interest as the United States. It is on this point we have centered our objections. I say to the hon. member if we could remove that problem, the rest is a matter that does not concern us directly.


LABOUR RELATIONS
Mr. David Lewis (York South):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question or two for the Minister of Labour relating to the possibility of almost certainty of a strike of the railway employees. Has the minister discussed with the parties or has he himself been giving consideration to the appointment of a mediator, not someone from his department, but an independent mediator to seek a settlement to the dispute without interfering with any rights the employees may have?


Hon. John C. Munro (Minister of Labour):: Yes, I have, Mr. Speaker. I have been considering both alternatives. I have acted now with reference to having mediation services provided by my department. As to whether an outside mediator would help, that is being explored. If it would help, it will be entertained. In the meantime, Mr. Kelly from my department is involved.

July 24, 1973
Oral Questions


DISPUTE WITH NON-OPERATING RAILWAY EMPLOYEES- UNION AGREEMENT NOT TO INTERFERE WITH GRAIN SHIPMENTS IN EVENT OF STRIKE-POSITION OF COMPANIES
David Lewis: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary arises out of a statement made by a spokesman for the union some time last week. It was that the union and their members are prepared to make sure grain shipments continue, even if there should be a rail strike, on condition that the companies co-operate and do not abuse the situation. Has the minister followed up or does he intend to follow up this possible offer of the union's concern and have discussions not only with them, but also the companies on that point to make certain that there is no interference with regard to grain shipments?


John Carr Munro: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I have had some discussions with the union officials on this question as well as the over-all strike situation or possibility of a strike situation. As far as the companies are concerned, I will be making approaches to them to determine their intentions in this regard. I have not precisely done that to this time, but I know communications have been made with them to explore their intentions in this regard.


DISPUTE WITH NON-OPERATING RAILWAY EMPLOYEES- UNION DISSATISFACTION WITH PENSION PLAN-SUGGESTED INQUIRY
David Lewis: There is one central point to the dispute of which the minister is well aware. There is widespread dissatisfaction among railway employees with the pension plan negotiated and agreed to some time ago which is to form part of any final settlement. In view of that widespread discontent and the relevance it will have on the kind of railway stoppage, is the minister considering acting without too much delay to appoint someone to make a thorough inquiry into the pension plans of the railways which have been the subject of discussion in Parliament for many years because of the historical inadequacies?


John Carr Munro: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I think it is worth noting there has been a considerable movement towards the improvement of these pension plans for the railway workers. We are very aware of the importance workers are attaching to this and are giving consideration to some formula in this regard. One of the reports of the union representative on the conciliation board advanced certain suggestions. We are looking at those at the moment.


DISPUTE WITH NON-OPERATING RAILWAY EMPLOYEES- UNION AGREEMENT TO EXCLUDE FERRIES SERVING PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND AND NEWFOUNDLAND FROM STRIKE ACTION
Hon. J. A. MacLean (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to address a supplementary question to the Minister of Labour. Can the minister confirm that the unions concerned have agreed to exclude CNR operated ferries serving Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland from any

strike action that may be taken in the near future in connection with the present labour dispute?


John Carr Munro: That is my understanding, Mr. Speaker. The union has indicated that it will co-operate in every way to ensure that the ferry services to which the hon. member has referred will not be interrupted.



SOCIAL SECURITY


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
Are consultations now in progress between the federal and the provincial governments with a view to granting old age security pensions to persons aged 60 and over?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, I have answered this question on several occasions. I have nothing new to add. It is one of the matters which is being considered as part of the general review of social security in Canada. It is only one of the many questions being examined.


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, since the provinces are now giving some financial assistance to persons of 60 or more, can the minister tell us what proportion of that assistance is paid by the federal government?


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, 50 per cent.



LABOUR RELATIONS


James Aloysius McGrath: A supplementary to the Minister of Labour. Notwithstanding the assurances by the union that the ferry services to and from the island provinces will not be disrupted and that grain shipments will continue, I ask the minister whether he has consulted with the union with respect to the movement of essential food items into my own province of Newfoundland, bearing in mind that most of the essential foodstuff entering the province does so by rail.


John Carr Munro: I believe the union has given consideration to these aspects but there is no indication that the same guarantees will apply to that situation as is the case in respect of grain and the ferry services.
July 24, 1973



DISPUTE WITH NON-OPERATING RAILWAY EMPLOYEES- UNION DISSATISFACTION WITH PENSION PLAN-APPOINTMENT OF INDEPENDENT EXPERT

Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: In view of the sharp difference between the company and the union with regard to an assessment of the monetary value of the pension plan, and the importance at arriving at an agreement in this dispute, is the minister considering the proposal of the union that he appoint an independent expert to advise the government as to the real value of the pension plan?


John Carr Munro: Yes, Mr. Speaker.



DISPUTE WITH NON-OPERATING RAILWAY EMPLOYEES- UNION AGREEMENT TO MOVE GRAIN AND FOOD IN EVENT OF STRIKE-POSITION OF COMPANIES

Mr. A. P. Gleave (Saskatoon-Biggar):: I asked yesterday whether the management of the two major railways was prepared to continue to move grain and essential foodstuffs, the unions having already indicated that they are prepared to do so. Might I again ask the minister whether the government has sought such an assurance from management and, if so, whether it had received an assurance to this effect?


John Carr Munro: I am not
aware of having received assurances, to use that phrase, from the companies.


Alfred Pullen Gleave: Then, may I ask again whether the minister has sought those assurances?


John Carr Munro: The companies are aware that we would very much like them to be able to operate in a way which would lead to as little dislocation as possible.



DISPUTE WITH NON-OPERATING RAILWAY EMPLOYEES- LENGTH OF STRIKE BEFORE GOVERNMENT ACTION

Gerald William Baldwin: I should like to ask the minister whether the cabinet has come to a decision as to the number of weeks which must be allowed to elapse before, in its opinion, the public becomes sufficiently exasperated to not accept the additional burden, involved in the increase, which would be passed on to it through a settlement?


John Carr Munro: The government is very concerned about the public interest in this matter and both parties involved are well aware of this.
Oral Questions CP AIR



POSSIBILITY OF STRIKE OF MACHINISTS-GOVERNMENT ACTION TO AVERT-SAFETY OF OPERATION WITHOUT MACHINISTS

Mr. Duncan Beattie (Hamilton Mountain):: My question, too, is addressed to the Minister of Labour. Can the minister outline the progress of the negotiations between CP Air and the machinists union, and tell the House what steps have been taken to avert this strike?


John Carr Munro: Yes, Mr. Speaker, we have been in touch with both parties with respect to the dispute. As of the moment, neither is desirous of mediation services of any kind. The parties are engaged in direct negotiations at the moment.


Duncan M. Beattie: In order to avoid an unsafe situation, the machinists' union has called on the government to shut down CP Air if the machinists strike tomorrow. In the light of the minister's direct responsibility in this dispute, has the government considered this important matter and, if so, is the government satisified that the airline can be operated safely without the machinists?


John Carr Munro: As far as CP Air is concerned, it is a private corporation governed by regulations, and responsibility for those regulations rests with the Minister of Transport to whom the hon. member's question might properly be directed.



PRIVACY


Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prince Albert):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Acting Prime Minister, both in that capacity and as Secretary of State for External Affairs. Throughout the years, as he will agree, the essence of communication between nation and nation, and their representatives, has been its entirely confidential nature, and to my knowledge, with the exception of one or two communist countries, there has never been any question of eavesdropping on those discussions, or of their transcription by tape. In view of what has been revealed, that in the White House, in Washington, when leaders of other countries have met with the President, secret eavesdropping has taken place, has the government of Canada made any protest to the United States against this practice, one which unless it were prevented and discontinued would undermine the whole basis of international discussion?


Mitchell William Sharp: The
answer, Mr. Speaker, is no. We have not made any such protest. The Prime Minister expressed it very well last week, I thought, when in reply to a similar question he said he continued to believe that his conversations with the President of the United States would be treated as secret and confidential.

July 24, 1973
Oral Questions


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, that was a pious expression of hope. I ask the minister whether the government has examined what took place during the discussions between the President and the Prime Minister and concluded that it would not really matter whether their contents became public or not?



PUBLIC SERVICE


Mr. Elmer M. MacKay (Central Nova):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the President of the Treasury Board. Has the minister reconsidered his position on the issue of equal pay for equal work done by employees under the jurisdiction of the Treasury Board no matter where in Canada they may be employed?


Hon. C. M. Drury (President of the Treasury Board):: No, Mr. Speaker.


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: I should like to ask the minister, now, whether he has received any indication from any provincial administration that it objects to this concept of equal pay for equal work?


Charles Mills (Bud) Drury: Not to my knowledge, but I will inquire.


Mr. Donald Maclnnis (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: I would ask the President of the Treasury Board how it is that he is not aware of an objection put forward by provincial governments with respect to equal pay for equal work, though it was reported to a committee of this House that such a position had been expressed by the provinces to the government? As President of the Treasury Board he should be the first to know. But as usual he will be the last.



HOUSING


Mr. Ian Arrol (York East):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of State for Urban Affairs I should like to direct my question to his parliamentary secretary. In view of the fact that a coroner's jury recommended last week the closure of Rochdale College in Toronto, and despite the fact the college is now fighting in the courts a foreclosure order by CMHC, would the government consider the possibility of taking further action so that the will of the people in Toronto might be served?


Mr. Ian Watson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State for Urban Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, the minister has replied to this question on a number of occasions. The government has given instructions to its attorneys to proceed as quickly as the courts will allow with the question

involved in taking possession of Rochdale. As soon as the courts allow the proceedings to continue, this action will be brought to a conclusion.


Ian MacLachlan Arrol: Mr. Speaker, is action being blocked by those holding second or third mortgages?


Ian Watson: Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of the answer to that. I will look into that question and try to supply an answer.



TRANSPORTATION OF ALASKAN OIL TO UNITED STATES- POSSIBLE REQUEST IN 1970 FOR TREATY FOR A PIPELINE CORRIDOR

Mr. Thomas S. Barnett (Comox-Alberni):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to address a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs arising from questions asked earlier by the Leader of the Opposition and in view of the ambiguity of the statement attributed to deputy assistant secretary Katz. I should like to ask the minister whether in the 1970 discussions the request from the United States was for an agreement or for a treaty? If it was a request for a treaty for a pipeline corridor or right of way through Canada, could the Secretary of State for External Affairs indicate to the House in what particular respects that proposal differed from the kind of arrangement which exists currently whereby certain Canadian oil is transported from one point in Canada to another point in Canada through the United States.


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I did not participate in all the discussions which took place in 1970, but my recollection and my exchange of recollections with my colleagues leads me to believe the conversations at that time were of a very general character and were not specifically related to a pipeline. They concerned many aspects of energy and this was only one thing that happened to be discussed at that time.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the minister, as Secretary of State for External Affairs or perhaps as Acting Prime Minister, specifically whether the United States at any time approached Canada to enter into a treaty arrangement with it for a corridor or right of way for an oil pipeline between Alaska and the main body of the United States?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, if any such proposal had been made it would have been made to me as Secretary of State for External Affairs, and no such proposal was made. There may have been some people in the United States who had some general ideas like this, but no proposal was made by the United States government to the Canadian government at that time.
July 24, 1973



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Claude Wagner (Saint-Hyacinthe):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to put a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
Following the appeal made in Canada yesterday by Mr. Trevor Page, one of the directors of the United Nations movement set up to help the people of Sahel, does the government intend to extend to the end of August shipment of food supplies to Nigeria, shipments which were due to cease at the end of July?
(English]


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, we have an on-going program of several million dollars. We are providing planes to transport food to Niger and other states in the Sahel. We are also engaged in developing some long range program to deal with the underlying problem of drought and the need for transport of water or the movement of people. Our program is not limited in time.



MANPOWER


Mr. P. B. Rynard (Simcoe North):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to address a question to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. In view of the large amount of money being spent, has a survey been contemplated of the LIP programs so that they may be classified according to their benefit or usefulness.


Hon. Robert K. Andras (Minister of Manpower and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, this whole program is under constant evaluation. We are analysing what its costs and benefits might be. Indications so far are that it has been a very productive program.



INQUIRY OF THE MINISTRY

Hon. W. G. Dinsdale (Brandon-Souris):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Supply and Services. With reference to his announcement yesterday of a contract of some half a million dollars awarded to the Saskatoon Fire Engine Company for 14 firefighting pumpers, could the hon. gentleman inform the House if this equipment will be available to cope with the fires ignited in western Canada by the minister responsible for the Wheat Board?


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The hon. member for Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe.
Oral Questions HARBOURS



POSSIBLE TRANSFER OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR SMALL CRAFT FACILITIES TO DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENT-REQUEST FOR STATEMENT

Mr. Jack Marshall (Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of the Environment I should like to address a question to the parliamentary secretary. The minister indicated on several occasions in committee and in the House that the decision to transfer responsibility for small craft harbours would be handed over to the Department of the Environment. Would he advise the House if this decision has been made?


Mr. William Rompkey (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, the minister intended to make a statement on this matter last Friday, but will be making a statement this coming Monday. I believe at that time the answer will be provided.



AIR CANADA


Mr. Doug Rowland (Selkirk):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Labour and relates to the strike of Air Canada employees in Winnipeg now in its ninth week. Has the minister finished his consideration of the union's request to present a case before the labour relations board regarding alleged unfair labour practices on the part of Air Canada and if so what decision has been reached?


John Carr Munro: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I have given the consent requested under the act for the union to bring its complaint before the Canada Labour Relations Board.



ALLEGED USE OF NON-UNION PERSONNEL DURING STRIKE-RESULTS OF INQUIRY BY MINISTER

Douglas Charles Rowland: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the minister if he has now completed his investigation of the union's allegation that Air Canada is forcing nonunion clerical personnel to work in the capacity of strikebreakers and if so what are the results?


John Carr Munro: Mr. Speaker, I am not satisfied there has been a concerted effort in this regard. There was no concrete evidence. However, the number of employees working there is of minimal proportions.



THE CANADIAN ECONOMY


Mr. A. D. Alkenbrack (Frontenac-Lennox and Addington):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Acting Prime

July 24, 1973
Oral Questions
Minister. Is the government giving consideration to measures to control the prices of farm and livestock feeds, and components thereof, so that the spiralling prices of meat products might be realistically stabilized?


Mitchell William Sharp: No, Mr. Speaker. We have no specific plans of that kind.



MANPOWER


Mr. H. W. Danforth (Kent-Essex):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct my question to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. Will the minister undertake to direct competent Canadian labour to southwestern Ontario or allow work permits to be granted to Mexican and Portuguese labourers in view of the fact that crops of food are now being lost as a result of the lack of harvest labour which local Manpower offices stated as recently as yesterday was not available?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, we have been in regular communication and conversation with the provincial government of Ontario on this matter. Some problems have been identified. From information I have now, I think the problems have been somewhat exaggerated. We have identified some 4,200 applicants for jobs in this area. They sometimes find that the conditions under which they are asked to work are not satisfactory to them. I would not take sides on that issue. To sum up, in view of representations made, we are looking into it with a view to making special efforts to permit the bringing in of named foreign workers. Where we are absolutely satisfied that this is required, we will move very quickly and we will be in touch with the affected employers within the next few hours as a matter of fact.


Mr. William Knowles (Norfolk-Haldimand):: Mr. Speaker, my question is supplementary to that of the hon. member for Kent-Essex put to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. It relates more specifically to the issuing of permits to Mexican families coming to southern Ontario on a contractual basis to help in the harvest of canning crops.


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I missed the specific point of the question. Would the hon. member mind repeating it?


William David Knowles: Yes, Mr. Speaker. We made an approach to the minister's department some time ago-I am referring to farmers in the area-asking that Mexican families be brought in as a unit on a contractual basis to assist in the harvesting of canning crops.


Robert Knight Andras: We are in consultation with the particular employers to whom the hon. member referred. There is some difficulty in giving blanket authorization to Mexican families, particularly in view of the employment of chil-

dren of a very tender age which, I understand, may have been the practice in the past. I would sum it up by saying that where working conditions are acceptable according to provincial and other labour standards, we would be sympathetic to bringing in those families, not only Mexicans, but Portuguese and people from other countries.



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE


Mr. Ron Atkey (St. Paul's):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Solicitor General. Can he tell the House when the new central police computer will be on line with the capacity to provide computer assisted interrogation and investigation similar to that being used in the U.S. Senate Watergate inquiry, and what steps have been taken to protect the civil liberties of Canadians who are subject to applications of this new technology?


Hon. Warren Allmand (Solicitor General):: Mr. Speaker, I will have to take notice of this question. We have information that the computer will not do all the things referred to by the hon. member, but I will get a complete report and provide him with it.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Andrew Brewin (Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. In view of the promise made by the government to assist in the rehabilitation of Viet Nam after years of devastation there, is it the intention of the Canadian government to take steps to establish diplomatic relations with the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, commonly known as North Viet Nam, the Republic of Viet Nam or South Viet Nam, and the Provisional Revolutionary Government, all of them recognized as parties to the Paris agreement?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, our embassy in Peking has been having talks with the embassy of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam proposing the establishment of diplomatic relations. Our delegation in Saigon has had discussions with the Republic of Viet Nam proposing the establishment of diplomatic relations and the opening of a Canadian embassy in Saigon. We do not propose to establish diplomatic relations with the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Viet Nam.
July 24, 1973



POSSIBLE STRIKES OF MACHINISTS-SAFETY OF OPERATION WITHOUT MACHINISTS-GOVERNMENT ACTION

Mr. Bill Clarke (Vancouver Quadra):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Labour. Has the minister discussed with the Minister of Transport the possible threat to safety caused by the decision of CP Air to use supervisory staff to do the maintenance work? If so, can the minister outline to the House what the government's position is on the threat to safety caused by the strike and the requests of machinists to shut down CP Air?


John Carr Munro: Mr. Speaker, I have not consulted directly with the Minister of Transport in this connection, but I am aware that the Department of Transport and the inspectors responsible for the implementation of these regulations watch situations of this kind constantly and very closely. I am sure they are taking it into account.



LABOUR CONDITIONS


Mr. Otto Jelinek (High Park-Humber Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Labour. Could he advise the House if he has had an opportunity to study the recent report of the research staff of the Ontario ministry of labour which deals with the specific problems and potential of the compressed work week? If so, will he soon be making a statement on motions about the subject or about the Johnston Commission of Inquiry report which he has had for the past three or four months?


John Carr Munro: Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of whether I have studied the particular report on the compressed work week to which the hon. member referred. I must say that I studied many reports on this matter and I am not prepared to make a recommendation to the government at present as to an over-all government policy with respect to it.



MANPOWER


Mr. Joe Hueglin (Niagara Falls):: Mr. Speaker, may I address this question to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. Earlier today he spoke about evaluation. When consideration is given by the minister's officials to extending Local Initiative Programs over the summer months, were these programs screened to make certain they would not duplicate Opportunities for Youth programs in the same areas?
Oral Questions


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, they were not necessarily screened to ensure that they would not duplicate OFY programs in the sense that they might be doing similar work or other kind of work, but they are certainly screened to try to ensure that there was no unwarranted duplication of grants, if that is what the hon. member is implying.


Joseph Fred Hueglin: It would seem that the minister and the Secretary of State should get together somehow, since-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member asked for a supplementary question. If he wishes to ask a supplementary question, he will be recognized for that purpose. Otherwise, the Chair recognizes the hon. member for Bellechasse.



LOCAL INITIATIVES PROGRAM-INQUIRY RESPECTING PAYMENT OF GRANTS FOR 1972 PROJECTS

Mr. Adrien Lambert (Bellechasse):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration.
Since the parties responsible for some LIP projects carried out in 1972 have yet to receive their final subsidies, can the minister say when the final payments will be made?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I think I would have to have details of the specific instances to which the hon. member is referring in order to give him a satisfactory answer. I would certainly request him to send that to me as quickly as possible and I will try to deal with it.



INDUSTRY


Mr. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa-Whitby):: I have a question for the Acting Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker. Could he inform the House whether or not the Minister of the Environment was stating government policy when he announced at the conference of all the western Liberals meeting, I understand, in a phone booth in Vancouver last week, that he favoured the removal of the 15 per cent duty that individual Canadians must now pay on cars ordered from the United States?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I can only assume the hon. member was bugging the phone booth.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.

July 24, 1973
Oral Questions



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE


Mr, Reg Stackhouse (Scarborough East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Solicitor General, also in his capacity as Acting Minister of Justice. When will the government inform the House as to what its decision will be with respect to the petition of Yves Geoffroy for a pardon or a new trial?


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, so far as my department is concerned, we have no intention of granting a pardon. I will have to consult the Minister of Justice with respect to those aspects which relate to his department.



TAPS TANKER ROUTE-RESPONSE OF UNITED STATES TO CANADIAN OBJECTIONS TO TANKERS MOVING THROUGH STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA

Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Secretary of State for External Affairs with regard to the movement of Alaskan oil through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the efforts that the Secretary of State for External Affairs ways he made to prevent this. I should like to ask him what response he has had from the United States, whether he has had specific success or any reason to believe that the United States is not planning to move that oil through the Straits of Juan de Fuca?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I think we have had some success at least in acquainting the members of the administration of the United States of the very serious danger, not only to Canada but to the bordering areas of the United States of the movement of these oil tankers. The secretary of state of the United States has spoken to me about the possibility of setting up a group to look at this problem. My own view is that we have only begun to fight on this issue.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Mitchell William Sharp: This is why I think there should be a distinct separation between the question of the approval of the TAPS line and the movement of oil through the narrow Strait of Juan de Fuca since there has been some confusion about this. I hope the statements I have made today will help to clarify the point. We are not particularly concerned about the movement of oil across Alaska. What we are concerned about is the movement through the narrow waters, and we are making a distinct impression both upon the government of the United States and upon the people in that area.
* (1500)


Robert Lorne Stanfield: In view of the fact that it has been the announced intention for a number of years to move this oil through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, would the Secretary of

State for External Affairs explain to the House why the government of Canada is only beginning to fight?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I think I should remind the Leader of the Opposition that there is a great deal of opposition in the United States to the TAPS line; indeed, the bill in the U.S. Senate was only approved by a single vote. So I think it is quite right that we are only beginning to fight, because now we have something tangible to fight about.



TAPS TANKER ROUTE-POSITION OF GOVERNMENT ON RAILWAY LINE AS ALTERNATIVE

John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, while the government of Canada is in the position of just beginning to fight, I ask the Secretary of State for External Affairs whether any consideration has been given to provide a railroad to haul the oil across Canada. I understand a committee connected with the Cabinet is giving consideration to this matter. Would he let the House and the country know the present position in this regard?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I think that was an idea put forward originally by the premier of one of the NDP provinces and I gather that the right hon. gentleman is supporting it. We have been looking into the possibilities. It is an interesting idea. We have not yet reached any conclusion.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The Chair will recognize the right hon. member for Prince Albert on a supplementary and then call orders of the day.


John George Diefenbaker: Would the minister let the House and the country know who he means by "we" when he says, "We have been looking into the possibilities"? Is there a committee, and could he tell us the personnel of the committee? This alternative is strongly pressed by the Queen's University group of whom the minister, of course, is fully aware.


Mitchell William Sharp: When I said "we" I was referring to the government of Canada.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed, from Monday, July 23, consideration of Bill C-2, to amend the Criminal Code, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.
Gerald William Baldwin: Mr. Speaker, yesterday I had two or three minutes before ten o'clock and was
July 24, 1973

dealing with the motion standing in the name of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin). I said I thoroughly subscribe to her intentions, her desires and what the hon. lady hopes to achieve by this amendment. She and I are in agreement on this score. I know the problem. All of us know it. We abhor the violence involved in these matters: it is a very terrible thing.
I also pointed out that there was a serious technical problem with regard to the establishment of the offences mentioned in the motion. That by itself need not be enough to stop us, but the motion is trying to establish what could be called a double offence. First, it is calling upon the Crown, in any charge which would be laid if this amendment became law, to prove that rape or attempted rape had been committed. This has to be established by evidence beyond any reasonable doubt, and as it involves a sexual offence of this type it has been held by the courts-although it is not in the written law of the country-that there must be corroboration in some material respect.
These are exceedingly difficult cases to prove. As I said last night, anybody involved in the professional career of law, either prosecuting or defending such cases, will realize this fact. In the event of the death of the poor unfortunate victim, the capacity for there to be corroborating evidence becomes exceedingly slim, if not impossible. Even if that offence is proved and having gone on to the next stage, you must then establish that the death of the person involved can be laid at the door of the person charged with the offence. I am only putting this forward, Mr. Speaker, not as a reason for not passing the amendment but simply to set out the problems and the difficulties which are conjured up by the hon. member's amendment. Indeed, it would probably require very substantial changes in the law of evidence if there is ever to be a conviction under this proposal of the hon. member.
There are others, of course, who say that such a provision constitutes a deterrence. There are elements of deterrence in the punishments which we have on our statute books, but from my experience I must say that in addition to deterrence there are substantial elements of fear and vengeance involved. I think these are not emotions which need be hidden. I do not say they are healthy emotions, but they exist, Mr. Speaker. Notwithstanding the progress of society over thousands of years, fear and vengeance are emotions which are still very much present in our society as a whole and in its individual members.
I understand these emotions. There is fear by parents about the perpetration of any of these horrible offences on their children. There is the very human element of seeking revenge or vengeance when you are either involved in such cases or know the people involved, or simply because you believe the offence is so wrong, so abhorrent, so repugnant to human nature that revenge must be a part of the punishment. These elements do exist. Let us not delude ourselves by saying they do not. With all members of the House, I believe it is necessary, in the kind of society in which we live, to provide opportunities for our families, friends and neighbours to walk the streets in safety and to protect our families and friends from crimes of violence which, unfortunately, have become so predominant.
Capital Punishment
I go along that far with those who take the other side of this argument, but there I part company with them. I am not going to attempt to convert the hon. member. The course of debates in this House over the last ten or 12 years has made it abundantly clear that very few people do change their minds on the issue, and in effect these debates are an opportunity to put on the record the reasons why hon. members feel as they do and vote as they do. But I part company with those who believe that the enlargement of the number of offences for which the punishment shall be the infliction of death constitutes a deterrent to the commission of such offences. This has been my experience. I put it on the record previously. I part company with the hon. member and her supporters in this regard. I give them full credit for the fact that they genuinely believe that this may be the case. They are entitled to that view. But, I cannot accept it. It is for that reason, as I said yesterday, that I will vote against the amendment.
Last night my hon. friend from Malpeque (Mr. MacLean), for whom I have a great deal of respect, mentioned the coddling of criminals and their glorification. I go along with him on that. There has been a tendency in certain elements of the press, not necessarily in Canada, to emphasize violent crimes as news that is of interest to people. As the hon. member for Malpeque said, there is a tendency to play up some of these particularly atrocious and colourful crimes. I think there ought to be a responsibility for moderation in this respect, and I agree with him on that as well.
I would point out that the dramas and other programs depicted on the television screen are bound to have some effect. I do not want to say things that perhaps ought not to be said, but it is not long ago that Senator Dodd of the United States headed a subcommittee of the Senate investigating the relationship between illustrations of crime on television and the growth of juvenile delinquency and crime. During the course of the inquiry a witness stated that one reason the growth of crime by juveniles had not spread was that many of these television shows were broadcast at a late hour and therefore were not seen by many young people. The television executives, after reading that evidence, immediately took steps to change the hour of these shows and brought them on earlier. I think this was a shocking thing to do. There is no question that this kind of relationship exists and I think that at some time a committee of this House might well examine it.
I know this has been scoffed at, but it seems to me that the crimes we are striking at are not susceptible of easy solution. It is all very well to say that we will hang more people, make more crimes susceptible to punishment by hanging and this will cure the problem, but I do not agree with that at all, Mr. Speaker. There is no single, simple, easy solution. We have allowed these things to develop over the years, and we have a responsibility in this House to examine with care and in detail every single method which can be employed to curtail the extent to which violence has become so prevalent in our society. It seerns to me that the improper use of television films is something which we should certainly examine.

July 24, 1973
Capital Punishment
I also agree with the hon. member for Malpeque when he talked about permissiveness. There was a time, especially during the 1960s, when it was fashionable to glorify permissiveness, to accept it. I believe we are heading the other way now. That is another aspect of our society.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I believe that the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) wishes to ask a question.


Mrs. Morin:: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I should like to remind the hon. member that my amendment was not about films or movies shown at the end of the day but, rather about capital punishment for kidnappers and rapists.


Gerald William Baldwin: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that is the text of the hon. lady's amendment, but I am trying to assist her by indicating that the offences at which she is striking will not necessarily be solved by her motion and other possibilities are inherent in this question. I was simply adhering to the proposals advanced by my hon. friend from Malpeque which the hon. lady received yesterday without any objection. Mr. Speaker, this relates precisely to the point I made before, the question of the rule of law. There are those who suggest that in an attempt to strike at crimes of violence we should relax the strict requirement of proof which has grown up over the years. This is particularly the case in the United States. I suggest that it is not a practice which should be adopted by any country. There are comparatively few countries in the world which have a rule of law which serves as protection for society. It has taken a great many centuries to build up this type of protection for society. I am sure the hon. member for Malpeque and the hon. lady would not want to see this requirement eased.
Mr. Speaker, I abhor violence. I have seen something of killing in wars, and I have lived with the effects of it in my professional life in times of peace. I certainly join members of this House in any way, in any measure, in any effort which serves to stop violence and violent killing. But in doing so I cannot forsake the principles which I have advocated on a great many occasions in this House, that we do not make it any better by encouraging or by allowing the passage of laws which say to the state: You, too, can engage in violent killing.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Gerald William Baldwin: Violence of any kind begets violence. Bloodshed encourages bloodshed. I think the attempt which the hon. member is making in her amendment to secure a very desirable objective will not be brought about in that way.
I simply conclude, Mr. Speaker, by saying that in the journey of life our society has many miles to travel, many mountains to climb, many rivers to cross and the destination is not that clear to any of us yet. I do not think we will ease that journey, nor will we make our destination any more clear by stopping from time to time as we journey to erect scaffolds and hang people from those scaffolds.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Duncan M. Beattie: Mr. Speaker, this is the second time I have risen to speak on capital punishment in this House. On the first occasion I stated the case for capital punishment for murder without distinction as to whether the murder victim was a policeman, shopkeeper, housewife or prison official.


An hon. Member:: Or politician.


Duncan M. Beattie: Or politician. I was one of those who voted against the government's bill to extend the partial ban on capital punishment, and I have not changed my position one iota. In the first place, even if I were prepared to go along with capital punishment for the murder of policemen or prison officials, I do not believe the government has any intention of exacting such punishment for capital murder. We have had a partial ban on capital punishment for more than five years, but the government has no intention of living up to the existing law. As all of us know, every convicted murderer of a policeman over that period has had his sentence commuted by the cabinet.
Before I proceed, Mr. Speaker, I should like to state that I am in the forefront of those who support the excellent amendment proposed by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin. I do not believe, as the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Gilbert) stated yesterday, that women have a hangup about the crime of rape. I believe, simply and sincerely, that women are entitled to this protection. The penalty for rape, especially when it results in murder, should be as severe as we can make it.
Mr. Speaker, I have noted that the government has not ever intended to live up to the will of Parliament as expressed in the vote that took place on the original bill five years ago to impose the death penalty for the crime of capital murder. This was borne out very dramatically by the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand). He tried to influence the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs and have Bill C-2 emasculated still further with his amendment to abolish capital punishment completely. That move on the part of the government was sneaky and devious and I cannot help feeling that we in this House have been deceived. The Solicitor General's amendment had all the earmarks-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I remind the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Beattie) that we had a debate yesterday on whether amendments which were or were not moved in committee could be the subject of debate at the present time. I think the hon. member and all hon. members ought to know that the most important rule of debate is that of relevancy. We have before us a specific motion. Hon. members have been given 20 minutes to put before the House their views in relation to the amendment. I would think hon. members should use those 20 minutes for that purpose and not discuss amendments which are not before us.


Duncan M. Beattie: Mr. Speaker, I was simply saying that we have not had a true representation of the facts. I invite the Solicitor General to rise in his

July 24, 1973

place and correct me. I invite the minister to state in this House that the attempt to press the amendment on the committee was just a last-minute thought.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member does not appear to have heard what I said a moment ago. The hon. member should know that there are rules of this House. The Chair has brought those rules to the attention of the hon. member. An attempt should be made at least to make a speech which comes within the rules. It is not often that the Chair reminds hon. members of the rule of relevancy. It is my impression that this rule is not overworked by hon. members. However, an attempt should be made by hon. members who take part in debate to at least take under consideration the suggestions made by the Chair.


Duncan M. Beattie: I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker. I devoted a large part of my first speech on this topic to the history of capital punishment, hoping to make the point that there is nothing new in the principle of imposing the death penalty for capital crimes. The fact is that this principle has survived intact since the dawn of civilization. Let me say something to those who insist that we are more civilized now and that capital punishment is uncivilized. I invite them to suggest to me that those who commit the brutal and senseless crime of murder are entitled to all the benefits of our civilization. The coddling of a murderer in the name of humanity is not a civilized act. In my view, it is an irresponsible act.
I have said that some members must have been of two minds when they voted to give this bill second reading. I wonder if the government is hoping that the bill will be defeated in the coming vote. I do not know why they would take such a great risk if they really want to get this issue settled. If this is an election gimmick, I must say that the government is miscalculating badly. The consensus of all surveys I have seen on the subject weighs heavily in favour of capital punishment for capital crimes. The government must surely know by now that the Canadian people favour drastic measures to curb the rise in the rate of murder and other violent crimes.
When I spoke on this bill, I posed a hypothetical case for my colleagues and asked: If one of my colleagues was confronted in his home by an armed intruder and knew that he was about to be killed, would he shoot the intruder to save his own life? If the answer is yes, then there is the answer as to whether capital punishment is compatible with what we call civilized conduct. I cannot imagine anyone hesitating to kill a would-be murderer in defence of his own life. So why is there all the anguish and soul-searching about whether or not to take the life of a convicted murderer?
My sympathy is not with the armed intruder. My sympathy lies with the innocent victim of the intruder. My sympathy is with the law-abiding citizen who deserves the protection of those elected to represent him in parliament. We have a responsibility to protect innocent citizens against those who would take the law into their own hands, especially those who would take another life in the course of committing a heinous crime such as rape or kidnapping.
I cannot throw my support to a murderer simply because he is alive and the victim is dead. All too often the
Capital Punishment
victim is forgotten in the course of what is usually a long, hard-fought and expensive trial. All the instruments of justice are at the disposal of the murderer because he is still alive. None of the instruments of justice, none of the advantages of our great civilization is available to the victim because the victim is dead.
When this bill was first introduced in January, most of us here agreed that if capital punishment were to be retained for any crime, it should apply to the murder of a policeman or prison official killed in the line of duty. That provision was in the bill that we passed on second reading a few weeks ago, and it was part of the bill that was passed by parliament more than five years ago. It can be said, then, that this is indeed the will of parliament. In fact, Mr. Speaker, it was also the will of the parliament of 1967. We should now be debating the question of whether we will have capital punishment in Canada or whether it should be abolished. But we are not debating that at all. We debated a few weeks ago, and are again debating today, whether we should pass the buck to another parliament five years from now.
We are expected to make a decision. It has been shown by the present government that there is no point in delaying the decision for another five years. We have been told that over the next five years we will be able to accumulate valuable data that will help us to make a firm decision at some future date. That is what the government said in 1967. And what do we have? We have nothing, absolutely nothing in the way of valid data. This government has commuted every death sentence imposed by the courts of Canada for the crime of capital murder. All of us in the House know that this government imposed a total ban on capital punishment more than five years ago when it adopted the practice of commuting death sentences and, in so doing, made it impossible for us to determine whether the death penalty would indeed be a deterrent.
Today, a criminal who is determined not to get caught will not hesitate to shoot at a policeman. I recall the case of the Toronto policeman who was killed a few months ago when he stopped an automobile that was being driven erratically. The driver simply stepped out of his car and shot the policeman dead. A few days ago a policeman was shot three times in Peterborough when he went to investigate a suspected break-in at a supermarket. In these and other cases relating to the murder of policemen the penalty for the crime committed has been relatively minor. We find that policemen are becoming fair game for anyone who feels that murder is no more serious than break and enter or purse-snatching.
Surely it is the fault of parliament that so many people today lack proper respect for our laws and for our law enforcement officers. It is our fault that this situation has deteriorated to such an extent that a policeman can be shot dead while investigating a minor traffic infraction. We have to consider putting a higher price on the luxury of killing people. The earliest recorded laws of man provide for the execution of criminals for certain capital offences, it may well be that that is one of the reasons why civilization has been able to move forward. I feel certain in my own mind that if there had not been some provision in those early times for controlling the base impulses of man, these impulses would have been paramount and

July 24, 1973
Capital Punishment
would have won over the instincts that took man out of the caves and the trees.
There is already evidence in our country to show that the permissive policies of the present government are eating away at the fabric of our society and eroding the foundations of traditional concepts of law and order. The victims in this drama are the innocent, the law-abiding and those who want to preserve our society. The winners are those who scoff at our laws, sneer at our institutions and poison the minds of the young and the impressionable. They take all, and give nothing. In far too many cases they take the ultimate: they take another human life. I say again, Mr. Speaker, in far too many cases they take another human life bacause the price is too cheap. We have an extraordinary situation in existence today in this respect. We have a law in Ontario that provides for compensation for victims of violent crime. Almost daily someone is paid damages by the provincial government for injuries suffered by victims of shootings, muggings and other crimes. At the same time we are debating whether we should impose a penalty in kind on the person who inflicts the injury. There are scores of cases where victims of crime suffer the after effects for the rest of their lives, while the criminal serves a few months or a few years in jail and is then free to repeat the crime.
In the case of murder I cannot accept the premise that execution of a murderer does not bring the victim back to life or ease the burden on the victim's family, so there is no point in executions. There is a very valid point. The point is that murder should carry a price as high as the value of the life taken. Anyone who is prepared to take the life of another person, deliberately and calculatedly, should have to pay with his own life. To say that that is uncivilized is pure and utter rubbish. The life of a murderer is no more sacred that that of his victim. That, Mr. Speaker, is what we should be talking about here today.
I would like to answer those people who might construe my position as bloodthirsty. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone who draws that conclusion from my remarks has missed the point. The point is that we should be prepared to adopt the strongest possible measures against those in our society who do have a thirst for blood. We should be debating right now the issue of who in Canada is entitled to our protection. It is the law-abiding citizens and the victims of crime who are entitled to our sympathy and our support. I am tired of hearing about how important it is to spare the life of the murderer. In the name of civilization, let us recognize the true role of parliament in this matter. Let us establish once and for all that we do not place the life of the murderer on a higher plane than the life of the victim.
In concluding my remarks, I would like to say to my colleagues that the partial ban on capital punishment over the past five years has resulted in a totally unsatisfactory situation. As we know, it has really been total abolition. We have seen a gradual breakdown of law and order, and in respect for the law and law enforcement personnel.
In place of this bill I would rather have us impose capital punishment for all crimes of murder, where there are no extenuating circumstances, for a period of five

years. If this new law were followed to the letter, we would be able properly to assess the value of capital punishment as a deterrent. Another effect, I am sure, would be to place the value of life in the proper perspective. We would in time tend to place as high a value on the life of the victim as on the life of the murderer. This would bring a very worth-while result: if we were to do that, the majority of Canadians might come to feel that we in parliament have their true interests and their welfare at heart.


Mr. Dan McKenzie (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, this is the second occasion on which I have risen to speak in this debate. In my earlier speech, on February 20, I outlined some of the reasons why I favour reinstatement of the death penalty for murder in Canada. Like the last time, my remarks today will be brief. This is because every conceivable argument regarding the entire subject of capital punishment has been advanced before in this House. Thus, parts of my address may sound repetitious and familiar. However, in view of the several proposed amendments to Bill C-2, and because of certain recent actions by the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand), I feel it is necessary to once again articulate the feelings of my constituents in Winnipeg South Centre.
The great majority of my constituents favour capital punishment, as do most Canadians judging by the opinion polls. It is a fact that this parliament must accept, and not ignore or try to sneak away from via the back door, in the fashion of the Solicitor General. Approximately 80 per cent of all the correspondence I have received regarding capital punishment has been from constituents who advoacte retention of the death penalty. Like myself, a great many of these retentionists, and even some abolitionists, were astounded by the Solicitor General's attempt to have the death penalty banned completely. Like his predecessor, the present Solicitor General appears to be having some difficulty adapting to his portfolio. As a minister of the Crown, one would certainly have expected him to know that if a cabinet minister wants certain legislation passed, he should introduce it in the House. He should not, as the Solicitor General did, introduce a bill and then, encouraged by favourable reaction, try to change it to suit himself and the government.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I am sure the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. McKenzie) expects me to remind him, as I have attempted to remind other hon. members, that we should attempt to limit our contributions to the specific motion before us. I am sure the hon. member's remarks are introductory. I hope he will come to the meat of his remarks very soon, and that they will relate to the motion now before us.


A. Daniel McKenzie: I will come to the meat right now, Mr. Speaker. Because I favour capital punishment, I cannot support certain amendments to Bill C-2 which is currently before us. Should the government bill be defeated, amendments such as those proposed by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) and the hon. member for York West (Mr. Fleming) are not acceptable for they would guarantee total abolition on condition that murderers of policemen and prison guards serve a minimum of 25 years' imprisonment. I am against abolition and also against
July 24, 1973

doling out 25-year sentences. Convicted murderers imprisoned in the Drumheller penitentiary are also against the idea of a 25-year minimum sentence. The prisoners are quoted as saying such a sentence would turn a convicted killer into an animal who would have lost hope for rehabilitation and might kill again.
Therefore, I can accept no amendments to Bill C-2. Bill C-2 must be defeated, and capital punishment brought back. However, future legislation regarding capital punishment must be flexible. In conclusion, it is not capital punishment that is barbaric, but murder. Capital punishment seeks retribution. This retribution is what my constituents and the majority of Canadians demand.


Mr. Gerard Laprise (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a few comments on the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin). I do not intend to comment on the entire problem of applying the law in cases of murder, since I already had the opportunity to participate in this debate when the bill before us was given second reading. I also had that opportunity in 1966 and 1967, and the opinions I expressed then have not changed today, so I do no intend to repeat myself on that topic. Nevertheless, I must say that I am in favour of the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin). I have said on other occasions that I am in favour of the death penalty as a punishment for premeditated murder. If it should happen that we were no longer able to apply this law, I believe that the death penalty should be retained in some special cases, such as that mentioned in the amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert.
I feel, however, that the hon. member for Louis-Hebert has made a distinction between rape and attempted rape. I feel that the judges who will be called upon to preside at trials in cases of rape or attempted rape accompanied by murder will be able to make the juries understand the seriousness of these crimes.
Once upon a time, I believe, the laws on rape were very severe, and it was a crime punishable by death. Today the laws have been greatly relaxed, and we realize that real cases of rape are increasingly rare. In fact, rape cases are often brought to court, but when the testimony is heard, it becomes clear that the victim is not always the female, for the provocations of some young girls or women have been such that the man has, in some degree, been led to commit rape.
A clear distinction must be made between rape or attempted rape and a less serious crime, so as to avoid doing injustice to those who may have let themselves get carried away on occasion.
Mr. Speaker, if we trust the judges who will have to conduct such trials, we may admit that mistakes will be avoided as much as possible and that once this legislation is established, those who will be tempted to act according to their feelings will think about it twice before taking such measures.
However, I am asking myself a question: once the amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert is
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passed, when there is murder while committing or attempting to commit rape, and when a verdict of guilty is pronounced by a jury, will the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) respect the jury's decision? He stated quite clearly some time ago that whatever may become of Bill C-2, the death penalty would never be applied as long as he is Prime Minister. If he continues to think along these lines, even though the House pass the amendment put forward by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert, the situation will remain quite the same as long as the present government is in office. I suggest that in such cases, the Prime Minister, the cabinet should comply with decisions rendered by those who will be called upon to consider cases before them and to take necessary decisions.
That is why, Mr. Speaker, I support the amendment introduced by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert, even though I would prefer a much harder legislation as regard premeditated murders committed in any circumstances.


Albanie Morin: Mr. Speaker, I would like to give an explanation and make a correction. The hon. member for Abitibi referred to "an attempt to commit rape"; my amendment does not relate to an attempt to commit rape but to a rape followed by murder. I want this point to be very clear.


Mr. Robert C. Coates (Cumberland-Colchester North):: Mr. Speaker, I am entering this debate for the first time, although the subject was debated at some length before being sent to the committee. We are now on the report stage, considering amendments which in one way or another would modify the objectives set out in the bill. The bill as originally submitted by the government would continue the law as it existed from 1967 to 1972, imposing a ban on capital punishment except when murder was committed against police officials or penitentiary personnel.
In 1967 it was my opinion that we should give limited abolition a trial, to demonstrate the effect it might have in alleviating some of the concern felt by the public generally, while at the same time establishing a certain degree of protection for specific categories of people in our society who assume special responsibilities for us in the field of law enforcement. Unfortunately, in that five-year period the government ignored the legislation. Even in cases where capital murder was committed against police officials and penitentiary guards, action was not taken to impose the death penalty. As a result, the legislation was really a fraud, or a farce. Members of parliament were duped, because they had voted for something which never happened. Now, five years later, we are asked to extend the legislation for a further five years. What the government is asking us to do, in effect, is to support the complete abolition of capital punishment under the guise or the pretence that is would be implemented in the case of capital murder of police officials and penitentiary guards.
The amendment before us would extend the area in which capital murder calls for the death penalty. Specifically, it relates to rape in the course of which the victim is killed. Really, the amendment involves only one segment of the offence of capital murder. I believe it should cover all cases of capital murder where there is in the mind of the person committing the offence a deliberate intention

July 24, 1973
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to carry out the action in question. There is some doubt in my mind as to this amendment because this type of murder often takes place in the absence of any deliberation. It is a crime of passion. It is a crime often committed by a person of unbalanced mind, a person who really requires special mental treatment. Perhaps such a person should be classified more often under the category of non-capital murder rather than murder. There are many such instances.
I cannot say I am a strong retentionist, because I believe that if the system worked properly abolition could be achieved. I cannot agree with one of the amendments proposed, to the effect that capital murder be completely abolished but that people be kept in penal institutions for 20 or 25 years. I believe the only way in which a rehabilitation program works in institutions is by the provision of some hope to inmates that if they are able to indicate they are rehabilitating themselves and are preparing themselves for return to society, society will give them an opportunity to return. But they must indicate that they have learned their lesson and can make a worth-while contribution for the remainder of their lives.
From that point of view I could not under any circumstances support any amendment to the effect that people be placed in penal institutions, much as people are placed in mental institutions, for the rest of their lives. I think there is nothing more inhumane than to say to a person that there is no hope left for him and that the rest of his life should be spent in a solitary way within an institution. From that point of view some arguments which have been offered have given me a great deal of concern.
At the same time, I believe society in general feels, because of the many things that have happened within our penal institutions, because of the increase of crime in the nation, because of the coddling of inmates in institutions, and because of a breakdown in the effectiveness of the rehabilitation programs that have been in effect in Canada or which supposedly are in effect, that parliament should restore, at least for a limited period, the death penalty because it lays a foundation on which a system can be built which says that at least the paid killers who roam the streets of our nation, if they commit this type of crime will pay with their lives.
If the government is desirous of securing the abolition of the death penalty-and I have no objection to that objective because I believe it is the ultimate objective in an enlightened society-it must first prove to the people of Canada that there is a system operating within our penal institutions which guarantees the ultimate security of the public. I believe there is a very strong feeling among the public generally that the death penalty should be retained because of the lack of confidence members of the public have in the type of penal rehabilitation programs in effect at the present time. While some people may say the two are not related-and perhaps they are not-I think in the main they are. I believe the public feel that because of the way we have been playing around with this subject it is not receiving the protection desired; therefore the public is urging members of parliament to give it the ultimate protection.

When parliament moves as strongly against the views of the public as was indicated on second reading, then I believe the public becomes very alarmed about parliament and the fact that parliament does not speak for it. If parliament does not speak for the public on this issue, then it is very easy for the public to conclude that parliament does not speak for it on any issue. I think this is one of the mistakes in respect of this debate and the whole concept adopted by the federal government.
I was very disappointed when the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) suggested he would propose the complete abolition of capital punishment by amendment of the original legislation. Then the public really became upset and said that the government did not care what the people of Canada thought. The public generally expressed concern that there was not a full return to retention of the death penalty, and the fact that the government had the unmitigated gall, through the Solicitor General, to suggest that parliament go further and completely do away with capital punishment rather than merely for another five years.
Cartoons sometimes display the views of people better than anything else. An interesting cartoon appeared on the editorial page of the Daily Colonist of Victoria, British Columbia, the other day. It depicted the Solicitor General pouting. There was this inscription:
Warren Allmand is my name,
Abolition is my game,
The death penalty is unfair,
As for murder victims, they're gone-why care?
Through the Commons it will be rammed.
Public opinion? Public opinion be damned.
That is the unfortunate history of this debate. This is a description of parliament because parliament does not mirror the views of the public and its apprehension about the state of affairs in this country, especially in so far as law enforcement and penal reform are concerned. At times I believe the Solicitor General could stand a sense of humour. Recently Harold Ballard received a ticket of leave. This type of leave from prison has been provided a great many times to people all across this country, some of whom have committed much more dastardly crimes.
I might say I do not know Mr. Ballard, I have never met him and I do not know any member of his family. I come from Nova Scotia, and he comes from Toronto. However, I can say that this man has a sense of humour, because having done all the things he has done at his age, it must have been a terrible thing for him to face the consequences of his acts and serve a term in a penal institution. He came out of the institution and made some humorous crack about the institution. Nobody in his right mind would have thought the man was serious when he was speaking about filet mignon being served, and this sort of thing. But what did the Solicitor General do? He was really uptight about this. He thought it was shocking and that the fellow should never be allowed out of the institution.
At the same time, in recent history this government is said to have had great compassion for Yves Geoffroy, a convicted killer. He killed his wife. They were so con-
July 24, 1973

cerned about that man that they let him out of prison so he could marry someone else and provide another mother for his children. To me the situation indicates the type of thinking and the inconsistency of this government as related to this debate. All Harold Ballard did was to admit he still had a sense of humour even though he was in a penal institution. What Yves Geoffroy did was commit an unthinkable act and none of us can have any respect for him. Mr. Geoffroy was even allowed to go for his honeymoon out of the country, whereas Mr. Ballard will not even be allowed out for weekends, even for good behaviour.
Some sense of proportion must be put back into the whole matter of capital punishment, penal reform and all the questions related to the subject before I can support the abolition of capital punishment. I say to this government: Prove to me, to members of parliament and to the people of this country that you have a sensible, realistic and reasonable program.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Laniel):: Order, please. The hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) is rising on a point of order.


Albanie Morin: The hon. member is not dealing with my amendment in support of capital punishment for kidnappers and rapists, Mr. Speaker.
[ Transla tion\


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Laniel):: Order. I must point out to the hon. member for Louis-Hebert that the President of the Privy Council (Mr. MacEachen) has himself asked the Chair, when the debate resumed, to give more freedom to hon. members wishing to participate in this discussion so that they may at one stage or the other stray from the amendment. It is, therefore, for this reason that until now the Chair has allowed hon. members to deal in general with this subject.


Robert Carman Coates: Mr. Speaker, I have dealt with the hon. member's amendment to the best of my ability. I have indicated that, among the other amendments proposed, it is one that should receive consideration. In effect, I have tried to indicate that if there were a return to capital punishment and the recognition of capital murder as an offence that is punishable by death, the amendment proposed by the hon. member would in effect be carried out.
At the same time I indicated-the hon. member may not have heard me-that this type of amendment gives me some concern, not because it is not a terrible type of crime but because people who qommit it are usually mentally unbalanced and require a great deal of medical attention, psychiatric or other; and because there would not be the same degree of mens rea involved as there would be in the type of crime which resulted, for instance, in the death of Mr. Laporte. In that case the people involved started upon a mission which they knew might very well end in murder. They embarked upon it, they carried out the murder and, in my opinion, they should pay with their lives for having done that.
That is not the same sort of situation as the one that is covered by the amendment. But in some instances, if there were a return to the Fulton formula, where murder is
Capital Punishment
divided so that there is capital murder and non-capital murder, there would be instances where a rapist who murdered his victim would pay with his life because it was capital murder.


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


Mr. Paul Dick (Lanark-Renfrew-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I take this opportunity to speak to the amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) referred to as the Morin amendment, a term which I believe is out of order. The hon. member for Louis-Hebert has suggested attaching to section 214 of the Criminal Code two further categories of crime for which a convicted person would receive the death sentence-not only for the murder of police officers and prison guards but for death ensuing kidnapping, or death which takes place in the case of rape. So now, according to the amendment, we would expand to four exceptions what is generally the abolition of capital punishment as proposed by the government. This creates a conundrum that murder is murder, and why should the lives of certain people be more valuable than the lives of others?
I think we would have to look at this question in another light. If this bill is defeated, then not only would the person who commits murder while committing rape be liable to a charge of murder, and those who commit homicide when involved in a kidnapping be liable to a charge of murder, but it would widen the scope to the degree contained in section 213 of the Criminal Code which provides: Culpable homicide is murder where a person causes the death of a human being while committing or attempting to commit treason or an offence mentioned in section 52, piracy-
Which would involve hijacking.
-escape or rescue from prison or lawful custody-
Which would cover prison guards.
-resisting lawful arrest, rape-
Which would include the amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert.
-indecent assault, forcible abduction-
Which includes kidnapping.
-robbery-
Which would cover the people who murder bank tellers and customers in banks.
-burglary or arson, whether or not the person means to cause death to any human being and whether or not he knows that death is likely to be caused to any human being-
So really the suggestion of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert that we increase the exception to the government's legislation so that offences punishable by death be not only the murder of prison guards and police officers, but also murder as a result of rape or kidnapping, would be adequately covered if the government's bill were defeated.
I do not believe that we should clutter our statute books with more exceptions. It appears that every day we make an exception to this and an exception to that, rather than painting the broad picture. Therefore, my tendency at this

July 24, 1973
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time is to vote against the amendment, hoping that its proponents will not feel that I am voting against the idea. In fact, I hope that the mover of the amendment will vote against the government's bill, because in defeating it she will gain what she seeks.
Once more we are debating capital punishment, Mr. Speaker. Although I am in my freshman term, it is interesting to me that this parliament has its priorities reversed. For some years there was discussion on changing the family allowance legislation so that many law-abiding people who are contributing in a useful way to society would be better able to do so. Now we have decided to deal with capital punishment, with the government's legislation proposing more benefits for the criminal element and murderers. We are discussing this question instead of trying to help people in need of financial assistance through such means as a revised family allowance plan.
When this bill was first introduced it was introduced with priority over increasing old age pensions. It was introduced with priority over increasing the veterans allowance. It was introduced with priority over reducing income taxes. What I am concerned about is that the government has proposed to confer benefits on criminals with priority over conferring benefits on the law-abiding citizens of the country who foot the bill. I feel that this is improper.
In the month of June, in response to a question from me, the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) indicated that at that stage there was no person in Canada who had committed culpable homicide, who had gone through his preliminary hearing, his trial and all appeal stages, including appeal to the Supreme Court, and was awaiting the death sentence. Indeed, I believe that is still the case. But although no person has exhausted all the legal remedies in connection with the killing of a police officer or prison guard, we are spending the time of this House discussing capital punishment. We could easily be discussing family allowance legislation to put more money into the pockets of law-abiding Canadians at an earlier stage than can now be expected simply because we are giving it lower priority than affording murderers extra benefits.
Dealing with this particular amendment-and as others come along I may wish to talk briefly about them-I feel we should not make further exceptions. I hope that the government's legislation will be defeated. If it is, then the Morin amendment-if I may call it so-will take effect because we will be returning to the Fulton formula of 1961 according to which a person, no matter what offence he committed, if he committed a murder in the process could be charged with murder or with the original offence. I say this with some background in criminal law; I prosecuted criminals for over three years in the capital of Canada. I discussed the matter at some length with the senior Crown attorney this morning, just to refresh my memory because I have not been active practising criminal law for a year. I wished to assure myself that this was the case. As I say, the hon. member for Lous-Hebert will succeed if the government's bill is defeated.

[ Translation]


Mr.   C.-A. Gauthier@Roberval: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to miss the opportunity of giving ny opinion on this amendment.
I wonder, Mr. Speaker, where the government wants to come to. Five years ago, we tenaciously pleaded to maintaining capital punishment in Canada and, in spite of all our efforts, the government succeeded in having a motion passed by the House to the effect that capital punishment would be abolished for a trial period of five years, whereas we had the evidence that 90 per cent of the population was against this legislation. The proposal was accepted and today, five years later, when the law made two exceptions for the murder of prison guards and policemen, such murders occurred and the law was not applied.
Today, we ask for a new extension of five years, and I would like to ignore the bomb the Sollicitor General (Mr. Allmand) launched in this House by saying that he wanted total abolition of capital punishment. I no longer understand anything. In fact I fail to understand the Liberals or the Progressive Conservatives and still less the members of the New Democratic party.
For the NDP, it is a total contradiction. There are in this party disappointing contradictions. They simply want to give death to the fruit of rape, and they are going to vote against the death penalty for rapeists. On one side, they will vote for abortion which is the fruit of rape and on the other side they are going to vote against an amendment asking for capital punishment for those who commit rape. Thus the situation in this House is incomprehensible; it seems to have become a Tower of Babel.
Once again, I wonder where the government wants to come to; does it want to extend indefinitely the study of the matter or is it trying by all means not to submit this question to the people's will. What we are pressing for is a referendum. We are here to serve the will of the people. Let us have a referendum and then we can pass legislation accordingly. But no! We are having lengthy discussions on whether capital punishment will be abolished as well as under what circumstances it should be abolished. I support the amendment introduced by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) which says that capital punishment will be imposed, and I quote:
(b) in respect of a male person, where such person causes the death of a female person while committing or attempting to commit rape.
Attempting to commit rape. I want to come back to those words because the hon. member for Louis-Hebert corrected my colleague a while ago when she said that the amendment merely suggested that capital punishment should be imposed upon those who commit rape. But the amendment goes on to say, and I quote:
-or attempting to commit rape,
However, if the hon. member for Louis-Hebert reads the amendment carefully she will see that it says "attempting to commit rape." But here again this amendment is a monumental farce. I will be voting for that farce because I am for capital punishment in all cases of murder.
The hon. member for Louis-Hebert says-and I understand her feelings as she is a woman-that when a man
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rapes a woman the death penalty should apply. Today there are men who are nearly carnivorous, and she foresees that. But do you know that there are also tigress women who can eat and rape men? Do you know also that there are homosexuals who eat men? In those cases too, let us have a general application of the act.
Homosexuality was legalized but here again even though rape is somewhat legalized today the issue is no longer raised. In the past, rape was punishable by death; today, it is a normal thing. However, I wish to call the attention of the House to a still more serious issue. The death penalty will be inflicted for rape, when we know that rapists are mentally unbalanced like homosexuals. They are sick and mentally unbalanced those who will be condemned to death.
It will readily be seen-and this is what I hate-that it is somewhat like setting up a cock-fight with lawyers. It is easy to imagine the lawyers in court; such a nice fight! Was it a rape or not? The witness is not there, she is dead. Now the rape will be discussed for a year or two and after it is ascertained, it will then be proved that the accused is mentally unbalanced. The death penalty will no longer be involved because it will have been proved that the accused is a sick person. That is why I suggest that the amendment is but a grain of sand, a monumental farce, for it is too incomplete and will lead to interminable discussions before the courts on the matter of rape.
In spite of it all, Mr. Speaker, I think I shall vote for the amendment. I heard some hon. members say they opposed the amendment because they favour restoring the death penalty. To my mind, that is fighting somewhat with opposites, because if you are in favour of the whole, you must also be in favour of the parts, however minimal. I say, Mr. Speaker, that the part is very minimal, but I shall still support it; and I hope the hon. member for Louis-Heb-ert understands that we are here to do the will of the people. If the people want such and such a regulation to be passed by referendum-the usual procedure-I hope Parliament will respect their wishes, especially in view of all the requests that were sent out, five years ago, to the Minister of Justice. I feel that should be sufficient to prevent once more these discussions that will drag on and will end up with a five year extension.
But, let us at least do the contrary: Let us reinstate capital punishment for five years. It has been removed for five years without success. Let us reinstate it for five years; we will see what happens. Let it be reinstated for five years, but, this time, the minister should cease to commute death penalties into 20, 15 or 7 years of imprisonment. There is no justice any longer. But who prostitutes justice? It is not the Canadian public, Mr. Speaker; it is those on the benches, the lawyers. That is why people do not believe anymore in justice, they consider it as a gigantic farce, and they are partly right.
However, Mr. Speaker, coming back to the amendment, I say that I shall vote for it and I sincerely hope that the reinstatement of the capital punishment will be passed for a five year period.
[ English]


Harold Warren Danforth: Mr. Speaker, I have not availed myself of an opportunity to speak on this
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measure, but I feel compelled to speak on the motion of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin). In the short time that the hon. member has been with us we have learned that she represents her constituents with a real sense of responsibility. There is no doubt in my mind that when she proposed this motion she had their welfare and the welfare of the majority of citizens of Canada at heart and had no desire for personal publicity.
I have no hesitation in supporting the principle of the motion because I think what the hon. lady is trying to do in this day and age is very sound. She is trying to bring in an amendment to enlarge the jurisdiction of Canada so that the death penalty will apply to cases of rape, attempted rape or kidnapping where murder is committed.
I will not burden the House with figures and with what has happened in the past in this country and in other countries, because that would not be pertinent to the measure with which we are dealing. We are entering into a brand new phase all over the world, and we must evolve new laws and new regulations for coping with the evolution through which we are going. The growing apathy and lack of responsibility shown by many in Canada as well as in other countries is causing many people great uneasiness and concern. We must be guided by something. Perhaps we shall need to control the emotions of those who cause harm to others by instilling a sense of fear or by showing force. We shall need to do that until we are thoroughly convinced that other ways of restraining people are just as effective.
Today there is not that assurance. Today the churches and schools do not influence the thinking and conduct of people as they did in the past. Certainly, our schools do not influence our philosophy of living as once they did. As well, the change in our way of living has brought a change in the influence of the family itself. At one time the family controlled its own members. All this change is happening at once. It is almost as if we are like a ship without a rudder. We are losing many of the guides that determined conduct in Canada in past years. Without those guides we sometimes flounder in our attempts to achieve something.
I do not think what we do in Canada should necessarily be the same as that done in other countries. For example, in the case of the Northwest Mounted Police, whose glorious hundredth anniversary we are celebrating this year, Canada departed from normal practice and established this first-class police force. With it we proved that a few responsible individuals are able to maintain order and peace if they are backed by the authority of government. Hon. members will recall that then we sanctioned capital punishment. At that time passions were perhaps stronger than they are today, and crime went undetected sometimes for months.
I want to deal with the rape aspect of the hon. member's amendment and say why I think it is so necessary to consider imposing capital punishment. We are living in a new age. The young girls and ladies of our nation are without the protection of home and relatives that they had in previous years. Our womenfolk are going out into the world, into the labour force and entering all aspects of Canadian life which are changing. We have industrial
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areas such as we never had before. We live in concentrated areas, packed elbow to elbow as never before. Such conditions create tensions and chaotic situations such as we have never before experienced and did not anticipate.
Many crimes take place because our way of living has changed, because many people are concentrated in small areas. We eat differently, live differently and work differently, and our churches and schools do not exert the same influence on us. The family is different too. That is why the crime rate is going up as it has never gone up before. Under these conditions we must take further measures in order to safeguard our people.
Let me deal with the other aspect of the hon. lady's motion, kidnapping. I was interested in the minister's remarks of Monday last. He almost sloughed off the suggestion that we should impose capital punishment for kidnapping ensuing in death and said that where a murder is committed in connection with kidnapping, the murder perhaps was not contemplated. Mr. Speaker, murder is murder, and it is only one man's opinion against another as to whether murder was contemplated or not.
As society becomes more complicated and more affluent, and tremendous sums of money become involved in our dealings, the temptation for kidnapping is greater than ever in history. Many countries worry about the safety of their ambassadors and respresentatives living in other countries. These people are being kidnapped and held for ramson, sometimes with disastrous results. In air piracy, entire groups of people are exposed to what may be contemplated murder.
In considering the phase into which we are now entering, and the new lifestyle which is now emerging in Canada as well as in other countries, it behooves us as representatives of the people to look at these questions in a manner different from that of five years ago. It is no use the government saying that there is no proof that capital punishment will restrain any of these violent crimes since, equally, there is no proof that it will not. Should we, as representatives of the people who are concerned about the safety of the nation, gamble and say that perhaps capital punishment will not act as a deterrent; or should we assume our responsibilities of safeguarding the majority of Canadians against the violence of the majority, and not gamble? This is what we must consider seriously.
In some quarters one hears tremendous expressions of sympathy for a minority of people involved in these crimes. It is said, perhaps on compassionate grounds, that what was done was not contemplated, that it was an accident or the result of undue influence of drugs, intoxicants or something like that. For how long can we make excuses for those who commit these crimes and show such callous disregard for their victims and the families of their victims? I do not think we are justified in adopting that attitude. That is why I have no difficulty in supporting the amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert.
The hon. lady's amendment amply reflects the majority feeling of the people I have the honour to represent. The people of my riding-as of the hon. lady's, I am sure-are most concerned about what is going to happen in Canada. Fifteen years ago we did not think that women would be afraid to walk the streets of our cities at night. We did not think that police would patrol in pairs for reasons of

additional safety. We knew what was happening in other countries; we did not think it could happen in Canada. I wonder if the softening of our laws has perhaps not contributed to some of the conditions we face today. Some say that the crime rate in Canada is not increasing more quickly than anywhere else. Certainly, once our society became more permissible, conditions were ripe for the violence that existed in other countries to be introduced into Canada.
I am very pleased to have had an opportunity to speak on this subject today and lend my support, on behalf of the people I represent, to the hon. lady. She is to be complimented for the fact that in her first session in this House, and on a subject as deep, complicated and as important as this, she has taken the time and trouble to research the subject and to assess the feelings of those she has the honour to represent. As a woman and a mother, she has brought this amendment to parliament. I have the greatest admiration for her and I ask the House to support this amendment.
[ Translation]


Mr. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Mr. Speaker, I should like in turn to make a few comments on the amendment now before the House.
Like many members, I have participated in the debate on second reading and I find the amendments under consideration very thoughtful. I agree with the remarks of the previous speaker and with the congratulations that he has offered to the representative from Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin), in view of the value of the said amendment as well as its necessity in the present context.
According to the amendment now before the House, capital punishment would apply in cases of kidnapping or rape following which the victim is murdered. Now, it is important to recognize the merits of this amendment in view of the problems which multiply every year and that we experience in our life. According to me, the fact of presenting this amendment at this stage is justified and altogether timely if the problems facing our society because of this are to be seriously acknowledged.
Of course, the member who spoke before dealt with the major changes which happened in our society and showed that our traditions and certain principles are unfortunately fading away, and that the influences certain sectors had on the good behaviour of citizens have also diminished, if not disappeared. That is why then I think that it is more and more becoming that this amendment be adopted and, according to me, if we had a real national enquiry 95 per cent of the people would be for this amendment.
I think quite honestly that 95 per cent of the people welcome this amendment which perfectly satisfies the needs for security which they are entitled to.
This amendment is important, most significant and very well presented. I too take this opportunity to congratulate the sponsor of the motion. I also wonder how this amendment can be implemented, in the light of the statement made by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). In fact, he said quite clearly that as Prime Minister he would certainly not be in favour of the death penalty.

We know perfectly well that in our present system, it is up to the Cabinet to allow or disallow the application of the death penalty. I therefore feel that it would be very important for all hon. members to demand that the Prime Minister agree to respect the decision and the will of this House. If you look at the statistics of the past five years, you will see quite clearly that Parliament had decided to suspend capital punishment, except in two instances, the murder of a policeman or a prison guard.
We know perfectly well that this decision made by Parliament has not been respected. In fact, we are now presented with this legislation aimed at continuing this experiment for another five years, and at considering the possibility of maintaining the death penalty for two categories of murder, namely the murder of police officers and prison guards. The amendment now before us provides for the death penalty in two more cases, rape and kidnapping where the victim is murdered, but we are never given any assurance that the Prime Minister will respect either this amendment or the decision that will be made.
If this amendment gathers the support of the majority of the hon. members-and I hope that it will-in view of the Prime Minister's statement, we will have to question ourselves seriously, we will have to believe that we are speaking in the wind, unless the hon. member who introduced the motion can obtain from the government the assurance that it will respect the decision of the majority of the members. I think that people expect the government to respect any decision taken by Parliament on such an important matter, which is one of those rare occasions when a free vote is held. And the majority of the hon. members have proved that this is so; they are expressing themselves freely.
Thus, it is imperative that the Prime Minister, in this debate, should commit himself in a very particular way to respect the decision taken by Parliament. Then, we shall have good reason to believe that the amendment will be followed through, which I hope.
Of course, at the second reading stage, I brought up many times, in my speech, the importance of establishing prevention procedures. The Solicitor General (Mr. All-mand) can talk of rehabilitation.
Much has been done in the last few years about rehabilitation. I think it would be more important to try to establish prevention procedures in our society.
I am doubtful in my mind about rehabilitation at 40, 50 or 60. But where the government has much work to do, for the prevention of cases such as those mentioned in the amendment, is in the development of prevention procedures. To identify dangerous environments which effectively are responsible for young men going wrong.
I believe that capital punishment is not a solution per se, but considering that we do not seem to have more valid solutions, I believe that a person which has taken upon itself to take the life of a citizen deserves no less than death. Kidnapping or rape followed by murder is a very serious offence which has been more and more current these last few years. So, considering the fundamental changes in our society, it is interesting to note that the
Capital Punishment
hon. member for Louis-Hebert has moved this amendment which is the perfect answer to present-day needs.
I hope most hon. members will support this amendment which meets present needs. Indeed, there was no need for it 15 or 20 years ago, but every day we witness some unfortunate incidents which makes it necessary to implement such a measure.
I do hope, Mr. Speaker, that the few comments I made on this amendment will receive the support of a majority and, above all, that the Prime Minister will undertake to comply with the decision made by most members of this House. Then, we shall have done a good job.


William Hillary (Bill) Clarke: It is over two months ago that I rose in the House to speak in the debate on capital punishment. Now I find myself on my feet again. I should like to reflect on one or two remarks I made in May which I think have some validity today. I said the question of imposing the death penalty was one of the problems which plague our society. I said the government had brought down stop-gap legislation to be dealt with at a time when we should be addressing ourselves to economic issues of real importance. I said the Criminal Code already contained provisions adequate to deal with this subject, so the legislation need not be brought in at this time.
I said, further, that it was a bad bill, so confusing that the abolitionists would support it even though it provided for capital punishment. In my view, the bill gave the abolitionists no real choice when it came to voting. It was typical of the government to have behaved in this way. If they had felt this was an important issue, they could have called parliament together in November or December to deal with it. In fact, the official opposition urged the government to do just that. Nevertheless, here we are today concerning ourselves, at this point, with an amendment moved by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin).
A great deal has been said since I made my own contribution to the debate earlier this year. I am still in favour of capital punishment; more so, if anything, having heard the speeches made from the other side of the House. I favour capital punishment. For this reason I find myself in agreement with the amendment. At least it is a step in the right direction. If I had a choice, I would go further than the amendment does, but we have to start somewhere.
It is curious, but if this amendment is passed it might deter someone from voting in favour of the bill as amended, for the reason that the bill calls for capital punishment for the murder of police officers and prison guards, and someone who agreed with that might take the view that a rapist was a sick person and should not be sentenced to death. This is a further indication of the fact that one law is needed for everybody. We do not want various degrees of capital punishment-I guess there is only one degree of capital punishment. There is capital murder, which is described adequately in the law, and therefore we should have capital punishment which would then fit the crime: There is no suggestion we should hang or otherwise execute someone who had committed a murder on compas-
5934

July 24, 1973
Capital Punishment
sionate grounds. It is wrong to have two categories of murder, one allowing a special status to prison guards and police.
If murderers are to be sentenced to life imprisonment, it is true there is no further penalty, which would deter them from escaping by whatever means possible, including murder. The worst that could happen to them would be to return to serve a further life sentence. If the law were less confused, its administration would be less confused and the government of the day would not be faced with the difficult task of deciding whether to commute death sentences or not. We have heard about the dilemma confronting juries which may feel clemency is deserved in certain cases. But again, if there were a rigid set of rules, juries would not be faced with this problem.
We are living today in a complex society, one in which it is impossible that each individual should receive the attention he might wish to receive or which he may think he deserves. In these circumstances, rigid rules are needed so that people may know where they stand. I am amazed at the arguments put forward by the abolitionists. They say it is the fault of society that murders are committed, and that murderers should not be put to death. I counter this assertion by saying that in today's complex society, if a man cannot cope with the situation I do not think there is any way in which the do-gooders will be able to correct him after he has committed a murder.
They say killing is wrong. Well, it is only wrong some of the time. They condone killing in the course of a war. Also, I am sure, they would not submit to a personal attack without reacting. And perhaps murder would be the result of that. They also say capital punishment has no deterrent value. I suggest that capital punishment is a deterrent, as are other penalties. We are brought up from earliest childhood to know there are penalties attached to certain acts, whether a spanking on mother's knee or a slap with a ruler in the classroom or, later on, a fine for some breach of the law, or a jail sentence and, finally, the death penalty. People are educated to understand that acts which are abominable to society are subject to penalties.
Statistics cannot prove that capital punishment has no deterrent value because, of course, the crimes which are prevented do not form part of the statistics. I find it curious that the abolitionists should feel they must pay more attention to a very small group of murderers who are probably not worthy of their consideration, while forgetting the millions of old people who built this country and who are suffering a worse fate, probably, than imprisonment. We have heard about the state of our prisons these days. They have been likened in the press recently to motels and nice vacation resorts.
We have heard many arguments put forward on religious grounds but there is no clear consensus emerging from them. There are clergymen in this House whose opinions differ on this question, and anyone who wishes to quote scripture can certainly find a text which will suit whatever argument he wishes to present.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Boulanger):: Order. It being five o'clock, the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's

order paper, namely, public bills, private bills and notices of motion.


Mr. Reid:: Mr. Speaker, I think there might be agreement to take item 7 in the name of the hon. member for Fraser Valley West (Mr. Rose).


Mr. Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Agreed.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Boulanger):: It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 40, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Simcoe-North (Mr. Rynard)-Transport-Request that measures be taken to avoid accidents which result in drownings; the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie (Mr. Symes)-Regional Economic Expansion-Northern Ontario-Joint action with province to formulate co-ordinated development plan; the hon. member for Egmont (Mr. MacDonald) - Transport-Increase in freight rates in Atlantic provinces-Possible government action to offset serious effects.


PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BILLS
[Stage Direction]
[ English]

Mr. Mark Rose (Fraser Valley West) moved: that Bill C-36, to establish an administrative review board, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to see the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Drury) leave the chamber. I know he will be around for the debate tomorrow on the Olympic bill, but I have something to say which perhaps compared to any other business will be more meaningful to this particular minister than any other.
My initiation of this debate today through the means of private members' public bill C-36 comes, I hope, under the heading of a positive suggestion designed to ameliorate certain problems I have encountered since becoming a member of this House. It could be argued, I suppose, that the matter with which I propose to deal could have been handled better under a resolution rather than a private bill. But whatever the means, I believe it to be important to make the point here that a problem exists, and with an ever-growing public service this House should begin to
July 24, 1973

concern itself with a solution which may not be possible through some other measure.
For the benefit of those members wishing to speak in this debate, I will summarize the problem and my suggestions for a solution before I go into any great detail. Let us take the case of a public servant who has a problem, who has been denied a promotion, who has been allegedly unfairly discplined or who has been refused a transfer to some other area of the country. This public servant, after exhausting the normal avenues of appeal or grievance through the Public Service Staff Relations Act, comes ultimately to his MP seeking justice. Usually, the MP has little alternative but to write the minister seeking a review of the case on behalf of the public servant. The minister sets the wheels in motion. Perhaps he has time to do little else. The case ultimately filters down to the public servant's superior who made the controversial decision in the first place.
I am sure many members have had this experience. Hence the problem. How much of an independent appeal or disinterested review of this man's case can be expected when the person in charge of the review is the identical person who made the original decision which is being questioned by the public employee through his MP? This is why as a proposal to get around this problem and to achieve a better method of dealing with grievances, I have suggested the establishment of an independent administrative review board.
Today, then, I would like to make a positive suggestion by calling for the establishment of an administrative review board to provide protection for our federal employees. Like many MPs, I have constituents who are federal employees and sometimes, because their problems are so desperate, they have written to me for assistance. Having made many representations on their behalf, I have begun to appreciate why they express such bitter exasperation.
I recall a specific case of a couple of years ago. A constituent whom we will call Mr. Jones had accepted a position in the Northwest Territories. Although he had accepted a position in the Northwest Territories, he still wanted to keep in touch with British Columbia. Most people who visit British Columbia feel the same way. However, the department could not accommodate his preferences. So because of other latent dissatisfaction, Mr. Jones applied for a transfer to northern British Columbia.
This request was denied by the director in Edmonton. Subsequently Mr. Jones applied for a transfer from the region. When this was turned down on the basis of there not being any vacancies, Mr. Jones appealed to me. I, in turn, appealed to the minister-in this case the then minister of national health and welfare-who generously agreed to review the case. The minister's reply was the same as the director's. It is no wonder. The minister passes the request on to his staff, who in turn pass it on to the deputy minister, who passes it on to the assistant deputy minister, who passes it on to his assistant, who passes it all the way down the line to the director in Edmonton, who prepares a reply for the minister, which eventually is passed on to me, and in turn to the constituent.
The trouble is that the director in Edmonton who prepares the reply for the minister is the same director who
Public Service
makes the decision in the first place. How can one expect anything else? A dispute such as this is a matter of interpretation. It is necessary to allow other interpretations to be heard by an impartial judge or board. Otherwise we have a situation of the proverbial sheriff who is also judge, jury and-if you will forgive me-executioner. Under the present system, how are the Mr. Jones's to get a fair hearing? I have a case involving a lady who worked in the UIC office. She wrote me and said:
If there were promotions the young got them without competition. The older had to apply and in most cases were told they didn't have the qualifications even in some cases for their own jobs. Even the casual young got preference over permanent older employees. They have tried to put in grievances through the union but the union rep. are employees and are working for promotion, so side with management.
I think that is natural enough. We all remember the celebrated case of Ann Booth. Miss Booth was striving to be a Liberal candidate and was dismissed by the CRTC. Her case was heard by the committee on broadcasting. I believe it was a unique case so far as civil servants are concerned. The broadcasting committee had power to recommend. Although the committee did make a recommendation, Miss Booth was unable to regain her position after she had been dismissed on the ground of political activity.
It is cases like those I have described which caused me to reflect on the present grievance procedure within the public service. As an example of the administrative inquiry, the grievance procedure itself tends to allow management to confirm their original decision. There is a tendency for people to want to save face and to back up their colleagues. I do not blame the individuals. It is quite natural for people to want to defend themselves. We all do it. This is not something involving merely civil servants or politicians. The point we must consider, however, is whether this allows for the fairest and most just appeal. And I would argue that this is not the present case.
I would suggest that an alternative to the present structure would be one similar to that of the Pension Review Board of the Department of Veterans Affairs. This board was introduced after considerable and persistent pressure had been applied by the veterans' organizations. The veterans' organizations argued that a new appellant procedure was necessary, one that would add a Pension Review Board that was independent of the department. Both the veterans' associations and the department are pleased with the new board. They have found that it has reduced much of the animosity that was felt previously in the department and directed toward the department. They suggest a number of reasons this is so. Today, I think one of the reasons, the most important reason, for separation is that separation itself allows a guarantee of protection for the case. But the veterans have found, as well, that within the new structure there is less pressure on the lower levels of the grievance procedure to want to be tight-fisted when it comes to handling the grievances of the veterans. So the net consequence has been liberalization-if you will pardon the expression-all along the line.
If we compare the new veterans' structure with the present public service grievance structure, we find that

July 24, 1973
Public Service
there is an outstanding difference. The present grievance structure is limited by section 91 of the act which provides:
-having completed the three levels of grievance, the adjudication is limited to cases of interpretation or application in respect of the employee, of a provision or a collective agreement or an arbitral award or the disciplinary action resulting in discharge, or suspension or financial penalty.
Of course, this leaves a great number of areas of grievance outside the bounds of the adjudication process. I submit that a review board would provide greater latitude to hear such grievances. But a call for fairness or justice is not just a moral question; it is not solely confined to a moral question. I think this is a very important point. It is also a matter of good organization. How badly has the morale of our public service been worsened because public servants do not have confidence in their grievance procedure? I submit, also, that they do not have confidence or the feeling that their rights are protected at present.
We note similar discontent among railroad workers. At present railroads have a court mechanism to hear grievances, but this court is staffed by the employer and it is responsible to the employer alone. Therefore, in effect it acts as a kind of kangaroo court. Decisions are known to have been made by this body that would never have stood up in a proper court, but it was all right for the kangaroo court. These decisions have resulted in disciplinary action-I have a sheaf of them-or brownie points, as they call them on the railroad, and in some cases even in dismissal.
Some might say that such a kangaroo court can be eliminated, depending on the bargaining power of the unions. However, the old-line parties have never exhibited an interest in rectifying the situation. Indeed, some have argued that the managements of railroads know that they can be a stubborn bargainer because the old-line parties will always send the men back to work if they dare to strike. They might be on the brink of such a situation at present. If that is the case, then we must be able to find some other means by which employees can express their grievances to management. In my opinion, a review board that is independent of the present administration in the civil service or even in the rail companies could allow for a more fair and more impartial hearing of grievances. Accordingly, the decisions that it would make would be treated with more respect and confidence by the men if the board and its members were truly independent of the government and of management.
This bill, then, is in response to the many frustrated individuals who have made representations to me, and I sympathize with them deeply. I have even to some extent sympathized with the ministers of the Crown because I realize that it is not ill-will that sends the representation to the person who makes the decision, then back through the minister to me and brings back the same answer that was given in the first place. I know it is not ill-will on the part of the ministers but, rather, it is a question of organization. The present administrative organization does not allow for the kind of independent review board that would be satisfactory to both parties. Usually it is only satisfactory to one party, and that is what is wrong.
If one were to examine the many individual cases, one would find that the majority of these grievances are due to

the fact that the federal government is, in a sense, a far-flung empire. We have people dispersed all over Canada, and therefore there exist many intermediaries between the individual with his problem and the minister in Ottawa. Of course, that leaves a lot of room for many personal problems and for tension, and that is what we have. Tension, if it is allowed to continue at a high rate, is bound to affect morale. It means, of course, that the minister must rely on his staff to provide the answers. Unfortunately, his staff is often the same staff that made the decision in the first place.
Common sense tells us that the most effective way of ensuring a fair examination of any case is to appoint someone different, someone other than the person who made the decision, to consider it in the second instance. What we must come up with is an effective substitute for physical proximity because our public service is dispersed. I hope that this review board will be part of that mechanism and will act to bring the two parties closer together.
To conclude, may I say that I know someone from the other side, and perhaps also from this side, will make the observation that the independent review boards under the Canada Pension Plan and considering veterans' cases are client-oriented and there is quite a different relationship between client and government agency and employee and government agency. I think it is a fair to say that to extend this principle of an independent review board- even though the two situations in the examples I have given are not congruent-is a worthy one. So it is worth while to consider that the principle of independence in terms of grievances is a valid one. Someone will say also that it should be done by the unions. I do not think the unions have that power within the present Public Service Staff Relations Act in their grievance procedure, and there are other impediments in the way.
In conclusion, I should like to say that in my view the federal government must set a good example for an effective employer-employee relationship and I believe that the place to start this is within the public service.


Miss Flora MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I find it particularly expedient that the bill standing in the name of the hon. member for Fraser Valley West (Mr. Rose) should come up for debate at this time. Anybody who helps to unravel and to make more digestible the mass of regulations, directives, rites, orders, controls and massive red tape which thwart and frustrate the contribution and working practices of hundreds of thousands of civil servants would be welcome, provided that such a board did not in itself constitute a further hazard to dealing expeditiously with the thousands of complaints and inequities which exist within the public service at present.
There are approximately 250,000 persons in the public service of Canada, and I am sure many of them feel they have justifiable grievances which they are hesitant to air through established procedures. An administrative review board, an independent body, might provide the outlet they seek. I have mentioned that there are some 250,000 persons in the public service of Canada. Of these, 63,000 are women. The federal government is the largest employer of women in the country. But the Archibald report on sex
July 24, 1973

and the public service found that 83 per cent of these women were concentrated in administrative support roles.


An hon. Member:: This is where they belong.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: This concentration does not reflect the levels of education or the competence of Canadian women. It was reported earlier this year that only 25 women in the public service earn more than $26,000. Another report I have shows that of these public servants earning $20,000 or more, 97.3 per cent are men while only 2.7 per cent are women. Whichever way it is viewed, the status of women in the upper echelons of the public service is admittedly bleak. I mention these figures to stress a matter which was raised in this House yesterday.
The President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Drury) was questioned about the abhorrent practice of rug-ranking which exists among women employees in the public service. This practice, which has existed throughout all of the five years in which the hon. member for Westmount has held that portfolio, is one to which the government has devoted minimal, if any, attention. This discriminatory practice was forcibly brought to the attention of the President of the Treasury Board in a recent brief submitted by the Association of the Public Service Secretaries. It had to be pointed out to the minister that rug-ranking is a system by which a secretary's job level is determined by the importance and rank of her boss rather than by her own abilities.
The brief recommended the immediate adoption of a point-rating system and an honest appraisal of the secretary's value and potential in working as part of the management team rather than as a chattel. The President of the Treasury Board, regrettably, had not read the brief of the Association of the Public Service Secretaries. When it was explained to him, he reacted with sympathy, so it is said, but with very little in the way of recommendations. In his reply yesterday he said that if members can suggest ways in which the situation can be corrected, he would be glad to consider them. He said he tought that the problem appeared to lie with the inability adequately to rank secretaries according to their competence. I do not think that approach, or that reply, is adequate to meet the situation which exists among women in the public service today. I think that a much more positive and practical approach on the part of the government would commend itself not only to women in the public service but to women in the country generally.
The report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women forcibly pointed out the basic difference between equality of rights and equality of opportunities for women. In speaking to this bill submitted by the hon. member for Fraser Valley West (Mr. Rose), I contend that if an administrative review board could have the effect of helping to correct the inequities to which women in the public service have been subjected for years, it would be a worth-while measure.
[ Translation]


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member for Fraser Valley West (Mr. Public Service
Rose) when he says that a board should be created not only to look out for abuses, but also to supervise federal government agencies. Here is the purpose of Bill C-36:
It is the function and duty of the Board to investigate and review any decision or recommendation made relating to a matter of administration and affecting any person or body of persons in or by any department or agency, or by any officer or employee thereof in the exercise of any power or function conferred on him.
Mr. Speaker, to my mind the bill is excellent from the administrative point of view. I should like to mention just one example to prove it. In the Canadian civil service, we need competent people, with a good command of both official languages, in order to provide services to the public. I know very well that there is a shortage of personnel in some federal departments.
Not long ago, a physician from Hull phoned me to ask if there was a job opening for his son-in-law. He is a young university graduate of 29, fully bilingual. He made an application and received an application form to fill from the Public Service Commission of Canada; he wrote an examination whose results were excellent: he got a 83% mark. But he was told on the phone by a Public Service officer: "If you had some political backing there would be some chances for you to get that job".
This has just happened, only 15 days ago. Mr. Speaker, I do not accept this procedure in the Public Service. They should take into consideration the skills of the candidate, not his political affiliation. Whatever he may be liberal, socred, new democrat or conservative, everyone has the right to earn a living in Canada and if after passing a serious examination there is a department which needs his services, he should not be told that he would need some assistance from a minister or some political organiser to be immediately hired to fill the position for which he made an application.
Mr. Speaker, this is terrible. And the guy gave me the name of the person who suggested to him on the phone that he find someone to obtain this position through political influence. Can you imagine that? If this is not settled I will disclose in the House the names of the people involved and I will show them what stuff I am made of.
Patronage dispenses do exist in the public service but there are even more of them among politicians and organizers. That a liberal, a new democrat, a conservative or a socred should recommend someone to help him get a job, I have no objection provided his application is treated fairly. They should take into account competence and bilingualism within the services-and God knows that we are short of bilingual and competent people able to speak both official languages fluently-because there still exist departments where we are dealt with in English. I do not want those people to be fired or told they are going to be replaced immediately but we need bilingual personnel in many departments. I will give the example of a federal organization, of a Parliamentary organisation: the Treasury Board. I am not referring to the Quebec, Ontario or Nova-Scotia Treasury but to the federal Treasury Board which should be controlled by a review board such as that mentioned in Bill C-36.

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Public Service
We need bilingual secretaries but we are told by the Treasury Board that they are short of money. Therefore we cannot get any secretaries. The other day, I was reading a list of people made available to political parties. I noticed that four press attaches were made available to the leader of the official opposition (Mr. Stanfield) and that some were paid up to $25,000. per year. As for me I have been requesting one for three years and did not get even one. I do not know whether the leader of the New Democratic party (Mr. Lewis) has one but I know that the leader of the official opposition has four. We are told by the Treasury Board that they have no money.
It is that same Treasury Board which decides to spend thousands of dollars to have beautiful wall-to-wall carpeting and special tapestries fitted in ministers' offices. They are throwing money out of the windows because they are in power. And those from other parties who need help are set aside and are denied secretaries and press attaches under the pretence that we are a small group in the Commons, as if we had no right to be treated on the same footing as any other political party.
If there were not a board of patronage dispensers but an independent board as proposed under Bill C-36 to contend with abuses, to pintpoint them, to inform the people on the ways money is spent in Ottawa, we would probably be better served by the Treasury Board. It is a federal agency. I will be told that it is a matter of internal administration, but nevertheless it is a federal agency. An internal administration to offer everything to big parties and nothing to the other ones, I am fed up with that, Mr. Speaker, and no matter who sits on that internal administration board it is all the same to me, but I say that there are abuses and that we are not treated fairly. There you are!
If a board could tell the Treasury Board: Listen, take it easy with the rugs, they are almost six-inches thick and you practically need snowshoes to walk on them, I would agree, Mr. Speaker, you should come and have a look at the sort of rugs we have in our offices. I think that they are ten year old hand-me-downs from the ministers' offices, it took me six years to get air conditioning in my office on the sixth floor of the Centre Block, six years to get a small unit that doesn't even work that well. It is better than what I had, which was nothing, but it isn't very effective. It must have cost about $150 or $160. It took me six years to get that. The Treasury Board didn't have any money before that, it was "broke".
Now, I am asking for assistance, because my office is overloaded with work, and I'm told: We do not have the necessary money to give you a larger parliamentary secretariat. Mind you, what I am asking for is not a secretariat for my own riding, but one to deal with all the correspondence we receive from all parts of Canada. We do not even have the means to answer all the letters received, because the Treasury Board says: We have no money.
Mr. Speaker, Bill C-36 provides for the setting up of a board composed of five members, independent of any political party, and not one which would take charge of the publicity or the propaganda for the party in power, or the official opposition party, the New Democratic Party or the Social Credit Party of Canada. It would be a board made up of independent members who would watch over

expenditures in Ottawa. Then you would see a change, considerable savings, and fairer treatment. You would no longer hear what I said in my opening remarks: If you had a little help from the bosses, a bit of political "pull", you would get the job you want, for which you applied.
Mr. Speaker, I said before that I would give names. I shall not give them today, but the House may rest assured that I will do so because I will not put up with a bureaucrat saying: "Go and see the political bosses and you stand a very good chance of getting the job"; when you are told bluntly: "We need you but we cannot hire anybody until we get the okay from a member of the party in power." This is what is going on at the present time.
If Bill C-36 could only open up the eyes and ears of those who are responsible for hiring, it would serve a useful purpose. If Bill C-36 only allowed the hon. member who introduced it to express his views and allowed me to express mine about the absurdities that occur not only in Ottawa but throughout the country it will have been most useful. We are told the same thing in Quebec, as far as the federal government is concerned and in western Canada: "You did not accept the party in power and you will be punished for that."
Mr. Speaker, I think that the time for punishment is over. We need justice. We must treat people as human beings, regardless of their political affiliation. It is normal to speak about elections during the electoral campaign, but once it is over, it is very bad to reward one at the expense of the other, or not to take ability into account. I think this has lasted only too long. That sort of thing took place 40, 30, 25 years ago but in 1973 it is outmoded. Then we should get back in fashion. Let us bring in the fashion of dealing with Canadians; let us treat them as Canadians and not as supporters of political parties, which is something I deeply regret right now.
As for Bill C-36, I know that it will not pass. It will not be voted on. The parliamentary secretary to the minister is prepared to rise in order to talk it out. Another member will rise to speak. We will not vote on that bill, but yet it has its significance, if they wish to put some order in the federal administration, since there is none right now. We must provide for more justice in the administration; we must administer in view of the country and not the party.
[ English]


John Mercer Reid: Mr. Speaker, one of the pleasures of a member of this House of Commons is to listen to the hon. member for Temiscamingue (Mr. Caouette). However, I would say that it is not really a pleasure to have to follow him after he has just made a speech in this House. He has a command of language and imagery, although I would not want to confuse that with having a command of logic and necessary facts. While he was speaking he did, almost by accident, it seems to me, touch upon some of the things covered by the bill.
Perhaps I might reply to him and answer a number of questions that he raised outside the scope of the bill but which I believe to be rather important not only to him but to all other members. They deal basically with the provi-
July 24, 1973

sion of staff for members of parliament and particularly for the leaders of the parties.
Hon. members may not be aware that for some time now I have tried to place on the order paper a question designed to find out exactly the staffing provided by the House of Commons for the leaders of the various political parties. That was not possible because that information comes through the Speaker of the House. However, I want to tell the hon. member through you, Mr. Speaker, that I did obtain that information. It is available and I will undertake to have it delivered to his office tomorrow so that he can be aware of exactly what staffing is provided through the House of Commons to members of parliament and particularly to all party leaders. He will be able to discover the formula that is used for the allocation of the moneys of the House of Commons to provide him with his staff.
Concerning his office furniture, rugs, and whatnot, I am happy to tell him that he is not being furnished with cast-offs from ministers but that it is all new. He does not need to worry about being given what ministers no longer want. I hope the hon. member will understand that there is a distinction to be drawn between the administration of the civil service and the House of Commons; it is not a case of Treasury Board being niggardly in the provision of services to members of parliament but, rather, of our making a judgment as to how much we require and how this amount is to be divided between ourselves.
I should like to turn to the subject matter of this bill. Until the hon. member for Fraser Valley West (Mr. Rose) agreed to bring it forward last Friday, I had not had an opportunity to look at it. I wanted to find out what the government thought of this bill and whether or not it should be proceeded with. Unfortunately, there was some difficulty in determining the precise nature of the bill and there was confusion over a number of the phrases contained in the bill.
I will not go into detail except to say that it was felt that the drafting was not adequate. There was confusion as to whether the hon. member was trying to deal solely with the grievances of public servants which arise from time to time or, perhaps, more importantly, with the grievances which citizens being served by public servants might have. Apparently we would be dealing with two different aspects. However, the wording of the operative clauses was such that it was not clear to the officials who examined the bill or to myself which route we ought to take.
Unfortunately, today I am in the embarrassing position of having prepared some remarks on the ombudsman aspect which applies to citizens and not on the aspect to which my hon. friend addressed himself, which is specifically how we deal adequately with the grievances of public servants who feel that they have not obtained a square deal from their immediate supervisor.
I will be the first to deny that this is not an important subject and not an important area of concern for many public servants. Like the hon. member, I have had occasion to take up the cause of public servants who feel they have been wronged and not treated properly by a supervisor. Unfortunately, members of parliament often have not
Public Service
been able to act because there is a union organization in the field which is responsible for considering these grievances, taking them up with the government and arriving at adequate solutions. These organizations are new in many areas, particularly in areas such as the one I represent, which consists of a considerable area of northern Ontario. These unions have not been able to set up a properly functioning operation in order to process the grievances of public servants in such areas. I have taken up a number of cases but have not been able to obtain complete satisfaction. I have not satisfied myself or the public servants involved, because we have always had to reckon with the interposition of the union between the public servant concerned and the government.
Whether we think they are efficient or not, we must recognize that unions are responsible for considering grievances brought forward by their members, and they must deal adequately with those by approaching the Public Service Commission or Treasury Board, as the case may be.
The bill brought forward by the hon. member indicates that he feels, as do other members, that some other method must be discovered for dealing with these matters. At the moment he obviously feels that the present method is not satisfactory, and I tend to agree with him. My solution would not be one which he proposes, namely, the setting up of an independent administrative tribunal, but, rather, one which encourages, perhaps even forces if necessary, the union involved to take up the cudgels on behalf of its members.
I recognize the dilemma involved in setting up a properly effective and operative union organization in this way, give the nature of our country and the difficulties inherent in screening properly the quality and quantity of complaints brought forward for attention. Without doubt the problem is genuine. However, it is my feeling, having been here longer than I care to recount, although not as long as the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles), that setting up another piece of bureaucratic-machinery in the form of an administrative review board would not be satisfactory.
Such action would not take into account the actual operations of bureaucracy and of similar organizations in our society today. This comment is valid not only for government bureaucracies, but, as well, for all large organizations, because they all tend to exhibit the same kind of behaviour. For example, the behaviour of a large private organization such as General Motors is not significantly different from that of a bureaucracy connected with a department of the federal civil service or with a provincial government. Bureaucracies tend to operate under very much the same rules of survival. Consequently, it seems to me that the hon. member's proposal for setting up an administrative review board, independent and unpaid, to adjudicate and make decisions, does not take into account the way in which bureaucracies operate.
I refer the hon. member to the studies of C. Northcote Parkinson on the operation of bureaucracies, to the book "Parkinson's Law" and subsequent developments of it, and also to the two invaluable books on the Peter principle. These, I think, are useful in determining the nature of bureaucracy and what can be done about it.
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Public Service
It strikes me that the problems public servants face at this time in this place will not be solved by this bill. That is not to say that the problem has not been recognized and that action has not been taken. Let me advise the hon. member that action has been taken by this Parliament. Let me give him a brief history.
About two years ago the then minister of manpower and immigration, who is now the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lang), announced the establishment of the Bryden Commission. It was to examine the workings of the Public Service Staff Relations Act. Its work culminated in the Bryden report which, due to the interposition of an election and other matters, was never seriously acted on by the government. As a result this Parliament, on April 17, passed an act which gave an opportunity for Mr. Jacob Finkelman, who is widely respected for his ability to mediate between employees and Treasury Board, the Public Service Commission and other employers, to take leave of absence in order to carry out a further study that will complement the Bryden report.
That report was never presented, mainly because by the time it came out it was considered to be out of date. The president of the Public Service Alliance asked the government not to proceed with it and the government acceded to the wishes of the union as well as to the wishes of its own management side, which in this case I believe was Treasury Board and the Public Service Commission. That study is in the process of being carried on. A time limit has been put on it.
It is anticipated that following our summer recess, if we ever have a recess, this matter will be brought forward and legislation, if required, will be introduced in the House of Commons. So this matter has been under consideration by the government and two studies have been undertaken. The co-operation of the various public service unions is being sought as well as input from the management side. Attempts are being made to understand the problems connected with this delicate subject, and perhaps some time in the fall there will be an opportunity for some committee of the House of Commons to carry out a study of its own, if that is felt necessary. As a result legislation would be introduced by the government to clarify some of the difficulties which have arisen in what I suggest is the trend setting legislation passed in 1966.
The federal government was the first government in Canada to provide union representation to its employees. In working out this new system and developing the new relationships, moving from a paternalistic relationship to a relationship based on equality, there were difficulties. However, progress has been made and we are headed in the right way. I do not believe the solution to this problem lies within the confines of Bill C-36. Regretfully I must say I hope it will not be proceeded with when we leave this place at six o'clock.


Mr. Barnett J. Danson (York North):: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to have the occasion to speak on Bill C-36 which was presented by the hon. member for Fraser Valley West (Mr. Rose) in his usual colourful way. I am delighted to see his red shirt. I do not know if it is an indication of his politics or the 100th anniversary of the RCMP.
His case was plausible and interesting, one that is worthy of a great deal of consideration by members of this House. All members of parliament are accustomed to receiving complaints from constituents who are members of the public service and feel they have been unjustly treated. I do not know if I share all the hon. member's frustrations, but I have the frustration of dealing with cases where you are never certain you are getting the right answer, and I can understand the frustration of the employee.
I do not think this bill was intended to be a specific vehicle to increase the number of women in the public service. This government is committed to that and I am sure all future governments will be. I do not feel this is the major thrust of this bill. I was interested in the remarks of the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald), who referred to a report on sex in the public service. I am most anxious to read it. I do not know whether it has been banned, but I will try to get a copy of it.
I was concerned about some of the remarks of the hon. member for Temiscamingue (Mr. Caouette). He stated you need political pull in order to get a job in the public service. That is quite foreign to the experience I have had. As a member of the government side, I find that any intrusion by a member, regardless of what political party he belongs to, certainly a member of the party in power, just about guarantees the person will not get the job.
I suspect that if I approached the Public Service Commission and suggested a person should not get a job, he would probably get it. I have a batting average of 1000 per cent on assisting people to get jobs in the public service. A recommendation from a member of parliament, no matter what party, has no bearing whatsoever. In fact, it is detrimental to the person's chances.
I am not suggesting this is all bad. Perhaps that is the reason we have a Public Service Commission. In days gone by it was necessary for people to have political connections to get a job. That method of patronage is the one to which the hon. member for Temiscamingue referred. Although I have only been here five years, I have found it to be absolutely non-existent.
I agree that part of the solution to the difficulties which the hon. member for Fraser Valley West is trying to resolve in his bill is to give greater facilities to members of parliament, both in the constituency and in Ottawa, to pursue some of those problems. We could do this more vigorously if we did not have so many demands on our time. We cannot get to the root of our problem without greater assistance. I am not even sure that this would solve the problem.
I would like to see us get to the root of our difficulties, but I wonder if this is the way to do it, certainly as far as agencies and Crown corporations are concerned. We have Crown corporations for many reasons. One of the reasons is that they are at arm's length from the political process. I wonder if it would be appropriate to have such an agency or review board in areas of employer-employee relationships for Crown corporations. The CNR has adequate union procedures, as does Air Canada. I do not think Crown corporations, such as Polymer Corporation or Atomic Energy of Canada, should be subject to this sort of
July 24, 1973

external review. The answer is to get at the root of the problem.
We have been dealing with problems that are difficult and complex. There are no easy answers to them. In the case of inflation and the high cost of living, the simplistic answer is we cannot find the real solution. Many people feel we should have price controls. When we come to capital punishment, we have problems in our society. Some people feel that if we cannot solve a problem, we should remove it and be rid of it. This does not have the same relationship, but I am suggesting the root of the problem here is employer-employee relationships. There should be more specific management techniques and implementation of the recommendations in the Bryden report. These are the basic problems that must be solved.
I would be concerned about the attraction of a board like this to handle complaints. There are many complaints about people feeling they are improperly treated with regard to merit pay. The line-up of complaints before such a board could be horrendous.
The problem explained by the hon. member for Fraser Valley West is evident. I do not know if we have time to vote on the bill tonight, but I think it was his intention to bring this up for discussion. He has brought forward an interesting problem on which we can cogitate. If the Bryden report is brought forth for study in the fall, it will attract more of our attention.


Mark Willson Rose: Will the hon. member permit a question?


Barnett Jerome Danson: If it is a question.


Mark Willson Rose: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member made reference to my beautiful ideological shirt. Can he inform me whether his ideological hair, which is the same colour, also represents his views on matters?


Barnett Jerome Danson: Mr. Speaker, you cannot judge a rose by its colour. I am not trying to judge the hon. member for Fraser Valley West by the colour of his shirt.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Boulanger):: It being six o'clock, the House stands recessed until eight o'clock p.m.
At six o'clock the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill C-2, to amend the Criminal Code, as reported (with amendments) from
Capital Punishment
the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, and Motion No. 2 (Mrs. Morin).
William Hillary (Bill) Clarke: Mr. Speaker, at five o'clock I had just disposed of some of the arguments put forward by abolitionists against capital punishment and, therefore, against the amendment we are now considering. As one who supports the amendment, I wish to reflect for a moment on the attitude on society toward this proposal, as I see it.
Many members send questionnaires to their constituencies. They receive thousands of replies. I have yet to hear of one member receiving replies the majority of which were opposed to capital punishment. I have not sent out a questionnaire, but I can tell from the hundreds of letters I have received from my constituents that the overwhelming majority of people there favour the retention of capital punishment, and presumably therefore, they would favour the amendment we are considering.
These people know there are problems within the penal system and they recognize that a swift solution is not possible. But they want us to take a step in that direction, and the first thing they want is a return to capital punishment, for whatever value it has. I have already dealt with this aspect. I am certain they would support the amendment because it is a step in the direction of returning to society some of the conditions we enjoyed when we felt easy about walking around in our neighbourhoods and in our own ridings without worrying about what would happen to us.
Society as a whole has a responsibility not only to rehabilitate criminals and murderers but toward the innocent masses of society who are being inconvenienced, frightened-there are any number of words we could use to describe the conditions which exist. There is a quotation which I thought worth mentioning, taken from an article written on this topic.
Perhaps convicted murderers are not fit to live in our society and rather than imprison them with its care and menace-
They are interesting words-"care" and "menace".
-better to kill them and be done with it.
If a man is not fit to live in society I think society owes it to the people to rid society of that man. I do not intend to get into the life imprisonment angle, but it has been said that this could be a worse punishment than being executed.
There is another aspect which is overlooked when we talk about the innocent masses. It is the type of protection they need. This sentence illustrates it well:
Some people may take the law Into their own hands if they think the state will not. If a man knows his wife's murderer will serve only seven years in prison for the crime he may be inclined, and understandably so, to execute the man himself and serve the seven years in place of his wife's killer.
I have said this before. The innocent who suffer as a result of a murder deserve the protection of society and of the law. There is always a danger that these innocents will take the law into their own hands in other ways and form vigilante or other undesirable groups. The people in my riding want safety in the streets for themselves and for their families. They are very much aware that some of the laws are too lax and that enforcement is too lax. They
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think of places like New York city, which perhaps at one time was a pleasant place to visit and walk around at night but where now not only do you not dare go out at night but you find hardly any people living there, it is such a dreadful place. The people in my riding want to know there are certain rules which will be enforced. They think society needs to be saved from itself. They think we can save society by restoring, among other things, capital punishment, which would implement the amendment we are talking about in respect of murder resulting from rape.
The people cannot understand why parliamentarians, at least the abolitionists, apparently reject the view of the law enforcement agencies all over the country, if not all over the world, that there should be a return to capital punishment for this sort of offence. A return to law and order is wanted by all these people and they have made their views known to me. I do not have any difficulty agreeing with the view of the majority of my constitu-tents. I think this is still a democracy. The people think this too. They know the majority of Canadians are in favour of capital punishment and in favour of this kind of amendment. I am in full support of it myself. I think we owe it to the majority of Canadians to pass this amendment.
[ Transla tion]


Mr. Gilles Caouette (Charlevoix):: Mr. Speaker, we are now at the report stage of Bill C-2, an act concerning capital punishment. In order to make this act still more effective, the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) has moved an amendment incorporating into the bill the case of murders which might be considered as punishable by death.
For the past five years, the government-as far as I know, it is the same old gang-has wanted the abolition of capital punishment for all murders except that of a police officer or prison guard.
For the past five years, we have constantly been hearing about murders of women as well as men, young as well as elderly people, policemen and prison guards as well as ordinary individuals. With such a sampling, we are therefore able to analyze the situation, to probe files, to turn everything upside down in order to find out whether, under the act, punishment has been dealt out or better still, whether the law has simply been applied.
I surely need not discourse any longer to convince the House that in spite of the law passed by Parliament, in no case did we respect our commitments towards society. Policemen have been killed. Did we, as the law stipulates, punish the murderers with death? No. So why should we waste our time enacting laws if we are the first to ignore them? And then, we expect the people to enforce the laws we pass.
Mr. Speaker, the past is the guarantee of the future, and despite what some government members may say, even if we should pass some law or other, we know in advance they will not enforce it. The government is using Bill C-2 to play politics, to play blackmail politics, to try to convince the people that we, federal members, work hard at serious problems.

What difference is there, Mr. Speaker, between discussing and studying this bill on July 24th and discussing it on November 24th? We know ahead of time that it will never be enforced. But to play politics, the government wants to compel the opposition parties to pass bills at full speed before the summer recess.
That is simply the petty method used by the government not to legislate according to the will of the people, but to threaten opposition parties and try, as I said, to railroad bills as loony, frivolous and thoughtless as the one now before the House.
Yet, throughout Canada, surveys have shown clearly- surveys conducted both by members of Parliament and agencies without political allegiance-that most people are calling for the restoration of capital punishment, and that, because society wants to be protected.
In spite of this consensus, the government, the Liberal party wants at all costs and without delay to force Parliament to pass a legislation which goes against the wishes of the majority.
In my riding, 82 per cent of the people are in favour of retaining capital punishment for premeditated murders and not only for people who murder police officers and prison guards or, according to the amendment under review, for people who kill a woman after raping her.
We favour this amendment because, first, it demonstrates the stupidity of the government, second, it widens the concept of the protection of society. I say "the stupidity of the government" because if a man kills a woman after raping her, they want to punish him by death, but the case of a woman who would kill a man in the same situation is not provided for in the amendment. She will probably be commended for such an achievement. If a homosexual attacks a man and kills him while raping him, fine, because the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) has had a law passed that legalized homosexuality. Therefore, no capital punishment for this privileged race, unless obviously it is discovered afterwards, and here I am interpreting the legislation, that the victim of the murder was a police officer or a prison guard. Then according to the law the murderer is punishable by death even though in effect this is not enforced. The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) does not, for one, comply with the legislation that he and his colleagues pass in the House.
Mr. Speaker, here is another example. If a woman rapes a young boy who dies from it, no capital punishment because the murderer was a woman. These are the terms of the amendment. If a man rapes a girl-I do not know if the word "woman" implies any segregation between unmarried and married girls-he is sentenced to death. We could give many such examples, but I will only mention that murder is punishable by capital punishment whether carried out during or after the rape. Culpability also depends on the victim's sex and occupation.
A skilled gangster should choose his victim carefully and however ridiculous it may seem, he should kill the Prime Minister's wife rather than a woman who is member of the police force. He should make sure to rape her only after her death, because if he did so before it could cost him his life. After all, if he kills her before
July 24, 1973

raping her, I doubt that there has been a rape, since the victim was unable to spurn or yield to the advances of the criminal.
So many fine distinctions, so many ways to amuse the lawyers. And I point out in this House that those same lawyers are divided, some being for the death penalty, others against it. However, they have all studied the same laws, but they realize how important it is to complicate them, because their daily bread is involved. Indeed, they can be pleased, because they are assured of obtaining more interesting cases than those they now have.
Mr. Speaker, the people refuse to become the plaything of gloomy politicians such as those who hold power. People want laws to be respected and law-abiding individuals to be protected.
Not only do the government and its departments not respect the laws established by Parliament, but what is even worse, they encourage those who unhappily do not abide by the laws.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The hon. member for Charlevoix will excuse my interrupting only for a moment, because his speech is interesting. I know that his colleagues want to hear him, but I remind him that under the Standing Orders, only 20 minutes are available to him and the Chair hopes that he will come to the point and consider the amendment presently before the House in the period of time allotted to him. I generally remind all hon. members that they must limit their remarks to the amendment under study. We are not at the third reading stage, that will come later on, but at the report stage providing for particular motions, including that of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin). I think that hon. members should not at this stage make speeches which they could deliver at the stage of the third reading or which they have already made on second reading; they should rather stick to the amendment before us. This motion is in very specific terms and hon. members participating in this debate at this stage should observe the rule of relevance.


Gilles Caouette: Mr. Speaker, it is precisely the motion I was talking about when I indicated the segregations the amendment seems to introduce in the bill. It would be against the wishes of the people who would like to see an amendment which would reestablish capital punishment not out of segregation but in a general way for all murders premeditated or not.
Then, in this perspective, we have to consider that the system as a whole which supposes compliance with the laws, as we see now, does not seem to afford individuals the protection they have a right to expect and this to the extent that we see-and we saw it this year-murderers or outlaws, prisoners get the permission to entertain themselves, to go and see hockey games at the Montreal Forum. On the other hand, we never heard that unhappy, miserable people, those who live on welfare, could get tickets from the government to entertain themselves and see hockey games too.
I was saying that somehow the government favours those people who do not comply with the laws. The poor people are never that lucky; on the contrary, they are penalized. But murderers must be rewarded; after all, a good hockey game or a walk through the Salon de la
Capital Punishment
Femme is probably a reward for getting rid of a future welfare recipient.
To show you the extent of our leaders' madness, Mr. Speaker, I would go so far as to say that I know a good many cases of unhappy, but law abiding people, depending on social welfare, who are not entitled to any recreational activities. If, by any chance, they own a car, their allowance is withdrawn and they are told to sell their car, often an old jalopy, worth about $50, if they want their cheque. On the other hand, the same people on social welfare are not entitled to get out of their misery or to be entertained; but a bandit, in short a smart bandit who infringes the law, is rewarded. Not only he is entitled to an automobile to go to his recreational activities, but he is provided with a private chauffer, paid by the state, to be entertained while serving his sentence.
This is the society that our practical jokers, our leaders, are building for us; on the one hand, by legalizing murder of an innocent, of a child, and on the other hand, by rewarding the murderer of an individual. It is with this kind of position that the government wants to obtain a "just society".
Let me say, Mr. Speaker, that not only is the present act unfair but it is discriminatory in respect of those who do abide by the law. This government seems to want to say, go ahead, ladies and gentlemen, kill, you will be rewarded for having contributed to solving the alleged problem of overpopulation. But before you kill, make sure that the man is neither a policeman nor a prison guard, or if you prefer to kill a woman make sure that it is not in the course of making love and also that she is neither a policewoman nor a prison guard because that would cost you your head. And, finally, go ahead, kill anybody, anywhere, anytime, because the law will not really be applied as has been seen in the past.
The Prime Minister undoubtedly prefers to listen to the demands of those sentenced to death for murder than listen to society which suffers from insecurity. We have seen enough people thus sentenced to death, blessed people who will have three meals a day for the rest of their lives, watch colour television, occasionally attend sporting events at the expense of the state and finally be released with the blessing of the right hon. government of Canada.
In conclusion, I simply want to ask those responsible both for the bill and the amendment to stop looking at themselves as angels and be human with everything that that entails, that is respecting those individuals who respect their fellow individuals. Then we will see legislation to protect society and not wrongdoers. We will see the restoration of capital punishment for all capital murders without any restriction of segregation and we will thus contribute to protecting society. After all, Mr. Speaker, that is our role and the approach people expect from us.
[ English]


Mr. J. H. Horner (Crowfoot):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on this occasion to speak in support of the amendment moved by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin). Basically, her amendment makes sense to me. It suggests that persons who deliberately commit an act which results in the

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Capital Punishment
death of another person shall be punished by death. That makes sense to me and to many people across Canada. While I do not wish to belabour the matter of the sentence of death and whether or not society has the right to punish the guilty in this way, this is the supreme test of those who are chosen to govern society, namely, whether or not they can take it upon themselves to adjudicate or to rule in authority in the case of acts of violence or acts against society.
The hon. member's amendment suggests that anyone caught and charged with this offence may be subject to the supreme penalty. In saying this I am not necessarily saying that I am absolutely in favour of that supreme penalty. I think as legislators we could devise a better system than hanging for the taking of the lives of violators. But that is not the point now before the House of Commons. The question before the House is the hon. member's amendment, and we must address ourselves to it.
Under the present law one who commits premeditated murder is charged with what is commonly called capital murder. One who causes a death as a result of anger, jealousy, or other emotional outburst, just on the spur of the moment, is charged with non-capital murder. In the hon. member's amendment we have a further clarification or differentiation between capital murder and non-capital murder.
The hon. member's amendment suggests that anyone convicted of rape and murder be subjected to capital punishment. Under such circumstances, I could agree with the hon. member. But I have seen the opposite argued, that rape cannot be committed without consent. I do not necessarily believe that. Rape is a supreme example of wanton pilferage. We have seen many examples of it in the country of our neighbours to the south.
What is society doing to protect itself? In suburbia we see housewives arming themselves with pistols, or some other means of defence against what could be called wanton pilferage. If as legislators we allow the law enforcement agencies in our society to become engaged solely in reprimanding the persons caught, this is not at all sufficient. We have to go one step further. We must caution people in society that they cannot do certain actions.
I do not know how many hon. members have been reading the newspapers in recent days, but from reports in them I have no hesitation in suggesting that the occurrence of rape in Toronto, Montreal and in the west has been on the increase. One must ask why. Is it because of a lack of appreciation of the judicial system? I think more severe penalties should be imposed on people who deliberately take advantage of others unable to defend themselves.
Some two or three weeks ago the attention of the House of Commons was directed to the bludgeoning to death of an 82 year old lady in the city of Edmonton, Alberta. She lived in an apartment house and had refused to hand over her money. That is not an uncommon thing. The people who broke into her apartment did not know her age. They thought the most they faced was a couple of months in jail for committing burglary.
(Mr. Horner (Crowfoot).]
The same thing happened to an elderly lady of 78 or 79 years in the city of Calgary. I do not think Alberta is different from the rest of Canada in this respect. I may be accused of being hypersensitive to incidents in the province of Alberta, but from my reading of the press I believe such incidents are increasing all across Canada-in Montreal, in Quebec, in Toronto, in Vancouver, and even in the Maritimes. From studying newspapers and RCMP reports one could discover the exact statistics. One must ask why these break-ins took place. Were these elderly ladies bludgeoned to death merely that others could steal the money they had received as pensions? No, I really do not think so. They were break-ins committed by those desirous of some other extreme pleasures, which some people take upon themselves and which I do not think society appreciates happen. I think this House of Commons should recognize the fact that 70 per cent of the people of Canada seriously doubt that a murderer today really takes into consideration the ultimate penalty for his crime. Why do those people committing the ultimate crime not take into consideration the desire of most of the people of Canada? It is because of loss of confidence in the judicial system in our country.
This is a sad thing in this day and age, a time when we in Canada throw out our chests and boast of our educational system, and how knowledgeable we are in understanding one another and of the comprehensive desires of the individual. It is a sad thing in an educated society today that most of the people that commit the ultimate crime have no confidence whatsoever in the judicial system. They say "I know a deliberate murder will not result in my receiving the death penalty; I will serve X number of years and then I will go scot free, so why should I worry?"
It is a strange situation when we reach that degree of misunderstanding within the educated society in which we are living. One would think the direct opposite, Mr. Speaker, was true. One would think that in an educated society those people committing the crime would really believe they would pay the penalty, but the direct converse is true.
I think this is a question which the governing power should answer, the governing power being that body which is putting forward this bill which will continue the so-called experiment. The governing body is putting forward this experiment. There is no question about this issue in the minds of the Canadian people; Gallup poll results suggest that 70 per cent or 80 per cent, whichever figure you want to relate to, are in favour of obtaining the death penalty. Among the urban people it is 80 per cent and among the rural people it is 85 per cent, and I suppose, being a Conservative, I have to say it is 70 per cent, because playing it safe is part of my nature. But certainly between 70 per cent and 85 per cent of the people of Canada believe that we must retain in our society an effective system of capital punishment.
How effective should capital punishment be? The bill before the House of Commons suggests it should be effective in the case of one committing a murder of a police officer or a prison guard. As a representative of a fair percentage of Canadian voters, I suggest that perhaps that
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does not go far enough. I do not necessarily believe that all murderers should have their sentences commuted; neither do I necessarily believe that all murderers should be hanged. But I do believe there should be degrees, that there should be qualifying factors.
Now, with murder with intent I am in no trouble. In cases of murder with a degree of deliberation to involve the death of a certain person there is no question in my mind that the person who commits that murder, or who orders the death of that person, should be committed to death himself. I have no question in my mind about that, no qualms, no loss of sleep. I know many solicitors general, Mr. Speaker, who have found that question a problem.
How much further do we go? Well, we provide in the present Criminal Code that in the case of any murder which can be declared by our courts to be a deliberate murder with intent, the murderer shall be sentenced to death. Then in this particular bill we provide that the murderer of a prison guard or policeman will be sentenced to death. I do not get over concerned by the murder of a policeman. I do not believe that a policeman should deserve all that more protection. He has a gun at his hip and because he has a gun at his hip he sometimes provokes the use of that firearm. He is trained very, very well to use it. Therefore, I think that he is a special case, but is he a special case beyond the rest of society? That is the question that the hon. member's amendment proposes to this House of Commons. Is the prison guard who has a duty to perform and also has a gun available, whether it be at his hip or in prison or wherever, also a special case? Those are a couple of particular situations which the present bill suggests we should provide for. But the hon. member's amendment goes one step further. It goes to the question of a female in trouble, a female subject to rape. There is no gun at her hip. She has no gun available. She is a defenceless person and nobody comes to her defence.
I urge this House of Commons-and I see the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) in his seat-if it sees any desire to create a halfway mark between complete abolition and complete retention, to accept this thoughtful amendment proposed by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) because I think it makes sense. I would say, Mr. Speaker, that it appears obvious to me that the government, in pursuing this lengthy debate at this late stage of the summer recess, has no desire to entertain any amendments. They want to proceed because they believe in commutation to the end.


Mr. Ellwood Madill (Peel-Dufferin-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, the amendment brought to the House at this time by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) affords us the opportunity of ensuring the Canadian people a certain amount of security and safety within the framework of Bill C-2. There are few crimes as serious or as horrendous as the two dealt with by this amendment. I wholeheartedly support both the principle and the facts behind this amendment.
We should look at this proposal as a safety measure in a bill which will experiment with partial abolition of capital punishment for a further period of five years. In this case
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we are acknowledging that the previous five-year trial period was not successful in the eyes of the majority of Canadians. Therefore, another trial ban must distinguish in better fashion between those crimes which are capital crimes and those crimes which are not. We may find that partial ban legislation, which defines murder-rapes and kidnap-murders as capital crimes, will assure Canadians of the security and safety to which they have a right. We may find after five years that we still have not gone far enough. But to refrain from including this amendment in the bill would be a forfeiture by this Parliament of its primary duty, that of serving Canadians.
Rape and kidnapping are two terrible crimes which, according to statistics and news reports, are increasing at an alarming rate. The figures have been quoted previously by other speakers and I do not need to repeat them. They are particularly terrible because they damage the moral and mental fibre of the victims and persons close to the victims. The terror and anguish which is experienced as a result of these crimes is something which no person should have to endure. On these grounds alone, rape and kidnapping should be recognized as capital crimes.
The amendment does not go as far as that. It requires that a murder be committed as well as a rape or a kidnapping. While I would be in favour of stiffer legislation, I am prepared to accept this amendment as it stands because it will in all likelihood act as a deterrent to potential criminals. All too often the threat of murder is an important factor in these crimes. And all too often death is the result of these crimes. If a criminal knows that murder, in conjunction with either rape or kidnapping, is punishable by death, he may have second thoughts about committing the crimes at all.
I do not accept those arguments which claim that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent to murder. Proponents of this theory overlook the impact that the threat of execution has on all criminals who carry a weapon, whether they be professional killers or milk store bandits. Many prisoners spoke freely of using unloaded weapons prior to the temporary ban on capital punishment, but they spoke just as freely of loading those guns after the ban went into effect. These feelings are common to most criminals.
The amendment suggests that members of parliament are aware of the need for deterrents with respect to certain crimes. Murder as a result of kidnapping or rape is certainly a crime for which deterrents are needed.
It is difficult to enter into a discussion of this amendment without straying into a more general discussion of abolition or retention of capital punishment. At the risk of straying, I would like to say that I do hope this amendment signifies a trend toward developing a safer society for Canadians. Is murder as a result of rape or kidnapping any more final than murder as a result of other premeditated crimes? How can we construct a partition between, for example, the acts of a kidnapper and the acts of a thief who murders a storekeeper? Both crimes contain elements of planning and strategy. Both involve the possibility of death. The need for a crackdown in law enforcement is recognized by most Canadians. Our entire society is jeopardized by weak laws, especially as they apply to the maintenance of society.

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To return to this particular amendment, I will support it in the hope that it will act as a deterrent to potential rapists and kidnappers and in the hope that society will be protected. I hope, too, that legislators and administrators will see the need to return to a more practical approach in the enforcement of law and the development of a safe society.


Mr. Trevor Morgan (St. Catharines):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to continue this discussion in the face of the very poor logic that has been exhibited here yesterday, this afternoon and this evening. The basic issue is simply one of law and order, and how we control that within our society. Do you just get rid of people because they disobey the law? Is this what we are coming down to at this stage of the game? Is this how we have advanced in the twentieth century? Is this where we say we are going?
Hon. members have talked about having respect for our fellows. How can we expect the young to have respect for the law when we have no respect for life? I find it difficult to anticipate what some of the people who have participated in this debate would have done in the olden days when they hanged people for stealing a sheep, so cheap was life. They talk about dollars and cents and say, "But look at the money we are going to waste if we keep these people in prison". Have we reduced the value of human life to dollars and cents? I hope not, Sir.
It really bothers me that the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) tried to bring in by the back door what certain members of the House were willing to bring in through the front door. He could have proposed some good amendments to this House, not the ones we are debating tonight. I think he cost his country a great deal by what he did. He lost us five years. That is nothing but a cop-out. Surely, after what we went through in 1968 and after everything that we have been going through on the present occasion we should have enough guts to make up our minds where we are going and what we are doing, and not put off this decision for another five years. But he denied us that opportunity.
Surely it must be apparent that you either impose capital punishment for all crimes or you do not impose it, and introducing exceptions such as the amendment speaks of is foolish. You do not choose and say what is against the law and what offence is within the law, because no offence is within the law. And do you sacrifice a human being because he has disobeyed the law? I think not.
The amendment goes further than the bill itself. I really laugh at the exceptions within the bill as it presently stands. Without being facetious, may I say this to the House that if I, with my poor eyes, take a shot at the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and miss, and hit the Mountie near him, I will hang, but if I am lucky and hit him, I will not. How laughable! How stup; ''You either hang or you do not hang, and I say you r'o no t.
I urge on all members as pointedly a I possibly can that the sacrifice of a human life for tie sake of sacrifice accomplishes nothing. Milton had something to say on this; he said that our law is all too curious to discover sin but not to prove the solution of it. This is what we must be after. This is what our law must be directed toward.

I do not know how many members of this House have ever defended people on a charge of murder. I have and it is not an easy task. You suffer. You stay awake nights. One life hangs in the balance.
I agree with what my colleague who sits in front of me said this afternoon. If we are going to adopt this amendment, go all the way. If death results, hang the culprit. If that is what we think of life, then I say we have come nowhere in the past 100 years of our culture.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


J. Trevor Morgan: The only point I attempt to make is this. If we v/ant the people of this country to respect our laws and respect what we as legislators are doing for this country, we must impress upon them what Albert Schweitzer said in his book, that you must have a reverence for life.
I say quite simply there is no statistical evidence available that capital punishment is a deterrent. By the same token, some say there is no evidence available that capital punishment is not a deterrent. I will buy that. You can go on both sides of the fence, but once you hit that square, then hit square two. Do you hang people because there is no evidence in support of it? Of course not.
If I could be shown by statistical evidence or in some other way that the execution of a person, whether by hanging or some other method-and I do not think there is an easy way of doing away with life-is a deterrent, I would take a second look, but you cannot argue that. There is no evidence one way or another.
We should value what we are as human beings. We have a frontal cortex, some place to think. We are not just animals. You do not get rid of us like animals. We must have a respect and reverence for life.
A member this afternoon said that if there is rape and an abortion results, you are doing away with life. What is the inconsistency there? It is illogical to want to hang a rapist. Do not say he deserves it. I bet that member has never defended a rapist in his life. He has no idea what he goes through, no idea of his mental process and the trouble he goes through in life. He could be a married man with a wife at home.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: What about the victims? Do not they go through a process of agony?


J. Trevor Morgan: Of course they do; but when a person is sick, are you going to hang him?


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: I am speaking after you.


J. Trevor Morgan: Without being personal, if some of these people had followed me around for a couple of years, they would have seen the agony these people actually go through. They are not well. They do not have a men rea. They do not say they are going to rape a little girl. They do not know what they are doing. Their mind is not with it. They need help. Do you hang a person who needs help? Do you hang a person with scarlet fever or a broken leg? Of course not.
I admit there are many faults in our penal system. The Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) knows that. There is
July 24, 1973

room for reform. Perhaps we should have life imprisonment for some of these people. If the Solicitor General could have brought in his amendments, we could be a little more realistic about what we are trying to do in dealing with these people. Perhaps life imprisonment should mean no parole or remission until these people are cured of their ills. Unfortunately, that spoiled it for those of us who want to bring in amendments, and I sincerely regret the amendments were ruled out of order. This is a bill to abolish capital punishment, with two exceptions. I wish the exceptions were not there.
I will not prolong my remarks. This House has a very clear choice in front of it. I do not care what amendments are introduced; I do not like the two exceptions in the bill. If I have to live with them, I can, but I certainly do not want them expanded.
For many years I have talked with police officials and detectives. They do not want these exceptions. They think they are foolish because they feel their lives are no more important than anyone else's. They agree that life imprisonment should mean a little more than seven or 10 years. As police officers and detectives who are fighting crime, they know the value of life. They want to protect life. They do this every day. They do this for the rest of us.
I will close by saying that this House has a clear choice. The amendments add nothing except more exceptions to the rule. You go one way or the other. I ask members of this House to make up their minds which way they are going to go, amendment or no amendment. You either have a respect and a reverence for life or you do not.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on the amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin). It extends the discrimination which the hon. member for St. Catharines (Mr. Morgan) so ably pointed out. In addition to the exception for policemen and prison guards, this amendment also makes an exception for murders or killings that take place while rape is being committed and during or after a kidnapping.
I respect my colleague, the hon. member for St. Catharines, who has proven himself to be a very eloquent man in the short time he has been a member in this House. I agree with him that the issue dealt with in Bill C-2 should be crystal clear: Will we have capital punishment or will we not? Unfortunately, we are confined to the restrictions of this amendment, and this is what I intend to speak about in the few minutes available to me.
While I respect the legal sagacity and experience of the hon. member for St. Catharines before the criminal courts of this land, I do not back off from him because of that. While I have not defended a murderer, I have certainly defended many people who were alleged to have committed rape.
I certainly admire and respect the fortitude it must have taken for the hon. lady to move this amendment. If the government had any doubt about the strong feeling on the basic issue in the bill before us, it can have no doubt left after the strong debate the first amendment has evoked. Look at the deep-felt and sincere emotion of my hon.
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friend from St. Catharines (Mr. Morgan), who asked the House some rhetorical questions which may be hard to answer. When my friend asks, Mr. Speaker, how one can have respect for the law when there is no respect for life, I turn to him and ask in return: How do you have respect for the law when there is no penalty befitting the crime? I say to my friend: How is it that you have respect for the law when there is no sanction in the sentence?
And my friend questions again: How can you believe in capital punishment when you have, or should have, a reverence for life? I am sure my friend did not intend to infer that any member of this House, regardless of the strength of his feelings on the issue of capital punishment, has any diluted reverence for life. I want to assure him that I have as deep a reverence for life as any member of this House, and because I feel this great sense of reverence for life I respect people and believe that the ultimate crime should be met by capital punishment after all the due processes of law have been followed. The case of Tanya Bush is the incident which finally swung my opinion from abolition to retention.
Three times, Mr. Speaker, in the seven year period in which I have been a member the House has been confronted with the fundamental issue here, life, or the philosophy of life, the poetry of idealism or the actuality of reality. None of us want to pull the door that makes someone lose his life, but I say that the House of Commons, regardless of public opinion, cannot get lost in philosophic homilies and beautiful platitudes which we would love to believe. The state takes life every time there is a war. War is a crime against society. I say murder is a crime. I say murder is a war against an individual, and because it is a war against an individual after due process of law the potential ultimate sanction should be there in our rule books.
We all know that armed with the power to exercise executive clemency, or the Royal prerogative of mercy, this government, if it stays in power, is not going to follow the law. They have not followed the law since it has been in the books. Because of reverence for life, because of respect for people, the House of Commons must discharge its responsibility too, in the most reprehensible of situations.
My friend, a learned criminal lawyer, fully knows the facts on Tanya Bush. And 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.
I have four children, Mr. Speaker, and I am not going to get overly emotional about this, but it is because I have a reverence for life and a respect for life, and because I do not want a Tanya Bush situation to repeat itself, that I have no hesitation about voting for this amendment, which at least extends the principle of capital punishment up to a point.
To follow my friend's argument to a conclusion, he says there is no logic to this debate; and he is right, Mr. Speaker. The issue of capital punishment is one which evokes the primary instincts of everybody, and that is

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why I do not think there is an issue since I have been a member of parliament which has sustained the interest of so many people from my constituency and from coast to coast. I agree with many of my friends and certain of the abolitionists up to a point; statistics do not mean anything in this debate. That is why you can walk into a barber shop, into a cocktail party, into a constituency meeting or into a church, and once the business is over the question comes up: What are you going to do about capital punishment? You do not need facts to cloud the issue. It is instinctive, as I say. It goes to the fundamentals of life, and that, basically, is simple.
If you follow what my friend says, that because the crime is so reprehensible in the case of rape that the fellow must be so sick that he ought not to be punished too severely. Where do we find ourselves? Pierre Laporte lost his life two and a half to three years ago. One man has been sentenced, I think, for his murder. No one has been faced with the ultimate penalty. No one has been hanged because of that heinous incident, that blot on our history.
If we were talking about the situation 50 years ago or even 25 years ago, I would most likely have joined those who were urging us to move forward. But the balance has shifted and as the hon. member from Halton-Wentworth (Mr. Kempling) said the other night, provoking an angry response from the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand), there is too little concern for the victims of these heinous crimes. I have listened to speeches, as I say, for the last seven years telling us that capital punishment is not a deterrent. But, Mr. Speaker, those statistics are only developed on the basis of those who have committed crimes. I agree it is most likely you cannot prove the contrary, but who knows what goes through the mind of someone who has a grudge, or wants to exceed all reasonable conduct. If there was a capital penalty, he might just not carry out the offence he contemplates.
Look at our jails. We are talking about prison guards and prison treatment. There is a higher rate of killings in the jails, if my reading of the newspapers is correct, than there is on the streets. This always happened to a degree. There are always grudges in penal institutions and undoubtedly some will go to extremes. But I think such crimes have been increasing, and they can increase with impunity. Because if a man has been sent to jail for life, what has he to lose under the present system? Do you want to put a man in a cage for the rest of his life? If he has committed an unfortunate crime, do you want to put him in a cage and leave him there for his natural life? I cannot get caught up on that argument. I think that with our penal system, our parole system and proper safeguards for those who commit the ultimate crime, there still should be a process of proper review. But I say the heinous crime, the repeated crime, the crime under contract, out to kill, the organized crime, comes into a different category.
It is difficult, Mr. Speaker, to stay calm in this debate. We have had a five-year trial period in theory, but it has not been followed in practice. I could go on and get a little political, but my time is running out and we are debating this issue for the third time in seven years.
Ironically, there are some members interested in family allowances, which is at the opposite pole of the capital punishment debate, I suppose. If you are going to deal

with capital punishment on one side, why should you not be thinking about the children of the world, the family allowance situation and the social security situation?
We have heard about high taxes, election expenses, foreign takeovers, crop insurance, mortgage money to help people get homes, and we have heard about the Olympics in Montreal in 1976. We have all these matters to deal with yet we keep this House going all summer on this matter of capital punishment. I hope the research people will dig up the number of days this and the previous Parliament spent on this issue. I do not think half the people of Canada know we are in session and I do not believe the other half care. However, the priorities of this government are twisted. I shall not belabour that point.
I think the government and some of the leaders of all parties have fatally underestimated the deeply held feelings on this issue. Why should we be in session debating this eternal question at this time? Some people may think we should be having a summer recess because we are not dealing with some issues of higher priority. What priority has capital punishment? We have not followed the law for the past five or six years. Is there any more guarantee that we will follow even the sham law, as it was described by my friend from St. Catharines, in the next five years?
This is supposed to be a priority item through the summer recess. It is not really. To show how unreal it is, people in the outside world are still going to cottages. Some people in the gallery here are still on vacation. Some of these people may have seen a cartoon which appeared on the editorial page of the Daily Colonist of Victoria the other day in which there appeared a drawing of the Solicitor General with a script over his shoulder which I thought was pretty good.


An hon. Member:: It is in Hansard.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: I will read it again. It states:
Warren Allmand is my name,
Abolition is my game.
The death penalty is unfair,
As for murder victims, they're gone-why care?
Through the Commons it will be rammed.
Public opinion? Public opinion be damned.
I say to my friends to the left, who sometimes have blinkers on their eyes, that if they think they are in tune with public opinion they should start to give some of their views on the floor of this House so that we will have that rhapsody of blue or that objectivity of thought that we always have when they enter a debate. I listened to a man this afternoon for whom I have the highest regard, the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Baldwin). He added a most eloquent phrase which I wish to repeat. He said that on this journey of mankind as civilization moves along we will go down many miles, cross over many rivers and climb many mountains and on this journey we do not want to be stopping and erecting scaffolds on the way. I listened to his fervent and sincere views on this issue, and I thought this was very hard to resist.
In conclusion, I wish to say that on the same journey, walking those same miles, crossing those same rivers and
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climbing those same mountains, if we do not stop and build the odd scaffold-which is a pretty picturesque and graphic way to describe it-then we will still be stopping and digging the odd grave for some of the victims who have been victimized, in effect, by a repeat performer.
The amendment of the hon. member for Louis-Hebert would extend even this sham bill, as it has been described, to cover this type of repeat act. It would also cover situations respecting the agonies of rape or the situation of the people who were on that Boeing 747 for three days without knowing whether or not they would be blown up. If they had been blown up, or if murder had occurred during a rape, surely the person who committed those crimes should not necessarily hang but at least be exposed to the ultimate sanction.


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, for many years I have held the view that the ultimate psychological reason for which some people support capital punishment is a firmly established attitude of vengeance that remains once every argument in support of capital punishment is shot to the ground. Nothing could more vividly demonstrate that to me, or to anyone else who reads these debates, than the bundle of illogical argument we have just heard, following perhaps one of the most moving speeches on this subject by a man who obviously feels for mankind, the hon. member for St. Catharines (Mr. Morgan).
The hon. member from Annapolis Valley who spoke after him got up and used every illogical argument that has been used in this debate by a number of members on both sides of the House. I should like to challenge the hon. member who preceded me to consider my arguments as I take his points one by one, and see if he can refute them. I challenge him to point out the error of my reasoning in respect of any of his points. If he can do so I will be prepared to consider his argument. If he cannot, then I suggest the reason he supports capital punishment-and I hesitate to say this but I do so because I feel seriously about this matter and any human being is entitled to an emotional response on the question of violence-is pure vengeance.
I should like to trot out the hon. member's arguments and deal with them one by one. First of all, in reply to the moving address of the hon. member for St. Catharines he said, "What about respect for law?" He said-and this was his first argument-that if we do not have capital punishment there will be no respect for the law. He received a number of cheers from the ranks of his own party.
I should like to ask the hon. member what evidence he has from any authority in this or any other country in the world to show how an act of violence by the state of anyone else brings respect for the law? The modern teachings of psychologists, either behavioural or Freudian, completely shatter that view. It has been shown that violence does nothing but create more violence. I agree that in time of war military commanders use violence in their training of troops to provoke the attitude of violence. I say to the hon. member that if he wants to rid us of violence the best way to do it is not to perpetuate capital crime because this will bring only more response in the form of violence and indeed breed more violence in our society.
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Do not take my opinion for it; look at the evidence and all the studies that have been carried out at home and abroad. If the hon. member can bring out any evidence pointing in the other direction instead of acting on his passion, I will consider his arguments.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Can you get evidence?


John Edward Broadbent: I just said I would be glad to give the hon. member a list of books the length of my arm which will provide the evidence.
The second point he made is that we all admit the legitimacy of using violence in wartime. He says that all members of the House would agree that in wartime the taking of another person's life is permitted. I say to him that there are some pacifists who would not go that far. But I also say to him-and I include myself in this-that most of us would say that violence is justifiable in wartime.
I ask the hon. member, just what does that mean? It means the following. The only time violence is justified in war is when one collective body of human beings, one state, is defending its very existence and its very life against another state or against another collection of human beings. In that sense only am I prepared to admit the right of people to take anyone else's life, and we apply that exactly in society in peacetime. We say that if a man, woman or child is being murdered, if an act of murder is being attempted on another human being, certainly that human being has the right to defend himself and certainly, if necessary, he is justified in killing the person who was trying to kill him. But I say to the hon. member that that example by no means supports his argument, because after an act of murder has been committed it is not the victim who defends himself then; unfortunately the victim is dead. The act of violence then committed is a cold, calculated and deliberate act of murder by the state. That is what is committed after an unfortunate victim has died.
I say therefore that the hon. member's analogy between justifying violence in wartime, when one society defends itself against another, and the right of a state after a murdered victim is lying dead to defend that victim who is no longer with us, is not valid.


Almonte Douglas Alkenbrack: They do not believe that in
Oshawa-Whitby.


John Edward Broadbent: I will come to that point in a minute.
The third argument which the hon. member used-and it is perhaps the most insidious of the lot in terms of its logic-is that now we have reached the state in our society where we are more concerned with the murderer than with the victim. This is absurd. Does the hon. member think that anyone in the House is not concerned with a victim of a murder or with victims of society? I say that his own leader and many members of his party, indeed all members of the House of Commons, are concerned with potential victims of crime, and it is absolutely ridiculous to say that any of us who oppose capital crime are more concerned with the wellbeing of the murderer than with the unfortunate murdered victim.

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It is our view that both are human beings and have the right to life. It is a very unfortunate and tragic circumstance when one man or woman has murdered another, but that tragic or unfortunate circumstance does not justify our murdering the man who has committed the act. If I may use a Christian analogy, when Christ was on the cross, when he was being murdered by others, did he turn to those who were murdering him and say that they must be murdered as well? Did he say that of his executioners? Of course he did not. The hon. member knows as well as I that Christ on the cross said just the opposite. So to be concerned with the murderer and to be concerned with the victim or the potential victim is not to say that one is more important than the other, as was clearly implied in the hon. member's fallacious argument.
Let me come to the fourth point which was called out by one hon. member in the Conservative party. He asked me what the people in Oshawa-Whitby believe. I say to him frankly that the vast majority of my constituents, I believe, favour capital punishment right now.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: Look at the people opposite. I say to them that the vast majority of Germans in the 1930's favoured Adolf Hitler. Did that make Adolf Hitler right? They smile now. I say to the same hon. members that the majority in that case and in many countries around the world did indeed favour the wrong principles at times, and I do not hesitate to say that. I was elected, as were all members of the House, not simply to respond to the prejudices of our community. That is not my work here. We are elected to look at the evidence in every case, whether it is capital punishment, taxation, or any other matter. We are elected to look at the evidence, to consider the wellbeing of mankind, including our constituents, and to make an honest decision.
If after four or five years the people in my constituency, or indeed any constituency in the country, think we have done a bad job, they have the right and duty to throw us out of office. But if they consider perhaps that some of us in the House, and indeed I hope most of us, try to act in good conscience on the basis of evidence, I have enough faith in the democratic process to believe that there will be members in every political party, including the Social Credit party, who will take what I regard to be the correct stand; and the people in their constituencies, whether or not the majority at this time happens to agree, will respect the honesty and integrity of that decision. I think it is a bastardization, if I can use that term, of the theory of democracy as we know it and have practised it in the British Commonwealth and elsewhere for over 100 years to say that all a responsible politician does is do a Gallup poll in his riding and respond to that. That would not make a good member of parliament, and I do not hesitate to say that.
I have gone through the four arguments presented by the hon. member who preceded me and, as I said, I feel strongly about this because I believe that human life is very important and that neither the state nor any individual has the right to take it. I conclude by saying that if the hon. member accepts my comments regarding his arguments, the only thing he has left is the emotional
|Mr. Broadbent.]
feeling of vengeance. Then he has to say regarding capital punishment; I believe it is right to take the life of another human being just because I feel vindictive. Vindictiveness is no foundation for morality.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I could just, since the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby (Mr. Broadbent) directed-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: It is generally not within the accepted practice that there be a rebuttal by an hon. member after another hon. member has dealt with a point. If the hon. member has a question to ask, this of course would be permitted.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to let the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby get away with such a serious phantom-like argument-


Some hon. Members:: Order.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: -by first challenging me and then not letting me have a chance to reply.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. The hon. member knew when the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby made, as he said, the challenge that there was no right of reply at this particular stage. There will be other opportunities perhaps during the debate when he will have the opportunity to reply.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: On a point of privilege, I was interested in the interjection of the Solicitor General-


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Chair does not know what statement was made. It did not come to the attention of the Chair, in any event.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: I just wanted to point out, on a question of privilege, since the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby was being so brave in laying down a challenge, that I, as he well knew, would be precluded by the rules from responding.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. I ask the hon. member to take his seat. I know that this is the type of debate in which emotions can become very highly disturbed, but I suggest to the hon. member that he will have other occasions during the debate when he can make his reply to the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby, if at that time it seems a reply is warranted.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: On a question of privilege-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: There is no-


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: You have not heard my point of privilege.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: There is no question of privilege in this particular debate, and I recognize the hon. member for Brandon-Souris.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: I stand on a point of privilege, and I do not care who you recognize.
July 24, 1973


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. I think on reflection the hon. member for Annapolis Valley will agree with me. Now that he has taken his seat I am grateful to the hon. member for co-operating with the Chair. This is a difficult debate, and I think that we would be better served if I could recognize a member other than the hon. member for Annapolis Valley, who will have his opportunity on another occasion on report stage, and certainly on another occasion on third reading, to answer the debating points that have been raised.
I underline that they are debating points. The hon. member could answer back, and then the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby could answer again, and so the story would go. I suggest that the hon. member permit me to recognize the hon. member for Brandon-Souris.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Normally I would, Mr. Speaker.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: On a point of order-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: I stood here on a point of order, and I have been interrupted from the time I stood and I have not had a chance to express my point of order. Then I had to go to a point of privilege, because, Mr. Speaker, you called me off and wanted the debate to continue. I can understand the position of the Chair.
Your Honour says that I will have a chance to reply, on August 15 or August 30, whenever this debate may conclude. I point out that I was rudely interrupted by the Solicitor General, and for co-operation in this debate he can forget about me. I was going to ask whether this House would give me a chance for 30 seconds to state, in one sentence, my response to the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby. I am not going to transgress any further, but I just could not let the opportunity pass, since the speech of the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby was entirely a so-called rebuttal of mine, knowing full well I could not get in a reply. I did not get that consent. The Solicitor General would not give that consent, and that is fine with me tonight.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I thank the hon. member for his co-operation. That is a point of order indeed, and I will put the question to the House. Does the House give unanimous consent that the hon. member be allowed 30 seconds to answer the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby?


Some hon. Members:: Yes.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I do not hear unanimous consent. The hon. member for Brandon-Souris.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: Mr. Speaker, I think it was the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Baldwin) who, in the final moments of the debate last night on this subject, referred to the exercise in which we are engaged as mid-summer madness. I would like to reiterate that sentiment as I begin my remarks tonight, because it is
Capital Punishment
obvious from the emotional atmosphere in which the discussion is being carried on that nothing is going to be resolved with respect to the fundamental subject of capital punishment.
It was anticipated that the government, in particular the government House leader and the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand), as a result of the deliberations on the bill in the standing committee, would have stayed further discussion on the matter at this juncture in our sessional career. But in their wisdom, or I would suggest lack of wisdom, they are forcing members of the House to debate the subject.
There is no consensus on this question. We are operating on the basis of a free vote. If the government is going to press on regardless, then not only will we fail to reach a definitive decision on this matter but other topics that we should be debating will be completely neglected and ignored.


Mitchell William Sharp: Then why don't we have a vote?


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: This demonstrates that the government is completely confused in its priorities-


Mitchell William Sharp: It shows that the hon. member is confused.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: -and completely irresponsible in selecting its priorities. If the Solicitor General were really sincere in trying to come to grips with the problems of law and order that are exercising the people of Canada-and this has been amply demonstrated by everybody who has taken part in the debate-he would be dealing with other matters. The people of Canada are concerned at the direction that the government is taking us through its permissive attitude to the whole subject of law and order.
If the Solicitor General, who made another emotional appeal last night, were concerned about this subject he would give priority to the question of penal reform, because we are not going to resolve the question of capital punishment until the good citizens of Canada once more have confidence in our penal system. In this regard I would like to re-echo the sentiments expressed in the Globe and Mail on July 19 in an editorial headed, "Anarchy in the Prisons." It reads in part:
Capital punishment exists in Canada. It exists in our federal prison system at the discretion of Solicitor General Warren Allmand, Commissioner of Penitentiaries Paul Faguy and the guards and administrators of the Canadian Penitentiary service. Convict Terrance Landry, 25, is the latest victim of the death penalty. Stabbed to death in his Collin's Bay cell. This week, in Kingston's Frontenac County court house, the charges against his accused executioners were dismissed after the Crown witnesses-all Collin's Bay convicts-found some reason for not testifying. One announced he was mentally incompetent. Another said he feared reprisals. A third said he could not identify the accused. Case closed, said the judge. Nothing said or suggested about the witnesses being charged with obstruction of justice. Just... case closed.
Our prisons are becoming a no-man's land beyond the rule of law and civilized men.
I suggest that this is the issue that requires the priority consideration of the government if we are going to come to grips with the emotion-laden subject that the government is force feeding Parliament at this particular moment. The very fact that government supporters are introducing amendments indicates there is no more consensus on that

July 24, 1973
Capital Punishment
side of the House than there is on the opposition side of the House.
I want to say that I support the amendment that has been put forward by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin). I support it on the basis of the comments I made on second reading, at which time I said that at this juncture in our political and judicial procedures Parliament is not ready to go beyond the solution of this very difficult problem that was arrived at by the Parliament of Canada back around 1960, when the decision was made to divide the treatment of homicide into the two categories of capital and non-capital murder.
The hori. member for Louis-Hebert (Mrs. Morin) pointed out last evening that in her amendment murder combined with rape and kidnapping is a form of premeditated murder, because obviously murder follows the other act. That is the sort of category of homicide that is taken care of by the division into capital and non-capital murder which was the solution of this Parliament just over a decade ago.
When this comes to a vote, I hope that hon. members will support the hon. member because, as one of the few women members of this Parliament, she has that special sensitivity and humanity which takes in both sides of the question and not only considers the fate of the murderer but also the fate of the murder victim and the loved ones and family of the murder victim.
I should like to point out to those who are emotionally arguing this case from the standpoint of blatant humanism that this flies in the face of Judaeo-Christian traditions. I have never debated this question from the religious standpoint because correspondence from both sides of the question, within the same denomination reveals divided opinion. Humanism ignores completely the Christian understanding of man's nature and his destiny.
A moment ago the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby (Mr. Broadbent) was quoting the Prince of Peace and the Son of God and the Son of man. When He Himself was the victim of capital punishment in the most heinous form, He forgave His tormentors. But I would remind the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby (Mr. Broadbent) that He also said that the heart of man is desperately wicked. To ignore that fact of the Christian interpretation of man's nature and destiny is to be accused of naivety, if not complete unawareness of the real nature of the evil that lurks in the deepest recesses of the human mind.
This view is also supported by the Freudian psychologists-if you want to get into that area of human behaviour-who describe the id as the murky recesses of the subconscious which bubble to the surface and cause human beings to perpetrate the most heinous crimes. Society, from the beginning of time to the present moment, has through the judicial process endeavoured to cope with the evil that lurks in the human heart by the due process of law.
I would also remind hon. members that the whole political process involves more than this legislature. Are we going to ignore and completely downgrade the responsibility of the judiciary in this matter in dealing with the problems of law and order, in dealing with crime and
[Mr. Dinsdale.J
punishment? That is what humanists would argue in their unadulterated, almost blandly innocent, humanistic approach to the great issues of life. I would say that the legislation under which we are operating now, which automatically came into effect after the five-year experimental period, gives the judiciary its responsibility in this matter and makes it possible for our judges, who after all are experienced and learned in the law, to decide in which category homicide will be judged, whether it is capital or non-capital, and then to judge the culprit in the light of our system of jurisprudence.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: In his appeal to the House last night the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) made an impassioned plea for outright abolition. According to Hansard, he was interrupted in the course of his remarks and asked how we were dealing with problems of law and order which are reflected in the breakdown of some of our basic institutions at the present time. He replied that this is a very difficult and complex matter.
Everyone, I am sure, is sufficiently humane to wish that we lived in a society where we could do away with capital punishment. This is the objective toward which the whole human family, we would anticipate, has been marching since the dawn of creation. This is the objective which is envisaged by even the Old Testament prophets when they say there will come a day when the lion will lie down with the lamb and we will beat our swords into ploughshares, that there will be no more war and every man will live under his own vine or fig tree, and so on and so forth. But that day is not yet, and that day is not even going to come if we have the socialist Utopia that some hon. members in this chamber look forward to.
As a matter of fact, whenever we have looked forward, on the basis of ideological doctrine, to some sort of politically dominated system which describes itself as communism or socialism, the due process of law has been ignored.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: The due processes of the judiciary suffered not only in capital punishment, but in mass extermination and all the other phenomena we have witnessed in the twentieth century. It is the dreamers, those philosopher kings, who in the last part of the last century said, "Every day and in every way we are getting better and better". They thought that as we moved into the twentieth century we had at last reached the age when mankind was able to resolve all the problems of evil. But they have been shaken to the core, I am sure, during the twentieth century by the fact that it has been the century of two worldwide conflicts, the century of genocide, mass extermination. Yet the humanists blandly stand up in this House and suggest that the time has come when we do away with the due process of law-


An hon. Member:: That is not true.


An hon. Member:: Who said that?


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: -and we condemn the victim.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
July 24, 1973


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: We are so confused in our moral outlook, Mr. Speaker-


An hon. Member:: Keep it up, you are getting to them.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: We are so confused in our moral convictions that, on the one hand, certain members are suggesting that we save the life of the murderer and advocate infanticide through abortion on demand.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
[ English]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 40 deemed to have been moved.

Philip Bernard Rynard: Mr. Speaker, on July 4 I asked the Minister of Transport (Mr. Marchand) if he was aware of the mounting number of tragic summer accidents which result in drownings in the Great Lakes, the Trent canal and other waters of Canada. If so, was he prepared to take the necessary steps to halt this appalling loss of life? The minister replied by saying that we are doing all we can.
One of the reasons, perhaps the most important reason, for my bringing this up is that quite recently a new houseboat, supposedly built by experts, floundered. It sank within a few feet of the dock with the loss of two lives. This boat was supposedly built by expert builders. Why did it go down? This is merely one example of the sort of thing I mean, and I do not intend putting cases on the record that all of us know about.
Over and over again we see tragedies that shock and disturb the whole community. Last season a boat set out from the shore of one of the Great Lakes. There were nine people in it. It was overloaded, the gunwales being almost down to the water line. It sank about half a mile out with the loss of all but two.
I ask, is it not about time we did something about this problem? The responsibilities of the federal government are serious enough. It should take a close look at this area. Are wharf users supervised? Are they told to use certain areas? Are inspectors appointed in all congested boating areas? What inspections are made of boats before they go in the water? Is instruction given, and is education available in this area?
Of all forms of accidental death, drowning ranks third, surpassed only by motor vehicle accidents and falls. As you know, Mr. Speaker, motor vehicle accidents on highways maim over 500,000 people a year on the roads of North America. Those accidents kill over 5,000 people in Canada. Drowning comes next but one in importance as a
Adjournmen t Deba te
cause of death. It is interesting to note that 88 per cent of drowning accidents involve males, that of total male drownings, 44 per cent involve males under 20 years of age, and a further 33 per cent involve males who are between 20 and 40 years old. Among young people of school age, between 4 and 24 years of age, accidents claim far more deaths than all kinds of diseases combined. In this age group motor vehicle accidents rank as the leading cause of death, and drownings rank next as the cause of death.
Taking the normal life expectancy of these young drowning victims as 70 years, their deaths represent a combined loss of nearly 60,000 man years. The male-female sex ratio of drowning victims in these ages was less than seven to one-that is, seven males drowning to one female-compared with a ratio of over 13 to one for ages over 24. Canada's record of drownings at 6.5 per 100,000 of population is substantially higher than that of either the United States or Great Britain. Twice the number of people per capita drown in this country as compared with England, and our drowning ratio is 50 per cent greater than that of the United States. While drownings occur every month of the year in Canada, they appear to be most heavily concentrated in the couple of months of summer recreational activity and annual vacations, when more people go on our waterways. On the other hand, in England and in much of the United States, people can swim 12 months of the year.
Three quarters of the fatalities were due to unexpected submersion. That means that the people involved were thrown into the water. This may have happened because of boating mishaps and falls. Only one fifth of drownings occurred as a result of voluntary submersion involving swimming, wading and diving. That shows that where lifeguards supervise the accident rate has been much improved. Small boat accidents account for 31 per cent of all victims.
The greatest factor in drownings involved falls into rivers. This hazard caused 25 per cent of the drownings. Accidents while wading, diving, etc. were responsible for 20 per cent of all drownings, and 47 per cent of drownings involve the age group between 15 and 19. In 90 per cent of the cases a male was involved, females comprising only 10 per cent, and two thirds of those girls were under 15 years of age. Falls into rivers and lakes constituted one of the greatest hazards for the pre-school age group in which girls accounted for about one fifth of drownings. Swimming accidents in the 5 to 14 year age group accounted for nearly a third of drownings. Falls into lakes and rivers claimed the next largest group of victims, and ice accidents were a particular hazard for this group.
In the age group beyond 50 years, males predominated by more than ten to one in involvement in accidents; accidents in small boats were almost as frequent and accounted for a third of drowning fatalities in this age group.
You will see by these statistics, Mr. Speaker, that younger people make up the bulk of all those involved in accidents in the water. Many are in their most productive years or are just approaching those years. It is for this reason, regardless of who is responsible, that I want to see action taken. Certainly the federal government is liable on

July 24, 1973
Adjournment Debate
the international and federal-provincial waterways and on its own canal system. We need more accurate reports of all water accidents, a study on how to cut this loss and the funds with which to do it.
I hope the minister will have something definite on this. He said he was working on it. I hope he has something to tell us. The minister will say there are certain written laws governing boating and equipment, but are inspections made regularly? The law may be there, but is it being respected?


Mr. Charles Turner (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, the Ministry of Transport regulates pleasure craft by means of the small vessel regulations which set forth the mandatory requirements for life saving and fire fighting equipment. They also make mandatory the affixing of a Ministry of Transport load and horsepower capacity plate which sets out recommended maximums for normal boat operation on any outboard motor not exceeding 16 feet in length powered by a motor of 10 h.p. or more. Provision is made in the regulations for enforcement by peace officers.
The boating restriction regulations provide a means whereby a local government or authority may initiate action through a provincial government to have a formal request from a provincial authority made to the federal government to have a restriction imposed on a given body or area of water. The purpose of the regulations is to prohibit or restrict some or all types of boating activity on the waters specified. It has the very great advantage of having all local differences of opinion sorted out before the province concerned makes formal application to the federal government to have a restriction or prohibition imposed.
The Ministry of Transport approves small vessel lifejackets on the basis of the requirements set forth by the lifejacket committee of the Canadian government specifications board. One of the requirements of this ministry is that every ministry-approved small vessel lifejacket sold be accompanied by the ministry publication "Your Lifejacket," which sets out advice in both official languages on the care and usage of lifejackets.
In an effort to inform the boating public and to alert them to the necessity for safe boating procedures, the ministry publishes and circulates free of charge the pamphlet "Boating Safety Guide". This is published in both official languages and circulation this year has passed the
500,000	mark.
In addition to the foregoing, there are penalties provided in section 240 of the Criminal Code of Canada for operating a boat in a hazardous manner, operating a boat under the influence of alcohol or drugs, towing a water skier during the hours of darkness or without having an observer in the boat.
The ministry is in the process of developing standards for the safe construction of pleasure craft. This is being done in consultation with industry with a view to making such construction standards mandatory. An ongoing program of liaison, public speaking and information dissemination is carried out by the coast guard rescue officer at Trenton with a view to encouraging the safe operation of pleasure and commercial craft. A rescue co-ordination
| Mr. Rynard.]
centre is maintained at Trenton, Ontario, which has as one of its tasks the co-ordination of marine search and rescue operations. This centre is manned jointly by Canadian Armed Forces and Canadian coastguard personnel on a 24 hour per day, seven day week, basis.
The Canadian coastguard operates three primary search and rescue cutters, the Spray, Spume and Spindrift, on the Great Lakes. In addition, the coastguard operates numerous other vessels that are also available to respond quickly to search and rescue missions. The possibility of reactivating an "R" class search and rescue cutter for service on the lakes is being investigated at this time.
An equipment evaluation program is taking place this summer with a view to expanding the trial program of inshore rescue boats introduced with great success last year on the Pacific coast.


REGIONAL ECONOMIC EXPANSION-NORTHERN ONTARIO-JOINT ACTION WITH PROVINCE TO FORMULATE CO-ORDINATED DEVELOPMENT PLAN
Reginald Cyril Symes: Mr. Speaker, on June 4 last I asked the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion (Mr. Jamieson) what action for co-ordinated federal-provincial planning was being taken to promote the economic development of northern Ontario, especially the development of secondary industry. I also asked the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) this question:
Bearing in mind that a DREE report said . . . that thousands of jobs would be lost in northern Ontario due to redundancy in the next few years, what immediate steps will be taken to prevent such an economic upheaval in our area?
The parliamentary secretary said studies were under way, and blamed the province of Ontario for lack of development in the north. The Prime Minister gave a vague reply to the effect that developments were taking place.
Today marks the opening of the conference between the western premiers and the federal government on the subject of the economic alienation of the west. I am gratified to see that the Prime Minister has finally discovered the west and admitted that the development of the west has been neglected by the federal government. Indeed, as the Prime Minister said, the role of the west as primarily a supplier of raw material is over. I hope the Prime Minister will also discover northern Ontario, for we have been for decades suppliers of raw materials with the result that people in our part of the province have been unable to find jobs in secondary industry. I hope the Prime Minister can make the same promise to us in the north and assure us that we will no longer be merely suppliers of raw materials for the heartland of Ontario.
We have been hewers of wood and drawers of water for too long. We have exported our pulp, our iron ore, our minerals, and in doing so we have exported jobs. Between 1966 and 1971 the population of northern Ontario showed a net gain of only 886 people. Between 1965 and 1969 only 14 new manufacturing plants were established in the whole of northern Ontario, employing 527 people. Contrast this with what has happened in the southern part of the prov-
July 24, 1973

ince. Over half of all the new manufacturing capacity has gone there, and in a three year period the population increased by almost half a million people.
It seems to me the federal government has failed in its DREE program to take into account the relationship between the south and the north of this province. I find its working paper, its report, to be a very shallow one, much of it already outdated, particularly with reference to the Abitibi Pulp and Paper plant in Sault Ste. Marie. No reference is made to the fundamental problem in northern Ontario, the failure of federal and provincial governments in the past to do more than provide incentives for northern development. This is the old carrot and stick approach carried out by the Department of Regional Economic Expansion, the Northern Ontario Development Corporation and other agencies, both federal and provincial. We must move beyond this idea of merely giving incentives to the north and adopt a co-ordinated plan of development. We need incentives in the north, but there should also be disincentives to discourage industry locating in the golden horseshoe. In the absence of such disincentives the advantages of locating in the south will always outweigh the attractions of the north, no matter how many incentive programs apply in northern Ontario.
There is need for a comprehensive examination of transportation costs. I might mention that Simpsons-Sears and Eaton's put out two catalogues, one for the south and one for the north. We have to pay between $5 and $20 more than is paid in the south for identical products because of the extra cost of freight. There is need for a complete reassessment of the schedule of rates which discriminate against northern Ontario. A Crown development corporation should be established to co-ordinate plans and promote industry through the expenditure of government funds in the north similar to the arrangement which has been set up in the Maritimes.
Attention should also be paid to the growth centre concept so that communities may have a chance to develop around cities in the north which have some potential for industrial expansion. A Liberal federal government has in fact failed to promote secondary industry in northern Ontario in the past, and so has a Conservative provincial government. These two governments are acting together and tell us they will come up with a great new plan. I hope both governments will listen to the people of the north such as representatives of the municipalities, industrial commissioners, interested businessmen and labour union people who have some very sound ideas about our problems and what is wrong. We have ideas for the north. We will not be content any longer with mere vague plans and promises. We want action now. I should like a response from the parliamentary secretary concerning what specific action will take place now in northern Ontario.
[ Translation]


Mr. Marcel Prud'homme (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie (Mr. Symes) did, in fact, ask a question some time ago, to which I replied, and I might very briefly elaborate on the measures which have been taken since then.
As the hon. member is aware, the minister appeared before the parliamentary committee on several occasions.
Adjournment Debate
He announced that he was undertaking a series of consultations with the provincial governments. This was done, and they have now been completed. The various levels of government are in the process of developing the solutions which may be applied to this very serious problem raised by the hon. member.
The report of the various provincial committees was tabled in the House last June; the details on the reorganization of the department were announced to the committee members, and in particular to the employees of the department, on July 5, and the minister has, moreover, been prepared to table the internal management documents since last July 5.
The minister also announced, not only that a regional office will be set up in each of the major centres, such as the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario and the western provinces, but also that special measures concerning a very special office will be considered, and possibly approved for northern Ontario.
The hon. member pointed out, in his remarks, that the time has now come to act, but in the same breath he said that we need-

If I am quoting the hon. member correctly, I believe he said we need a comprehensive study of transportation rates. The hon. member said we need action now. The hon. member at the same time stated that we need a whole re-assessment; that we need a Crown corporation to study the situation, and at the same time he said we need action now. Then he said we need a new centre concept, and he wants action now.
Needless to say, if we really want to know where we are going we must definitely be sure of what action will be taken. This demands much co-ordination between the provincial government and the federal government. I am not trying to pass the buck, but I must say that much of the responsibility for this is in the hands of the provincial government. In this connection, however, I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. member that not only has the time come for action, but that the time has come to see whether the natural resources of Canada will be sent out of Canada in their raw state or as finished products. This is a major problem not only for northern Ontario but also in respect to natural resources in the province of Quebec and in the western provinces. So I think some action will be taken having in mind the very good words of the hon. member.


TRANSPORT-INCREASE IN FREIGHT RATES IN ATLANTIC PROVINCES-POSSIBLE GOVERNMENT ACTION TO OFFSET SERIOUS EFFECTS
Mr. David MacDonald (Egmont):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to raise again the matter of the transportation policy of the federal government in eastern Canada, a subject which has been raised constantly in the chamber over the years and more specifically during the month of June by the hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie) and myself. On June 18, both the hon. member for Hillsborough and I inquired of the minister whether or not he would shortly take action to alleviate the very serious situation with respect to freight rates in the Atlantic

July 24, 1973
Adjournment Debate
provinces. This is a matter with which the minister is not unfamiliar inasmuch as a major delegation of Atlantic premiers plus interested parties approached the minister earlier this year, and at that time the Minister of Transport (Mr. Marchand) gave extensive assurances to them as well as to representatives of major organizations that action would very shortly be taken.
Unfortunately, in recent weeks the Minister of Transport has apparently preferred to shift the burden of responsibility for federal transportation policy to the Atlantic premiers, and to my mind this has been a rather poor effort on his part.
It is somewhat of a coincidence that tonight I have the opportunity again to raise this matter, because just yesterday an announcement was made with respect to transportation in the Atlantic provinces and in Quebec. The announcement-I will not read all of it but only the first few lines which set out the basic aspect-reads in part:
The government of Canada and governments of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Quebec have reached agreement in principle that to assist regional industry the existing westbound Maritime Freight Rates Act and Atlantic Region Freight Assistance Act 30 per cent truck and rail subsidies will be augmented for selected commodities. This increase will be subject to existing regulations of the Maritime Freight Rates Act and Atlantic Region Freight Assistance Act, and in addition the following conditions are intended . . .
I plan to speak about those conditions for a moment, but I want to comment, first of all, on the basic announcement. The announcement really leaves out more than it includes. The basic question of the extent of the increase above 30 per cent which has operated since 1969 is not defined, and I think this is an incredible omission after this length of time.
In the late 1960s we adopted a new transportation policy, and I think since September of 1969 there have been successive increases which have detrimentally affected the economy of the Atlantic provinces. These increases run to something like eight or nine in number, and the impact extends in a major way to almost 68 per cent in increases in the past four years. Now we are given this announcement by the minister with very little indication of what it will mean to producers in the Atlantic provinces. There is no indication what commodities would benefit or to what degree. There is no indication how much of a rate Increase we can expect. We are simply told that there will be an augmentation of the present one.
Will it significantly close the very large gap that has opened in freight rate increases in the last four years? We are not told. Will it be a token gesture to placate some of the more vociferous elements of the economic community of the Atlantic provinces? We are not told. When will it start? Again there is no indication. Most important of all, who will make the basic decision in terms of the variety of rates and the commodities which will be covered? In terms of the qualifications that are attached to this announcement, we are shown again that there is no willingness to face in a serious way the considerable transportation difficulties that exist in the Atlantic provinces. This is a very selective kind of announcement in that it will only cover one way traffic; that is, outbound western traffic from the Atlantic provinces. It in no way will deal with the very serious problems for manufacturers and processors in the

Atlantic provinces who often must import at very high charge, because of transportation costs, materials and items used in the manufacture of finished products either for distribution and sale in the Atlantic provinces or beyond.
This announcement will not deal with our export situation. This is an incredible admission when you realize that the Atlantic provinces are on the doorstep of major export markets both in Europe as well as in the eastern seaboard region of the United States.
There is no clear-cut assistance, as I said previously, for manufacturing materials. Also there is no grappling with the fundamental problem of what to do with intraregional transportation. This, in addition, will be complicated by the fact that the administration that is likely to be loaded on to the carriers, and to some degree on the shippers, may add to costs. I do not think that matter has been examined in view of the very brief announcement by the minister.
I hope that the parliamentary secretary, in replying this evening, can give us some indication that there will be a much more positive, comprehensive and detailed program announced very shortly. Otherwise the alienation that has been greatly discussed in western Canada will become even more apparent in Atlantic Canada.


Charles Robert Turner: Mr. Speaker, concerning the rate increases, the railways have given notice that they will increase agreed charges for all contracts by 6 per cent. One of the conditions under the law is that these contracts may be terminated by either side on three months written notice. Agreed charges are low contract rates voluntarily agreed to by shippers and railways, in return for which the shippers agree to ship a stated percentage of their traffic by rail.
Shippers who are parties to agreed charges affected by the railways' announcement have the option of agreeing to the higher rates that will be effective September 1, or afterwards, or of withdrawing from the agreed charges, in which case they could ship by rail at open tariff rates, or by another mode such as truck, or ship their goods by their own trucks. But there is no general increase in freight rates anticipated in the Maritimes.
The Minister of Transport (Mr. Marchand) and the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion (Mr. Jamieson) met on April 9 with the premiers of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island to discuss transportation matters affecting the Atlantic provinces. It was agreed at that meeting that steps should be initiated to increase westbound Atlantic region freight subsidies above the current 30 per cent level on a selective basis, aimed particularly at helping the manufacturing and agricultural industries in that region. It was also jointly agreed that the federal-provincial committee on Atlantic region transportation would begin working out such a program.
While an officer of MOT is chairing the committee, the definition of commodities to qualify for the selective subsidies was made the responsibility of the provincial members of the committee. They felt that they could not draw up this list from their own resources but should consult with local industry.

On June 21 the Minister of Transport announced that the federal-provincial committee was making good progress toward finalizing recommendations for the selective increases. He said that the increases were intended to aid Atlantic region shippers east of Quebec City in reaching the central Canadian market. He said that shippers in the Atlantic region would be notified shortly by public adver-
Adjournment Debate
tisement of the general basis of eligibility under the selectivity criteria being developed, and that they would be invited to submit to their respective provincial governments lists of commodities they wish included in the expanded subsidy program. This process will likely take some time, and at least one or two more committee meetings, before matters are finalized.
Motion agreed to and the House adjourned at 10.31 p.m.

Wednesday, July 25, 1973