1974-11-08

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


[Stage Direction]
Second report of Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs, in both official languages.-Mr. Trudel.
[Editor's Note: For text of above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]

Hon. Daniel J. MacDonald (Minister of Veterans Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind hon. members of this House that next Monday is Remembrance Day, the fifty-sixth anniversary of the day when, at 11 a.m., the guns fell silent along the Western Front. Sadly, this was not the "war to end wars" that we were told it would be. Since that day many more Canadians made the supreme sacrifice in the Second World War and in Korea. In these three conflicts, nearly 115,000 Canadians gave their lives to preserve and protect the freedoms and institutions we hold dear, not the least of them being this House itself. When I look around this chamber and see empty chairs, I am often reminded of the empty chairs in Canadian homes to which so many fathers, husbands, sons and even daughters did not return.
In this connection, I want to inform hon. members that on Wednesday of this week a book was published which will serve as a fitting tribute to those who never came home. Its title is "Silent Witnesses"; in the French language version, "Temoins Silencieux". It tells the story, in words and pictures, of the cemeteries and memorials to Canadian war dead overseas. It is hoped that the book-a joint of my department and the National Museum of Canada on behalf of the Canadian War Museum-will be a source of information and comfort to the relatives and comrades of the dead, and of satisfaction to all Canadians.
Our memorials to the fallen, both at home and abroad, pay tribute to those whose names they commemorate. We are equally proud of, and grateful to, those who returned bearing the scars and wounds of battle. These we also remember on November 11. For these and many others whose lives were tragically altered by war, this nation
observes a daily act of remembrance and an acknowledgment of the debt we owe to them through the many programs of assistance to veterans. We can never do enough, but all Canadians can be proud of our achievements in this area and can rest assured that this obligation, rooted in gratitude, is being faithfully discharged.
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On Monday we shall remember them in ceremonies across this broad land of ours. It is proper that we do so, for they have earned the eternal respect of this nation.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Hon. J. A. MacLean (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and a pleasure for me, on behalf of the official opposition, to join with the minister in the sentiments he has so well expressed. As the years go by and the memories that are vivid to many of us of World War II and the Korean war recede into the distance, it is even more important that the memory of those who made special sacrifices in those crucial days are kept ever green. We should not forget that all of the democratic freedoms we enjoy were preserved by the many, many Canadians who made the supreme sacrifice in World Wars I and II.
These memories will come back on Monday as many of the members here take part in commemorative and memorial services throughout Canada. We certainly appreciate the remarks made by this minister.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Arnold Peters (Timiskaming):: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the New Democratic Party, I join in the sentiments expressed by both the minister and the spokesman for the Conservative Party in paying tribute to the veterans who fought in wars gone by. We are proud to pay tribute to them on November 11. The contribution made by those who fought in World War I was made to end all wars, but 25 years later service people were called upon to serve this country, and did so with great distinction again to end all wars.
I hope, Mr. Speaker, that Canadians in the age group that do not remember the contribution made in both world wars will look at the reasons that caused those wars and will make sure that it is never again necessary to send people into battle. The responsibility is now with that age group. It seems to me they can play a better role by seeing that the world is free of war and making their contribution in that direction. They should also take the opportunity on November 11 of paying tribute to the memory of those who secured for them the freedom to make that contribution.

November 8, 1974
Farm Broadcasting
tTranslation]


Mr. Real Caouette (Temiscamingue):: Mr. Speaker, we join the minister in expressing our gratitude to those who gave their lives for what was called and still is freedom and peace. On two occasions, in both World Wars, Canada has greatly contributed to the victory. We won the wars, but we lost a great many distinguished Canadian soldiers whom we would have liked to spare.
I would like to draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to the fact that the objective of both wars was to restore peace in the world. The minister has well stated that sadly this was not the war to end wars. It is somewhat like strikes, the end of one is the beginning of another and if today our dead were coming back on earth to see what is going on in Canada, I think that they would rather be still where they are than being worried like Canadians are presently by inflation and all kinds of problems.
Wars do not settle problems. We want to solve problems, but the opposite occurs. It happened on two occasions, but it does not prevent us from being deeply grateful to those who gave their lives for their country, Canada. I also believe that after having commemorated the 56th anniversary next Monday, we should, as soon as Tuesday morning, pass some legislation to avoid wars and guarantee to all the people on earth security with freedom, which would be a token of fair, solid and honourable peace throughout the world.


CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
Mr. Jack Murta (Lisgar):: Mr. Speaker, I rise, under Standing Order 43, on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity, that being what appears to be CBC policy of phasing out radio farm broadcasting in Canada in favour of a broad, and sometimes meaningless, version of agricultural information and news. It appears that the management of the CBC does not understand the importance of an informative program directed to farm and rural audiences. I would move, seconded by the hon. member for Swift Current-Maple Creek (Mr. Hamilton):
That the matter of program content and direction of farm programming be sent to the Standing Committee on Broadcasting, Films and Assistance to the Arts, and a full and open discussion of this important area be undertaken as soon as possible.


Mr. Speaker:: The House has heard the motion which, being proposed pursuant to Standing Order 43, cannot be debated without the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: The motion cannot be debated at this time.


AIRPORTS
Mr. Perrin Beatty (Wellington-Grey-Dufferin-Water-loo):: Mr. Speaker, I rise pursuant to the terms of Standing Order 43 on a matter of pressing and urgent necessity. My motion arises from the advertisement in today's Globe and Mail which reads:
We have a number of challenging positions for engineers who wish to join a team of professionals involved in creating the New Toronto International Airport.
That advertisement for engineers seriously undermines the position of the Airport Inquiry Commission. For that reason I would move, seconded by the hon. member for Hastings (Mr. Ellis):
That this House requests the government to delay any further hiring of personnel to be engaged in the construction of the new Toronto International Airport, pending the final report of the Airport Inquiry Commission.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The House has heard the terms of the motion which, being proposed pursuant to Standing Order 43, cannot be debated without the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: Accordingly, the motion cannot be debated at this time.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Sharp:: Mr. Speaker, because of the rapid progress made in disposing of items on the order paper yesterday, the announcement I made about House business has become obsolete. I therefore wish to indicate the business we propose to call today. The first item will be Senate Bill S-13 respecting the boundary between the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, followed by Bill C-29, the Canadian business corporations bill; if we complete that, we shall follow with Bill C-25, the environmental contaminants bill. If we complete that we may take another look.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Robert L. Stanfield (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs.
November 8, 1974

Since the food chain stores have traditionally stressed cash payment and since they are greatly concerned with the price of foods at this time, would the Minister tell the House whether he is conducting a thorough study on the use of credit cards and its effect on foodstuffs prices?


Hon. Andre Ouellet (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Yes, Mr. Speaker, a study is being conducted within my department, especially in respect of the use of credit cards.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary. Considering the concern expressed by the Canadian Grocery Distributors Institute and the Retailers' Council to the effect that the extensive use of credit cards would bring about a spiralling of food prices and since this practice is rapidly increasing, why did not the minister ask the people concerned to stop this practice, at least temporarily, until completion of these in depth studies?


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I did not because we are in a free enterprise society where every individual may use the type of payment he feels proper and there is no question of limiting the people's freedom of action.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: One further supplementary. Has the minister raised or does he intend to raise this matter with his provincial counterparts, particularly in view of the effect widespread use of this practice might have on the price of food across the board, that is on the prices paid for food by people who continue to pay cash?


André Ouellet: It is an excellent suggestion, Mr. Speaker. I shall certainly follow it up.


EFFECT OF USE OF CREDIT CARDS-SUGGESTED INVESTIGATION BY FOOD PRICES REVIEW BOARD
Mr. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. In view of the impact the use of credit cards could have on food prices in Canada, will the minister ask the Food Prices Review Board to look into this matter on an urgent basis so that we can get some indication of exactly how serious the impact could be?


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I wish the hon. member could provide me with proper evidence warranting the conclusion that credit cards have greatly contributed to the rise in food prices. If he could, I should be very pleased to refer this information to the Plumptre board for review.


SUBSIDY ON POWDERED MILK-PROPOSED APPLICATION TO EVAPORATED MILK
James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, it is precisely to get evidence that I asked the minister if he would refer this subject to the Food Prices Review Board which could ascertain if there is evidence. In the
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absence of the Minister of Agriculture, I will direct my supplementary question to the Minister of Finance who has shared responsibility. Will the government give immediate consideration to a recommendation contained in a report released by the Food Prices Review Board today on food prices in the province of Newfoundland? They recommend that the powdered milk subsidy be applied immediately to evaporated milk. Will the government give immediate consideration to that as that recommendation of the board is something that can be done immediately?


Hon. John N. Turner (Minister of Finance):: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I will look at that report right away.


FLUID MILK-SUGGESTED RE-INTRODUCTION OF SUBSIDY
Mr. John Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. The latest consumer price index indicates a very substantial increase of 3.7 per cent in the price of fluid milk from September 1974 to October 1974. Will the government re-introduce the subsidy on fluid milk?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, this question has been answered before. The answer is still the same.


BREAD-SUGGESTED INVESTIGATION OF PRICE INCREASES
John R. Rodriguez: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker. This question is addressed to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. In view of the revelation in the latest consumer price index that bread prices have increased by 7.1 per cent since September of this year and noting that Maple Leaf Mills, one of Canada's largest mills, enjoyed a profit increase of 40 per cent in the first nine months of 1974 while sales in the same period increased by only 23 per cent, would the minister order an investigation into bread prices from March of 1974 to the present in order to determine whether the consumer is again being ripped off?


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, the Food Prices Review Board has precisely been established to carry out this type of work. I am sure it is aware of the statistics quoted by the hon. member, and that it will look into this with the same drive it demonstrates generally in fulfilling its assignments.


John R. Rodriguez: A further supplementary directed to the Prime Minister. Will the right hon. gentleman admit that the lack of investigations and subsidies is due directly to the fact that the government now sits in a majority position?

November 8, 1974
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RISING COST OF SUGAR-GOVERNMENT ACTION
David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the same minister, the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs.
The other night on television, he was answering the questions of interviewers about the rising cost of different products. About antifreeze, for example, the minister suggested a price not exceeding $10, but felt an inquiry should be made.
With regard to the price of sugar, the minister repeated: "We will conduct an inquiry". The minister is conducting an inquiry on about every product. Now, with regard to sugar, as soon as he said that an inquiry would be made, in fact as early as the next day, the price of sugar went up by $3 per hundredweight. Is the minister aware that those companies are laughing at the government and the minister instead of taking the measures required to provide a good service to Canadian consumers?


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member watched closely that TV program, he will recall that with regard to sugar, I indicated that it is not an inquiry which is being conducted, but that proceedings have been taken against three eastern Canada refineries. So, we take the matter very seriously since we have taken the matter to court. Besides, if the hon. member is suggesting that there is some profiteering, I will repeat what I said in the House yesterday: When the government introduces a profiteering legislation, I hope the hon. member will vote for it.


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I wish to put a supplementary to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. I readily believe the minister when he maintains that proceedings are being taken against the three largest sugar refineries. But since they are just the same increasing their price by $3 per hundredweight, what does the minister intend to do in this connection? They scoff at the law, at the minister and at the government.


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, to my knowledge, Canadians have not voted for a price freeze in Canada. Secondly, when the profiteering bill is passed, we will be able to implement it. If the opposition members had maintained the government in power before the last election in order to enable it to pass that legislation, it would probably be in effect by now.


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I wish to put a supplementary question to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs.
The minister urges me to vote with the government for a price freeze in order to maintain profits. I agree, but is he aware that an anti-combines legislation actually exists in Canada and that under its provisions, should the minister or the government bring this problem before the courts, those responsible can be sent to jail? I undertake in the presence of the minister and of the government to vote for the jailing of the thieves who create sugar monopolies in Canada. I shall vote with the minister then.
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André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I think that the hon. member is well aware that sentences are handed down by judges in Canada. In fact, there is an anti-combines act and we invoked it to take proceedings against three sugar companies in eastern Canada.


PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. J. M. Forrestall (Dartmouth-Halifax East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the President of the Treasury Board and arises out of a speech that he made to the Club Richelieu two or three days ago in Quebec. In light of his statement that positions in the Ottawa area will be opened to unilingual French persons in the near future, will the minister undertake to the House and give us a guarantee, if he will, that no unilingual English speaking public servants who presently hold positions to be designated unilingual French will lose their present positions?


Hon. Jean Chretien (President of the Treasury Board):: Yes, Mr. Speaker.


J. Michael Forrestall: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: I do not like to be too restrictive but it seems to me that the hon. member got exactly the guarantee from the minister for which he was looking. However, he may put a supplementary.


J. Michael Forrestall: Mr. Speaker, seeing that the minister is in such a good mood I thought I might get the other part of the guarantee out of him at the same time. Would the minister also give his assurance that no positions designated unilingual French will be closed to any Canadian who is prepared to learn French?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I would welcome any Anglophone who wants to work in French.


POST OFFICE
Mr. Benno Friesen (Surrey-White Rock):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct my question to the Postmaster General. In view of the fact that individuals as well as business people have spent thousands of dollars printing stationery to include the postal code and are now forced to discard that stationery because those zones are being reorganized, would the minister please inform the House whether this reorganization is now complete and, therefore, save taxpayers further inconvenience and money?
November 8, 1974


Hon. Bryce Mackasey (Postmaster General):: Mr. Speaker, I am afraid the hon. gentleman would have to give me specific instances because his question is very general. We are presently reorganizing the post office on about 35 different fronts, so he would have to be a little more specific.


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, I do have a specific case regarding which the minister will be receiving a letter momentarily. As a supplementary question, may I ask the Postmaster General this. In view of the fact that the Vancouver post office does not even have the equipment to handle the postal code, does he think this expense and inconvenience was at all necessary?


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Mr. Speaker, there are only five centres in Canada that do have this equipment. We think it is only logical that Canadians be educated to the code before we buy the equipment. So far as letters to the minister are concerned, I prefer to get the letters first through the mail or delivered by hand, rather than read them in the press or hear them in the House of Commons.


SUGGESTED DELAY IN REORGANIZATION OF POSTAL CODES
Hon. W. G. Dinsdale (Brandon-Souris):: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. In view of the fact that the new automated plants are coming on stream on a staggered basis, would the Postmaster General issue orders that there be no drastic changes in postal codes until such time as the code is actually in operation?


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Mr. Speaker, I think I am quite prepared to review the whole situation, as the hon. gentleman suggests. My main problem is not so much the staggering of equipment but the Postmaster General arriving on the job staggering!


PENITENTIARIES
Mr. Eldon M. Woolliams (Calgary North):: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask a question of the Solicitor General which I address jointly to the Minister of Justice. I ask him this morning whether Gagne, who was given a temporary pass after having been convicted for killing a taxi driver for a theft of $20, has been rearrested. I should like to know who granted the pass and why it was granted. There is presently a high incidence of murder, with two cases in Calgary in one week, one a young fellow 17 years of age who had his throat slashed, the other a child of three, and with a doctor and a policeman killed in Montreal. With the administration of justice now at such a low ebb, is there going to be a change in this policy, or are we just going to continue to drift and make society an unsafe place?


Hon. Warren Allmand (Solicitor General):: Mr. Speaker, I believe Mr. Gagne was convicted in 1967, at which time the eligibility date for parole was seven years. Since that time we have amended the law twice. The most recent amendment made last year was to fix the minimum parole
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date at ten years, with the possibility of increasing it up to 20 years. We also put in the legislation the provision that no temporary absence pass can be given until two years prior to the full eligibility date. But that law was not made retroactive; consequently the rules relating to temporary absence passes applying to Mr. Gagne provided that he had to wait three years, I believe it was. The first temporary absence pass that was given to him was five years after he started to serve his sentence. The rules that apply today provide that the minimum period will be eight years, and it could be up to 18 years before any temporary absence pass is granted.


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. The minister talks about parliament passing those amendments. It was a government piece of legislation which was rammed through by the government. I should like an answer to my question. Has this man been rearrested? Whatever the rules and regulations provide, they are always subject to interpretation. This is a serious matter. I am getting dozens of letters from people across the country regarding the high incidence of violent crimes, particularly murder. Irrespective of what the regulations provide, here we have a man who was released and who killed a doctor and a policeman.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The hon. member has put his question; I do not think he should argue it.


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: Do you want murder?


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, as I pointed out to the House, the law has been amended and temporary absence passes have now been restricted quite substantially compared with the situation formerly. I do not think there was any objection in this House last year, when we introduced and passed the capital punishment law, regarding these longer eligibility dates for parole and for temporary absence passes. If I remember correctly, the hon. member supported that part. I think he was suggesting yesterday that there be no temporary absence passes at all, that a life sentence would mean a life sentence, with no opportunity at all for release. We did improve the situation last year.


INQUIRY AS TO REARREST OF ESCAPEE GAGNE
Eldon Mattison Woolliams: Well, Mr. Speaker, I see the minister does not want to answer the question; perhaps the answer is obvious. I ask him again, has Gagne been found and rearrested?


William Warren Allmand: Not to my knowledge, Mr. Speaker.


TEMPORARY ABSENCE PASSES-DATE OF APPLICABILITY OF AMENDMENTS TO LEGISLATION
Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prince Albert):: Mr. Speaker, I have endeavoured to follow the minister in his peregrinations and explanations. Did I correctly understand him to state that the amendments made by parliament in the last two years concerning length of time that an inmate must serve before he can be granted parole apply only to those inmates who were sentenced since the

November 8, 1974
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date of the change in the law, that they do not apply to other inmates who were in penitentiary prior to the passage of the amendments?


William Warren Allmand: That is right, Mr. Speaker, and I believe the right hon. member voted for the bill to make the rules more stringent. The new rules relating to release on parole apply only to those who were convicted following passage of the law; that very provision is in the legislation. It was felt that it was not right to apply more restrictive rules to people who had been sentenced previously, and I think this is a tradition that is usually followed with laws of this kind.


STUDY OF MERCURY CONTENT OF FISH IN WHITE DOG AND GRASSY NARROWS INDIAN RESERVES-REQUEST FOR PUBLICATION
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of National Health and Welfare and the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development I should like to direct a question to the Prime Minister. In view of the information made public yesterday in the Ontario legislature and on a CBC program that the Department of National Health and Welfare had conducted a study on the amount of mercury found in fish in the Grassy Narrows and White Dog reserve area, an amount 30 times the permissible level, would the Prime Minister discuss with the Minister of National Health and Welfare the making public of that very serious report prepared by the department?


Miss Coline Campbell (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform the hon. member that that report was tabled in the House in December 1973.


SUGGESTED COOPERATION WITH ONTARIO IN SUPPLYING NON-CONTAMINATED FOOD TO INDIANS ON WHITE DOG AND GRASSY NARROWS RESERVES
David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary for the Prime Minister. In view of the statement yesterday by the Ontario Minister of Health to the effect that his department had suggested to the federal government that it work on a program of alternate food supplies for the Indians adversely affected in that area, which proposal was rejected by the federal government, would the Prime Minister discuss with the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the Minister of National Health and Welfare the possibility of working with the Ontario government to supply food which is not contaminated to the people concerned?


Mrs. Iona Campagnolo (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, the responsibility for developing an alternate economic base rests with the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. However, this

must take place in consultation with both the bands and the province and action is being taken on that front at this time. I will refer the matter to the minister who no doubt will have more information for the hon. member and the House in the near future.


PROPOSED REPRESENTATION OF EASTERN CANADA ON WHEAT BOARD IN VIEW OF FEED GRAIN SITUATION
Mr. Albert Bechard (Bonaventure-Iles-de-la-Madeleine):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the hon. Minister of Justice, who is responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board.
In view of the never-ending problem of supply and of the cost of feed grains in eastern Canada, could the hon. Minister tell this House whether he intends to put forward an amendment to the Canadian Wheat Board Act, in order to enable Eastern producers representation on the executive of this Board on which only Western Grain producers are represented?


Hon. Otto E. Lang (Minister of Justice):: Mr. Speaker, the commissioners of the Canadian Wheat Board are not representative of particular areas but of expertise which enables them to do the job of disposing of the grain produced in Canada. It does happen that one of the commissioners was born in one of the central provinces, but that is irrelevant to the situation. The present situation with regard to feed grain is progressing very satisfactorily. The early delays caused by the strike are being made up by the rapid movement of a very large volume of grain into the domestic feed grain market and I have every confidence the needs of the producers throughout Canada can be met given a new degree of alertness on the part of the agencies in this regard.


POSSIBILITY OF OIL IN GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE IN VIEW OF GAS FIND OFF COAST OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
John Angus MacLean: Mr. Speaker, I should like to pose a question to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. Is there anything he is in a position to state regarding the indications, if any, of petroleum products being present in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in economic quantities as a result of the recent gas find off the east coast of Prince Edward Island?


Hon. Donald S. Macdonald (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to thank the hon. member for notice of the question. The find off East Point by Hudson's Bay Oil and Gas rather than being significant in itself is significant in respect of the addition it makes to geological knowledge. Similar structures apparently do exist in the gulf which if they have similar shows of hydrocarbons would give an indication of a


COMMUNICATIONS
Mr. J. P. Nowlan (Annapolis Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the President of the Privy Council. In view of the recent charges of the Hon. Joseph Smallwood, a member of the Privy Council, and of cable television applicants, of political interference of the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion to delay the development of CBC facilities in Newfoundland and to block a cable television application, would the government House leader consult with the Minister of Communications and the Secretary to State in order to clear the air and remove any suspicion by having this matter referred forthwith to the appropriate committee so that rumour can be resolved with fact and allegation and answer supported by evidence.


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I do not know how much substance to give the allegations made by the hon. member, but I will look into the question to see if anything needs to be done. I have great confidence in my colleague the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion, and I am sure he would never act in conflict with his public duty.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is directed to the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion who I tried to reach by phone twice yesterday. I should like to ask the minister, in his ministerial duties as minister in charge of DREE through which he has contractual relationships with the Newfoundland Broadcasting Corporation of which he is a major shareholder and of which his brother is a major shareholder, if he himself would not like this matter forthwith presented before a standing committee of the House so that all these matters can be cleared up once and for all.


Hon. Donald C. Jamieson (Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Mr. Speaker, if I am permitted to answer the question, the answer is an unequivocal yes. I am fed up with allegations. I have said categorically in this House and elsewhere that there is not a syllable of truth in it. I am sorry the hon. member was not able to contact me yesterday because I would have been glad to give him all the data which indicates that I have disposed of those shares, except for the action of the CRTC, since December of last year.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


An hon. Member:: Withdraw.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: There is no question about withdrawing. Mr. Speaker, this is not a supplementary but rather a point of privilege. I did try to get the minister yesterday. In regard to the disposition-and this is the disappointment because this matter came up two years ago at which time
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through an exchange on the floor of the House we had been assured there had been a disposition into the blind trust of shares owned by the minister and yet in checking the CRTC records not only of two years ago, or last year, but right at the present time I find there has been no effective disposition whatsoever of those shares under any sort of blind trust pursuant to section 19 of the Broadcasting Act. There has been no hearing by the CRTC, so the statement of the minister in this situation confuses the issue and compounds the rumour-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. It seems to me that the hon. member began perhaps by seeking information on the subject and is finishing by coming very close to making specific charges against the minister about proprieties and, in addition, is now, in his latter remarks, coming very close to making a specific charge that the minister is misleading the House, whether it be deliberate or otherwise. In both instances, surely the question period ought not be the place for that unless under the usual circumstances the hon. member is prepared to name the minister or any other minister in a specific charge with the usual consequences on both sides.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, you have taken this thing several steps further. The minister said he had an unequivocal disposition to have this matter referred to the committee, but in the latter part of his answer he made a few statements which are not supported by the record. I suggest, and say in this House, there has been no effective disposition of the ownership or control of the shares in the name of the minister.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. In view of the clear understanding that the purpose of the question was to see whether or not the matter would be aired in the committee, it seems to me with the greatest respect that the details with which the hon. member is now dealing ought to be exactly the kind of thing that is dealt with in a more specific way in the committee.


Donald Campbell Jamieson: Mr. Speaker, may I be permitted a question of privilege. At this stage of the proceedings I do not wish to hold up the question period. I assure the hon. member that I did not try to deceive him. What I said was that disposition had been made as of last December but that the CRTC had not held the hearing. The hon. member knows that kind of process must be undertaken. It is one over which I have no control whatsoever. When the CRTC decides to hear it, presumably it will dispose of it.
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AGRICULTURE
Mr. Adrien Lambert (Bellechasse):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Agriculture, I shall address my question to the right hon. Prime Minister.
In view of contradictory press reports on the elimination of the raw milk subsidy, can he tell the House wheth-
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November 8, 1974
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er or not the federal government decided to do away with the 5-cent a quart subsjdy at the request of the provinces? If so, will he also tell us what provinces?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, as I understand it, for I was not involved directly in the matter, the provincial Ministers of Agriculture all agreed, unless I am mistaken, with the federal Minister of Agriculture to recommend that the subsidy be discontinued for a while. As a result of that recommendation, we decided to do so, which was our policy, but, I stress it again, with which the provincial ministers agreed. Later on, I believe the provincial premiers changed the position taken by their Ministers of Agriculture, but the provinces changed their minds and not the federal government.


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary. As that policy has done much good, especially to low-income families, can the Prime Minister tell us whether the government is considering the possibility of maintaining or reinstating that policy which is truly beneficial to families?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member will recall the early part of the question period, he will see that I answered a similar question very briefly by referring the hon. member to previous answers. The hon. member will then see, through those answers, that the main thing is that we are keeping the subsidy on powdered milk precisely to help the needy families.


FINANCE
Mr. James Gillies (Don Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. Given the fact that the consumer and mortgage debt in Canada today is at the 90 per cent level with respect to consumer disposable income-and to put the question in perspective, in 1929 the figure was 45 per cent-is the government concerned about this extension of debt and will they bring some action to limit the expansion of consumer credit?


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, with a potential for a slackening demand in the next fiscal year, that might not be the appropriate policy, but I will go into that in more detail in the budget.


James McPhail Gillies: Is it the position of the government that this incredible expansion of debt has had any relation to the record levels of inflation that we are having in the country now?


John Napier Turner: The inter-relationship between those phenomena is a little more complicated than the question would imply.


FISHERIES
Mr. Walter C. Carter (St. John's West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State (Fisheries). In view of the fact that the fishing industry, especially in eastern Canada, is going through an extremely difficult period because of the markets and because of over fishing on the part of foreign fishing fleets as well as other factors, can the minister tell the House what initiatives will be taken by the government to help the industry? I realize that there is a form of subsidy now for surplus stocks, but does the government intend to take any new initiatives to help the fishing industry over this rather difficult period?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of State (Fisheries)):: wish to thank the hon. member for giving me notice of his question. I hope that after having solved some of the detailed problems I will be able to provide some more information next week of a positive nature.


Walter C. Carter: Does the government intend to introduce an income support policy for fishermen because the present Unemployment Insurance Act discriminates against fishermen and contains many inequities? Without some kind of an income support policy it is quite possible that the industry could fail.


Roméo LeBlanc: It is our intention to introduce an income support program. However, the more I work on this with my officials the more I realize why since 1970 successive ministers and officials have been fighting with this problem. It is an extremely complicated area because of the variety of fishing operations and differences on both coasts.


INDUSTRY
Mr. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Mr. Speaker, may I put a
question to the hon. Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce.
United Aircraft of Canada Limited is appearing before a parliamentary commission in Quebec, where they tabled several documents. However, the legal advisor representing this company said yesterday that he could not table documents concerning subsidies for several million dollars coming from the federal government, claiming he had not got permission to do so from the latter.
Would the hon. Minister be prepared, for the good of this inquiry and for the settlement of the dispute, to recommend United Aircraft to table these documents and, in the affirmative, could he invite the company to do so as soon as possible?


Hon. Alastair Gillespie (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce):: No, Mr. Speaker.
November 8, 1974


Roch La Salle: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary.
In view of the fact that those documents seem important for that inquiry, could the minister give the reasons why he refuses to make public the details of the grants which the United Aircraft is said to have received from the government?


Alastair William Gillespie: Mr. Speaker, these documents are confidential documents exchanged between the government of Canada and the company involved.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Robert Lorne Stanfield: So were the tapes.


AIRPORTS
Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Transport perhaps I can address my question to the Prime Minister, if he is listening. Like my motion under Standing Order 43, my question to the Prime Minister arises from an advertisement in today's Globe and Mail calling for engineers to do design work for runway terminal facilities and sewage facilities at the second Toronto international airport. Would the Prime Minister be willing to have his government initiate a moratorium on the further hiring or advertising for personnel to be engaged in the design or construction of the second international airport until such time at least as the Airport Inquiry Commission has had the opportunity to bring in its final report to ensure that the Airport Inquiry Commission is not reduced to a position of simply being window dressing?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I will be glad to refer the question to the Minister of Transport.
* * [DOT]


SARNIA-MONTREAL PIPELINE-ADVICE TO STELCO WITH REGARD TO GOVERNMENT'S INTENTION ON CONSTRUCTION
Mr. Lincoln M. Alexander (Hamilton West):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources related to the very disturbing headline in the Hamilton Spectator reading "Pineline Limbo Worries Stelco". In view of the assertion made by the Prime Minister, I should like to know now whether the pipeline from Sarnia to Montreal will be built and whether the contract with the Steel Company of Canada, which amounts to some $37 million, still stands. Has he advised the Steel Company of Canada of the government's intention?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Yes, sir.
Oral Questions


SARNIA-MONTREAL PIPELINE-LACK OF INTEREST OF INTERPROVINCIAL PIPELINE-DISCUSSION WITH GOVERNMENT
Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: In light of the fact that Interprovincial has begun to lose interest in the general contract for the pipeline, has this matter been discussed by the minister with the Interprovincial authorities, and, if so, is there any truth in that allegation?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Yes, Mr. Speaker, it has been discussed. I have responded several times in the House with regard to the principal points that are of concern to the company regarding the financing of the pipeline on the current market. I hope that within a very short period of time we will make arrangements to overcome that particular concern.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Yes, two or three years.
[DOT] * *


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Stuart Leggatt (New Westminster):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment. In view of the news reports and admissions by the Alberta minister of the environment that many shore and migratory birds have been found dead on Syncrude property in the great Canadian tar sands, would the minister inform us why no charges have been laid under the Migratory Birds Act in this case?


Hon. Jeanne Sauve (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, I was not aware of that particular situation. I will inquire and give an answer to the hon. member.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary question for the minister. When making inquiries would the minister also look at the complete study which was apparently done by her department into this matter, and would she also look into the fact that the Minister of the Environment in Alberta has indicated that he will not release this report without her consent? Would the minister inquire why a federal government is covering up something that should be revealed to the people of Alberta?


Jeanne Sauvé: Mr. Speaker, our policy is to make public the reports presented on matters like those raised by the hon. member.
If the report in question has not been made public yet, perhaps it is because the Minister of the Environment of Alberta has some reservations, namely that he wants to examine some particular aspects of it. However, I will inquire. My policy is to make reports public whenever possible.
2 85 43-7)4

November 8, 1974
Oral Questions


POLLUTION IN GREAT LAKES-WORSENING CONDITION OF LAKE ONTARIO-GOVERNMENT ACTION
Mr. Otto Jelinek (High Park-Humber Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also directed to the Minister of the Environment. In view of the fact that the International Joint Commission in its second annual report on water pollution in the Great Lakes has indicated some progress in water clean-up in Lake Erie while worsening conditions continue in Lake Ontario, has the IJC and this government in particular given up attempts to make similar progress in Lake Ontario in pollution clean-up as well as the control of highly fluctuating and dangerous water levels? If not, what further steps is this government prepared to take in order to rectify this situation?


Jeanne Sauvé: No, Mr. Speaker, we are well ahead in our clean-up program of the Great Lakes. Our concern is such that, following recommendations of the International Joint Commission, we have made representations to the Americans so that they speed up their own water clean-up program.
Water levels, as everyone knows, are subject to constant study by our services and the International Joint Commission and we keep the matter under close watch.


POLLUTION IN GREAT LAKES-SUGGESTED STIFFER PENALTIES FOR POLLUTING INDUSTRIES
Otto John Jelinek: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. In view of the fact that all reports, including one from the chairman of the Toronto Waterfront Advisory Board find that Lake Ontario is destined to eventually become just one large marsh, will this government undertake to introduce even stiffer penalties to industries that continue to dump polluted wastes not only in our lakes but in our rivers and will they suggest the same thing to the United States?


Jeanne Sauvé: Mr. Speaker, the discharge of industrial wastes in the Great Lakes is subject to regulations that we established in co-operation with the provinces and by which, as far as I know, the industries concerned abide.


Hon. Barney Danson (Minister of State for Urban Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to clarify that. I have consulted with my colleague the Minister of National Revenue and the $500 first time home owners' grant is not taxable.


NUMBER OF UNITS AVAILABLE WHICH QUALIFY FOR $500 GRANT
Barnett Jerome Danson: While I am on my feet, Mr. Speaker, may I respond to a question the hon. member for Broadview asked yesterday which I was not able to answer in detail. I can offer a little more detail today. It was with reference to the availability of housing which qualifies in this range in Toronto. I do not have a complete list but from a quick scanning of the newpapers, which anyone who can read can find, in the Toronto region there are 190 units in Scarborough, 300 in Islington-


Some hon. Members:: Order, order!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Perhaps in respect to the other members, the further information might better be conveyed by correspondence. The hon. member for Hillsborough.


Mr. Gilbert:: Mr. Speaker, a question of privilege.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Broadview on a question of privilege.


John Gilbert: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the minister said that he had sent me a newpaper showing advertisements for homes listed at less than $45,000 and he restricted it to condominium and row housing. May I say, Mr. Speaker, that I have not received the newspaper from the minister. Probably the only place I would find any mention of the minister would be on the comic page rather than the advertising page.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Gilbert: May I say he is quickly becoming-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. In fairness, if I am not going to let the minister continue with his side of it I do not think I can allow the hon. member to continue.


John Gilbert: He started it.


HOUSING
Mr. Jim Fleming (York West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State for Urban Affairs regarding the first time home buyers' program. Present inquiries to my local office indicate some confusion. Can the minister clear up the question of whether the $500 grant for first time home purchasers is or is not taxable?


STUDY ON CORRELATION BETWEEN MALE FERTILITY AND WEARING OF KILT
Mr. Heath Macquarrie (Hillsborough):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of National Health and Welfare may I address a question to his parliamentary secretary. It is prompted by the research being carried on by a leading geneticist at a great Scottish university on the apparent correlation between male fertility and the wear-
November 8, 1974

ing of the kilt. Can she advise if the department contemplates any such research in this country with a consultative role for the Secretary of State for External Affairs and the hon. member for Hillsborough or do they view the whole project as an exercise in supererogation?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. parliamentary secretary.


Coline M. Campbell: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I could bring this matter to the minister's attention and perhaps he could assign me to investigate this matter.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


HOUSING
Mr. Jake Epp (Provencher):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State for Urban Affairs. In view of the statement made by the minister on Friday last, could he clarify whether people who constructed homes during last summer and occupied them prior to November 1, will be eligible for the $500 bonus as indicated?


Barnett Jerome Danson: Mr. Speaker, it will only apply on those homes on which the deals were closed and the occupants moved in on last Friday or subsequent to that for the next 12 months.


NATIVE AND RURAL HOUSING POLICY-NUMBER OF UNITS CONSTRUCTED-SUGGESTION GREATER PUBLICITY BE GIVEN PROGRAM
Mr. F. Oberle (Prince George-Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister of State for Urban Affairs and refers to the secret housing policy called the native and rural housing policy. It became secret when a senior official from Central Mortgage and Housing was dismissed because of revelations of the policy late last year. Today the information service of Central Mortgage and Housing indicates to anyone who wants to inquire that there really is not such a policy and that the minister's statement is the only material available explaining such a policy. Can the minister tell the House today how this policy that was announced by his predecessor on March 7 is being implemented and how many of the 50,000 homes promised to Canada's native people and deprived people, have been constructed to date?


Barnett Jerome Danson: Mr. Speaker, first of all I should like to say that it never moves as quickly as we would wish. There are three provinces that have entered into the agreement with the federal government, British Columbia, Manitoba and Alberta and three projects are under way in British
Oral Questions
Columbia for a total of 24 units to start. I have had meetings with some of the native people themselves and will have meetings with officials-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: Twenty-four!


Barnett Jerome Danson: -in Vancouver early next month. We hope to see this program get off the ground a great deal faster. It is a matter of some priority to me that there are 24 units in one province. Some of the other provinces have not yet signed at all, unfortunately. We would like to see this program moving more quickly. I give it a high priority and I will be meeting in British Columbia with officials to try to speed up the program.


Frank Oberle: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Since the minister is obviously experiencing some difficulty in getting this program known to the people who could benefit from it, is he prepared to instruct his department and Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation to bring out information material that could be circulated among those people so that they could take advantage of it or is he hiding the program forever because he is embarrassed about the impact it could have in the housing field?


Barnett Jerome Danson: Not at all, Mr. Speaker. I am optimistic about the impact it could have. Certainly, the groups to whom I have already spoken have been well informed on it but I will check the procedure to make sure that more people are informed and that all hon. members are informed as well. Then, they may promote the program in their areas and, perhaps where the provinces have not signed agreements with us, they may encourage them to do so.


PENITENTIARIES
Mr. A. C. Abbott (Mississauga):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct my question to the Solicitor General. Would the minister, when he visits cell block one, take certain opposition members as well, and leave them there for a period of intensive study.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, I will be pleased to do so.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Specify. Be more specific.


CANADIAN ARSENALS LIMITED
Mr. John Reynolds (Burnaby-Richmond-Delta):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Supply and Services. It concerns a Crown corporation known as

November 8, 1974
Alberta-B.C. Boundary Act
Canadian Arsenals Limited. As it costs the Canadian taxpayer about $3.5 million a year to keep it alive, will the minister advise the House if he plans to close down the corporation.


Hon. Jean-Pierre Goyer (Minister of Supply and Services):: Mr. Speaker, I shall soon be in a position to inform the House of the steps we intend to take to reorganize completely Canadian Arsenals Limited, in order to increase our efficiency and to be able to reduce, and perhaps do away with our deficit.


PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. Gordon Towers (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the President of the Treasury Board. In view of the dissatisfaction that an unreasonable pay differential creates for federal employees at Canadian Forces Base Penhold, will the President of the Treasury Board make an effort to see that federally employed personnel receive pay equal to that given to other personnel doing the same category of work in the provincial labour force.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, we always try to give our employees adequate compensation for the work they do. National rates are often not comparable to the rates in certain areas, such as Alberta or other places. That is why we sometimes ask for regional rates in our consultations and negotiations with unions.


Mr. Speaker:: Orders of the day.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Mr. Speaker:: Mr. Macdonald (Rosedale), seconded by Mr. Sharp, moves that Bill S-13, an act respecting the boundary between the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on National Resources and Public Works.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Mr. Baker (Grenville-Carleton):: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The position of the opposition is that this bill ought to go to committee. The hon. member for Rocky Mountain (Mr. Clark) and the hon. member for Okanagan-Kootenay (Mr. Johnston) have certain reserva-

tions with respect to the bill which can be dealt with in committee. We do not intend to hold up the bill at this stage. Our reservations concerning the bill are these. The bill provides for the boundary dispute to be settled by action involving the lieutenant governors of the two provinces and the governor in council, but makes no further provision for the final disposition of the matter.
Secondly, the bill does not specifically provide for public hearings, although one could infer from its language that a public hearing of the kind associated with boundary disputes involving municipalities and provinces is to be considered: there is no direct statement, although the implication is there. I thought I should express those two reservations before the bill goes to committee. We are content to let the bill pass at this stage without hearing from the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Sharp) as, despite our reservations, we wish to co-operate with the government in bringing forward legislation which we consider important, always subject, of course, to our right to express legitimate differences of opinion on important questions of principle. That being so, let me say that we of the official opposition intend to give this bill speedy passage and refer it to the committee.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, speaking on the same point of order, I suggest that the points the hon. member has raised can better be dealt with when the bill is in committee. His substantive points cannot be dealt with satisfactorily on a point of order. I do not know why the hon. member raised the matter in this fashion at this point.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I understood that the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton (Mr. Baker) did not rise to make a substantive intervention in the debate at this point but, rather, to indicate that he was speaking on behalf of other members of his party who are prepared to see the bill go to committee quickly. Our present way of proceeding is unsatisfactory because we are restricted by the rules, which do not provide for the sort of exchange that is taking place. If there is disposition to refer the bill to committee quickly, we should let it go to committee. If there is disposition to debate it, we should do so. I see that an hon. member wishes to rise.


Mr. Foster:: Speaking on the same point of order, Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that the bill has been properly moved by the minister. If it has, I plan to speak on it.


Mr. Johnston:: Mr. Speaker, may I comment further on what was said by the representative of my party, namely, that we do not wish to debate the bill but shall refer it to committee. I represent a constituency which for the past few years has shown considerable interest in the revision of the boundary. Various disputes involving local municipalities and the provincial government have arisen. As members may recall, it was suggested that the boundary between British Columbia and Alberta ought to be revised.
My point in rising is to ask the minister to give some assurance that by sending the bill to committee without debating it, we shall not be raising false hopes in parts of British Columbia. I hope the boundary dispute will not be settled solely on technicalities or by some secret arrange-
November 8, 1974

ment between the two provinces and the federal government under which the people of the locality involved would not know what was happening. I do not want our action at the moment to be misunderstood by the people who are most directly concerned in any boundary alteration.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, speaking again on the point of order, I think these questions of substance could best be debated in second reading debate and in committee consideration. My colleague, the parliamentary secretary, will be dealing with the background of the bill. Rather than dealing with the actions of the two provinces concerned and the carrying out of our agreement on a point of order, I think we should consider the bill itself.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Is there disposition to send the bill to committee, or would the House prefer to hear the parliamentary secretary explain the bill?


Mr. Clark (Rocky Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to continue debate under the guise of spurious points of order, but it should be understood that if the parliamentary secretary speaks at this stage I shall wish to avail myself of the right to speak.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. We must now decide whether this bill shall go to the committee without debate. If the parliamentary secretary speaks, the debate will begin and there is no indication how long it may continue. Is the House ready for the question? The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Foster).


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, as I understand it, we are prepared to debate the bill at second reading: we are not in any great rush to send it to committee without debate. Possibly some of the points which members opposite have raised as points of order can be answered at this time, and certainly in more detail in the standing committee. I must say we are very impressed with the kind-


William Arnold Peters: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This is highly irregular. Either this is without debate, or the debate should be called in the normal manner.


Mr. Speaker:: With due respect, we have passed that point. I have already called the bill. I asked if the House was ready for the question, the parliamentary secretary rose and I recognized him. The debate has begun.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, Bill S-13, an act respecting the boundary between the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, which is before us today provides for the proper management of the boundary between the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, especially the sinuous southern section which is defined by the height of land along the Rocky Mountain system. The British North America Act provides the following:
-the Parliament of Canada may from time to time, with the consent of the legislature of any province of the said Dominion increase, diminish
Alberta-B.C. Boundary Act
or otherwise alter the limits of such province upon such terms and conditions as may be agreed to by the said legislature-
The governments of the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia have recently enacted legislation, to be effective upon the enactment of this bill on the Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Act. The provincial acts allow for conversion of the sinuous-height of land-boundary to a conventional boundary marked on the ground by survey monuments connecting a series of straight lines. They provide for changes in the boundary to be approved by the lieutenant governor in council, and they also provide for the survey, maintenance and resolving of disputes related to the boundary. However, these provincial enactments cannot bring about any desired change in their mutual boundary without similar federal legislation. Consequently, this bill is being introduced to provide the federal authority for confirmation and proclamation of any change that may be made.
The provincial acts and the federal bill provide for the establishment of a permanent Alberta-British Columbia boundary commission comprising three commissioners, one each from the three jurisdictions. That is the two provinces and the federal government. The functions of this proposed commission are to survey parts of the sinuous boundary as may be required, resolve disputes which may arise as to the true location of the sinuous boundary and possibly for other reasons, resurvey the surveyed portions as may be deemed necessary, and be responsible for clearing the boundary and for the maintenance of boundary monuments and markers.
Regarding any alterations to the boundary that may result from conversion of a sinuous boundary to a conventional one, the consent of the two provincial legislatures to the alteration is deemed to be given upon approval by the lieutenant governors in council of the two provinces and the consent of parliament is deemed to be given upon declaration of the boundary by the governor in council. Provision is also made for revising or supplementing the boundary map-sheets when any such alteration may be made.
The main purpose of the provincial acts and the federal bill is to enable quick reaction to resolve any doubts or settle any dispute that may arise as a result of exploitation of minerals which may be found in the proximity of any unsurveyed portion of the boundary. They will permit the ready establishment of a well marked conventional boundary without the rather cumbersome and lengthy procedures that would otherwise result each time a portion of the sinuous boundary had to be conventionalized.
With these few remarks I complete my presentation on this bill. I am sure several members on the opposition side of the House will want to speak to it. When the bill goes to committee we will be able to go into the full detail of all its ramifications.


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I must say at the outset we very much regret that what appeared to be an agreement to expedite the business of this House has now been broken by the commencement of debate by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Foster).


Some hon. Members:: Shame.

November 8, 1974
Alberta-B.C. Boundary Act


Charles Joseph Clark: It was the understanding, agreement and disposition on this side of the House that we should not take time in this chamber to discuss the details of this legislation which most of us believe can, and should, be adequately and exhaustively discussed within the committee. However, once the parliamentary secretary broke the agreement that was apparently reached by House leaders on all sides, we certainly were not in a position where we could remain silent in the debate.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. There was agreement to bring on this bill last night, but I am aware of no agreement to put the bill through without debate. That just is not the fact. We wanted to deal with the bill.


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to take the time of the House on spurious questions of privilege. It is clear from the remarks of the spokesman for this party, the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton (Mr. Baker), that we were prepared to proceed with this bill. There is, obviously, confusion on the government side. It certainly does not constitute a question of privilege in this House to simply note the government is in confusion. Were that the case, we would be engaged in questions of privilege from morning to night.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: Again, I wish to indicate we regret that the agreement reached has been departed from by the actions of the parliamentary secretary. We will not take a great deal of time here, because we think the matter can be dealt with in the standing committee. There are some very important matters in connection with this bill-matters of particular concern to those of us who reside in the provinces involved. There are matters of principle, including the highly important principle of whether public business is going to be discussed in public or whether it is going to be discussed in private as is provided in this bill.
As members of this House who are acquainted with the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia know, there has been a great deal of concern about where the boundary lines will lie, and how firmly they will lie. From time to time there has been conversation about changing the boundaries in a way that would move communities from one side to the other. As one of my colleagues indicated before the debate began, it would be very unfortunate if a piece of legislation were allowed to go through this House which suggested there would be an opportunity, which may not in fact exist, to change the province of residence of certain communities on one side or the other of the present boundary. Therefore, there is now real concern within the provinces affected by this particular boundary.
There is a matter I wish to draw to the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Mrs. Campagnolo) and her predecessor. There is a great deal of concern respecting this bill because many of the boundaries being discussed within this legislation lie within or adjacent to part of the

system of national parks, at least in the area abutting Waterton Lakes national park in the province of Alberta and the adjacent area of British Columbia. There has been concern for some time about the possibility of extending the boundaries of Waterton Lakes national park to portions of British Columbia which contain the kind of interest that should be enclosed within a national park.
This is clearly a matter which might be considered by the commission. We believe that decisions taken with respect to national parks should be taken in public. There is danger that decisions made under the authority of the bill before us could be taken in private, hidden away and ratified by orders in council, without the public being given any opportunity to participate in them or to find out what has been done. This is a situation which we on this side of the House oppose without reservation.
Another matter of great concern is the presence of a variety of proven natural resources within the areas affected by these boundaries. We would not want decisions made in secret to alienate from one province and transfer to another province areas which contain important resource wealth. We hope this concern is not an academic one, although it might be if the intentions of the federal government, approved on second reading last night, are carried forward. For the present, at any rate, the provinces have a primary right to the resources within their boundaries and, as such, natural resources are capable of alienation.
These are some of the matters which will have to be considered. It may be, also, that some citizens desire to shift their province of residence, and this legislation as it stands might cause some of those communities to believe that this kind of transfer will be easier than it is in fact. But the intent of the bill before us which causes most concern is the proposal to establish a boundaries commission consisting of three members, one appointed in secret by the government of British Columbia, one appointed in secret by the province of Alberta-


Mr. Blais:: In secret? How is that?


Charles Joseph Clark: The hon. member asks what I mean by "in secret". I mean, without reference to the legislatures of the respective jurisdictions. A third member of the commission is to be appointed by the government of Canada. As I say, these commissioners are to be appointed without reference to any legislature, and they will consider these matters in the absence of any reference requiring public hearings to be held or any kind of public participation. They would make recommendations to the governor in council who would then put those recommendations into practice, again without reference to any legislature or to parliament. Thus, highly important matters concerning the provinces and affecting communities, national parks and resource development could be decided in secret. My hon. friends and I believe this to be a dangerous procedure and we want to consider it carefully in the standing committee.


Mr. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich):: Particularly with this government in office.
November 8, 1974


Charles Joseph Clark: That is certainly so, because the present government has shown an insistence on secrecy from time to time. In particular, we noticed in the last parliament an emphasis upon making decisions affecting national parks in such a way as to exclude public participation. In committee we shall be asking the minister to tell us why this process should not include a requirement to hold public hearings. We do not propose, either as members of the parliament of Canada or as representatives from Alberta and British Columbia, to allow these boundaries to be changed in secrecy without reference to the legislatures concerned. The parliamentary secretary did refer in his remarks to the consent of the legislatures. In the bill, as I read it, there is no reference to consent on the part of the legislatures. The process is carried out entirely by the lieutenant governors in council and the governor in council.
As I say, we do not wish to take a long time debating this issue, but since the parliamentary secretary made it impossible to proceed with the agreement to allow the measure to go through without discussion, and thus made it necessary for the House to delay its proceedings, I can say there will be other contributions from hon. members on this side. We wish to make the point that there are aspects of the measure which cause us concern and which we shall want to consider at some length in committee.


Mr. Bob Brisco (Kootenay West):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to associate myself with the comments made by the hon. member for Okanagan-Kootenay (Mr. Johnston) and the hon. member for Rocky Mountain (Mr. Clark) and add some simple thoughts of my own. I am concerned about the effect of clause 4 which deals with the resurveying of that portion called the sinuous boundary. I notice that the last time adequate maps were prepared was in 1950 or 1953. There is no question that a new survey of this boundary is overdue.
The hon. member for Rocky Mountain has covered the ground very well and referred to a number of specific matters. I should like to draw attention to the arrangements for game management and regulation, as well as the management and regulation of fishing streams. I should like to see a member on the government side catch a trout in Alberta and get nailed in British Columbia for violation of the Fish and Game Act.
The bill we are considering might appear to be a very simple bill and one unlikely to create difficulties. Nevertheless, a number of questions arise. In the southern half of British Columbia there are extensive mining operations. Extensive exploration for oil is being conducted and there is also extensive coverage of the area by those doughty souls who are so rarely recognized. I refer to the prospectors. These people need definite guidelines on which to base their references-as, of course, do the mining and oil companies. The suggestion is that no input from the public is required in connection with this measure. What if the community of Fernie should wish to join the province of Alberta, as was suggested at one time?
Alberta-B.C. Boundary Act


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Robert Hylton Brisco: In any event, I do not wish to detract from what has been said about this bill, but there are problems that must be considered. I also take exception to the "from time to time" review of this sinuous boundary. I am wondering how long this "from time to time" review well be. Will it be for one year, or 20 years? I think a very definite commitment should be established, both with the federal government and with the provinces, to review these boundaries and markers on a regular basis. There is no point in five or ten years hence going through the same argument we are having today. I suggest we establish a firm and definite timetable so this review can be made on a regular, ongoing basis.


Howard Earl Johnston: Mr. Speaker, I realize this is a bill which perhaps under more ordinary circumstances would not seem to be controversial, but I suspect the parliamentary secretary knows that the question of boundary change has been a very hot and lively topic through a good part of the constituency that I represent. It arose in a rather odd way in the southeast corner of my constituency, the area which has in it the city of Fernie. That area had very much hoped to benefit from increased travel and tourism that would follow upon the world's fair at Spokane, but to the amazement and disappointment of the people of the area, when the provincial government published its tourist brochure for distribution at the world's fair at Spokane, the city of Fernie and the related communities of Sparweed and Elko were left off the map.
Local reaction at the time was that if these communities were not to be recognized by their own province of British Columbia, then perhaps they should petition the province of Alberta to accept them as part of that province. Considering the provocation, I thought the reaction was a natural one. It was, of course, picked up by a variety of other communities and became a local cause for some weeks. Just last week when I returned to my constituency I noticed that a community on the boundary between British Columbia and Alaska was petitioning that state. Dissatisfied with conditions in the area, the residents were requesting they be transferred from the provincial and federal jurisdiction of this country to the jurisdiction of the United States.
The feeling that boundaries are flexible is a common one. Although the parliamentary secretary may consider it too widely held, that is not quite the point. The point is that the feeling is there and as disputes arise from time to time I think people feel they can find the answer to their particular dispute in a boundary revision. It is primarily for this reason that I wish to intervene, because I do not want to let the bill go through, following the intervention of the minister, without telling him that this has been an issue in the constituency I represent. There are clauses in the bill which suggest that quite profound changes might be possible. There are no limitations to the "whereases"; for example, the following:
And whereas the legislatures of the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia having consented thereto, it is desirable that provision be made to declare the boundary line to be established from time to time
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November 8, 1974
Alberta-B.C. Boundary Act
by the said commission to be the boundary between those provinces, at such time as the boundary line has been approved-
As I see it, the bill does not have any particular limitation of scope but the point I want to make, which I mentioned earlier, is that I suspect in some ways if we move the bill through without debate, without any statement from members on this side, we might be creating a false hope in communities that are having problems. The area with which I am concerned is, I realize, remote, much of it glaciated. There will be natural changes in boundaries, and surveys must be done. I agree with the hon. member for Rocky Mountain (Mr. Clark) that there should be provision for disclosure of intention as changes are made, and also for public input so that people are fully aware of what is going on each time a change is proposed and a dispute arises. This becomes absolutely crucial because of natural parks along boundaries. The federal government is very much involved in control over provincial lands because of our system of national parks.
Mr. Speaker, those are the points that I wished to bring to the attention of the House at this time.


Frank Oberle: Mr. Speaker, I, too, follow my colleagues reluctantly since we did have an understanding, not just among ourselves on this side of the House but also with members responsible for the bill on the other side, that this bill should be sent to committee. We regret that the time of the House is being takeh up with the matter at this time. We feel that the work of the committee will be very important. As some of my colleagues have already said, this is not a matter that we can allow to proceed without debate. Neither is it a matter to be taken lightly by my colleagues in the House of Commons or by those who will be affected by any eventual change in boundary.
My first concern is about the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources being responsible for this bill in the first place. This indicates to me that if any boundary changes are to come about, they will be made with emphasis being placed on the resources that will be affected by such change. The constituency that I represent runs for
1,000	miles along the boundary between the province of British Columbia and the province of Alberta. In this area there are some very significant resources. As you know, Mr. Speaker, the northeastern portion of British Columbia has some large coal deposits which extend into the province of Alberta, and any boundary change in that area will certainly affect those resources. My colleagues have already mentioned the national parks. Canada's highest mountain, Mount Robson, is in my constituency and lies just outside Jasper national park. The people of Alberta often identify this great landmark with their own province, yet it is situated in the province of British Columbia.
However, I am more concerned with the people who will be affected than with the resources. I represent an area of British Columbia which has made a very strong case for secession from British Columbia to the province of Alberta, not because it is a geographic area that is totally isolated from its own province's economic area but it even has two time zones. When I call my constituency, the operator will invariably say, "Mr. Oberle, do you realize it is only seven o'clock in your constituency?" and I have to tell her no, it is eight o'clock. But she will insist. She will

say, "The number you are calling, area code 604, is British Columbia and there is a three-hour time difference". Every time I tell the operator that that is not so.
There is an area in British Columbia on Mountain standard time, which is Alberta time, and that is the Peace River area. The people in the Peace River country often have been alienated by their province economically, socially and in every other way. The economy of the Peace River country in British Columbia is based upon the economy of the Peace River country in Alberta. The supplies for the Peace River country come from Edmonton rather than from Vancouver. As I have said, their social and political affiliations lie with the province of Alberta as well. In northern British Columbia we do not feel it is a virtue to spread misery equally among everybody, which of course is the philosophy subscribed to by the present provincial government of British Columbia. That, of course, is one of the main reasons that part of the country has often made a case for secession from the province of British Columbia.
Under the Department of Regional Economic Expansion there is an act, the name of which escapes me momentarily, in respect of rural farm improvement. With regard to that act, the provinces of Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan have certain privileges and rights. But the Peace River country, which has the same economic base, social problems and geographical location, does not have access to the services provided by the federal government simply because it is inside the province of British Columbia, which has never cared very much about the Peace River country.
There was always a great northern development philosophy in the province of British Columbia under a previous administration, and particularly under this administration which has really done nothing: there was a philosophy of government that all that was necessary was to build railways and highways into an area and people would look after themselves, they would move into the area, build their own social infrastructure and make life livable. That is not so in our modern day.
The government has direct responsibility in this very important area of communications. The federal department has never lived up to its responsibility. The quality of life in northeastern British Columbia simply is not the same as, and cannot be compared with, the quality of life in northwestern Alberta. I am making these comments in the form of a public statement in the hope that the government will recognize the very special need of the people in the northern part of my constituency.
We build railways and roads into this area, but only in order to plunder the resources. The giant Peace River dam never had an impact study. This was never considered by the federal government and the province of British Columbia. As a result, we have been burdened with a very grave situation. I think it would be in the interest of everybody in Canada today, particularly the federal government, to conduct a post-mortem on the Peace River dam in order to evaluate the damage done in respect of human resources, land, wildlife and the environment in general.
November 8, 1974

The province of British Columbia has plundered its northern regions. I am concerned whether the commission which would be set up under this bill would sit in a dark room, because there is no provision for public meetings or public consultation. There is no provision for the commission to meet with regional groups, planning commissions and northern development people who are concerned with the human resource. These groups have been established in the area for the purpose of helping themselves in the absence of any assistance from the provincial government. There is no real provision in this bill for the commission to take into account the very serious problems the people in that part of the country must face on a daily basis.
There is the town of Fernie to which my colleagues referred. There is a very real desire on the part of the people in that region of British Columbia to secede and join those who still subscribe to the political philosophy that has served Canada and the free world for so long, rather than surrender to something we are experiencing in British Columbia today, commonly known as socialism but which is far removed from anything I would call socialism. I am certainly upset about that situation. I want to know whether this commission would have in its mandate authority to consider the political climate as well as the social, geographic and economic climate that exists in areas with which it is to concern itself.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner):: The hon. member for Burnaby-Richmond-Delta (Mr. Reynolds).


John Douglas Reynolds: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I should call it one o'clock.


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.
Thomas Gordon Towers: Mr. Speaker, in rising to take part in this debate I want to make it known to the House and to Canada that if the good people in the towns and villages of British Columbia find that they can no longer tolerate their socialist government, they will be very welcome in the province of Alberta. I want to make sure that each and every one recognizes that there is a warm welcome awaiting him. This welcome is extended not only to people in the province of British Columbia but also to Saskatchewan and Manitoba. There is an important point that must not be overlooked when we are discussing the boundary between the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia; that is, the fact that no doubt in the future there will be a very important highway in the Howse Pass area, going from one province to the other. There have been many discussions about this highway, and we trust that they will continue.
It is the responsibility of the federal government to complete this highway in conjunction with the province of
Alberta-B.C. Boundary Act
British Columbia. The province of Alberta has completed the major portion of the highway for which it is responsible. No doubt the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan are also interested in the construction of this road that will cross the boundary of Alberta, thereby providing an alternate route into central B.C. We trust that this will not be overlooked when the boundary is considered, because the federal government has great responsibility in this area.


John Douglas Reynolds: Mr. Speaker, my party does not intend to hold up this bill much longer. In fact, we would like to see it in committee now. We would have liked it to be sent to committee right away. However, since the parliamentary secretary seemed intent on having the bill debated, members from British Columbia and Alberta felt we had a few things to say about it.
I have several concerns in this area and several questions that I would like to put. For example, there is no reference in this bill to public hearings. That is a matter which very much concerns our province because we have in British Columbia a boundary on the south side at a place called Point Roberts. At present the matter is before a public hearing and is proceeding in the proper manner. It concerns me that some time in the future this government might bring in a bill to give Point Roberts away to the Americans without allowing the people in the area any say in the matter.
There is a paragraph in the preamble of this bill which reads as follows:
And whereas the legislatures of the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia having consented thereto, it is desirable that provision be made to declare the boundary line to be established from time to time by the said commission to be the boundary between those provinces-
The term "from time to time" scares me. As hon. members may know, this is a hunting area. One week you may shoot a moose, and the next week you may go back to get it but find that the boundary commission says it is now in another province. Such examples show the loopholes which exist in this bill. It has been put together very loosely, and I ask the government to be prepared, when the bill goes to committee, to answer some very serious questions because members of this party will certainly want to ask them. Now we will agree to let the bill go to committee and hope it will be considered very soon.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner):: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on National Resources and Public Works.
28543-8V2
[Stage Direction]
November 8, 1974
Canadian Business Corporations Act

Otto Emil Lang: that Bill C-29, respecting Canadian business corporations, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.


Mr. Norman A. Cafik (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce today, for second reading, Bill C-29, a bill which proposes a totally new law to govern federal business corporations. Because the present Canada Corporations Act applies to both business corporations and non-profit corporations, whereas this bill applies only to business corporations, it follows necessarily that a new non-profit corporations bill must be presented at a later date. In June of this year our department published a comprehensive report on non-profit corporations and is currently preparing a non-profit corporation bill generally in accordance with that report.
The federal corporations law is essentially only a technical law, but it can be fairly argued that it is of strategic importance to the Canadian economy. Although it applies to only 23,000 of the approximately 270,000 corporations carrying on business in Canada, it is estimated that those
23,000	corporations carry on at least 40 per cent of the dollar volume of Canadian enterprise. The bill, therefore, has immediate significance for business managers and professionals. The bill also has great significance for the 1.5 million Canadians who are shareholders and who must have confidence in the corporation law system in general, and corporate management in particular, before they can be induced to invest their savings in corporate securities. In the long run, the bill has even greater significance for Canada as a whole, for if it achieves its objectives of furnishing a vehicle to attract and use effectively Canadian savings, it will tend to furnish capital required for Canadian development and better enable Canadians to participate in and control the direction and pace of that development.
The present Canada Corporations Act, although substantially amended in 1964 is still largely the 1934 companies act which was a synthesis of the early federal company law and the landmark English companies act of 1929. Since that time, the English companies act has undergone one over-all revision and several substantial amendments. The English companies act is currently being reconsidered in light of the Jenkins committee report of 1962 and a number of subsequent policy papers.
Moreover, since 1960 major reports have been made on and sweeping amendment made to the business corporations laws of France, Germany, a number of commercial states in the United States, Ontario and British Columbia. The government therefore decided, late in 1966, to set up a task force to prepare a report on the federal corporation laws. The terms of reference of the task force were very broad and empowered it to review the current corporation reports and laws of other jurisdictions, to consider the
[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner).]
functions of corporations and their role in Canadian society and to prepare a comprehensive report.
First priority, however, was to be given to several specific topics that had recently been introduced into Ontario law-insider trading practice, proxies, financial disclosure, take-over bids and investigations-which could be added as interim amendments to the present act. These amendments were made, accordingly, in 1970. Even with these amendments, however, the present act remained generally archaic with respect to a number of substantive topics and its administration provisions. As the task force explained at that time, the 1970 amendments were only an attempt to fill in obvious gaps in the existing law.
Following the task force studies, therefore, a working group made up of task force members was instructed to submit to the government a report entitled "Proposals for a new business corporation law for Canada". This report was published and widely distributed by our department in June, 1971. Following publication of the proposals, the department received a large number of letters and briefs, which have been most useful, pointing out the deficiencies and the inconsistencies in the proposals and recommending a number of changes. The original Canada business corporations bill, Bill C-213, was drafted in accordance with the general recommendations of the proposals but substantially amended to reflect the many constructive comments received. That bill was tabled in the House on July 18, 1973. It died on the order paper at the end of the first session of the twenty-ninth parliament.
Since then, in light of the comments received, one substantive amendment and a substantial number of technical amendments were made to the original bill and set out in the current bill, Bill C-29, which was tabled on October 21, 1974. To enable interested parties better to analyse the interim changes made, the minister has carried out an undertaking given by his predecessor, the hon. member for Windsor West (Mr. Gray), to publish a concordance of the two bills that points out and explains concisely the reasons for these changes. The one significant substantive change is the deletion of the provision barring Canadian employees of a corporation from being counted as "Canadian resident directors" of that corporation. I shall elaborate on this topic later.
When preparing the proposals that led up to the bill, the task force established as its central objective the preparation of a business corporation law that would be clear, comprehensive and practical. And they concluded that the best means to achieve this goal would be to construct a draft law that is the best synthesis of the substantive and administrative concepts set out in contemporary corporations laws, having regard to other jurisdictions in Canada, the United Kingdom, the larger states of the United States and Europe, and constantly keeping in mind the particular need in Canada for a coherent corporation law at the federal level. The task force defined a coherent corporation law as one that achieves a practical balance of interests among shareholders, creditors, management and the public, a balance that ensures both adequate investor protection and maximum management flexibility within the over-all context of the public interest. As far as possible, the bill expresses this objective.
November 8, 1974

The bill also reflects several secondary objectives. It seeks to eliminate many of the pointless formalities that are a signal feature of the present Canada Corporations Act. Wherever possible, it substitutes clear rules and standards for administrative discretion. And, as a corollary, it provides effective remedies that render the law largely self-enforcing and obviate much of the need for administrative paternalism. To the greatest degree possible, it permits administration by exception, characterizing the administrator more as a fireman who is always ready to act to deal with an emergency, rather than as a policeman who maintains continuous surveillance. It proposes setting out in regulations the detailed contents of the many statutory forms and also the contents of financial statements. Finally, as an effective constraint on the exercise of these regulatory powers, it establishes a procedure to require the pre-publication of proposed regulations for public comment at least 60 days before their effective date.
In general, the bill is an attempt to present an exemplary act to serve as a model to be followed both by administrators of other federal corporation laws and by provincial legislatures. In no case does it sacrifice principle in order to attract more federal incorporations. In summary, then, the bill substitutes for the present Canada Corporations Act an entirely new law that applies only to business corporations, setting out the new concepts in a logical framework but avoiding change for the sake of change, particularly in respect of issues such as proxies, insider-trading, financial disclosure, and take-over bids where uniformity with provincial acts is highly desirable.
Since a number of the parts of the bill are very technical, I shall not discuss them here, knowing that they must be considered in detail by the standing committee of the House. These parts deal with securities registration and transfers, trust indentures, receivers, liquidation, dissolution, and investigations. In addition, since some of the topics that were introduced into the Canada Corporations Act in 1970 concerning insider-trading, proxies and takeover bids are largely continued in substance in the present bill, I shall therefore ignore them today. Instead, I shall underline those parts of the bill that best illustrate the objectives sought and the techniques employed in the bill to achieve those objectives.
Part I of the bill mainly concerns the application of the proposed law. The proposals had recommended that all federal corporations should be brought under the aegis of one comprehensive business corporation law. This was not practical, Mr. Speaker. However, with respect to the acts regulating financial intermediaries, first because it is so difficult to separate regulatory and corporate law provisions in those acts and, second, because it is very desirable to have both the regulatory and the corporate provisions set out in one internally consistent act, the bill applies potentially to all federal business corporations other than the financial intermediaries.
The bill only applies automatically to new corporations that are incorporated under it. With respect to all other corporations, the bill introduces a continuance concept requiring a corporation that seeks to be governed by the new law to take positive steps to become continued under that law. If it is an ordinary business corporation subject
Canadian Business Corporations Act to part I of the present Canada Corporations Act, it must become continued under the proposed law within five years. If it does not become continued, it is deemed dissolved at the end of that period. There is no corresponding mandatory continuance for special act corporations, but they may be required to continue under the new law by order in council.
As stated, the objective of part I is to create one comprehensive federal business corporation law; That is, to substitute a uniform, understandable legal regime for what is now almost an arcane art.
Essential to a uniform legal regime are the formalities and procedures that govern the operation of the law. Part II, on incorporation, introduces three of the recurrent minor themes of the proposals that are reflected throughout the bill. The first is that incorporation should be a matter of right, rather than a privilege. The second is that wherever possible, administration should be in accordance with express rules of standards and not based on administrative discretion. And the third is that empty formalities, such as incorporating through legal secretaries or students, should be eliminated.
Thus, part II of the bill modifies radically the present incorporating system. Incorporation is clearly as of right. Corporate names are granted pursuant to broad statutory standards that are to be further clarified by regulations intended better to reconcile corporate name policy with trademark and trade-name policies. Decisions of the director of the corporations branch relating to corporate names will be appealable to the courts. The formalities are simple, straightforward, clear and consistent in this part and throughout the bill. To win support for more efficient procedures is a simple task.
Far more difficult-although there is broad agreement that it must go-is elimination of the ultra vires doctrine. For at least two generations, efforts have been made in Canada to seek a uniform corporation law, but most of these efforts have floundered because of the inability of lawyers in different jurisdictions to reconcile the conceptual differences between the letters patent systems and the registration systems that were based on the United Kingdom companies act. Finally, however, these conceptual difficulties have been largely overcome. Like the Ontario Business Corporations Act of 1970, the bill in effect abandons the letters patent or discretionary system and adopts a registration system, which implies incorporation as of right, as I said previously. But the bill does not adhere blindly to the traditional registration statutes. Indeed, one of the themes of the bill is to introduce a simpler registration system free of the unnecessary technicalities with which it has become encrusted over time.
One of the major problems with the registration systems has been to determine clearly the capacity of the corporation. Unfortunately, the common law during the nineteenth century withdrew from the earlier common law proposition that a corporation had all the capacity of a natural person, and equated a corporation with an agent having a mandate to do only those things expressed in its objects clause and only the powers to realize those objects that have been accorded to it by statute or by its internal constitution. As a result, corporation laws and constating instruments have become characterized by excessive ver-

November 8, 1974
Canadian Business Corporations Act biage relating to objects and powers in an effort to avoid application of this ultra vires doctrine.
Because objects and powers clauses have become meaningless to protect investors, they tend only to be a trap for the unwary creditor or shareholder, invoked in most cases to permit a corporation to escape an obligation. The bill, therefore, attempts to resolve this root problem instead of attacking symptoms such as limiting broad objects and powers clauses or minimizing prejudice to third parties. To preclude any inference, therefore, that the ultra vires doctrine might apply because the bill is cast as a registration statute, the bill states clearly that a corporation has the capacity and also the rights, powers and privileges of a natural person.
In short, the bill reverts to original common law doctrine and so becomes consistent with the European concept of the corporation. That does not mean, however, that the shareholders of a corporation cannot constrain management by establishing express goals in the corporate constitution. Such restrictions are expressly permitted. But part III makes abundantly clear that even an express restriction cannot prejudice the rights of a third party contracting in good faith. The third party is entitled to presume that the corporation has the capacity to enter into any contract and that its directors and officers have authority to act on behalf of the corporation. Part III, by giving a corporation the capacity of a natural person, rids the corporation law of what has clearly become excess conceptual baggage.
Part V of the bill, concerning corporate finance, deals with more difficult problems. Probably no provisions in the present act are as unclear and unsatisfactory as the sections relating to capital structure, shares, redemption of shares and dividends. Reflecting that the present law developed from several sources and on a piecemeal basis, the financial provisions are scattered throughout the act, rendering difficult the resolution of even simple problems. Some of the provisions relating to registered shares, bearer shares and series of shares are conceptually incomplete and thus engender much confusion. In addition, a number of concepts like partly paid shares and par value shares have simply become archaic, bearing little relation to contemporary market requirement and practices.
Finally, there are several provisions that are altogether absent from the present law, such as rules relating to options and rights, acquisition by a corporation of its own shares, rules relating to accounting practices and uniform insolvency criteria. Part V attempts to clear up this conceptual confusion, to abrogate a number of concepts that no longer serve a useful purpose and to legitimate those institutions that serve a practical purpose and do not prejudice creditor and shareholder interests.
To this end, the bill bars the issue of shares subject to assessment, or the issue of par value shares, prohibits bearer shares, avoids reference to concepts such as paid in surplus or capital surplus, and expressly permits acquisition by a corporation of its own shares subject to strict solvency standards. Similar strict solvency standards apply to determine whether a corporation can pay dividends, make loans or guarantees to its employees, or

reduce its capital. In brief, these provisions tend to permit a great deal of management flexibility within the limits prescribed by the general solvency rules, forcing management to rely on what is good business practice rather than on technical idiosyncrasies that have become part of the traditional corporation law.
Consistent with this philosophy, the bill continues to vest in the directors very broad power to manage the business and affairs of a corporation. Indeed, it is this institutionalization of responsibility in the board of directors for the management of the business and affairs of the corporation that is the hallmark of a contemporary corporation law. But that is not to say that the directors are given a blank cheque, for the bill substantially increases the residual powers of the shareholders to control indirectly the management of the corporation. For example, shareholders have the power to initiate bylaws, to submit general proposals to shareholders' meetings, to remove directors by ordinary resolution, to vote on fundamental changes and even to require the corporation to purchase their shares where they disagree with a proposed fundamental change. It is this internal balancing of interests that raises the most difficult conceptual problems, and it is with respect to this central issue that the bill has been recognized as both imaginative and practical by the business community.
One aspect of this problem, that is, the declaration of a standard of trustee responsibility of duty and duty of care to regulate the conduct of directors and officers, has elicited a great deal of controversy. In general, however, these provisions are only declaratory of what is the common law or is generally acknowledged to be good business practice. For that reason, it is becoming a conventional provision in contemporary corporation laws. To mollify the seemingly high standard of care imposed on corporate management, the bill contains indemnification provisions that are broad in scope and that apply wherever a director or officer has acted in good faith in the interests of the corporation and not in his own interests.
Part IX also introduces the requirement that a majority of the directors of a corporation be resident Canadians. Some of the major initiatives of the government in this area in recent years have been introduction of the foreign investment review bill and the revision of the acts regulating financial intermediaries and some resource corporations in order to restrict foreign ownership and control. It was decided that the corporation law could usefully reinforce these policies by ensuring that the Canadian viewpoint will be expressed in all meetings of directors and committees of directors.
The predecessor bill, Bill C-213, contained two provisions designed to achieve this goal. The first provision, which is already law in Ontario, required each federal corporation to have a majority of Canadian resident directors. The second provision, which is altogether new in Canada, applied only to foreign-controlled corporations, requiring them to have a majority of "outside" Canadian directors, that is, directors who are not employees of the corporation.
The first provision requiring generally a majority of Canadian directors has been widely accepted as expressing a legitimate Canadian concern and as serving a useful
November 8, 1974

purpose. We have, however, received an extraordinary number of heated, even passionate criticisms of the second provision, particularly from Canadian officer-directors who argue that the effects of the rule would be to compel directors to promote Canadian interests above corporate interests in contravention of their legal duty to the corporation, to place greater emphasis on citizenship than demonstrated competence, and to regulate Canadian officers of foreign-controlled corporations to the status of second-class citizens. These were persuasive arguments.
Even more persuasive, however, were the arguments of the more detached professionals, lawyers and accountants, who pointed out the two gross defects of the provision. First, because foreign investors will invoke every possible stratagem to retain control over their capital, they would tend to recruit "straw-men" who would be amenable to their control. Second, it would be relatively easy to set up a formal board of directors and then proceed to control the corporation through a management committee or advisory board, In short, the provision would not be effective. We found these arguments convincing. We therefore recommended that the second provision concerning foreign-con-trolled corporations be dropped and the government modified the bill accordingly.
As I stated earlier, the bill confers extensive power on the directors to manage the business and affairs of the corporation, but counterbalances that power by conferring on shareholders a number of residual powers to influence or even discourage fundamental changes, to participate more actively and more knowledgeably in the internal affairs of the corporation, and even to remove directors. Most of these provisions which are set out in part XI are not new law. In fact, the bill continues most of the substance of the present act, reorganizing the rules for greater simplicity, redrafting a number of provisions for greater clarity and adding some minor substantive rules relating to the conduct of shareholder meetings and court review of elections of directors.
The only completely new substantive provisions in part XI relate to unanimous shareholder agreements. These provisions, in effect, permit the shareholder of a closely held corporation to assume the duties and liabilities of directors, thus creating what is conceptually a partnership with limited liability. Again, although the provision is new in the statute it only reflects, rather than changes, present practice. It is included in the bill for two specific purposes. First, it legitimates direct control by the shareholders and so obviates many unnecessary formalities in close corporations. Second, it virtually compels an incorporating lawyer to consider more carefully the relationships among his clients when setting up a close corporation.
But this unanimous shareholder agreement provision is the exceptional case. The general policy of part XI is to vest residual power in the shareholders of the usual corporation to enable them to participate directly in the internal affairs and to control indirectly the management of the business of the corporation. This policy is firmly buttressed by the disclosure provisions set out in the proxy rules in part XII and the financial disclosure provisions of part XIII.
Canadian Business Corporations Act
Part XIII of the bill largely continues the substantive disclosure rules of the present Canada Corporations Act but introduces two new concepts, one a matter of form and the other very much a matter of substance. The first major innovation of the bill is to provide that the very lengthy provisions relating to the contents of financial statements be set out in regulations instead of in the statute. Three arguments support this recommendation. First, the changes in future, as in the past, will be made only after discussion with interested parties. Second, it is impossible to amend a corporations act frequently enough to reflect changes in accounting principles and practices. Finally, the regulations will in any case be subject to pre-publication under the bill and will also be subject to scrutiny under the Statutory Instruments Act.
The second innovation of part XIII is to strengthen the role of the auditor as an appointee of the shareholders, following generally the policy of the Ontario Business Corporations Act. One of the best illustrations of this policy, at least in respect of corporations which distribute their shares to the public, is the requirement of an audit committee which can ensure that the auditor is responsive to the directors as the representatives of the shareholders, and not answerable only to the officers of the corporation.
I turn, now, to the fundamental changes. Reinforcing the residual control of shareholders, part XIV introduces a new legal regime concerning fundamental changes of the constitution or of the business carried on by the corporation. As I said earlier, because the present act was assembled brick by brick with little concern for over all symmetry or even internal consistency, it has become extraordinarily difficult to interpret or to comply with the new law. Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than with respect to fundamental changes sought to be made under the present discretionary system.
Because of the amount of discretion exercised and the complicated interrelations among the present statute rules, working with the present act has become an arcane art which requires an insider's knowledge of the statute provisions, departmental policies and rules of practice. To resolve this problem, part XIV of the bill recommends two solutions. First, it makes uniform all the formalities relating to basic modifications of the corporation's constitution or business-amendment of articles, amalgamation, continuance under the bill or any other law, and sale or lease of assets of the corporation outside the ordinary course of business.
Under the bill, these modifications may be made as of right, free of any intervention by public administrators. Second, part XIV confers a right to dissent or, as it is more commonly known, an appraisal right on a shareholder who dissents from a proposed fundamental change and demands from the corporation payment of the objectively appraised value of his shares. The purpose of this policy is twofold. It permits management and majority shareholders to effect changes in the business or affairs of the corporation with a maximum of flexibility. At the same time it permits a dissenting shareholder to withdraw his investment from an enterprise which is substantially different from the enterprise in which he originally invested. In short, the rule makes it very difficult for a minority to

November 8, 1974
Canadian Business Corporations Act veto a majority decision, or for the majority simply to impose its will on the minority shareholders. As I stated earlier, the goal is to achieve a reasonable but dynamic balance of power between directors on the one hand and shareholders on the other, and at the same time to ensure practical management flexibility And that is precisely what the appraisal right achieves.
Complementing the appraisal right are the shareholder remedies set out in part XIX. To ensure that shareholders can effectively exercise the powers conferred on them by this bill, part XIX attempts to strip away the self-imposed judicial constraints of the common law and to compel courts to judge on their merits the complaints of minority shareholders against majority shareholders or management. Part XIX seeks to achieve this goal in two ways. First, like the Ontario Business Corporations Act of 1970, it legitimates the derivative action in the name of the corporation to remedy a wrong to the corporation. Such a derivative action may be initiated by a shareholder in his own right or as a representative of a class of shareholders.
Second, going beyond present Ontario law, the bill adopts an amended version of section 210 of the United Kingdom companies act of 1948, the so-called oppression remedy. This remedy permits an aggrieved person-particularly a disgruntled minority shareholder-to apply to the court to right an alleged wrong, applying a very broad, just and equitable standard. In effect, the oppression remedy complements the shareholder's appraisal remedy under part XIV, ensuring that a shareholder will have a last resort remedy in a squeeze-out case where he has no grounds to invoke the appraisal right. Summarized briefly, the policy of part XIX is to furnish effective remedies to enforce expressed rights, obviating the need for excessive formality, complicated structure and excessive administrative paternalism.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I would like to reiterate very briefly the salient characteristics of the bill. For what is an archaic statute it substitutes a modern corporation law that is tough and yet flexible and practical. For paternalism it substitutes clear rights that may be enforced by effective remedies. And finally, for a Victorian paperwork routine it substitutes clear, efficient administrative procedures.
Writing about the famous New York business corporation law of 1963, an American scholar deplored the fact that corporation law is not a topic that stirs men's souls. Although this is undoubtedly true in part, and although the original proposals and the bill emphasize the goal of a corporation law as being essential only to maintain a fair and workable balance of power within the corporate enterprise, given the pervasiveness and the great economic power of business corporations in our contemporary society, the bill cannot be dealt with casually as a technical law that interests only businessmen and professionals. For even if modest in its goals, the bill is of importance to Canada as a whole, providing a model law which will further encourage Canadian investors to put their savings into Canadian enterprises. If the bill succeeds in achieving that goal, the result will be greater participation by Canadians in the growth of the Canadian economy and also the exercise by Canadians of greater control over Canadian resources and means of production. The bill is 
comprehensive, clear, equitable, imaginative and, above all, practical. I therefore urge members of all parties to support it.


Mr. Sinclair Stevens (York-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, I am naturally a little hesitant to speak on this bill after the impassioned address just delivered by the parliamentary secretary. Some might even suggest he was a little emotional in his approach to the subject. However, I do have some comments which I hope will be taken into account by the government.
First, I might say that we in the Progressive Conservative Party believe the bill should go to the committee. It is a detailed measure containing 266 clauses and we think that the proper place with which to deal with it is in committee. As I have indicated, we are generally in support of the main principles of the bill. This is particularly easy for those of us who come from Ontario and who are Conservative to say, because the measure we are considering is modelled largely on the Ontario Business Corporations Act of 1970.
In the course of his remarks, the hon. member expressed the hope that this would be a model bill and a basis for similar legislation in other jurisdictions. I think he has his priorities a little reversed. In fact, he is substantially following the Ontario Business Corporations Act of 1970. If there is a model, that, perhaps, is the model that is being used by this parliament and other legislatures in Canada. To support my point, even in the detailed background papers for the Canada business corporations bill we find that in justifying the legislation the government refers to Ontario no less than 25 times in explaining why the government drafted the legislation in the form in which we have it today.
Before I move on to deal with the bill specifically, I suggest that when the bill goes to committee ample time be given to business to respond to it. It may be wise to send a copy of the bill to each of the 23,000 corporations that carry on business under federal jurisdiction. It may also be wise to advertise in local newspapers and let legal counsel know that we have reached committee stage of the bill. In committee, I believe we should consider in some detail why we feel we need Dominion company legislation to start with. As the hon. member has indicated, there are only 23,000 corporations, out of a total of around 270,000, which are incorporated under federal jurisdiction, which is roughly 8 per cent. If I may put it another way, more corporations have been incorporated in the province of Ontario in the last two years than exist today under federal jurisdiction. So, surely, we must ask ourselves whether this kind of corporation serves any meaningful role in Canada, or is it something that to all intents and purposes should be left to provincial jurisdiction?
The revenue and expenditure of the department with respect to corporations roughly balances out. The department receives roughly $1.5 million in revenue from various corporate sources, and their expenditures are a little less than that. I therefore suggest that in committee it would perhaps be wise if the minister or his parliamentary secretary explained in a little more detail why the government believes this legislation is warranted and should remain
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on the books. I say that because I think it is very easy to create new legislation or to continue existing legislation to perpetuate bureaucracy. Any time we see an opportunity to lessen government involvement and bureaucracy, I think we should jump at the chance and do a little pruning.
I also believe the minister or his parliamentary secretary should explain more fully why certain corporations in Canada have been exempted from the provisions of the act. For example, the parliamentary secretary indicated that financial concerns will be exempted. That may or may not be wise. I am curious to know at what stage the government intends to make some of the rules that they feel should apply to private corporations also apply to Crown corporations. I find it increasingly difficult to understand why we always seem to pass legislation that requires the private sector, especially the private corporate sector, to make full disclosure and file more and more forms, yet when we ask for what appears to be basic information concerning some Crown corporations' operations we are told it is none of our business.
We had an example of this last night, Mr. Speaker, in the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs. The chief general manager of the Industrial Development Bank was asked whether he would give us the salary range of the five senior employees of the bank. We were told that that information was confidential and not available to us. There have been other instances when we were similarly told by the bank officials that the information we sought was either not available or would not be conveyed to us. As I say, if private corporations, through this kind of legislation, are continually being required to make disclosures, it is ludicrous for the parliament of Canada to allow a situation to exist where corporations under federal jurisdiction are not required to disclose information for which we ask.
In many ways this government, through this type of legislation and through other legislation that it is proposing to bring into the House, seems to show great inconsistency of approach. Bill C-2 deals with amendments to the present combines legislation in this country. The government likes to call it competition legislation, which is a misnomer. In any event, if hon. members read Bill C-2 and then read the bill before us today, Bill C-29, they will find diametrically different concepts as to the way the law should be approached.
For example, in the competition bill, Bill C-2, the government is proposing to give highly discretionary powers to the Restrictive Trade Practices Commission. It is proposing to lay out certain procedures against which there is no right of appeal. In short, I suggest the government is proposing to put much of Canadian business through an unnecessary amount of red tape. Yet in the bill before us now, the government is taking great credit-and I am pleased that it is-for trying to streamline the legislation and to iron out some of the Victorian provisions, as I believe the hon. member calls them, in the existing Dominion companies legislation. Again, I hope the minister or his deputy will explain what appears to be an inconsistency of approach to the business sector of Canada.
Canadian Business Corporations Act
On the same point, I am also disturbed by the continual evidence we have of how out of touch is the government with reality. This bill is really a catch-up bill; it is doing in 1974 what perhaps could have been done five years ago. The hon. member stated that a committee was working on this problem in 1966. It is interesting to note that in Ontario a committee was sitting on it in 1965, and that committee was able to produce legislation by 1970. Yet here we are, in 1974, dealing with a bill which is largely modelled on the Ontario bill.
I do not sense that the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mr. Ouellet), the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Gillespie), the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner), the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), or any responsible cabinet minister in this government really understand the position Canadian business is in at the present time. Why should we accept as an inevitable fact that there is only one Canadian company at the present time among the 200 largest corporations in the world? Canada, the sixth strongest nation of the world, should encourage and create a business climate that ensures greater participation in the international and multinational corporate world. But I suggest the government is so narrow and provincial in outlook that it is unable to understand our modern-day industrial business world.
It is the government's lack of understanding that is placing Canada in a secondary position so far as business activity throughout the world is concerned. Expressed in another way, our largest corporation ranks only 155th in terms of world corporations. That largest corporation incidentally is one which most would not assume to be a powerful Canadian company. I refer to Alcan Aluminum.
I touch on this because I believe the government, in its anxiety to try to convince the Canadian people that they are relatively well off, is ignoring the hard fact that, for example, in respect of trade we are going into a spiralling increase of trade deficits so far as manufactured products are concerned. In the year 1972 our total fabricated and end product deficit was $1.5 billion. In 1973 it was $2.2 billion, and in the first six months of this year it was $2 billion.
The only way we in this country have been able to right this imbalance is by selling off our resources and our primary products. The Canadian people must be told how we are financing ourselves in the world market at the present time. It is not through ingenuity or through expansion of the manufacturing and business sector, but simply through a substantial deficit, paying for it through the sale of merchandise such as raw materials, iron ore and so on, into the world market. Surely this is something which must be dealt with by the government in a more satisfactory way.
Touching again on that question I notice in the background papers that the parliamentary secretary today has taken credit for what the government feels is a strong stance on foreign ownership in this country. In this bill it is proposed that a majority of the directors of a corporation be Canadian residents. I do not object to that. I am pleased the earlier provision has been changed. I would

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Canadian Business Corporations Act point out, however, that the question of foreign ownership in this country should perhaps be studied in more depth.
A study of the Canadian and the United States economies shows rather startling figures. For example, in the years 1968 to 1973 in Canada the average corporation tax paid was 36.3 per cent. In the United States it was 45.1 per cent. But interestingly enough in the same period 9 per cent of the total corporate profit in Canada was paid to non-residents. In the United States zero per cent was paid to non-residents.
The amount paid to non-residents in that period by Canadian companies was exactly equal to the tax differential between Canada and the United States. The net result was that both countries had retained earnings that were very close-54.7 per cent in Canada as against 54.9 per cent in the United States. But here we find in the case of Canada only 9.7 per cent was paid to our residents, whereas in the United States 27.8 per cent was paid to its residents. The net result was that 45 per cent of the net profits of Canadian companies were held in undistributed form, while in the United States 27.6 per cent was the comparable figure. I suggest the government has not dealt either domestically or on an international basis with the hard fact that a tremendous amount of Canadian earnings simply are being re-invested without distribution to Canadian shareholders.
The net result is that we have an expansion of assets within a corporation without benefit being felt by shareholders. In Europe, as many members of this House know, this matter is being dealt with. Various innovative types of legislative matters are going through European parliaments. Recently one went through the German House. An attempt is being made to try to make sure there is more asset participation by shareholders and the general public with regard to corporate activity. I suggest this House might well consider that. How can we ensure that the people, be they workers or Canadian citizens generally, benefit more from the prosperity of many of our corporations in dealing with the question of dividend pay-out?
I find the most startling figures when we compare what is happening in Canada with what is happening in respect of non-residents. In the years 1956 to 1969 the average dividend paid to Canadian residents by Canadian corporations was 4.87 per cent. From 1969 to 1973-and I remind the House that in those years we had the present administration-the rate of dividends paid to Canadian residents was minus 2.07 per cent. In those years there were less real dividends paid to Canadian residents than in previous years.
Let us look at what happened in respect of non-residents. In the 1956 to 1969 period the average dividend paid was 2.51 per cent, but in the 1969 to 1973 period the figure was 4.61 per cent. What a contrast! I believe we must ask why the dividend pay-out to non-residents should increase in real terms while the dividend pay-out to Canadians decreased. These are the more basic things I feel the government should be dealing with now.
If the government feels now in 1974 that it wants to do a catching up job in an administrative sense, I can accept that, but I believe we should always remind the government that there are things more important than simply bringing in a new Canadian business corporations act. I

would hope that at the committee stage we will have ample opportunity to review this bill. I believe in the free enterprise system. I believe that with less confrontation on the part of government business can continue to produce.
Our commercial system has produced the wealthiest civilization man has ever known, and I believe no legislature should continually tamper with that system unless it knows it is going to better it. I suggest there is no alternative system such as socialism, state-ism, or call it what you may, that will produce or allow us to prosper and retain democracy. The two just will not work. This is why I believe it behooves the government not only to pass this type of legislation but to get down to the basic problems that are facing Canadian business at the present time, so that business can get on with doing the job, raise the level of real income in this country, and make us more competitive throughout the world. Canada should not be on the bottom list of the big corporations of the world. We should be number one, and with proper federal government direction this nation can be number one in the world.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, I rise to make the opening remarks on behalf of my party on this bill not because I am an expert in this field-I must be frank-but because the bill is being discussed on a Friday afternoon when some of our members, who have a little more knowledge of the subject than I, have other commitments.
However, as I listened to the parliamentary secretary explain the purposes of the bill and some of the provisions, I could not help but wonder why it took so long to prepare such a large and long bill to deal with what I consider, having listened to him, to be relatively unimportant matters which may be of consequence to shareholders of corporations, and there are some several hundred thousand of those, but which will in fact not give them much more power than they have had until now, and will have very little of any real value for the 99 per cent of the Canadian people who do not now own, nor are they likely ever to own shares in any Canadian corporation.
It is not often that I agree with the views of the hon. member for York-Simcoe (Mr. Stevens), who just spoke on behalf of the Official Opposition, but I do agree with him when he says that this bill cannot be considered in isolation, that it must be considered together with the government's proposed legislation to deal with competition, legislation on foreign ownership, the proposed antiprofiteering legislation, past budgets, and the budget for this year which we will get in some ten days. All the legislation which we have had, and which the government proposes to bring in, such as its tax policy, is the foundation which will affect the lives of ordinary Canadian people.
When I look at what the government has done and what it proposes to do, I realize how little this bill will mean to the Canadian people. Yet we live in a society in which corporations, particularly the large ones, of which there are perhaps 100 in Canada, have fantastic powers because of their assets and because of their control of various facets of Canadian society, control which gives them the
November 8, 1974

life and death power to create jobs, to destroy jobs, to develop provinces or to pull out of them, to develop or not to develop the Arctic, to develop or not to develop the Atlantic provinces.
If you look at some of these corporations such as General Motors, Imperial Oil, CPR with its subsidiaries, or International Nickel, you see corporations which have assets and which are involved in annual financial transactions which, in some cases, bring them profits bigger than those of any Canadian province. Indeed, in many cases the profits are bigger than those of most countries in the world today.


Mr. Fraser:: Provinces are not supposed to be making a profit.


David Orlikow: So the decisions of these corporations are important to each Canadian, whether or not he is a direct shareholder in a corporation. Yet despite that we have here a bill which, at its best, tidies up the legislation which we have had and which was passed originally, as the parliamentary secretary said, in 1934, which was itself based on British company legislation enacted in 1929, almost 50 years ago.
To a large extent this bill is based on a study done for the government by R. W. V. Dickerson, a lawyer in Vancouver. If members look at that study they will see that Mr. Dickerson makes it clear that he does not propose any fundamental change in the rights, powers or responsibilities of corporations. In his report Mr. Dickerson accepts that corporations will continue essentially as the private property of the shareholders, and that the bill can only deal with the rights of the corporation and the rights of its owners and shareholders. There is no reference in the bill, nor was there in Mr. Dickerson's study, to the responsibilities of a corporation to society.
Mr. Dickerson says in his study:
A Corporations Act will not solve problems of industrial relations, nor can the many vexing problems of taxation be cured through some alchemy in the corporation law. We have also resisted the idea that corporation law as such has anything to do with the question of foreign investment, control of the economy, and Canadian sovereignty.
The government has accepted that view of Mr. Dickerson and I could not argue with it too much if we had, along with laws dealing with corporations, tax laws or competition laws which would really set forth the feelings of the people of Canada through their government, as to the right of a corporation to make profits. And I do not question that right so long as we have a system in our society according to which a large majority of the economy is operated through free enterprise, through corporations, large and small.
I do not see in the foreseeable future any real changes in that system, regardless of what government is in office, either provincially or federally. Free private enterprise in the foreseeable future in Canada will continue to play a major role in the lives of all Canadians. It is surely in the light of what is happening in the world today that the people of this country, and indeed of every country, have a right to expect that corporations will consider their needs, particularly the large corporations.
We are living in difficult times. We see shortages of food. A world food conference is taking place right now.
Canadian Business Corporations Act There are shortages of fuel. Every person in the world has been affected and will be markedly affected in the next ten to twenty years at least by the fourfold increase in the price of oil exported by the oil producing countries of the world.
I am not now discussing whether the increase in price was justified entirely or in part. The point is that we have had the increase and the people of the industrialized affluent world, and the people of the have not nations, will feel the effects. Prices are going up, up, up. As they have gone up, so have profits. It may be that price increases were necessary for the basic commodities used by the whole world, or that they can be partly justified. As far as I can see, however, there is no government mechanism in Canada to examine this question. But we do know that the percentage of the gross national product which went to profits in the last year was higher than ever before. Last year, Mr. Speaker, 13.5 per cent of the gross national product went to corporation profits.
I do not believe that all the price increases we have been subjected to in the past two or three years have been justified. Corporation profits are at an all time high. Prices are not based on increases in the cost of labour, although that is a factor, nor on increases in the cost of raw materials, although that is also a factor, but are based almost exclusively on the judgment of the corporations of what the traffic will bear.
There is no real competition for the major commodities used by the large corporations. I do not think anyone would suggest that the price of cars which Canadians buy is set by corporations competing for the goodwill of customers. It is no secret that General Motors sets the price for cars, and the other automobile corporations follow suit. It is no secret that Imperial Oil, which is part of the giant multinational conglomerate Exxon Corporation, sets the price of gas in Canada.
A sharp increase in the price of gas in Nova Scotia a few months ago prompted the provincial Liberal government to set up an inquiry. A representative of Imperial Oil appeared and said that their price was set by world factors, not by the cost of oil laid down in Nova Scotia, Mr. Speaker, but by what the world pattern suggested they could charge.
I think we need to have a lot more say about what corporations are doing in this country, Mr. Speaker, and I do not believe this bill will help in that regard. One just needs to look at the corporation profits, published almost every day in the Montreal and Toronto newspapers, or in the newspapers of any other city in Canada. As an example take Ogilvy Flour Mills. If there is one area in which prices have gone up it is in food. For the three months ending July 31 this year Ogilvy profits were $2,035,000 compared to $1,144,000 for the same period last year. Madam Speaker, that is an increase of almost 100 per cent. It is any wonder the cost of food is increasing?
Steel is used in virtually every basic implement we make. Algoma Steel profits for the period reported in 1974 were $39,910,000 compared to $18,043,000 for the same period in 1973, an increase of more than 100 per cent. Cominco profits went up to over $50 million in 1974 com-

November 8, 1974
Canadian Business Corporations Act pared to less than $20 million in 1973. That is also substantially more than a 100 per cent increase. These are the kind of profits shown by large corporations form one end of the country to the other.
Will the bill before us do anything about that situation, Madam Speaker? I do not think so. It will not protect the Canadian consumer at all. Will it do anything for Canadian shareholders? In this respect I think it would be interesting to look at an article which appeared in the Montreal Gazette on July 31. It was written by a former Liberal cabinet minister, Eric Kierans, and he was replying to a full page advertisement which had been inserted in many Canadian newspapers by the Mining Association of Canada entitled, "Does Anybody Out There Give a Damn if the Mining Industry is Taxed to Death"?
Mr. Kierans' article bore the headline, "Shed no Tears for the Canadian Mining Industry", and showed, among other things, how little concern Canadian corporate management has for the Canadian shareholder. I wish I had time to put the whole article on the record. Mr. Kierans is no flaming radical, no socialist. Before he entered politics he was president of the Montreal Stock Exchange so he knows a good deal about Canadian corporations, and he cares about their shareholders.
Mr. Kierans, by illustrating actual cases, shows that Canadian corporations are not operated for the benefit of Canadians or company shareholders; they are operated to increase the power of management and directors, at the expense of the shareholders. Certainly their activities are not conducted in the interests of the Canadian people.
Mr. Kierans illustrates his point by referring to two large and powerful Canadian corporations, Inco and Noranda. According to Mr. Kierans the profits of International Nickel this year after taxes will be better than $300 million. The company will have on hand, because of accelerated depreciation allowances, depletion allowances, exaggerated exploration and development expenses, and the like, which governments allow, another $200 million in extra cash. Mr. Kierans says that in the good old days, when there was real competition-if ever there was such a time-there would have been a horde of competitors in the field. Profits would have been quickly cut to ribbons. Prices would have fallen and consumers would get a break. But that did not happen in this case because Inco had a virtual monopoly. There was a nickel shortage in the world and Inco did not need to cut prices.
Mr. Kierans said the company could have passed on a substantial part of its $300 million profit to shareholders. But, he said, that is the last thing which would occur to Inco management, because shareholders might spend the money foolishly. They might buy clothing, or use it for the down payment on a house, or try to stay even with inflation. So, Inco did not intend to give this money to shareholders as dividends. Inco shareholders have received about a 5 per cent return on investment, less than they would get if they invested their money in federal or provincial bonds, or put it in the bank on short-term deposits.
What did Inco do? It purchased an American company, whose stock was then valued at $105 million, for approxi-

mately $230 million. Mr. Kierans calculates that on this $230 million Inco can expect dividends ranging from $4 million to $7 million, representing a return on capital of between 2 per cent and 3 per cent. Clearly that purchase did not increase productivity. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) keeps saying that to beat inflation we must increase productivity. That Inco purchase did not increase productivity in Canada or the United States. It merely increased the power of management and directors, and was not of benefit to the people of Canada or company shareholders.
Mr. Kierans also referred to Noranda. That company, far from being taxed to death as the Mining Association claims, this year has run up profits which are 60 per cent better than they were in 1973, when they were at an all-time high. Noranda invested $63 million of those profits in other companies and increased its working capital by another $61 million. The president of Noranda rejected the suggestion that the company should pay out, as customary, 50 per cent of its earnings in dividends. He said it made no sense to do this in view of the tremendously increased amounts of money needed for capital development in the mining industry.
Mr. Kierans points out that investors, be they individuals, pension funds, insurance companies or trust companies, are not foolish. If corporations are not willing to pay dividends, investors see no sense in investing money. The result is that although corporation profits are at an alltime high, share prices have come down. He was referring not only to International Nickel and Noranda but to most other corporations as well.
Mr. Kierans says, and I agree, that corporations are not interested in the welfare of the people of Canada or in the welfare of their own shareholders. As I said earlier, Mr. Kierans is not a radical, is not a socialist, is not one who thinks Canadian corporations should be taken over by the state and put under public ownership.
What does he think should happen to the mining companies and other corporations of this country? He says:
It is high time that the government prevented takeovers and mergers and gave these giants three choices-reduce prices, increase dividends to shareholders, or pay taxes on the excess profits. Perhaps a combination of all three.
I ask members: has any of this happened? Prices have not been reduced; they are going up. Dividends have gone down, if not in actual dollar terms then in percentage of profits. The percentage of profits now paid out as dividends is much smaller than the percentage previously paid out, and the rest is used for exploration and for moving into fields in which a company has not previously been engaged. This applies not only to Noranda and Inco, but to Canadian Pacific and other large corporations in Canada.
Mr. Kierans also said:
... if the government really wanted to reduce inflation, there would be no better time than the present to cut tariffs by 25 per cent across the board. Nothing else would do as much to put pressure on prices, wages, and profits by enforcing efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness, qualities that we are going to need in the coming struggle for declining markets.
We go through the motions. We pay lip service to GATT, but the government has made no serious effort to cut tariffs, to make Canadian corporations more efficient and
November 8, 1974

force them to compete with United States or Japanese corporations and so bring prices down for the ultimate benefit of Canadians.
According to Mr. Kierans, Inco's profits after taxes in 1972 were $110 million, and in 1973 $227 million. This year they will exceed $300 million after taxes. The profits of Noranda, after taxes, in 1972, were $64 million. In 1973 they were $121 million. This year they will approach $200 million after taxes.
I use the argument which Mr. Kierans made in his article, and made while he was a member of this House. I cannot say for a moment that I have made it as effectively as Mr. Kierans, but I use it because it illustrates so well that in bringing forward this and other legislation it is really not the intention of the government to deal in a fundamental way with the power and growing stranglehold which the large corporations have on the life of this country.
We should look at what is being done in other countries. We should look at what the Norwegian government is proposing to do, and has already done, with regard to bringing in North Sea oil which is under the control of Norway, we should look at what the British government proposes to do about North Sea oil which is in the area controlled by Great Britain. These proposals have received the encouragement and endorsation of journals such as the Manchester Guardian which is not a supporter of the labour government. Those journals are not organs of socialist opinions.
Governments must play an increasingly dominant role in the lives of people. They must put on more controls and restraints, and plan more fields of life which affect every citizen.
If we compare the steps other countries have taken with the puny hesitant steps this government proposed in other legislation and is proposing in this bill, we see how little the government is prepared to deal with the facts of life and the tremendous problems which the world faces in 1974, and is likely to face until the year 2000.
The members of the New Democratic Party do not believe this bill does anything except nibble at the edges of one of the fundamental problems of the country, how to meet the needs of the world, and how to bring about the organization of industry and business, whether publicly or privately controlled, so that it begins to satisfy the requirements of the people of Canada. This and other legislation which the government has brought in, or proposes to bring in, does very little to meet the needs of the Canadian people.
Having said that, I say that to the extent it moves in the right direction, even though it is probably inches compared to the miles it ought to move, we will support it. We are prepared to let this bill pass second reading and go to committee where we can study it in detail. We will try to improve it there. We will be making certain proposals so that the bill will include some of the things it does not now have in it.
We have no desire to hold up this bill. We will not try to do that. However, we do not believe the bill does the job
Canadian Business Corporations Act which is required. It does not meet the needs of the people of this country. Therefore we are skeptical about the value which this bill will provide for the people of Canada.


Mr. Bill Kempling (Halton-Wentworth):: Madam
Speaker, I believe there is agreement to let this bill pass at four o'clock, and for Your Honour's guidance I will conclude my remarks a few minutes before that, so the question may be put.
In many ways I welcome this bill. It is a clean sweep approach that should have been taken five or even 10 years ago. It closely follows legislation enacted in the province of Ontario.
I commend the government for finally getting around to the point of bringing in a new corporations act. I suppose it can be said in somewhat general terms that the cornerstone of commerce in Canada is a sound and clear corporations act, a workable combines act, an understandable tax act, a bank act, and supporting legislation that will complement the commercial trade structure in this country.
In this legislation we have the makings of a sound corporations act. When we get it to committee we will certainly want to study it in detail. That is where a bill of this nature should be studied.
In my remarks I will speak in a rather general way about the bill and business, leaving the details and nitpicking for committee, where I assume we will hear witnesses from various segments of commerce indicating any inequities they may see in the bill. I know that hindsight is great. We all have 20/20 vision when we look back. However, I cannot help but reflect that had we enacted this bill five years ago we might have a somewhat different condition in this country today as it applies to business.
A great deal of comment has been made in the past 18 to 24 months about the business community. I think it can be fairly said that business has been under attack for several months. Comments have been made about ripoffs, price fixing and inside trading. There have been other comments that are derogatory and detrimental to the business community.
I think it is a fair comment to say that some of those remarks are well-founded. When talking about business, corporations and how they act, the problem is that we tend to encompass everyone in those terms. Of course all business is not ripping off the general public, as is believed and promoted by my colleagues to my far left. No doubt there has been inside trading going on in respect of shares and the sale of shares, as well as divulging inside privileged information that should not have been given. We certainly know that price fixing exists.
But I think that for the most part the business community acts responsibly and is trying, under very hard conditions, to conduct business fairly as far as consumers are concerned while at the same time ensuring, of course, that shareholders receive a due return for their investment. We are where we are today because of what we loosely call the free enterprise system, and I believe that if we should ever get away from what we call the profit motive our position would be very serious indeed.

November 8, 1974
Canadian Business Corporations Act
The bill before us is probably the first step to restoring some confidence in business in general. We see the stock market at a very low ebb; many of our corporations are going to the wall as a result of difficulty in raising money to carry on their operations. Traditionally they operated through the stock market. Today many of them find that their bonds and debentures are not saleable. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) tells us that the major key to levelling off inflation lies in increasing supply. We may or may not agree with this theory, but that is his point. Well, we find that in trying to raise funds to continue expansion in their operations the business community have encountered severe difficulties. Some have raised prices because there is a continual cycle of price increases going on, and they are using the retained profit to finance their own expansion.
One of the best ways to overcome a good deal of the inflation in the country would probably be to bring back confidence in the stock market so that shares will be traded again. This would allow the companies to return to their usual practice of asking for a reasonable return on their investments so that they might pay shareholders in return for the risk they have taken. This bill is a first, though limited step toward clearing up the business climate.
As my hon. friend said, the government has followed Ontario's lead. I note that British Columbia has put a new corporations act on its statute books in the last few years, and I hope other provinces will follow the example of Ontario and the federal government by enacting corporations legislation which will ensure a degree of uniformity across Canada. As hon. members realize, Canada is a difficult country in which to do business because of the vast distances between major centres; there is a tendency for a great deal of the commerce to congregate in four or five areas. This results in regional disparity. If we could promote the establishment of uniform corporations legislation across the country it would go a long way toward improving business conditions in Canada generally, and thus help to restore confidence among investors.
While the bill is in committee we might consider whether or not it provides for the exercise of any effective control over branch plant operations. From my own study of the measure so far, I cannot see that it does. However, we may find that some guidelines are set out on the basis of which branch plants can operate. This would not only encourage such firms to stay here; it would be good for the people of Canada as well as for the plants themselves. Generally, as I have said, the businessman is a straightforward, honest guy. Most of them are not nitpicking lawyers-


Some hon. Members:: Oh!


William James Kempling: I see there are a lot of lawyers here this afternoon. Businessmen appreciate legislation which they can understand without the help of expensive advice, and I congratulate the draftsmen for putting some clear wording in this measure, wording which the average man can understand. If the Income Tax Act and the competition legislation could be drafted in the same way, businessmen would probably be able to surge ahead with greater speed.

I shall resume my seat, now, in order that the question may be put, Madam Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: Order. Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. Members:: Question.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.


Mr. T. Lefebvre (Pontiac):: Madam Speaker, I request the unanimous consent of the House in order to announce, on behalf of the government, the establishment of a special committee to review the Finkelman report.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: Is this agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Thomas Lefebvre: Then I move:
That the Members of this House to serve on the special Joint Committee on Employer-Employee Relations in the Public Service be Messrs. Alexander, Baker (Grenville-Carleton), Blais, Clermont, Dau-dlin, Dinsdale, Dionne (Kamouraska), Fairweather, Forrestall, Francis, Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier), Herbert, Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre) and O'Connell; and that a message be sent to the Senate to acquaint Their Honours thereof.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: It being four o'clock, the House will now proceed to private members' business as listed, on today's order paper, namely, notices of motions, public bills, private bills.


Thomas Lefebvre: Madam Speaker, I think there would be general agreement to call private member's Notice of Motion No. 4 standing in the name of the hon. member for St. John's West.


Walter David Baker: There is certainly no objection to calling item No. 4, but I notice that according to the order paper items Nos. 2 and 3 were allowed to stand and retain their position by unanimous consent. I presume this arrangement will continue and that they will not lose their places on the order paper.


Thomas Lefebvre: That is agreed.
November 8, 1974



PRIVATE MEMBERS' MOTIONS


Walter C. Carter: That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of reducing the present passenger-car fare and freight rate structure of the North Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Port-aux-Basques and Argentia, Newfoundland ferry service to better conform with the cost of travelling a comparable distance on the trans-Canada highway system as a more economic link between the Province of Newfoundland and the mainland of Canada.
He said: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity of presenting this motion; it is the second time this year that I have had the pleasure of doing so. The first time was on April 8 of this year, when we debated the motion, but unfortunately were not permitted to vote on it. Consequently it dies on the order paper.
The subject matter of the motion is not new to this chamber. I have raised it on numerous occasions, the first time being on November 1, 1968, during my maiden speech. So you see, Madam Speaker, if persistence and determination are worth anything I think the motion should be allowed to come to a vote this afternoon. I have enough confidence in my colleagues to say that, having read the motion and listened to my speech and to others that will be made on this matter in the next few minutes, I am sure they will see things our way and will support the motion.
The ferry service to which I make reference is the only link between Newfoundland and the Canadian mainland except, of course, that link provided by the two air lines operating in and out of the province. Surely, then, this House must appreciate the importance of my motion, because the 90 miles stretch of water separating our island province from the rest of Canada is to us Newfoundlanders what the trans-Canada highway is to Canadians living in other parts of Canada. I contend that so far as passenger car and freight rate service are concerned we should not be treated any differently from people living in other parts of the country.
I might add, too, that this debate is rather timely because it was only yesterday that the Food Prices Review Board presented a report on food prices in Newfoundland, showing that Newfoundlanders are paying in certain areas as much as 20 per cent more for their food than is paid by their fellow Canadians. The findings of the Food Prices Review Board indicate that transportation is one of the major contributing factors to the high cost of food, services and other commodities in our province.
In its report the Food Prices Review Board makes certain recommendations. A number of its recommendations include improvements to the gulf ferry service. These improvements are necessary, in the opinion of the members of the Food Prices Review Board, in order to ensure a faster, more efficient and I presume cheaper transportation and freight service across the gulf separating North Sydney, on the mainland of Canada, from Newfoundland.
Newfoundland Ferry Service
It is rather ironic, Madam Speaker, that today we hear members of the government talking about equal opportunities and equal rights in something as uneconomically measurable as language and as abstract as the Canadian identity. Is it not equally important that people should have equal opportunity to be accessible one to another? As the situation now exists in my province-I presume the same situation pretty well exists in other parts of Canada, including Prince Edward Island and the western end of the country-people are being denied the right of accessibility to fellow Canadians.
In 1969 or 1970 the Canadian National Railways, with the concurrence of the Canadian Transportation Commission, and with the full knowledge and consent of the Canadian government, abolished Newfoundland's rail passenger service. Since that time we have seen Canadian National take other action which has had the effect of reducing its presence in our province. This, along with the action taken by the federal government in moving some of its offices out of the province into the maritime region, leads one to believe that we are being reduced to colonial status. I do not think Newfoundlanders joined confederation in 1949 to become a colony of Canada. We were a colony of Britain for a large number of years, but I do not think we want to continue now as a colony of this country.
Newfoundland has the dubious distinction of having the highest cost of living of any province in Canada, the highest rate of unemployment, the lowest per capita income, the highest cost of shelter and, I believe, the highest cost of transportation. I do not have the figures before me, but I believe I am safe in saying that the cost of transportation in our province-the cost of buying, operating and maintaining a motor vehicle-is from 12 to 15 per cent higher than it is in other parts of Canada.
This is why I believe it is essential that the government take the necessary action to remove this inequity and to make the people of Newfoundland more accessible to their fellow Canadians. This can be done by reducing the cost of travelling on the ferry, the cost of transporting a car and family across 90 miles of water separating Newfoundland from the rest of Canada. I contend that the fare structure should be reduced to make it consistent with the cost of travelling a comparable distance along any part of the trans-Canada highway.
I do not think we are being unreasonable in asking for this. I believe that if confederation is to be meaningful to the people who live on the island provinces, certainly if it is to be meaningful to us, then the Canadian government has a very serious moral and legal obligation to provide us with a decent, modern and efficient passenger transportation service.
I am not going to talk for long, Madam Speaker, because I want this motion to come to a vote today. I realize that if I take up too much time with my remarks, and since other members also wish to speak, the motion could very well be talked out. I am hoping that by cutting my remarks short members on the other side will do likewise, and that the motion will be brought to a vote before five o'clock. I hope all members will see fit to support it. I am sure that the people of Newfoundland, as well as the people of Prince Edward Island and other parts of Canada where ferry services are essential, will be very thankful to this House

November 8, 1974
Newfoundland Ferry Service
and to the government if they see fit to reduce the fares as I have suggested, bringing them in line with the cost to other Canadians of travelling a similar distance.


Mr. Maurice A. Dionne (Northumberland-Miramichi):: Madam Speaker, I agree with the sentiments expressed in this motion and I realize the inadequacy of the kind of transportation to which the hon. member refers. It surely must be recognized by all members of parliament that transportation has always been, and still is, a major concern of all the Atlantic provinces. We lag far behind the rest of the country, the far north excepted, in all forms of transportation-that is, air, highway, rail and water.
Thanks to the recognition of this problem by the federal government, the Atlantic provinces now have their sections of the trans-Canada highway. But this is only one route and it is obvious that these small provinces with small populations, and an even smaller industrial base, cannot build and maintain the kind of arterial highways which modern transportation systems require.
Hence the federal government will have to continue to assist, through such financial arrangements, the continued development of a modern system of highways in Atlantic Canada. The national railway, the CNR, seems to be and has been for years on a deliberate course of making rail transport as expensive and as difficult as possible. Nowadays it may cost more to send a single package by CN than the contents thereof are worth. And unless the article has a very long life span it will be obsolete, rotten, or dead, before it reaches its destination. If indeed it escapes all the aforementioned fates, it is liable to be bent, spindled or mutilated beyond recognition.
I might point out that very often by CN rail it takes freight at least two weeks to travel from Montreal to northeastern New Brunswick. A good deal of this delay is due to inefficiency and over-haul, whereby cargo is hauled beyond its destination, stored in a warehouse, and then hauled back again.
In the field of passenger service the railways have had even greater success in their aims and objectives than in freight and express. The trains normally run late; they are uncomfortable and slow. The officials are often indifferent or even discourteous, and unless one is a millionaire it is necessary to carry one's lunch along. Maintenance is inadequate, both on the roadbed and the rails, judging from the frequent derailments experienced in Atlantic Canada.
Air service as well leaves a great deal to be desired. The national carrier obviously gives thought to Atlantic Canada only as an afterthought. The service of the regional carrier, Eastern Provincial Airways, is much, much more personalized service than the national carrier, but its scheduling requires a great deal more thought and imagination. It does little good to substitute a slow daily plane for an occasional fast one that comes in only occasionally.
You, may well ask Madam Speaker, what all this has to do with the motion we are now discussing. The answer, of course, is that I am trying to put this problem in context vis-a-vis the entire problem of transportation in Atlantic Canada.

Obviously the most unsatisfactory form of transportation by its very nature is ferry service. But the government of Canada has invested a great deal in providing better ferry service between Newfoundland and the mainland, and between Prince Edward Island and the mainland. Having said that, I sympathize with the sentiments behind this motion. I must ask, however, whether its implementation would not have the effect of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
Can one logically expect, in view of the present high subsidies, to lower fares substantially and at the same time increase service? I would suggest, however, that a look should be taken at the rate structure. It might be well to base the charge on a flat rate for a car and all of its occupants, so that families will not be penalized unduly. Does it cost more to transport a family of six than a family of four? In conclusion, Madam Speaker, I cannot support this motion because its net effect would be to create yet another disparity in Atlantic Canada.


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: Madam Speaker, I am delighted to support the motion of my colleague, the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Carter), who has presented an excellent case. He is indeed an excellent member. He is a diligent, thoughtful and far-seeing member of this place. He has, with his usual realism and precision, zeroed in upon one of the greatest issues which troubles our region, and indeed our nation because the land is not prosperous if any region thereof is lacking in prosperity. He is dealing with an issue of national importance.
It is appropriate that he and I should be discussing it because, in a sense, we are both from islands, although I think Prince Edward Island is the only island province because the great Labrador mainland is part of the province to which my colleague belongs. In another way I suppose that might be said because in my province, in the constituency which I represent, Canada began. The 1864 cradle of Confederation conference was localed in Charlottetown, and Newfoundland so far is where Confederation has ended.
I am not saying that Confederation with Newfoundland brought the thing to an end, but this is the last expansion so far, unless the Turks and Caicos Islands join us, and other adventurous developments in the south take place in God's good time. It is tremendously important that we deal with transportation as our ancestors in this chamber from the maritimes have had to do, because by a fine, enlightened, considerate, sensitive policy the national government can do something to offset the economic imbalances which came upon our region because of Confederation.
In the days before there was the great union in the 1860's the people in my part of Canada and the people in Newfoundland were well located in terms of the economic factors of importance. They were in a good position for trade. The Atlantic was a corridor of commerce and their location, their marine centred economy and their initiative brought for them a degree of prosperity which they have never attained since, relative to other parts of North America.
November 8, 1974

Now, their location on the seagirt shore of the eastern part of Canada is not an advantage. It is often a disadvantage. As the hon. member for St. John's West says, it seems that, being the tag end of the transportation line, things cost more in our provinces. All the economic indices find us at the bottom. I refer to such things as unemployment and high wages. But in things that should be lower, such as the cost of living we are at the top. Sometimes Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland have competed in those two dreary and soul-destroying economic indices, the high cost of living and the low rate of wages. So, transportation aid must be used as an amelioration for their problems. Freight rate increases in recent years have had the opposite effect.
The kind of thing the member has suggested in this motion would be of some help to our people. I am amazed that the government supporter who just sat down has worked out that it would be unhelpful for our provinces and the people of Canada if there were lower rates on the ferries connecting the islands with the mainland.
Surely it was the belief of those who formed Confederation that the joining groups would share economic advantages and economic disadvantages. National policies are made to take into consideration regional disparities. How logical, how reasonable, and how sensible is it to say that there will be free interprovincial movement unless you happen to live in Prince Edward Island or Newfoundland?
No one has to pay $5 to go from Ontario to Quebec. There is no collecting agency on the border of Manitoba and Saskatchewan soaking those people $5 or $10 every time they go to the other province. But try getting off Prince Edward Island without paying for it, try getting off Newfoundland without paying for it, or try getting on.


An hon. Member:: How about Vancouver?


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: The hon. member mentions Vancouver. I will not talk about intra provincial transportation but interprovincial.
This is the iniquity. This is the thing that should be faced. Indeed, instead of having the presumption to increase the cost of taking automobiles and people from province to province, from our island to the mainland and back, a move should be taken to abolish such tolls. The people of Charlottetown, the people of St. John's, the people of Port aux Basques, should just as truly benefit from the trans-Canada highway as those who live in those provinces which do not have the good fortune to be islands.
However, I do not want to get into the area of psychic satisfaction and psychic income, because we are often told in our part of the country that we do not really need these hard and important economic gains because life is so beautiful in the psychic sense. All of that is true. These are two beautiful provinces that we are discussing and I cherish them both, particularly the one of my birth. But I do not find that the Bank of Nova Scotia in Charlottetown is any more susceptible to being paid in psychic funds that its branches in Ontario or Quebec.
Newfoundland Ferry Service
In other words, the people in the beautiful part of the land have also to compete in the hard currencies of today's real world, and I believe that in zeroing in on one of the deterrents to the prosperous self expansion of our own economy, namely transportation, my colleague, the hon. member for St. John's West, has struck the right note. He struck it clearly and strongly, and I hope that my friend, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport (Mr. Mclsaac), who himself is an islander and therefore is one step ahead in the comprehension of all these problems, will relate it to the minister, and that before too long we will have a real look at these bottlenecks. Indeed, it is bad enough to give us a bottleneck, but to make us pay for it in increasingly heavy doses is, in the vernacular which I rarely use, laying it on a bit thick.
So I am enthusiastically in support of this motion, and I commend it to the government. I know it is not interested in such political things at this stage of the game, the last election being so near behind and the next one so far ahead, but if it wants to win friends and influence people in our part of the country, even though that may be disastrous to some of us personally, I would suggest that the very first recipe for it to learn and to put into effect would be to take some curative action on our transportation problems, one of which was so eloquently described by my colleague today.


Donald W. Munro: Madam Speaker, I rise to add a few words of support for this motion which was presented by my colleague and so eloquently supported by my other colleague on this side of the House. One of the reasons is that I would find it unfortunate if the first apologist for the government should feel he can go off for the weekend now that the government which he supports is the best of all possible governments, and has done everything possible for people in all parts of this country.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. To begin with, I am not an apologist for the government, and secondly, I have never suggested that we have the best of all possible worlds. If the hon. member had listened, he would have known that I enumerated the numerous problems with which we have to deal. My point was that this motion does not deal with them but simply creates another disparity.


Donald W. Munro: I accept the reprimand, it being Friday afternoon. But I think he should be reminded, at least once again this week, because we have been reminding the government side of it, that there are areas in this country which have been neglected. It is being done now. Someone mentioned the west coast a few minutes ago and the trans-Canada highway. Some people in this chamber may not realize that mile zero on the trans-Canada highway is in the riding of my colleague, the hon. member for Victoria (Mr. McKinnon), and that it passes through my riding on its way to Nanaimo.
Then there is a great gap in this magnificent trans Canada highway which joins the island on the west coast to the island on the east coast. Mile zero is on the west coast. But the gap there has to be filled by a ferry. Now, the construction of that ferry from the west to the east coast was done with funds provided in part by the prov-

November 8, 1974
Newfoundland Ferry Service
ince through which it passed. That gap is not being filled with funds from the federal government. This is the thrust of the small contribution that I wanted to make.
I think that one of my colleagues the other day raised the question in the House as to why there was no support for the ferry that joins Vancouver Island to the mainland, to which the reply was that the government cannot support transportation within the province. Unfortunately this is belied by some of the facts that have been brought to my attention.
There is support given in postal services on the east coast. There is also a ferry service, the construction costs for which were provided by a federal government grant to the province of Ontario even though it was from one point in Ontario to another point in the same province. So I do not want to have that sort of reply stand on the record unchallenged. There is a gap in the trans-Canada highway the filling of which has not been supported by this government, and 1 feel that it should be mentioned this afternoon in support of the motion before us.


James Sydney Clark Fleming: Madam Speaker, I am always pleased, as the member representing a suburban Toronto constituency, when I can rise and speak with some measure of support for a proposal put forward by a colleague from the great province of Newfoundland. I am very pleased that within my own riding, if I can be political, there are a number of people who hail from his part of the country, and it will be a happy day when I will be able to investigate the "great homeland" that they talk about so often.
When I read the first part of the motion that:
-the government should consider the advisability of reducing the present passenger-car fare and freight rate structure of the North Sydney, Nova Scotia to Port aux Basques and Argentia, Newfoundland ferry service to better conform with the cost of travelling-
Up to the part in which the hon. member says that we should consider assisting them, I find that there might be merit in the proposal.
I am not an expert and have not done any deep investigation of what the subsidy level now is, but I have a few facts on it. I do believe it is reasonable to allow people to move freely and provide for them access back and forth from any part of our nation to another. I hope, later on in my comments, to point out that we do not need a water barrier of 90 miles to have difficulty communicating in transportation back and forth in Canada today.
Indeed, in southern Ontario there are examples of shorter distances than that, with hard firm land and no mountains in between, where people have difficulty commuting. They are in fact land-locked. I do not believe, as one hon. member mentioned, that there is significance in the fact that this 90 miles stretch is a borderline between provinces. It is not just a line on the map, but is a considerable boundary which isolates that province.
However, the motion loses much of its saleability when it says:
-to better conform with the cost of travelling a comparable distance on the trans-Canada highway system-

If it had simply said that fares should be reasonable on this 90 mile barrier it would have been better. I know there are subsidies, but perhaps they should be larger and the fares should be decreased. There are other instances in this country where there is no regular service, such as places in the far north, and there is as much difficulty there as between these two points in Newfoundland and the mainland, and where the costs are even greater. Those people are at a greater disadvantage but no one suggests that the air fare from Edmonton to some point in the Northwest Territories should be the price of the gas it would take for a motorcycle to go that distance overland. I am surprised at that comparative suggestion in the motion.
Although the price should be kept as reasonable as possible, Madam Speaker, still people must pay for service. One of my concerns about soaring medicare costs is that the federal government in forcing the provinces to join in a portable medicare program, encouraged a system where there is no requirement for a token payment for the services received. Sometimes this sort of thing doubles or triples the burden on the taxpayer because such services are taken advantage of, and in the end the people who need them are at a disadvantage because the doctors are so busy they cannot take care of everybody. In the same way I think there should be some requirement for the user to pay for transportation.
Considerable amounts of money are already being expended on transportation services, and particularly in the maritimes. The gulf service is not the only service provided on the east coast. The government provides ships and port facilities at no cost, between Prince Edward Island and the mainland. In fact there are seven ships operating between Prince Edward Island and the mainland, one between Yarmouth and Bar Harbour, and 20 others in service in that area. So there is a good deal of assistance; in fact millions of dollars in capital costs, and also help in offsetting operating costs on the route we are discussing today. Perhaps there should be more, but we should remember that the money we spend is the money of the Canadian taxpayer and there is only so much in the coffers.
One hon. member mentioned the many problems faced by the people of Newfoundland-the high unemployment rate, the high cost of transportation and the high cost of food. It should also be recognized by hon. members opposite, and I am sure it is, that the federal government has attempted to lend assistance to all parts of Canada that find themselves under economic duress. For instance, unemployment insurance aid in Newfoundland today has grown tremendously from what it was a few years ago, but there is only so much money and it must be spread in many directions.
In the last parliament I criticized the government because of the lack of an over-all transportation policy that would allow our large urban areas to relate to our rural areas, and allow people from all parts of the country to come and go easily. 1 am not happy that it costs more to fly from here to Vancouver or Newfoundland than it does to fly to other parts of the world at a greater distance, Madam Speaker.
November 8, 1974

I should like to point out some other dilemmas. There is a small town at the base of the Bruce Peninsula called Wiarton. It is only 20 miles from the relatively large community of Owen Sound, and only 140 miles from Toronto. But an old person there, living on a limited income, is virtually isolated. For people like that it is not just a matter of $3 for a berth on the ferry to go 90 miles, it is $15 or $20 by the time they order a cab to go the 20 miles to Owen Sound to get the bus-because there are no trains-to go to some other part of Ontario. It does not take a 90 mile expanse of water to isolate people, Madam Speaker.


Walter C. Carter: Madam Speaker, would the hon. member permit a question?


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: Will the hon. member for York West (Mr. Fleming) allow a question?


James Sydney Clark Fleming: Certainly, Madam Speaker. When I complete my remarks I will be pleased to do so.
1 am saying that I can see the problem and perhaps the need for further subsidies, but I am also saying that rather than move on one particular motion it is an over-all transportation program which must be demanded on all sides of the House. It is extremely important that Canadians in any part of the country not be isolated. We must not just think of transportation as being able to move by bus anywhere in the urban community, but must remember that transportation also means relating to and communicating with other parts of the country.
As I say, Madam Speaker, the cost is great and the pie must be cut in many pieces. It is extremely important that we approach the matter with an overview, and not just concentrate on the problem of the 90 mile gap. We must understand that we must subsidize in all directions, not just between Newfoundland and the mainland, or the Northwest Territories down into the provinces. People in all outlying areas must have access to others. Even if a bus runs through a community just once a week it is a chance for the people there to get about and visit.
A lot of money has to be spent and the government has pledged to improve the situation. I share the concern that ordinary Canadians should have access to transportation from one province to another, from one town to another, at reasonable cost.
I should like to make one other point about the ferry service from the mainland to Newfoundland. It must be remembered that there are also a number of private enterprise competitive services running. I am sure my hon. friends, members of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, would not want to deny that party's firm belief that competition and private enterprise should be encouraged. It is true we want a good service and do not want to rely on a service where the private sector could let us down.
I know that government service is provided. But if the subsidy is too great, if the outlay of the company is too small and if there is lack of competition, service suffers. One will then find that the level of service becomes lower, that the service is less efficient, that schedules are not adhered to. On the other hand a private corporation tries
Newfoundland Ferry Service
to adhere to schedules, improve service, provide more comfort, and generally do better.
The hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie), who spoke some minutes ago, said we must share; that is, Canada as a whole must share the benefits of service with the people of the Maritimes. I agree that the federal government must make sure that service is provided equitably, and that we do not say to one particular area, "We are giving you a little more." That is why I cannot accept the motion, as worded. The government must be fair; it must provide an overview. It must make sure that benefits and services are offered equitably to all.
Either the hon. member for Hillsborough or the hon. member who preceded him said we needed national policies in transportation. That is exactly what I am saying, and that is why I cannot support a motion which pleads for parochial benefits, which asks for a subsidy for one area. I cannot support that. I would, however, support a policy which would make available on the same basis service to the people in Wiarton as well as to the people in the Northwest Territories, Newfoundland and other parts of the Maritime provinces. Finally, I think it is unfortunate that the motion compares the cost of travelling on the trans-Canada highway with the cost of running a ship. That comparison is unfortunate.


Walter C. Carter: Madam Speaker, will the hon. member permit a question? To strengthen his argument the hon. member used the analogy of the small, isolated farming community. Surely there is a difference between a community which is isolated by 20 miles of land and one that is separated from the mainland by 90 miles of water?


James Sydney Clark Fleming: Madam Speaker, I think it is possible to equate two such communities. Let me say that the community in Newfoundland has available a heavily subsidized service. Actually, there are six or seven private services which people in Newfoundland can use if they want to move to the mainland. On the other hand, somebody living in an isolated region of southern Ontario may need to pay between $20 and $30 for a cab, which will take him only 20 miles, and then he must start paying for public transportation.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: Madam Speaker, I rise to support this excellent motion and congratulate the hon. member for bringing to the attention of the government the lack of transportation policy. It is all very well for the government to say that we must wait for a national policy which will solve parochial problems. The government keeps saying it has the answer, that it will bring forward a national policy. There has been such talk in this country ever since I was born, and the only solution to our difficulties has been the sporadic introduction of mish-mash solutions.
I applaud the sentiments of the hon. member who proposed the motion. He wants to encourage people to move across the country and visit each other. I think we should vote on this but I am afraid that the remarks we have just heard were designed to spin out this debate, to the point of precluding a vote.
As the hon. member for Esquimalt-Saanich (Mr. Munro) said, British Columbia coastal ferry services are not feder-

November 8, 1974
Newfoundland Ferry Service
ally subsidized, the people of the province being forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the system. Anyone looking at the map will realize that those travelling from Vancouver Island or the Queen Charlotte Islands to the mainland must cover a fair distance over water, in the same way as those travelling from Newfoundland to the mainland must cover a fair distance of water. Clearly, coastal transportation is an area of difficulty in this country.
The government talks of uniting the country. Madam Speaker, the longer we take to cure our inequities in transportation, the higher will become the mountains of British Columbia! I know the province is not separated from the rest of the country by water, as is Newfoundland. That fact is incidental and unimportant. We need a rational transportation policy. Admittedly the motion before us refers to a subsidized ferry service for the east coast; let me point out that the British Columbia ferry service is not subsidized, for reasons I have never understood.
The argument that we only subsidize interprovincial ferries will not wash. The Library of Parliament study on Canadian ferry services, recently published, shows that $51.8 million was spent on subsidizing ferry service, largely Canadian National Railways ferry service. There is also reference to the subsidy for the Tobermory and South Baymouth ferry service.


An hon. Member:: Manitoulin Island is like another province.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: That service does not cross provincial boundaries. So, the government is being inconsistent in its approach to subsidized ferry service.
Most of us in British Columbia want to discourage sentiments of separatism which lie just under the surface. Sometimes we find this difficult, especially when we learn that the government subsidizes heavily a ferry service which owns more vessels than the Canadian navy. Such subsidies are only possible because the government has adopted an inconsistent and irrational transportation policy in the many years it has mismanaged the affairs of the nation.


Mr. Cliff Mclsaac (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport):: Madam Speaker, let me thank the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Carter) for bringing forward this motion which deals with ferry service to Newfoundland and, by implication, with ferry service to other parts of the Maritimes and other parts of Canada. The hon. member dealt with various aspects of transportation. It is in that context that we must consider this motion.
I was impressed by the comments of the hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie), who has left the chamber, and by those made by the hon. member for St. John's West. I was born on the east coast and recall how important it was to get to Charlottetown harbour on time to catch the ferry. I remember the ice boats which crossed the harbour in the spring. They crossed from Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick when the larger icebreakers, the CNR ferries, could not get through because they were caught in an ice jam. I appreciate the concern of the hon. member about ferry service to his home province.

I am not certain that I agree with everything the hon. member for Hillsborough and the mover of the motion said. I was under the impression that they were, in a way, downgrading their provinces by saying how tough things are, all because of transportation difficulties. I am sure that they did not mean to leave the impression that they were downgrading their own provinces.
I am sure they do not mean it that way, but they do have a lot of other attributes on both islands. The tourist traffic and tourist industry have been building up tremendously, abetted by the ferry services that are there. The improved ferry services are another factor insofar as the economics of Newfoundland are concerned. I do not think we can look at this from one side only, with even more subsidized service than now exists.
While I appreciate the advisability of the motion from the point of the hon. member who moved it, I ask hon. members to oppose it in this particular form. I will advance some arguments on why I ask that.
I can well appreciate the hon. member's concern for service to his province. That is a legitimate and genuine concern. Indeed, it is not only a concern of his and of other members from Newfoundland, but of members from other parts of Canada. Accessibility to Newfoundland is a concern of all of us. Indeed, it was a condition of confederation. In total, it is one that has been very admirably fulfilled when compared with the situation prior to confederation.
I can recall as a boy loading produce, cattle and other things on ferries out of Charlottetown bound for Newfoundland. That ferry service is a vital link in the chain of uniting our Canadian provinces, as is the ferry service to the province of Prince Edward Island and the railroad that was built years ago across the prairies and western Canada to link the province of British Columbia to Canada. All of this points out the very vital aspect of transportation, not only to Canada today but to our development as a nation.
Every time we look at a motion like this which involves ferry service to Newfoundland, we ask why it is different from ferries that run in British Columbia, across rivers in Saskatchewan, ferries to Manitoulin Island and others. The answer is obvious on why there are variations. They were all built for different reasons, and probably at different times. It is not easy to resolve this problem with a uniform policy for all of Canada, based on local needs and traditions, and how they evolved. Those are a few of the reasons why it is difficult to come up with an equitable policy for all of Canada with regard to ferry service.
How much should we subsidize ferry service to the province of Newfoundland? How much does it cost to maintain that service? How much will it cost in the future? The figures are high. What was the capital cost of the facilities now there? They were paid for by the taxpayers of Canada. What are the present and projected operating costs? These are huge figures.
When making an examination we must look at other needs insofar as capital investment in Canada is concerned. There must be increases and improvements in our transportation service in other areas of Canada.
November 8, 1974

As a matter of interest the capital costs of vessels now on that service add up to $67 million. That is a very large figure. Proposed vessels for future improved service will involve an additional $100 million. Existing terminals at Port aux Basques, Argentia and North Sydney cost $53 million. Proposed improvements for terminals at Port aux Basques and North Sydney will involve future expenditures of another $50 million.
As the hon. member for York West (Mr. Fleming) mentioned earlier, the tariffs charged for ferry crossings can in some way be compared with the costs of medicare or hospitalization premiums in that they are not related to the cost of providing the service. Certainly ferry services to Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland are not directly related to the cost. There is a considerable degree of subsidy in the operation of both services.
I think that users of services such as hospitalization or ferries would be more cognizant of the cost to the taxpayer if the rates represented 50, 25 or even 20 per cent of the actual cost, and were allowed to rise accordingly. If the costs to users increased by 25 cents, 50 cents or $1 every year to cover fuel costs, or operating costs of medicare, for example, they would be more appreciative of the growing costs of governmental services.
Newfoundland Ferry Service
I might point out that the rates for this particular ferry service have not increased in the last year. I say quite frankly to the hon. member who proposed the motion that when these rates are looked at, they will more than likely be revised upwards rather than downwards.
In fairness, if we look at the increases in operating costs, fuel, labour and so on, to provide these services, somewhere along the line we have to decide at what level to peg the subsidy, and what priority must be given to ferry service as opposed to the renewal of rail lines required for transportation in western Canada, a federal commitment of some years ago, and to port facilities on the west coast, another government commitment. Somewhere along the line there has to be an element of balance and rationalization with regard to expenditures to be made in the next few years. There is not much time left when we consider some of the freight that has to be moved.
When we look at the broad picture of transportation and the needs this country will face in the next 10 or 15 years, they make the problems of the last 100 years look small by comparison.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: Order, please. The hour allotted for private members' business has now expired. It being five o'clock this House stands adjourned until Tuesday at 2 p.m.
At 5 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Tuesday, November 12, 1974