1974-04-19

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Randolph Harding (Kootenay West):: Mr. Speaker, I ask for the unanimous consent of the House under Standing Order 43 to present a motion of urgent and pressing necessity. In view of the opening of Expo '74 in Spokane, Washington, in less than two weeks time and the urgent need to extend border crossing hours at several ports of entry in the Kootenay and Okanagan area, and since this extension of time has been promised and planned for by the department concerned, I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles):
That this House unanimously endorse the need for adequate extensions of time at these border crossing-points and requests the Minister of National Revenue to announce these time extensions at the earliest possible date so that individuals, groups and organizations can make plans for widely advertising the border crossing hours and for arranging their own visits to Expo '74.


Mr. Speaker:: The House has heard the motion proposed by the hon. member for Kootenay West. Under the terms of Standing Order 43 this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: There is not unanimity. The motion cannot be put.


HOLIDAYS ACT
Mr. John Reynolds (Burnaby-Richmond-Delta) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-280, to amend the Holidays Act.


Some hon. Members:: Explain.


John Douglas Reynolds: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to change the name of one of our main holidays to Canada Day, a name that is already being used in the majority of the cities of Canada.


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


Hon. Robert L. Stanfield (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Prime Minister who eight days ago, according to a transcript released by his office, said:
We've had very very little legislative time as you know. We think we should be using the days before the budget to bring in legislation to alleviate the various difficulties in the economy to help the people in various ways-
Would the right hon. gentleman tell the House what this legislation is and why parliament is not dealing with it today?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, it is because of that, because of my statement, that the leader of the House made the suggestion to parliament last night that we should deal most expeditiously with the football bill which is of importance to some people.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: We are prepared to put up only two speakers and if the opposition will co-operate we shall certainly be very pleased to move on to other business.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Robert Lorne Stanfield: The government is responsible for the business before the House and, Lord knows, it exercises that control in a rather tyrannical way. I want to ask the Prime Minister where this important legislation is, why it is not before the House and why, in view of the rapid inflation in the country and the spreading chaos with regard to the provision of essential services, the Prime Minister is not telling the people what the government proposes to do to restore some sense of confidence and stability?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The House can deal with only one bill at a time. The judgment of the government was to bring forward the bill which is before the House today. I repeat, we are seeking co-operation from all parties to deal with it in

April 19, 1974
Oral Questions
a businesslike fashion, and then we shall bring on other legislation.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: We should like to know what the business of the government is. I should like to ask the Prime Minister whether he is prepared to test the confidence of the House on the basis of the replies he is making today?


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I find it rather typical of the Tory opposition that they are never prepared to deal with matters before them because they never have any answers for them.


Mr. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister. In view of the fact parliament has passed only seven or eight bills, none of them dealing with inflation on either a long-term or short-term basis, and in view of the fact parliament will today be occupied in considering a bill dealing with football at a time when the country is being paralysed by strikes, when the regional price index will come out today showing the highest inflation rate in the country, will the Prime Minister change his priorities and bring on legislation to deal with these problems?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I do not agree with the premise of the question. Only this week very important matters of great concern to the fishermen and farmers of this country were dealt with, and the Canada Pension Plan bill is also of great concern to all Canadians. I repeat, we shall bring forward other business but I think it is very important that the opposition should not make this kind of speech merely to hide the fact they do not know what position to take on the football bill.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: If you had been here last night, you would have known we have taken a position-against the bill.


REQUEST FOR TWO-PRICE SYSTEM FOR LUMBER IN LIGHT OF PROSPECTIVE FURTHER INCREASE IN WHOLESALE PRICE
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. In view of the statement made yesterday by the Ontario Lumber Manufacturers Association that the wholesale price of lumber will increase by a further 25 per cent by next fall, does the Prime Minister think the time has"" now come to introduce a two-price system for lumber in this country, as in the case of oil when an export tax was imposed?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: My view has not changed from that expressed by the Minister of Finance on a two-price system a few days ago.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: In view of the announcement that another increase of 25 per cent can be expected by the fall and the fact that the cost of lumber is already very high, can the Prime Minister tell the House what he intends to do about the high price of housing in this country?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: This has been the subject of many statements by the government, particularly by the Minister of State for Urban Affairs.


MEASURES TO CURB INCREASES IN COST OF LIVING
Mr. Jean-Marie Boisvert (Drummond):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the right hon. Prime Minister.
Since the cost of living is steadily increasing and since there is no forseeable end to this trend, I would like the Prime Minister to tell the House which steps he is taking right now to prevent a further increase in the cost of living next Monday?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member must have been away from the House for months to ask such a question. As to Monday morning, I suggest that he should read this morning's Financial Times.

Looking at the Canadian economy, it talks about the remarkably strong performance of our economy in the first two months at a time when industrial production fell back in other major industrial countries, including the United States, Britain and France.


Jean-Marie Boisvert: Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the right hon. Prime Minister that I was here and that if the rate of economic output is exceptional, so is the rate of inflation. What I want to know is what the Prime Minister is doing to prevent a further deterioration.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member would like the government to reiterate large portions of the Speech from the Throne. We said that inflation was being fought in several ways, we never promised that inflation would be reduced to zero before Monday morning, and we indicated that the best way to control inflation was to increase commodities supply in the country. The hon. member knows that the throne speech contained a series of legislative programs that the House should allow us to implement, so as to get those results.


DATE OF BUDGET AND INTRODUCTION OF EMERGENCY LEGISLATION TO DEAL WITH LABOUR DISPUTES
Mr. Peter Reilly (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. Will the right hon. gentleman assure the House that the Minister of Finance will have named the date upon which the budget will be brought down before the Prime Minister takes off on his political trip around Ontario next week?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I can give that assurance. I am not afraid to show myself in Ontario as the hon. member is.


Peter Reilly: Mr. Speaker, I am not afraid to show myself in the House of Commons in any case. I have a supplementary question for the right hon. gentleman. Will he assure the House that any emergency legislation necessary to
April 19, 1974

deal with the plethora of labour disputes and strikes that abound in Canada will also be introduced before the beginning of his political trip next week?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I have already indicated that, so has the Minister of Transport and indeed even the House leader. I cannot recall whether the hon. member was brave and showed himself in the House yesterday. If he was in the House yesterday he is certainly different from the hon. member for Prince Edward-Hastings who is not here today and was not here yesterday.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The Chair will recognize the hon. member for Ottawa West and then the hon. member for Brandon-Souris.


Peter Reilly: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry I did not hear a good deal of what the right hon. gentleman muttered toward the end of his speech; maybe he was simply moving his lips again. Will the Prime Minister assure the members of this House and the people of Canada that it will be the Liberal party that will pick up the tab for the many government aircraft needed to transport him around the province of Ontario and not the taxpayers?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I can say that it is the government of Canada and the taxpayers who are picking up the tab for the many Tories who are flying out on DND planes both last night and today.


Mr. Bell:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order respecting the Prime Minister's charge about members of the opposition. If any members are on government planes, they are returning to their constituencies to look after constituency business. It is because of a national strike that this government cannot handle that they are using DND planes.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Thomas Miller Bell: I might say they are not using government or military helicopters.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I do agree that it is customary to use government planes-I do not see the relevancy of whether they are helicopters or fixed wing aircraft-to bring members back to their constituencies. I just find it strange that the opposition wants to play with the rules only for its side and not for both sides.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


POST OFFICE
Hon. W. G. Dinsdale (Brandon-Souris):: Mr. Speaker, obviously my question is for the Postmaster General.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!
Oral Questions


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member for Brandon-Souris has the floor.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: Mr. Speaker, I am sure everybody has heard of sunny Manitoba. In view of the fact the Canadian Union of Postal Workers national executive has now called a national strike, can the Postmaster General indicate to the House what action he is taking to get the mail moving again?


Hon. Andre Ouellet (Postmaster General):: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to see the sun has done some good to my hon. colleague. I should like to remind him that we held a meeting yesterday with the national executive and that another is to be held this afternoon. As far as I know, the national executive did not call the national strike. I wonder where the hon. member got his information. Be that as it may, if it did, and I repeat what I have already said, the strike is illegal and infinitely regrettable because the permanent employees of the postal department are guaranteed jobs and salaries under their collective agreement.
I am terribly sorry such excessives steps should now be resorted to in order to solve a problem which, basically, concerns only a very small number of our employees and could be solved within the framework of the collective agreement. Provisions stipulate specifically that a manpower committee must sit to solve those problems.
I have often expressed the wish that the manpower committee should work out. I have expressed my willingness to take part in its work. I hope our employees will understand that it is in their interest and also their duty to go back to work. Then, we can solve the problems that trouble them.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that morale in the Post Office Department, as well as in other branches of the Public Service, has been sagging disastrously during the past few months, and as the key issue with reference to the Post Office is the wide differential between the pay rates of sorters and coders, is this particular item a part of the current negotiations?


Mr. Marchand (Langelier):: It is part of the agreement. [Translation]


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, if the morale has been so low these last few months, it is certainly not because of the Post Office administration. We have said again and again that all our employees had a guaranteed employment and salary.
The hon. member spoke about the coders, but I must emphasize that there are only 95 such employees and that the difference in wages is 54 cents an hour. The Post Office employees have approved the last collective agreement providing for that wage scale. I think they have no excuse to stop work like that, just because of 95 employees.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: In view of the answer given by the President of the Treasury Board last Thursday, when I asked a similar question, indicating that this item is a problem,

April 19, 1974
Oral Questions
would the President of the Treasury Board speak to the Postmaster General and apprise him of this situation please?


Hon. C. M. Drury (President of the Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to say that the Postmaster General and I are in almost continuous consultation.


SETTLEMENT OF PAY RATE FOR POSTAL CODERS
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday in answer to a question the Postmaster General said that he would not negotiate with the postal employees while they were engaged in this work stoppage. However, he has been meeting with them. I should like to ask him whether he and his department have now moved away from the position they have taken until the last couple of days at least of insisting that the pay rate for the coders is a matter which will be settled by the department and will not be discussed with the employees even though this is the question about which the employees have in fact left their work?


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I said yesterday and I repeat that we are ready to discuss with the representatives of employees any issue which concerns them. However, I have already assured the House that the problem of coders can quite well be discussed with the manpower committee whose creation is provided in the collective agreement.
Our employees are not entitled to leave their work at the present time since they benefit from a mechanism provided in their collective agreement to discuss and settle the matter. I repeat that I am ready to sit on the manpower committee to find a solution. It is not by an illegal work stoppage that the employees will obtain what they are asking.


Mr. Speaker:: The Chair will recognize the hon. member for Winnipeg North for a supplementary, followed by the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands also on a supplementary.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, the minister says he is prepared to have the matter discussed by the manpower committee. This issue has not arisen just in the last couple of days. The employees have indicated for more than a year that they are not satisfied with the much lower rate of pay set by the department for the coders. If the manpower committee has been ready to discuss this question, has it in fact been discussed and has any progress been made, or is not the case that, while the minister and his department are ready to listen to the objections, they are not prepared to take the objections into consideration and move on this question at all?


André Ouellet: We are ready to discuss the matter, but I remind the hon. member that only 95 employees are involved. Now this illegal work stoppage is due to the classification of 95 individuals in a department of 50,000 employees. In my opinion, it is entirely irresponsible to

deprive the Canadian people of such an important service to settle the case of 95 individuals, especially in Montreal where there is not a single coder and there will not be any for two years.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.


Miss MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, my question-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I must interrupt the hon. member. I believe the hon. member for Winnipeg North is rising on a point of order.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, the minister has repeated several times that there are only 95 people involved. Is it not true that the report on which this whole mechanism or automation is based-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. This is hardly a point of order. The hon. member might be recognized for a further supplementary later, but in view of the fact that we are still on supplementaries the Chair has recognized the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.


MEASURES TO ENSURE DELIVERY OF FAMILY ALLOWANCE CHEQUES
Flora Isabel MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister and is prompted by the fact there has been so little information forthcoming from the Minister of National Health and Welfare. Now that the deadline date has arrived for the normal mailing of family allowance cheques, will the Prime Minister tell the House and the country what contingency plans the government has for the distributing of these cheques beginning today?


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to answer this question and advise the House that 95 per cent of all social allowance cheques have already been delivered or should be delivered today. We have taken exceptional steps to give preference to these cheques in the sorting of the mail, and I can assure the hon. member that, with a few exceptions, all these family allowance cheques have already been delivered or will be delivered shortly.
Arrangements have been made with the various provincial governments for the delivery of their respective welfare allowance cheques.
Moreover, I must advise the hon. member that old age security pension cheques are not due for mailing until April.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, will the Postmaster General be good enough to name the exceptions, including Kingston and the Islands?


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!
April 19, 1974


André Ouellet: Unfortunately, I have been unable to obtain a final answer concerning this, but I think that the mail in the Kingston area is being delivered today.


FINANCE
Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of State for Urban Affairs and the Minister of Finance I should like to direct my question to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware that the general mortgage market in Toronto in particular has broken down as a result of the inordinate increase in interest rates and the uncertainty in the market, and will the Prime Minister direct the Minister of Finance or himself to make a statement to the House on motions as to the government's long-term mortgage interest plans so that mortgage companies, at this critical time of the year when housing starts must commence, will know where they are going and will be able to make commitments?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the answer to the question is no.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Does the Prime Minister realize that housing starts cannot commence unless mortgage companies are able to make long-term commitments, and will he actually inform the mortgage industry as to the government's plans so that something can be done to make sure there will be some housing built this year?


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Skeena.


CONSUMER AFFAIRS
Mr. Frank Howard (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, inasmuch as the hon. member from Barbados has indicated that football is more important than food prices, may I direct my question to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. When will the study, either by his department or the Food Prices Review Board, of the extent to which the food processing industry has pocketed the corporation tax cut to 40 per cent be completed and a report made?


Hon. Herb Gray (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member must be referring to studies carried on under the auspices of the Department of Finance with respect to the effect of the tax cuts in question.


Frank Howard: Mr. Speaker, I based my question on the response that the Minister of Finance gave me on April 10, about which the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs would know nothing. In response to a question of mine he said that if in the report of the Food Prices Review Board the facts alleged are proven, the govern-
Oral Questions
ment will do something. I am merely taking the advice given me by the Minister of Finance who obviously knows more about it than the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs.


FINANCE
Mr. Kenneth J. Higson (Lincoln):: Mr. Speaker, my question is supplementary to the one put by my friend, the hon. member for Mississauga, and it is for the Prime Minister. Do the Prime Minister and the government accept responsibility for the recent action taken by the governor of the Bank of Canada in increasing the interest rate, which has resulted in chartered banks and other lending institutions across Canada increasing their interest rates across the board?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance has answered similar questions many times.


Kenneth James Higson: No.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Yes, he has and, if I am given time, I could probably read his answers.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: You have lots of time.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The long and short of it is that the governor of the Bank of Canada decides what the interest rate will be but in consultation with the government, and there is an over-all responsibility by the government for the general monetary policy of the country. This is the way the law stands and this is the way we operate.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Kenneth James Higson: Can the Prime Minister assure the House that the next adjustment of the bank rate will only be downward, or is it the policy of the government that increasing inflationary pressures will be met by simply increasing bank rates?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I have the general reference for which I was looking in my first answer. It appears at page 1413 of Hansard where the Minister of Finance was giving a series of answers. One of them reads as follows: The governor of the bank indicated to me over the weekend that monetary policy will continue to accommodate the rapid expansion in the economy-


Mr. Woolliams:: You're reading.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Of course I am reading. I am reading from Hansard. Did you not realize that?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: It continues:
-but that he is concerned about the increase in the monetary aggregates-in other words, the money supply.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!

April 19, 1974
Oral Questions Mr. Speaker: Order, please.


Some hon. Members:: Answer the question.


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


CRIMINAL CODE
Mr. Eudore Allard (Rimouski):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the Minister of Justice.
Could he advise the House whether or not he intends to amend the Criminal Code section dealing with abortion so as to assure nurses, who are refusing to participate in abortions because they consider them immoral, that their employment will not be jeopardized?


Hon. John C. Munro (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, I will be pleased to take the hon. member's question as notice and relay it to the Minister of Justice. I am sure he will let the hon. member know.


TRANSPORT
Mr. J. H. Horner (Crowfoot):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Transport. Following the transportation conference of over a week ago and the chaotic situation described by the chief commissioner of the Canadian Wheat Board, can the minister assure the House and the country that his department has looked into the problem of boxcars in western Canada for the movement of grain and that the situation is improving?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, we are following this problem on a daily basis. I think the situation is improving.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Korchinski:: Daily basis?


Jean Marchand: However, what can complicate the situation is the strike on the St. Lawrence. As hon. members know, ocean-going ships cannot go up to Thunder Bay, and this might have some implications.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Randolph Harding: Mr. Speaker,
I have a question for the Minister of National Revenue or

his parliamentary assistant. In view of the fact that Expo '74 in Spokane, Washington, opens in about two weeks time, does the department plan to extend the border crossing hours at several ports of entry and, if so, when will this announcement be made?


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, I will be happy to draw this question to the attention of the minister.


Randolph Harding: I think this supplementary should be directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs or to his parliamentary secretary. As Canada is participating in Expo '74, what plans, if any, have been made for the federal government's participation on either the opening day or some other appropriate occasion?


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, I shall submit this question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs.


FINANCE
Mr. Sinclair Stevens (York-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Finance I should like to direct my question to the Prime Minister who I notice has acknowledged ultimate responsibility for interest rates in Canada. Because the increase in mortgage interest rates has been triggered by the government, with the result that a person now needs a $17,000 income to buy a below average price home in Toronto, and in view of the continuing instability of mortgage rates in Canada, would the Prime Minister indicate if he has any plan to stabilize mortgage rates in this country, or is it his government's policy that mortgage rates should find their own level?
[DOT] (U40)


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, any announcement in this respect will be made in due course.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, I would point out to the Prime Minister that this is the two hundred and ninth sitting day since the last budget and-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Would the hon. member ask his question.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: As mortgage rates in Canada are now 25 per cent higher than in the United States, and in view of the continuation of the unfilled demand for housing, at what level does the government think mortgage rates should be over the coming months so that a person desiring to purchase a home in Canada may do so?


Mr. Speaker:: It seems to me that the hon. member is asking for an expression of opinion. I do not think a question in those terms is quite in order.
April 19, 1974


AIR TRANSPORT
Eldon Mattison Woolliams: Mr. Speaker, in light of the fact the airport firefighters' strike is spreading like a prairie fire in the west and is now affecting Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, and as it appears there may be another strike, what is the government going to do? What plan does the government have, and how long does it expect the country to tolerate this kind of performance?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the last part of the question, I think the country will have to answer that for the time being.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Marchand (Iiangelier):: Mr. Speaker, I think it would be a good idea if some members of the opposition would read the law relating to the labour negotiation system that has been established in Canada. We are negotiating with the Public Service Alliance. A proposal has been made and has been submitted to the firefighters. We are supposed to receive an answer. Of course, if the situation does not improve we have other means that we can use.


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: Mr. Speaker, I respect the Minister of Transport. He knows that, but I wish he would not hide behind the law. We know what kind of strike the firefighters' strike is. I want to know how long the government is going to allow this thing to drift without making a decision and doing something about it. The whole of western Canada is now paralysed by the inactivity of the government.


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, there is something even worse than that. I heard this morning that even Quebec City airport is closed.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Jean Marchand: The alliance is trying to have the understanding that was reached ratified, and we have to accept this procedure which is normal in such cases.


Mr. Donald W. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich):: Mr. Speaker, with all the strikes and study sessions, actual and pending, in the Public Service I should like to address my question to the minister who in the final analysis is responsible for negotiating with the designated bargaining agents on labour contracts covering government employees. Has the President of the Treasury Board, since his return from Victoria where he talked with the firefighters, managed to get negotiations under way between the Treasury Board and the Public Service Alliance with a view to getting the firefighters back to work under the terms of the equitable settlement which was mentioned during the question period yesterday by the Prime Minister?


Charles Mills (Bud) Drury: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. gentleman is aware that
Oral Questions
the Treasury Board has a settlement agreed with the Public Service Alliance. The procedure of ratification and acceptance by the membership of the settlement reached between the Treasury Board and the Public Service Alliance is now in process. We have agreed with the Public Service Alliance that this process of consultation with the membership will be carried out with the utmost speed.


Mr. John A. Fraser (Vancouver South):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a supplementary question to the President of the Treasury Board. Is it the position of the government that because you have an internecine dispute going on inside a union there is nothing the government can do until it is resolved by the parties within the union itself? Is that the position you are trying to put to us seriously?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I am wondering whether that question was addressed to the Chair.


PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. Walter Baker (Grenville-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the President of the Treasury Board. In view of the fact that what we are talking about this morning, namely, the curtailment of essential services, is really symptomatic of a lack of speed and responsiveness to inflation in terms of the collective bargaining process in the Public Service, would the minister please inform the House whether any new departure, new policy or new direction is being taken by the Treasury Board in presenting itself to bargaining unions for the purpose of settling contracts in the Public Service of Canada?


Charles Mills (Bud) Drury: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated yesterday, there are no easy panaceas. I hope there will be an intelligent and at the same time forceful approach to the different problems with which we are faced in seeking different solutions.


Walter David Baker: In view of the fact that one of the problems facing the Public Service is that it is being met with bargaining offers from the Treasury Board which are completely unrealistic in view of the rate of inflation in the country, will the minister undertake to make an immediate study and a statement on motions with respect to the principle including in contracts with public servants cost of living increases on an escalating scale as has already been done for retired public servants?


Charles Mills (Bud) Drury: Mr. Speaker, this is an interesting suggestion which has already received serious consideration and will continue to do so.

April 19, 1974
Oral Questions GRAIN


POSITION OF CANADIAN WHEAT BOARD IN LIGHT OF FEED GRAINS POLICY
Mr. Elias Nesdoly (Meadow Lake):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to address a question to the right hon. Prime Minister regarding his feed grains policy and his new alliance with the Conservative party on that policy. In view of the fact the Conservatives conceived the Wheat Board in 1935 and the Liberal party has managed to get along with it for 30 or 35 years, is the government now proposing to abort the Canadian Wheat Board?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: No, Mr. Speaker. But I am very happy that the hon. member has realized that the Tories are coming along in agreement with our policy in regard to feed grains.


PUBLIC SERVICE
Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the right hon. Prime Minister. With the Prime Minister saying that he will take certain things under advisement and the President of the Treasury Board saying that certain other things are interesting, while all the time chaos continues to spread throughout the country-


An hon. Member:: What would you do?


Robert Lorne Stanfield: I have several recommendations I could make if the government would only adopt them. The simplest one is that the government resign.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Hopkins:: It isn't going to be that easy.


Thomas Miller Bell: Make them suffer it out.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. May we have order, please. We are coming to the end of the question period. There is just about one minute left.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: In light of the fact that those of us who stayed here have listened to the Postmaster General give the same explanation for a week, when the difficulty seems to deepen every day, and with other ministers, including the President of the Treasury Board, passing things off with generalities, I would like to ask the Prime Minister whether in view of the spreading chaos he is prepared to interest himself personally in these problems and really put something before the House that will restore some hope of order in this country?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition seems to recognize chaos everywhere except where it really exists.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: If the solution to chaos were, as he suggests, resignation, he would have long ceased to be the leader of his own party.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the right hon. gentleman whether he is trying to get an Oscar award for playing Nero.


Mr. Speaker:: The Chair will recognize the hon. member for Frontenac-Lennox and Addington and then call orders of the day.



AGRICULTURE


Mr. A. D. Alkenbrack (Frontenac-Lennox and Addington):: Mr. Speaker, my question is an agricultural one but in the urgency of the moment I direct it to the Prime Minister. During the term of the former minister of agriculture the government promised Canadian egg producers that if they would govern their industry by setting up marketing agencies the government would protect the industry against foreign competition. This is not happening at the present time. United States eggs are now coming into Canada-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I am sure the hon. member will appreciate that he is making a speech. He should come to the question.


Almonte Douglas Alkenbrack: Mr. Speaker, I simply wanted to state to the Prime Minister the conditions that exist. United States eggs are now coming into Canada based on a New York price of 47 cents a dozen for Grade A large. The Canadian price to producers is 66 cents. Why does the government not make use of the anti-dumping Export and Import Permits Act regulations, as tabled on March 26 last, to help the egg producing industry in these difficult times?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, an hon. member asked a question along similar lines yesterday. It is already being processed by the Department of Agriculture and an answer will be forthcoming soon.


Mr. Speaker:: Orders of the day.

April 19, 1974



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed, from Thursday, April 18, consideration of the motion of Mr. Lalonde that Bill C-22, intituled Canadian Football Act, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Health, Welfare and Social Affairs.
Mr. Jim Fleming (York West):: Mr. Speaker, in the last seven or eight weeks the uproar over Bill C-22, the football bill, has both been positive and negative. Certainly, the members of the Toronto sports media would have people believe that a terrible thing is happening and is being permitted by the government of Canada. Certainly, members of the opposition party would like us to believe that as well, and the Canadian public to believe it. I noted, when the hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie) led off for the official opposition last night, that at no time during his amusing and sometimes interesting comments did he put weight on either of his feet when coming down on both sides of the fence. The hon. member for Hillsborough stressed that he spoke for the opposition, and that there are important and critical matters to be dealt with by the government and the House. That is quite true. The Liberal party recognizes that, as does the government, and I will be the final speaker on the government side. Yet this bill must progress, not only in fairness to the Canadian Football League, but also in fairness to the Northmen and John Bassett. It must be dealt with, surely, before the football season approaches. If this is not done real harm could be caused to fans in Toronto as well as to the Canadian Football League.
I remind my hon. friends opposite that the government was forced to legislate, after having made its policy eminently clear through the former minister of national health and welfare some 17 months ago, and reaffirmed by the present Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) when he took over that portfolio. The government was forced into legislating, and now this bill is before the House.
You know, filibuster can be a very effective technique for the opposition in times of majority government. It can be used to keep the majority from legislating something that the opposition feels is not in the public interest. However, the majority rests with the opposition parties at this time. There is no reason to prolong this debate. If members want to act responsibly, surely they will deal with the bill in fairness to the CFL and the Northmen before the football season begins. I hope there will be co-operation by all parties in the House so that we can get on with this matter. Many members on my side would like to participate. I think the hon. members for Sarnia-Lamb-ton (Mr. Cullen), Vaudreuil (Mr. Herbert), Spadina (Mr. Stollery), Labelle (Mr. Dupras) and others want to participate. They are satisfied, I believe, however, to work in committee, and have us get on with second reading.
The hon. member for Hillsborough said that the government and the House have more important things to do.
Canadian Professional Football


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


James Sydney Clark Fleming: He said we are taking up important time. Well, I am pleased to see that I have the rapt attention of hon. members opposite because, so far, this debate has taken less than two hours of the time of the House. The bill could be dealt with in five or six hours, if the opposition wants to be co-operative. We want debate to be short. As I said, I am the final speaker.


An hon. Member:: You hope.


James Sydney Clark Fleming: Well, we have not spent two hours so far debating this bill. All of us on both sides, especially those representing constituencies in Metropolitan Toronto, have received a great deal of mail. Answering it is very time consuming. Many of these letters say, why is the government spending so much time on this subject? I write back and say that the government is not; we have said what we want to do, and we want to get on with it. It takes me and my colleagues a great deal of time to reply to these letters. I note, having checked my files, that I have not received letters from these people covering such other matters as labour strife, inflation, justice, pensions and what have you, subjects which the opposition says must be dealt with. I agree. But sports are extremely important to Canadians, as you will agree if you look at the pages of coverage given sports in our newspapers and the attention our broadcasting media gives to the subject. It is of great interest to Canadians and that is why this bill is before us today.
The hon. member for Hillsborough made several other points to which I should like to reply. At one point he mentioned the domination of our colleges by foreign professors. That is the kind of red herring that party brings forward when it has no united policy of its own. It is clearly a matter of provincial jurisdiction. I wish the hon. member could talk to the government of Ontario, in which my constituency is, so that he could convince the government of Ontario to act on policies which my party has put forward provincially for several years to correct that situation. The hon. member for Hillsborough said, as the official lead-off speaker for his party, that it was "beyond his comprehension" that we were dealing with this subject at this time. He said that we should debate other matters. I say, let's finish this one, and have done. The strength of the majority is not on the government side; it is with the opposition parties. It will be "beyond the comprehension" of other parties in this House and the Canadian public if the opposition says that debate on the subject is beyond its comprehension but then delays.
The hon. member for Hillsborough's speech was perhaps the most entertaining I have heard since coming to the House. It was 40 minutes of witticisms, rhetoric and, at times, buffoonery. But I have found that when the Progressive Conservative Party have trouble facing an issue together, when they are seriously split, as they usually are, up goes this smokescreen. The Canadian public is well aware of their talent to cover division in their party and, so, their credibility goes up in smoke as well.
Just after I had been recognized to speak last evening, the hon. member for York-Simcoe (Mr. Stevens) made the comment, "Let him dig his own grave." I am confident
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April 19, 1974
Canadian Professional Football that the overwhelming majority of Torontonians, given a chance to understand this issue, are going to support the government and Canadian football. Toronto has always been prepared to shed parochial, selfish advantage, if it is in the national interest to do so. The hon. member for York-Simcoe seriously underestimates the electorate of the greater Toronto area if he thinks that anyone will be elected or defeated because we did not follow our own self interest but rather what is good for Canada.
Before touching on the essentials of this legislation, I wish to make one final point of rebuttal to the comments made last evening by the hon. member for Hillsborough. He said that, lacking expertise, he was quoting Russ Jackson, who, he said, doubts the efficacy of the measure before the House. The Canadian Football League teams, the western cities directly affected, the Canadian Amateur Football Association and the players' association do not doubt the efficacy of this particular measure. They are all on record as supporting it strongly. They are not one football player but the entire football industry.
Ninety five per cent of the Toronto sports press has been strident in opposition to this move by the government. I suggest that there are some honest conflicts of interest, in that they want the benefit of this football club to Toronto. It might provide very good football, indeed. They also have some real conflicts of interest in who would be travelling with that team around the United States to cover its games and which of them now who are so stridently against the government are receiving moneys from the World Hockey League for play by play and colour comments on television and radio in Toronto?
Despite the organized lobby that I believe has been developing in support of the Northmen, including a letter writing campaign, in two months in a constituency of 160,000 people, I have received less than 40 letters. About one quarter of those letters are in support and they were not prompted by a strident campaign of the Northmen managers.
It has been suggested on several occasions that polls in Toronto suggest overwhelming support for the Northmen coming into Canada. I suggest that if we wrote polls with questions worded in the same way, we would be saying "Are you in favour of free ice cream?" If those polls had said "Are you in favour of it if the CFL is jeopardized", I suggest they would be very different. If they had said is Canadian football important, they would have been very different. If they would have asked whether the CFL and the Grey Cup game plays an important role in developing Canadianism, those polls would have been very different. The Northmen suggested along the way that the government has not offered a compromise and has not been willing to sit down. I suggest you cannot compromise on a situation where once they are here, and I will carry that argument further in a few minutes, the CFL team is lost.
Let me take up a couple of the arguments they have put forward as areas where they would compromise. One is on equalized payments. They say they would pay the largest amount they have ever paid, the amount that the Argonauts paid last year of equalization of $48,000. There is no mention of pre-season equalization which manages to

be a cost of $25,000 to $30,000. There is no mention of play-off equalization of $40,000 to $60,000. There is no mention of $150,000, but in fact $48,000, a very limited amount which would make very little difference to the survival of the CFL. They argue they would be the only franchise and they, the Northmen, control the rights in Canada. They say it would only be in Toronto. I think one team in Canada in the World Football League is as dangerous as two or three teams simply because of the great pride of Canadians and their great sense of competition.
You suddenly have the one Canadian David taking on the American Goliath. The three quarters of Canadians who can see American television will turn toward that because of their very pride and sense of Canadianism, but in time where will we be? If the one team is allowed, then where do we find the top of the pyramid where now our young people can develop in football, become the best, become professional and find nine teams in which to place themselves? Perhaps in an expanded CFL with London and perhaps Dartmouth-Halifax there would be an even larger top of the pyramid, but where when there is only one team? When they are looking for American super heroes, will those American teams, which can draw from 10 times the population, really start looking at Canadian talent? I doubt it very much.
If Toronto were allowed that WFL franchise, how could a government whose responsibility is the national interest possibly give a special deal to one Canadian city? Would we not then have to go ahead and allow what I believe will come about if this bill is not passed, namely an application from the National Football League for entry into Canada as well? Then, what will we have because with those two teams, there can be no doubt but that the CFL will die.
We will have two little brother football clubs in Canada playing all the big brothers in the United States. Then, where is Canadian football? Where is the incentive to develop Canadian football? Where is the east-west rivalry in Canadian football? Where are the five publicly owned western clubs? Where is the huge Canadian audience watching Canadian Grey Cup over Canadian television each year?
There are also the apples and bananas arguments that have been put forward. What about the Montreal Expos? The Montreal Expos came here and got assistance from the government in some tax forgiveness clauses simply because there was no major league baseball in Canada and because the government thought it would be good. For our largest city, Montreal, it is good. It attracts many fans, it is popular, provides entertainment and this government has no argument with it. On that same point, may I say that the same incentive and help is available for the development of a major league baseball club in Toronto. One of the people bound up in that and probably the person who will succeed in developing it is John Bassett Jr..
What about the NHL? Surely, that battle was lost some decades ago, not because of the most recent expansion, but away back when Canadian hockey began to involve itself with American cities. However, I cannot believe that yesterday's mistakes justify inaction today. We can protect a Canadian institution and, as a parliament, we should do that.
April 19, 1974

In Toronto there is concern about making the expanded stadium pay its own way if there is not a second football team. Well, I understand that the additional revenues from a second major league football club in Toronto would be about $200,000 a year. Much more than that would be provided if major league baseball came into that stadium simply because many more games would be played in that sport in that stadium each season. Three out of four American cities which tried two major football leagues failed, Dallas, Chicago and Los Angeles. The only one that succeeded was New York City which could draw on a population of almost 14 million.
What good relying on revenues from a second major league football club to support that stadium if within a year or two, as experience has shown, one of those teams would fail? If that happened, I suggest the team would be the Argonauts and goodbye Canadian Football League. I do not deny that the Northmen would bring new and exciting sports to Toronto but do we need it so much in Toronto? Is it so essential to us in addition to what we now have? Are we so short of good competitive sports and entertainment that we will ignore our western Canadian cities and fellow Canadian football fans?
I think it is very important to put on the record a line or two of what is being said in those cities. Mayor Rod Sykes of Calgary said:
Strongly support your stand re keeping professional football Canadian Congratulations
Pierre Benoit, mayor of the city of Ottawa, stated:
-please allow me to express my whole-hearted support for the position, I understand, you have taken.
Mayor Copps of Hamilton stated:
Everybody here right behind you in urging the government to act immediately to preserve Canadian football.
Mayor Baker of Regina said:
I commend and support your stand regarding the World Football League.
Mayor Stephen Juba of Winnipeg stated:
I wish to advise that I wholeheartedly support your recent announcement respecting the intrusion of the World Football League into Canada.
Mayor Ivor Dent of Edmonton:
I appreciate your attitude and back your statement made in Regina.
There it is, Mr. Speaker. They all line up with the government.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


James Sydney Clark Fleming: I think it should be made clear that Bill C-22 is not an act against one single Canadian enterprise. It is for Canadian enterprise and for Canadian sports development. The CFL expansion has been brought about as part of the action of the Minister of National Health and Welfare. London can now have a franchise. Halifax-Dartmouth is open for expansion so it is truly national from coast to coast. I do agree with the comments in that part of the speech of the hon. member for Hillsborough last evening.
Over seven years, the training of young Canadians will be doubled to 500,000 or 600,000 in football. For Torontonians, the blackout will be lifted on an experimental basis
Canadian Professional Football when the expanded stadium is sold out. Exhibition games are encouraged. We can have the David and Goliath battle with the Americans. We can fill our great sense of competition and pride in competition with the American leagues but meanwhile protecting our own Canadian Football League.
The legislation is not negative. It is positive and it is for Canadians. The government of Canada has been making efforts to protect Canadian industry as long as this country has existed. Most recently the government acted against the DISC program in the United States with a measure that allowed corporate tax cuts. We have had tariffs, special grants to business, loans and all sorts of other incentives to help Canadian business in competition with foreign interests.
In the development of artistic talent, literature and sports, CRTC regulations have encouraged more Canadian development. John Bassett Sr. and John Bassett Jr., through Glen Warren Productions in Toronto as well as through CFTO, have developed with their own business expertise, which is recognized and respected, and with the rules set down by the CRTC one of the most successful television production and television operations in North America because the Canadian government provided special incentives and Canadian content rules. The Canadian Film Development Corporation has spent millions of dollars to develop the Canadian film industry because we in this country are in such tough competition with the United States. Hundreds of thousands of those millions have gone to Agincourt Productions and John Bassett Jr. for films like "Face Off", "Flick" and "Paperback Hero". It was his excellent entrepreneurship and this government's assistance that made it happen.
In 1972, John Bassett Sr. sought government financial assistance for the publicly owned western clubs in the CFL. Yet today many members opposite would like to argue, as the press reports, that though the government may wish to act against the Northmen it has no right to intrude in Canadian football. How does that gibe?
I see no financial hardship for the Northmen owners, Mr. Speaker. They will prosper if they run their team in the United States. I would not be unhappy to see a Canadian enterprise move into the United States for a change and if they sell it to an American city they also will profit. Meanwhile, the people involved in this operation can go on and develop baseball in Toronto on a major league level. They can go on with their Canadian films with government assistance, they can go on with their Canadian T.V. supported by government control of Canadian television. If the Northmen are allowed, the NFL in Montreal cannot be denied. That is the next step.
Is there a real possibility such a development would kill the CFL, Mr. Speaker? Well, the CFL teams think so, the Players Association thinks so, the Canadian Amateur Football Association thinks so, the Prairie Cities think so. All those important groups say that the CFL will be jeopardized, and if parliament respects those fears and believes Canadian football is of real importance to Canadians as a part of our lifestyle, then parliament will support this bill.

April 19, 1974
Canadian Professional Football
As I said when I began, Mr. Speaker, we want to have brief but meaningful debate. The government and the backbenches, certainly on this side, are not suggesting closure or the muffling of contrary views. We are prepared to complete our participation at this point, however, in the hope that this House can soon move on to other matters.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Joe Clark (Rocky Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, let me begin by drawing the attention of the House of Commons and the country once again to the wide range of problems which beset us in Canada today. Inflation is running at a rate of approximately 10 per cent, the government is obviously disorganized-


Some hon. Members:: Order!


Charles Joseph Clark: -but instead of coming to grips with the situation which exists in the country we are here today discussing football. Earlier today, during question period, the point was made that, with all its articulated concern, with all its phoney interest in the country, the government has not brought down a single piece of legislation to deal with the economic and other ills which so badly affect us. The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) excused himself by saying parliament had come to the aid of fishermen, farmers and small businessmen by passing legislation last week. I would point out that the only reason this bill was passed was that the party to which I belong preferred to stay here this week and work, and not run away to Barbados-


Mr. Haidasz:: A cheap argument.


Charles Joseph Clark: I want to deal with some of the remarks which were made by the hon. member for York West (Mr. Fleming) when, echoing his master's voice, he said his party had no interest in a filibuster and no interest in closure. The hon. member put forward on behalf of the government he supports a proposition which strains the credulity even of those who are accustomed to watching the way the government works. The government has placed before the House a bill which is clear evidence of its distorted priorities at a time of national emergency. It is the government which controls the business which is to be brought before the House, but having brought this bill forward, what does it do? It asks us not to talk about it. It tries to curtail the right of individual members to deal with the bill.


An hon. Member:: What's stopping you. Deal with it.


Charles Joseph Clark: If the government is concerned about inflation, as the hon. member suggested it is, let them change their priorities and bring in legislation dealing with inflation. Let them not seek to mislead the House of Commons.


Stanley Haidasz: You are running scared!


Charles Joseph Clark: That kind of approach indicates a double contempt for parliament; first, contempt by introducing legislation which ignores the obvious priorities, and, second, contempt by seeking, with all the means at its disposal-


Stanley Haidasz: Are you for or against Canadian football? That is the issue.


Charles Joseph Clark: Let me suggest to you, Mr. Speaker-


Stanley Haidasz: Are you against a Canadian identity? Yes, or no?


Charles Joseph Clark: I find it strange that a question about the Canadian identity should come from a minister who has responsibilities in this field but no staff at all, which indicates the kind of identity-


Stanley Haidasz: Come and see us some time.


Charles Joseph Clark: One other matter before I come to the substance of the bill. I wish to refer to the suggestion by the minister yesterday, supported by that very great ability of his to count noses, that the bill did not involve a question of confidence. I want to ask the minister what right he had to state, in his place, out of the shadow of the grey eminence he used to occupy, that this is, or is not, a matter of confidence. Such a question is surely one for the House itself to consider.


Mr. Lalonde:: Read Beauchesne!


Charles Joseph Clark: He makes such statements simply because he is having trouble getting the member who sits in front of him to support his legislation. The minister made the suggestion on television, which has now become the principal method used by ministers when they wish to make announcements, that this bill was a trade-off designed to help western Canada in exchange for concessions western Canada made in connection with the petroleum question. I shall not deal with this aspect at length, but I would make the point, as an Albertan, that if there is to be some kind of balance in confederation we in western Canada would much prefer that attention be given to our legitimate concerns for equality in freight rates, a better balance in industrial development and so on, rather than an unprecedented and direct interference in the business which is professional sport.
There is an old adage in the country that Toronto is a great unifier because Toronto gives everyone in the rest of the country something in common to hate. I think the minister was probably banking on this attitude when he introduced his legislation. I will concede that there is some resentment in my riding of the idea that Toronto is the centre of the world-an idea which was in the mind of the hon. member for York West when, talking about east versus west, he told us this really meant Toronto versus the west; apparently eastern Canada stops at Toronto, excluding every large part of the country. Anyway, I know this opinion of Toronto exists in my part of the country. I regret it. I think the resentment of Toronto is not sufficient reason for embracing legislation which fails to do what it attempts to do, and which sets a very dangerous precedent for direct intervention by government in the field of professional sport.
The single, primary point about this legislation is that it is not going to do what it tries to do. It is not going to be
April 19, 1974

effective. The WFL, whatever the House does, is not suddenly going to dissolve and go away. It is not suddenly going to stop being competitive for Canadian football players on member teams in the CFL. Indeed, it could be argued that the best protection that the CFL has against competition from the WFL is having the Northmen in Toronto, where the guarantees that were given by the sponsors of the Northmen would ensure that there will be an honouring of CFL contracts, that there will not be raiding. John Bassett Jr. has given certain guarantees to the government which would take effect if the Northmen were allowed to continue to function in that city. One was that there would be no raiding, and that would be a great protection to the CFL, a greater protection than is now envisaged in the legislation that has been brought before this House. Then, there has been a guarantee of certain equalization payments to the CFL. There has been a guarantee that no other WFL club would be established within Canadian boundaries, that the franchise rights would be turned over. They are concrete guarantees to the future of the Canadian Football League and will do something, whereas this bill only pretends to do something.
The hon. member for York West (Mr. Fleming), who has now left the chamber, quoted some statements from various officials in western Canada and elsewhere in support of the idea that the minister had articulated in Regina. I think it would be important to add to the record the dates on which that correspondence took place. Because it is my very deep suspicion that that correspondence was sent before the bill was seen; it was sent in support of an idea which would win support in western Canada and elsewhere, but not in support of a piece of legislation which all of us who can read know is not going to be effective in doing what the government says it is trying to do.
It is very clear, and a matter of very great concern to any member of this House who has an interest in professional and amateur football, that the CFL is threatened anyway by the very existence of the World Football League. So long as the WFL exists and is competing, one of two things is going to happen to the CFL, and maybe both. First of all, there is going to be competition for players, which might mean that some of the U.S. imports, who at least add to box office appeal and strengthen CFL teams, will be drawn away; and there is the danger that the quality of football in the CFL will go down, regardless what we do with this bill, unless we can accept and implement the guarantees associated with the establishment of the Northmen in Toronto.
The second thing that could happen is that in this competition for players the CFL would have to bid higher, and consequently it would become more and more difficult for those clubs operating near the profit margin- clubs in western Canada particularly and perhaps the club at Hamilton-to continue to compete. It would be particularly difficult for them to continue to make whatever contribution they are making now to the development and encouragement of amateur football.
I suggest to the House that if there is an aspect of this question that is of legitimate and real concern to those of us here, that aspect is the future of amateur football in this country. It is clear that amateur football receives a certain benefit now from CFL teams who make money
Canadian Professional Football available on a voluntary basis and who also make coaching, films and other assistance available. But it is also obvious that the first people to suffer when there is a decline in the revenue of CFL teams, such as will come from competition with the WFL, will be the amateur teams.
I say again that the one possible protection against that-unless there is to be some new legislation brought in-resides in the guarantees that are associated with the location of the Northmen in Toronto. I hold the view that if there is genuine Canadian football of the kind the minister, in his preamble to the bill, talked about, it is the amateur Canadian football teams. That is where support is needed in this country. If the government is serious about that, and if it does succeed with this bill, maybe-just maybe-it should increase the percentage of Canadian players to 80 per cent, 90 per cent or even 99 per cent. This would be one way of ensuring that there would be effective encouragement of the amateur football associations of this country, whatever happens to the CFL.
Last night the minister indicated there are some other programs that the government intends to follow to encourage amateur football. He indicated that the government had accepted the seven year plan of the Canadian Amateur Football Association and intends to do some other things. I simply want to make it absolutely clear that that undertaking is a separate item from the bill concerning the Northmen. We can presume, unless the minister is involved in some kind of subtle encouragement of support for this bill, that we are going to have support for amateur football anyway, whatever happens to this bill.
Many of us who over the years, in one party or another, have developed an admiration for the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) were struck last night by the very defensive nature of his speech. It was the speech of a man who knows he has made a mistake. He made a long apology for singling out the Northmen, for not acting on those other occasions in professional sport in Canada which have caused harm either directly or by foreclosing possible options for the development of Canadian leagues. He did that by concocting the argument that these other activities, such as baseball, lacrosse, etc., are not Canadian entities anyway. So he is doing nothing about the Expos; he is doing nothing about the fact that foreign owners have to buy the Vancouver Canucks; he is doing nothing to protect lacrosse which suffered a serious blow even during the months that this issue has been before us.
Because this issue has great emotional content the minister also talked about the Grey Cup and how important it is as a national institution. And of course it is. But it is simply false to argue that the Grey Cup will lose its status as a national symbol and event because the Northmen play in Toronto. The Grey Cup has withstood the erosion of broadcasts every Sunday from the National Football League, broadcasts, I might remind the minister, on the Canadian public television network. It has withstood the conversion of the game of football into one that is dependent for its stars and box office appeal primarily upon imports. I say the CFL and the Grey Cup will withstand the Northmen.

April 19, 1974
Canadian Professional Football
The hon. member for York West, if I can return to him for a moment, was eloquent in his early obituary to the CFL, suggesting that this bill before us is the thing, and the only thing, which will keep the CFL in existence. I do not believe, as Russ Jackson, who is a far better authority than I, does not believe, that the CFL is such a fragile plant that it will suddenly wither and die if this piece of ill-considered and ineffective legislation fails to carry in this House.
The minister in his defensive speech last night also spoke at length about the Bassetts, father and son, about what they knew or what they should have known. I suggest the minister's intention was to indicate that the Bassetts knew that the government was going to bring in this kind of legislation, that they knew that the strong arm of the state was going to be brought to bear against them well before they acted. With all respect to the minister, I think that is simply a red herring. Even if the Bassetts did know what the minister and his predecessors had said, and we can only speculate that they did, things ministers say are not law until this parliament makes them law.
I recall, Sir, and I think other members do, that not very long ago the Prime Minister of this country announced a certain skepticism about the work ethic. Is that policy? Will that be law? Will all of us who work be subject to retroactive legislation and two years in jail? I think that indicates the absurdity of the minister's suggestion that because he or his predecessors might have said something that did not then have the force of law, or did not then carry with it the intention of acquiring the force of law, the Bassetts acted in some way that justifies this retroactive legislation against them.
The minister has taken this bad legislation, bad because of the precedents it sets and bad because it does not do what it sets out to do, and he has tried to cloak it in the attractive garb of Canadian nationalism. I mean no offence to the Canadian Football League, but I think that since the minister has made this argument, and since so much of his case depends upon it, and since it has excited the interest and put in jeopardy the seat of his colleague the Minister of State who sometimes is responsible for multiculturalism, I think it might be legitimate to ask how national is the CFL when all of its coaches and nine of its general managers are American born? Most of its stars and most of the people who draw Canadians to the box offices are American born.
The history of the sport and the history of the game that is played in the CFL is a history of change. It started, as my colleague the hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Mac-quarrie) pointed out the other night, as a game that is now explicitly excluded from the effects of this legislation by the minister and which has gradually evolved into the game it is today generally along the lines of the U.S. game. It is obvious that the CFL is important to Canada, an important institution as are other of our institutions of national origin, but it is simply misleading to suggest that the Canadian Football League possesses a Canadian identity so distinctive as to be in a place of priority when protecting Canadian culture.

I want to come for a moment to this question of priorities of nationalism and priorities of protecting Canadian identity. Even if this government had turned around and suddenly been seized with the need to protect Canadian identity, why should it start here? Why start with a game dominated by Americans? Why start with football? My colleague, the hon. member for Hillsborough, pointed out the other night that a better place to start would have been by changing the federal immigration laws. If the hon. member for York West were in the House, I would draw to his attention the fact that the federal immigration laws are the responsibility of this government, and this in one thing he cannot fob off on Queen's Park.
The federal immigration laws are the prime reason there is a very serious problem about non-Canadian nationalism in teaching, controlling and hiring in our Canadian universities. Why should football have priority over universities? Why should professional football which does not even directly affect the physical wellbeing and the physical development of Canadian youngsters have a priority over a question which very clearly affects the mentality and attitudinal development of Canadians in universities in this country?
Again on this question of priorities, why do we start with football, with a club owned by Canadians when we continue to allow concessions to Time magazine? Why does football have priority or precedence over Time? Why does football have priority and precedence over book publishing in respect of which the Secretary of State (Mr. Faulkner) has been dithering and dallying, making brave but empty speeches about what he is going to do, yet has done nothing at all? Why is football more important than books?
If football is of such almighty importance, why is there not a policy that will do something about the televising on the Canadian national television network of NFL games every Sunday? If the influence of American football is so rending to our national identity and being, why do we subsidize the CBC to carry NFL football games into Canadian homes for far more Canadians to watch than get into the stadiums, particularly since you cannot get into them in most of the cities in the country? As was pointed out to the minister the other day, if the CBC is carrying these things and we are really concerned about these questions, why do we go to the length of providing French-language translation to carry the NFL into the province of Quebec? Surely, if there were some sense of priority or some sense of context to this action these would be the steps the government would be taking.
I have asked already why, if the minister is worried about developing football as part of Canadian identity, the government is not taking steps now to encourage amateur football in Canada and, indeed, to encourage amateur athletics of all kinds? As an aside, Sir, one of the very great concerns many of us have about this bill that is brought in is a concern which was apparent when the Department of National Health and Welfare began to get involved in fitness and amateur athletic sports. We believe there is a very real role on the side of encouraging Canadian fitness, but the action this government has taken and the priority it has given to professional football has given the caste of nationalism to its activities in sports as being
April 19, 1974

one of preoccupation with professional sports and one of caring not at all or caring enough about amateur athletics. If the Department of National Health and Welfare is to be involved in sports and athletics, then it should be involved on the side of fitness and amateur sports and it should not be long in its acquiring of these priorities and concerns with the professional game.
What is most remarkable of all, Sir, about this legislation and this so-called act to protect and advance Canadian identity, is that it occurs absolutely without any context of national policy. It is not part of a policy at all, it is simply a random strike by the strong arm of the organized state against one venture.
Speaking personally, I believe there are occasions when the state must move in the national interest into fields where it had not been before. I am proud to be part of a party, as was indicated earlier today, which took the initiative to establish the Canadian Wheat Board, and proud to be part of a party which took the initiative to establish the CBC. I believe there is very real room for argument to be made for the state moving from time to time into areas where it had not been before. Once you accept that view you have to go on to say that the state should do that only when it is necessary, as it is not necessary here, and only when the action will be effective, as it will not be effective here, and only when the state knows what it is doing, and I think it is pretty clear that the government of Canada does not know what it is doing with this legislation.
One of the aspects of this bill that worries me most of all as a Canadian who believes there is a legitimate role for state activities and careful watching is that the minister's action today jeopardizes the legitimate principle that the state has some right in activities where the right did not always exist. That right and that principle is jeopardized when the state moves into everything without consistency and without the context of a general policy. It is a very dangerous mentality in a free country that favours governments rushing into every phase of life.
Even if this bill were to be effective, and it is not, there is a legitimate question as to whether the state should suddently swoop into sports, and particularly into professional sports, because professional sports, as we all know if we are honest, are much more entertainment than athletics. This is another kind of business, and that is a question to be considered if this bill is to be effective.
This bill will not be effective. It will not do what it is supposed to do. It is even more dangerous as a precedent of the random intrusion of the strong arm of the state in professional sport. The minister made the point in his remarks that there are no absolutes about whether the state should be in or out of these activities. I happen to believe there are no absolutes about that, but I think the question we must consider all the time is, when does the state become too active. That question is particularly important for those of us who believe that the state does have some legitimate role and who do not want to see that legitimacy destroyed by a random raw exercise of state power without a context of general policy and without a purpose which can be achieved. If we argue that football is
Canadian Professional Football distinctive Canadian culture then this bill is reversing the way we encourage Canadian culture. It is turning it around because the Canadian way is to encourage our own culture positively and not to contort ourselves to keep others out.
That was the principle involved in the establishment of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in the establishment of the National Film Board and in the establishment of the Canadian Film Development Corporation, which is that we act positively to encourage Canadians. However, if the Lalonde principle is applied to other cultural areas what we would do instead would be to ban circulation of United States movies in Canada, prohibit the circulation of foreign books in Canada and tear up foreign magazines at the border because we are turning around in this legislation the whole long-established Canadian principle of the way in which we encourage identity and self-expression in this country. What we should be doing here, if anything, is encouraging amateur Canadian football and this bill not help that at all. In a free society there are some things the state cannot do.
In Alberta we had experience with that not too long ago in respect of cable television when it was proposed by a former roommate of the Minister of National Health and Welfare that access to cable be prohibited to Calgary and Edmonton. That was designed to protect us against the televised influence of the United States while residents of cities closer to the border in Vancouver and in central Canada were bathed in that influence. This was discriminatory against Alberta. It did not work because it was ineffective as a protection of the Canadian identity. The same kind of inconsistency is evident in a proposal which would allow Torontonians to sit at home and watch United States football on the Canadian National television network or on the United States channels and yet not allow them to go downtown to watch it live. Not only will they not be able to watch the Northmen if this bill passes, but they will not be able to watch the Argos either because they will not be able to get in.
In conclusion, I want to draw attention again to some of the central criticisms with regard to this bill. First, it will not protect the Canadian Football League. The World Football League is an inevitable competitor and its very existence either in Toronto or in some city across the border will create very serious problems of player quality and revenue for teams in the CFL. I repeat this point because I think it is highly important. It may very well prove to be the case that the guarantees associated with the Northmen in Toronto may be the best protection to the CFL as against the inevitable competition from the world Football League. That is point one. This bill will not protect the CFL.
The second point is highly important to all of us concerned about amateur athletics, particularly in the smaller communities. This bill will not protect or encourage amateur football. Indeed it may endanger amateur football and other sports as well because it may give the impression that the government is preoccupied with professional sport rather than with amateur athletics in this country. The third point is that this bill entails an attempt to reverse, to turn right around, the whole approach of developing Canadian culture to an approach of prohibition.

April 19, 1974
Canadian Professional Football
The approach of encouragement is being discarded. The fourth point is that this action is being taken outside the context of national policy. No national policy is involved here. It is simply a random strike by the state against a particular entrepreneur and activity.
Finally, the principles involved in this bill will be a dangerous intrusion by the state, reflecting a dangerous mentality whereby the government might pass retroactive legislation to prohibit anything that it does not much like, an intrusion which threatens to change the entire nature of sport in Canada. The best possible result of this bill would be if the minister would stand in his place and have the courage to say he had made a mistake, that he wanted to do something which perhaps many individuals in Canada wanted to do but that he was not able to devise a bill to achieve what he wanted. The minister should have the humility to say he made a mistake and that he is backing off.


Marc Lalonde: You are an expert at it.


Charles Joseph Clark: I perhaps am an expert at humility. I am not sure the minister could make the same claim. He should be prepared to reassess this bill. He should do the right thing which is stand up now and withdraw this bill which will be harmful to professional and amateur football in this country. There is no question that the best way to proceed would be to withdraw this legislation, but if it is not withdrawn then I want it to be clear to the Minister of State and to everybody else that I am against this bill and intend to vote against it.
My party intends to vote against this bill because we think it is dangerous, ineffective legislation and involves principles which will not only reverse the principles and practices in Canada but which will give more force to the idea that the state should intrude at will whether or not it knows what it is trying to do, whether or not the intrusion has any effect and whether or not it is operating in the context of policy.


Mr. Andrew Brewin (Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I intend to oppose this bill and I intend to vote against it.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Francis Andrew Brewin: I will summarize the reasons for my view. I think I have about six points on which I will want to expand later. First of all, I say we should not be discussing the issue of football at all at this time when we are faced with the problem of inflation, housing, energy, taxation and a host of other urgent economic and social problems. The hon. member for Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie) reached back into antiquity in his speech. I would say that this is an example of Nero fiddling while Rome burns. My second point is that the parliament of Canada should not be in the business of regulating professional sport at all, and least of all should it be an arbiter between two competing private enterprises.
My third point, and I will expand on it later, is that, in my view at least, the legislation is clearly unconstitutional and beyond the powers of this parliament. My fourth point is that the pretence that this legislation is essential to

defend Canadian culture and unity, to my mind at least, is completely phoney. Canadian culture and unity do not depend upon which of two types of football are played or watched in Canada, and least of all do they depend in the degree of American content in these two particular brands of football. If this is Canadian nationalism, and I say it is not, I want to have none of it.
My fifth point is that a basic right is involved here, that is the right of people to choose for themselves, unless there is some very good reason why they should not be allowed to and such reasons do not exist in the present case, what they want to watch on television or hear on radio. There is no reason why the consumer, that is the viewer who wants to view football directly or through any other means, should not have the widest possible choice, and if that choice involves some degree of American importation- and it does now and will continue to do so-so what? No nationalist rule compels us to say that we are going to shut our doors to seeing things, hearing them and enjoying them because they come from some other part of the world.
Last, and not least, perhaps my reason for opposing this legislation has been said already and I heartily agree with it. This legislation will be completely futile; it will accomplish none of the purposes for which it is designed. I do not regard this matter as being in any sense a party matter. In my party, and no doubt in others, we discuss policy at conventions, at meetings of our council, and in our caucus. We have not done any such thing with regard to this subject. Our caucus has taken the view, and quite rightly in my opinion, that we should be completely free to exercise our own judgment in this matter. I realize that there are strong regional feelings pressuring certain people into the acceptance of this particular type of legislation. I respect their point of view, but I cannot agree with it.
I want to expand on the points I have made. My first point dealt with a proper sense of priorities. I know that the people in my riding in particular, and I have been talking to a good many of them lately, are deeply concerned about the economic crisis that is facing this country. They want action from this parliament in various fields, above all in the field of the high and increasing cost of living. In my own judgment, and that of many people, parliament is demeaned when it departs from these crucial bread and butter issues and spends its time discussing the type of legislation that is presented to us today.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Francis Andrew Brewin: The next point I made was that the parliament of Canada should not be in the business of regulating professional sport. I, myself, think that there is an aspect of sport in which the federal government and the federal parliament should be involved, that is the promotion of amateur sport to assist the health, welfare and fitness of the people of this country. I do not believe this legislation adds one iota to the health, welfare and fitness of the people of Canada. If we are going to spend time and money dealing with sport, let us deal with it on that basis and not on the basis that this legislation purports to do.
I say that the legislation is unconstitutional. 1 know very well, as one who has had some experience in constitu-
April 19, 1974

tional law, that it is very hazardous to predict what the result of constitutional decisions in the courts may be. I know that these matters are complex. It is possible to take different points of view. But from the basis of any knowledge I have I say there are at least grave and serious doubts as to whether this parliament has any right to legislate in this field at all. I would have thought that the regulation of sport generally was a matter for the provinces under property and civil rights and a matter of local and private nature.
I do not quite know how this is justified. We have not heard any justification. I heard the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) make some frivolous replies to questions from the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker), but I have not seen, nor have we been vouchsafed any serious analysis as to whether we have the right to deal with it. Does it depend on peace, order or good government, the opening words of section 91? To me that is a nonsensical suggestion. That particular power relates to times of emergency. What emergency requires us to decide whether the Northmen play football in Toronto or do not play football in Toronto?
It might be thought to be justified under the heading of trade and commerce. I know that is a complex subject and there are numerous cases, none of them clear. From my reading I have not been able to discover any case that justifies the suggestion that to allow someone to come across the border to play football, to play a musical instrument, albeit they are playing for money, is a matter of trade and commerce of such dimensions that it would justify legislation here on issues of trade and commerce.
Is it criminal law? Some clauses appear in the bill as if criminal law were included in this bill on purpose. This is an indication of the completely unconstitutional nature of the bill because criminal law certainly is a power that the federal government has but it cannot be used to justify interference in a field where the government has no right to be.


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.
Francis Andrew Brewin: Mr. Speaker,-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Francis Andrew Brewin: My colleagues assure me that their applause is for me, and not for my speech.


Mr. Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Hear, hear! You are a fine man.


Francis Andrew Brewin: Mr. Speaker, I was giving an outline of the various reasons why I think this bill should be opposed. One of the reasons was that I thought it was beyond the constitutional power of this parliament to pass, and I touched on some of the headings under which it might be
Canadian Professional Football sought to be justified. I mentioned the subject of criminal law which, of course, is within the power of parliament. But, Mr. Speaker, I find the references to penalties in this bill clearly colourable. One just cannot attach a penalty to a bill which is dealing with something that is basically provincial and, as a result, call it criminal law.
I do not think criminal law has any part in dealing with the question of who plays what sort of football, or who watches what sort of football. I cannot imagine that that subject has anything whatsoever to do with the field of criminal law. I find the suggestion that perhaps it is justified under this heading is clear evidence of the lack of any proper basis of constitutional support, and indeed is a clear indication that this legislation is colourable legislation.
Some people may ask why bother about the constitution these days? Some people do not seem to be very interested in or to bother much with constitutional matters. I particularly ask the government members, some of whom have been stout defenders of provincial rights, why are they so silent with respect to this intrusion in the field of provincial rights? I myself have never been a strong defender of provincial rights because I felt that, as a federal member of parliament, my main interest was concerned with defending the federal rights of this parliament. But I think we need balance.
To me it is a most extraordinary thing that a whole political party-so far as I know not a single one has got up here to protest against this bill-has been silent on this invasion of the provincial sphere. Could it possibly be because the bill in the first instance is aimed at the area of Toronto, at the province of Ontario? Do they think provincial rights are important when they concern some other province, but not worth defending if they concern this particular area of the country?
I want to warn people who think like this that if they can invade the field of provincial rights using the flimsy pretext of this bill, then they can invade those rights tomorrow in a different sphere affecting different areas of the country. As I say, the silence of the government party on this issue is astounding and astonishing to me.
My next point is this: I do not believe that the pretence that this bill is a defence of Canadian culture and Canadian unity has any substance. I have described it as phony, and I cannot think of a better word. We are all Canadian nationalists and we all recognize the importance of maintaining the identity and self confidence of Canada. There are many fields in which we need more Canadian nationalism. We need it in the defence of our resources, in the development of our resources, and we need it particularly in international affairs. All too often we have borrowed our ideas from other countries, first from Great Britain and, currently, the United States. I believe in the strength and independence of Canada and, although nationalism is not the ultimate loyalty, I still think it is very important.
But how is it that a game which is at least semi-American, professional football, has suddenly become the symbol of Canadian nationalism. If that is the symbol of Canadian nationalism, I say Canadian nationalism is pretty sick. If we have to borrow, as our symbol, a game
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April 19, 1974
Canadian Professional Football
which everybody who knows anything about it will admit is thoroughly Americanized, if we have to borrow that and defend that as the symbol of our nationalism, our nationalism is in a pretty poor state.
If one concedes that somehow or other Parliament must insist on Canadian sports remaining Canadianized, what were we doing when a genuine Canadian sport, lacrosse, was taken over by the Americans. No one can deny that lacrosse was a basic Canadian institution. Is the football that is played part of our culture, when a large proportion of our players are American and rules are the same as American rules? When the forward pass was introduced in the United States, it was introduced in Canada as well only a few weeks or months afterwards. Our so-called Canadian football is a derivation of American football. Even if it was not so originally, it has become so over the course of years.
There are forms of nationalism which are just. It is perfectly reasonable to require a certain Canadian content in what goes over our air waves. I do not object to that, for what goes over our air waves is closely related to our culture and nationality. But I deny that this particular form of football, this professional football which we are discussing, is such a national symbol.
I read the recital to this bill. It spoke of national unity. All the noble words were used in it. I have never before seen such a ridiculous recital to a bill. If I were to bring a bill forward with that sort of recital in it, I would be ashamed of myself.
Another point I made is this: people have the right to choose what they shall see and view, and what sort of entertainment they want to watch. This right belongs to everybody, not just to people in the Toronto area. It will be a sorry day when Parliament gets into the business of trying to regulate what we can see.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Francis Andrew Brewin: True, the right to choose is not absolute. At times it must be interfered with for the benefit of the public generally. As I say, it is not ah absolute right. But I fail to see what circumstances has suddenly come about which gives the government the right to tell people, in effect, that they cannot watch a football player who happens to be affiliated with some foreign league. I would deny the government this right. Although it is not covered in the Bill of Rights, this involves a basic human right, and you should not interfere with it unless you have a very good reason. I do not see any such reason in this particular case.
Another point I made is that the present legislation is doomed to futility. It just will not work. This point has already been expounded in the House and I will not spend long on it. I see no reason for believing that this legislation will achieve the purpose at which it is aimed, the protection of the Canadian Football League. They would be far better protected if they accepted the proposals made by the proponents of the WFL, that there be no raiding. If they insist on throwing the other league out of the country altogether, they cannot appeal to them. They cannot ask them to desist from raiding, from using their superior financial resources to diminish the quality of Canadian football. If they are thrown out, how is that going to help

Canadian football? This bill is a weapon. It is a weapon which should not be used at all, for the end that it purports to achieve it obviously will not achieve. Therefore, it is futile.
I have had and have a great deal of respect for the Minister of National Health and Welfare. His is an extremely important portfolio. So far as I know, he is carrying out his duties well. I say to him, this bill is an aberration. It is tragic that a man with his reputation has come forward and associated his name with this sort of aberration. I have no desire to prolong this debate. Let me summarize the reasons why I say we should vote against this bill. First, it is an unwarranted interference with freedom of choice. It is an invasion of the provincial field of property and civil rights. It is outside the constitutional power of the federal government. Its pretended defence of Canadian nationalism, unity and culture is without substance. It is not a matter of high priority in the present day of crisis. Lastly, it will be futile for carrying out the purpose for which it appears to be aimed. For these reasons I appeal to all members of the House, irrespective of party, to repudiate this particularly bad legislation.


Mr. Norval Horner (Battleford-Kindersley):: Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I follow the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Brewin) who showed great concern for the rights of individuals. I agree with him, even though such concern has not normally been expressed by those who sit to the left of me in the House.


Francis Andrew Brewin: Nonsense.


Norval Alic Horner: The hon. member for Regina-Lake Centre (Mr. Benjamin) wondered what my position would be, as I come from Saskatchewan. Before the barbs come from the other side of the House, let me say that I am for Canadian football and for Canadian sports of any kind. Also, I am for excellence in sports. I shall deal with this later. At present, I wonder how relevant this debate is.
The Treasury Board has just received word that the air traffic controllers will go on strike at midnight, on Sunday, and here we are, arguing whether we should protect the monopoly of the Toronto Argonauts, the team the people watch in the Toronto area. What is all this nonsense? The country is saddled with strikes. The railways are 56 million bushels behind in grain deliveries. People in the world are starving because we cannot deliver wheat to export position, and we talk about football. If inflation goes above 10 per cent and if half the traffic in the country is stalled, will we talk about tennis? Taking the argument to ridiculous lengths, when inflation reaches 15 per cent, will the government bring in a bill to regulate ping pong?
One wonders about this government. When I go to my constituency, people ask why we cannot have legislation which deals with the Criminal Code and abortion. I tell them there are 30 departments of government and everyone is either trying to update their legislation or bring in new legislation to meet the ever-increasing demands of the public. How will I ever be able to explain to my constituents why we had to spend several days debating
April 19, 1974

football? When the minister introduced the bill, he spoke for an hour, and closed by saying that he hoped no one would want to talk about this measure, that there would be co-operation from other members and the debate would be closed. I would like to take this opportunity to discuss some of the issues in his department.
Over the years I have sent requests to the department asking for financial support for people honestly engaged in the promotion of amateur sports. The answers have always been the same, we get nothing. However, the minister is going to spend $18 million this year and $25 million by 1975-76. Where is it going to go? I can well remember living in Saskatchewan and wanting to see some Canadian football. All we ever got over CBC television was American football. I did not like it at first, but after seeing nothing else, it kind of grew on me. The CBC could not carry Canadian games so we had to watch American ball. Now, the government is getting kind of fussy about what kind of ball there may be in Toronto.
It seems the department of fitness and health can give grants to Lethbridge and Montreal. The people in my constituency contributed to support Expo '67 and the great monuments and facilities that remain there. Olympics '76 will also cost the Canadian taxpayer. However, we do not get anything in the rural and sparsely populated areas. North Battleford in my constituency was going to host the Canadian senior baseball championships this year. When we hosted the Saskatchewan winter games, we requested some television coverage by the state-owned CBC. They said they could not go there and do that, yet they spent $25 million sending progress reports on sports events in Mexico. Why do they not have money to project happenings that are taking place in remote areas, as I suppose the government considers them to be, like North Battleford? Facilities will be required to host these games in Kinders-ley and Unity. It will not be possible to get any financial assistance from the minister's department.
There is talk about football being part of the Canadian culture. I have not received one single letter on this issue. I did receive a booklet from the Canadian Football League which is not looking very far down the road when supporting this legislation. I quote from that paper:
-Canadian Clubs would lose just as much or more money but more importantly they will have lost 100 years of Canadian sporting tradition.
They say it will not only wipe out the Canadian Football League, but all sporting tradition in Canada. What nonsense. They further state:
The Grey Cup Game, as one of Canada's greatest annual events, will disappear with it-
No one is talking about the disappearance of the CFL. This bill does not guarantee the Saskatchewan Rough Riders will survive in Regina. I do not see anything in this bill that assures a football team in Saskatchewan. Whether or not Saskatchewan continues to have a football team will depend on the ability of those managing the team to sell their product. It will also depend on the willingness of the people with the entertainment dollar to purchase tickets and see football. They have to compete with hockey, other sports and activities of all sorts. That is as it should be.
Canadian Professional Football
This bill to keep a football team out of Toronto and support the monopoly of the Argonauts in that city will not do anything for Regina, Calgary or Edmonton. You do not get excellence in sport by eliminating the better players. Look at what the Americans have done to promote hockey in their country. They could simply say they will not allow any Canadian hockey players into the United States. We know what the result would be. There would not be a team in St. Louis or Cleveland. There would not be two hockey teams in New York or Boston. Without excellence in sports, you just do not get spectators. A person will pay $100 to see two excellent boxers but will not walk across the street to see two mediocre ones. This socialistic minister is trying to promote mediocracy in sports as well as everything else.
The minister's speech made it quite clear why we are debating this issue today. The government is hanging by a thread not knowing what to do. What do you do in a case like that? You find some filler legislation. The minister said, as recorded at page 1566 of Hansard, and I quote:
As a matter of fact, although we consider this a matter of significance we do not consider it a matter of confidence.
Why is it here? Why are we debating it? They sense an election in the near future. As the minister said at page 1561, it is an emotional issue, a gut issue. That is why we are debating it. The government cannot be defeated on it. It is an emotional issue, but they are trying to gain the support of Canadians for it.
I live in a town of about 3,000 people. We have local hockey teams. They have done something to promote unity. In the last three years, they travelled to Powell River, B.C. and Bathurst, New Brunswick. They went to the Canadian finals intermediate A hockey, real amateur hockey. These fellows do not get paid fancy salaries. They play for pleasure and to entertain the local people. They live in sparsely populated areas and are hard pressed for money. We produce a lot for the economy of this country in terms of grain and cattle, but we are denied any support from this minister's department. I requested some support when the Rosetown Red Wings had to travel to St. John, New Brunswick, to play in the intermediate A finals. There was no support in terms of travel expenses or help to have these games broadcast in Rosetown and surrounding area.
If football is a traditional part of Canadian culture, certainly hockey is much more so. I would not hesitate to guess that for every child with a football, there are a thousand children with a hockey stick. The minister made a speech at the University of Lethbridge on awards night. He said that Canada was not winning gold medals at the Olympics and countries with populations smaller than ours were winning more medals. He said we want to help the best Canadian athletes in their pursuit of excellence.
Let us look at those two objectives, achieving more medals for Canada and helping our athletes in their pursuit of excellence and look at the bill this minister has brought forward. How does the bill achieve either of these objectives? I do not see how keeping the Northmen out of Toronto is likely to help us win more gold Olympic medals. I do not see that it will help our athletes achieve any greater excellence. It is difficult for socialists to understand excellence, to understand that mankind has always
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April 19, 1974
Canadian Professional Football sought excellence and tried to achieve the best. The socialists formula is to say: you cannot run as fast as the next fellow, but never mind, we will legislate a stone around his neck. There will always be followers of that philosophy because there will always be people who cannot run as fast as the leader. So it always goes over well.
The minister says he intends to appoint an executive director for amateur football. That is a fine sounding idea. Perhaps the man selected will be a defeated Liberal candidate, or, perhaps, a football player. In any case, he will need a secretary. If he is a football player his spelling will probably be no better than mine. Whoever is appointed will probably need a few assistant directors, one for the west, I suppose and another for the east, with a commissioner to represent the maritimes. Half of the staff will be French, and the rest will be English. Having done this with football, what about hockey? Will the minister appoint a director to look after hockey? What about lacrosse, Canada's national sport? This is how bureaucracy grows. This is the reason I am opposed to the legislation, and I think it is the reason most of my constituents are opposed to it. If the CFL had any opinion, they would be opposed to it as well. We just cannot achieve excellence in Canadian football by protecting players.
It would not be gratifying for any Canadian player to find himself part of a team simply because someone in his family had influence or owned a share of the team. Just now, the Americans are achieving greater excellence in hockey, not by banning our players but by welcoming Canadians who have achieved eminence in that sport. I think we could learn from them. If it is the intention to improve football in Canada, the federal government might try to find ways of improving the standard of coaching in our high schools, colleges and universities. If the government is so anxious to spend money it could make grants available for hiring American coaches, or the best coaches wherever they can be found, rather than protecting footballers who in time, nobody might care to go and watch.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some hon. Members:: Question!


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Not yet!


Peter Reilly: Before I begin, Mr. Speaker, let me suggest to old leather lungs over there that he and the rest of his accomplices in the government party, to judge from their demeanour during the consideration of this bill are analogous to the young man who, having murdered his mother and father goes into court pleading for mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan-I have used that comparison before, but only once; the lawyers will know it.


An hon. Member:: Very funny!


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Not bad.


Peter Reilly: It is they who brought this bill before the House. It is they who urge the rest of us to pass it without debate. Yet it is bad law. It has dubious constitutional backing. They want us to get rid of it so that there can be a

vote. Well, they are not going to get it. In case there should be any doubt in the mind of the aforesaid leather lungs, I intend to speak against this bill as will most, if not all, of my hon. friends in this party.


An hon. Member:: And so would they, if they could!


Peter Reilly: Yes. As my hon. friend says, if the truth ever came out there is hardly a member within that tatty caucus who, if he had the courage, would not stand up and say exactly what I am saying about this affair.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Peter Reilly: Mr. Speaker, I am in some difficulty, I must confess, in finding within the lexicon of the English language words to describe the emotion I feel as I stand up here to debate this over-poweringly important measure. My thoughts stray to my riding, not 2,000 yards west of here. I think of the young housewife whose husband, by whom she has had three children, earns less than $10,000 a year, and of the tiny, tiny tender smile that must flit over her lips as she delves deeply into her handbag in an effort to make a down payment on the weekend groceries, and remembers that the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) has made Toronto safe for the Argonauts. I think of the many hundreds of thousands of people-507,000 by the government's own count last Monday-who are out of work in this country and who, as they line up to receive their unemployment cheques, may be taking real comfort from the fact that the WFL shall not pass.


Mr. Muir:: A thousand laid off last week in my city.


Peter Reilly: Last Monday, the increases in the cost of living were announced. As we all know, the average increase in the consumer price index for the year was 10.1 per cent. In some cities it was as high as 12.5 per cent for the year with St. John's leading the pack. In Ottawa, where the minister sits five days a week, it was 11.4 per cent, the monthly increase being .9 per cent. This is in addition to the multiplicity of other disasters which have been brought on the heads of the unsuspecting and undeserving people of this country as a result of the really creative incompetence of the government.
As I say, I find myself at a loss for words to describe my feelings. Certainly, "honoured" is not the word. "Happy" does not describe the way I feel, either. What I really feel is demeaned and deceived and put upon at having to sit here and watch this kind of spectacle. I think of all the people in the Public Service who are trying through their collective bargaining agents to get a decent collective agreement out of the Treasury Board, and not succeeding. I think of all the travellers who find themselves waiting at airports, unable to reach their destinations. I think of the many people waiting for mail, including a bunch of postal employees in Kentville, Nova Scotia who went on strike because they could not get their pay cheques because the post office employees are on strike elsewhere, as a result of which their cheques could not get to Kentville.
The firemen at the airports across the country want to vote on their contract, but once again they cannot because
April 19, 1974

the post office is on strike and they cannot receive their ballots. Even if they did succeed in getting their ballots on the plane, they had better vote fast because the air traffic controllers are going to be on the street by midnight Sunday. In the midst of all this the government brings on this extraordinary measure to regulate in what fashion, in what numbers, and by whom, a leather spheroid shall be propelled up and down a 100 yard field.
At this point I should like to read a charming editorial that appeared in this morning's Globe and Mail entitled "Canada crowds in again". I think it is particularly poignant in the context of this moment. It goes like this:
It is said that Barbados can bestow a special sense of tranquility on all who visit it; a calming, benign influence that can waft troubles away on zephyr breezes. We trust it worked its therapeutic wonders on Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau during the five or six days he spent there, because he returns to an in-tray that threatens to break the legs of his desk.
If I can interpolate a personal observation here, those of us who have been unfortunate enough to have to witness the ill temper of the aforesaid member from Barbados know full well that there is no discernible evidence that the tranquility or zephyr breezes had any ameliorating effect on his temper at all. To continue:
Some of us can go on holiday and return to find that our week has been invisibly mended. Hardly anyone noticed we were gone, and events just lumbered easily along. It doesn't work that way for prime ministers.
Then, it poses this rhetorical question:
From calypso to collapso? Well, we can't be sure what lurks behind the enigmatic smile of New Democratic Party Leader David Lewis or behind the doors of the Conservative caucus room, but staying afloat in Ottawa can be more fun than skindiving in the Caribbean.
The first thing Mr. Trudeau should understand is that if his in-tray is overburdened, it is not the fault of the Post Office. That operation has done all that could be expected of it to ease the flow of communication by letter.
Let him be thankful also that the possibility of intrusion on his working day by delegations from all parts of the country has been thoughtfully reduced through a gift by airport firefighters, with air traffic controllers standing by. In keeping with the fiesta spirit that goes with labour's rites of spring, the St. Lawrence River pilots have made their own unique contribution.
Canada is wonderful in the springtime. It's nature's time of renewal and all around us things are pushing merrily upward-wages, prices- you name it. Yes, inflation is another of those little things that tells you you have been away. Even in six days you can see the index move.
Lay a budget on us. Give us something to sing and dance about. The good old countervailing force, remember? We have it on the highest authority that this will be a good budget, and those of us who didn't make it to Barbados this winter need a glimpse of sunshine.
Well, Mr. Speaker, if we have not got sunshine, at least we have football. In an earlier reincarnation the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) once functioned as principal secretary to the Prime Minister. In that lofty capacity he had occasion to speak to a seminar of Liberal party workers on the west coast. This particular seminar had to do with the participation of party workers in the formation of Liberal party policy. He said at this seminar: "Of course, you have to realize that none of these policy resolutions are binding; after all you are only a few per cent". So they said to him: "What if you have more than a few per cent? What if you have 51 per cent, or even 100 per cent of all the workers in the Liberal party deciding we should do something that you did not want to do?" "Well," he replied, "we would send our P.R. men out to do
Canadian Professional Football a better selling job because we would realize that we had made a mistake".
If I ever saw concrete evidence that that curious attitude toward the democratic process has not changed one bit, it is the almost inch think folder of profession "bumph" that came our way in trying to sell this dubious proposition to members of parliament. We have received telegrams from mayors, and following a rhetorical question posed this morning by the hon. member for Rocky Mountain (Mr. Clark), I should like to tell the minister that of all the telegrams and letters received from mayors of various cities in this country, only three were written after March 1, out of about 15, by the look of it. One has to assume, since the bill was recently introduced in this House, that they knew not what it contained, unless the minister was sliding around showing it to them in advance, and I can scarcely credit that. So I think we can take these letters, telegrams and all the rest with a grain of salt.
As far as the letters are concerned, I should like to read a couple of them to the minister. One from a constituent of mine says this:
I would like to list a few of the reasons why I think Mr. Lalonde is being ridiculous in his stand.
-The Northmen have guaranteed that the equalization from the
Argonauts would not decrease from last season's level for the next
three years.
Actually, it is the next ten years.
They also hold refusal rights to another WFL team in Canada and have guaranteed the government they will not allow another team to play in Canada.
Mr. Lalonde's worry about Canadian sport comes much too late for anybody to seriously believe that is his only motive and not a vote-getter from the western provinces ...
If the government is really worried about the CFL going belly-up why don't they set up a grant system for the leagues teams that are not drawing large enough crowds to support them. The manner in which the government is spending money and giving grants to the most idiotic causes would suggest this would be a worthy cause.
This is a letter to the minister from a constituent of mine who was kind enough to send me a copy:
Canadians have more faith in their institutions and themselves than you give them credit for. Normal competition leads to strength and vitality-government interference leads to complacency and decay.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, a letter that appeared a couple of days ago in the Ottawa Journal from an admirable person who signs himself or herself "K. C. Shindler":
Sirs:
Our federal government has strange priorities. The cost of living has gone up 10.4 per cent in one year, vegetable prices will go up between 20 and 30 per cent by next autumn, Agriculture Minister Eugene Whelan wants higher beef prices in Canada, and now Health Minister Marc Lalonde has introduced a bill to protect the CFL from the WFL.
How about a bill to protect me from the federal government?


Mr. Lachance:: Why don't you table the letter?


Peter Reilly: Here it is, any time you want it. I should just like to comment on some of the remarks made during the minister's lengthy and paranoid apologia for this curious position of his last night. He said, as reported at page 1561 of Hansard:
We hear about the principles of free enterprise and free competition in the marketplace.

April 19, 1974
Canadian Professional Football
Fancy that.
We are told that the state should not interfere with private business unless, of course, private business requests state help. We are bombarded with lectures about people's freedom of choice and freedom of movement and other fundamental rights.
I suggest that must be an imposition on the government. Imagine being bombarded with speeches about people's rights! This entitles them to take a long, long second look at this bill. Just imagine-freedom of choice and freedom of rights are being urged upon the government. How uncomfortable it must make them feel. The minister goes on to say that there is nothing unprecedented or arbitrary in the government's position.
I ask hon. members to consider precisely what it is that this bill does. It makes it a criminal offence, punishable by up to two years behind bars and/or a fine which is set at whatever a court deems advisable, if a person decides to set up a particular business in Canada, to employ American nationals and to carry on part of that business in the United States. That is exactly what the bill does, no less.
Is there another industry to which this applies? Is there another area of entrepreneurship in which a person risks going to jail and/or a fine of undetermined size because he decides to hire as his employees people who come from countries other than Canada, and because he decides to carry on business at least part of the time in another country? I do not believe so. As for being arbitrary, Mr. Speaker, I do not think there is a fashion in which you could behave more arbitrarily than by threatening someone with two years behind bars, unless it is to threaten him with a sentence of death. I think on this basis the minister's defence of this position fails to stand up at all.
Then, he goes on to appeal to the basest kind of prejudice when he says that those whose manufacturing industries have been protected in the past by tariff legislation should not complain about this. He finds that terribly ironic and he tried to suggest to us that this is a quid pro quo on the part of the whole of eastern Canada because of a reasonable position taken in bargaining over the price of oil by western provinces. I suggest to you that this is just about as strained a comparison as the bit of gibberish that came out of the minister of state for multiculturalism this morning when he was insisting on bellowing across whether the hon. member for Rocky Mountain (Mr. Clark) was in favour of Canadian unity. I agree with the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Brewin) that if the issue of whether John Bassett or Fred Schmertz, or whoever, is going to be allowed to operate a football team in Toronto in competition with the Toronto Argonauts bears heavily on the issue of national unity, then this country is in worse shape than I had imagined it to be.
This issue of national unity has been a stalking horse of this particular brand of Grits for far too long now. In the first session of this House after the election of 1972 we heard them get on the national unity hobby horse and, in the person of their Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and national leader, accuse even the leader of this party of racism during the election campaign of October 1972, and accuse this entire political party of damaging the concept of national unity. They were rebuffed at that time quite

properly and they will be turned back and rebuffed on this issue if they try to make out that this is important to national unity, any more important than mom's apple pie. Perhaps they will come back in here with another imagined threat to national unity in the near future, but they certainly have not made any point here at all.
As to whether this team, the Toronto Northmen, would be a threat to the Canadian Football League, and this is the unifying premise of the bill, I want to examine this with you. I would be very, very grateful if the minister or anybody else over there could tell me precisely how this team located in Toronto is going to damage anybody. The existence of the WFL itself is going to threaten not only the Canadian Football League but the National Football League in the United States because there will be unrestrained raiding and bidding for services. Indeed, this very day in the newspaper John Bassett claims to have signed Larry Uteck, the Toronto Argonauts' first pick of the Canadian college draft. That kind of thing is going to go on apace. The very existence of that league, with its need for players, is going to put the pressure on every other professional football league in North America, and it is not going to matter a hoot in hell whether that team is located in Toronto, Nashville, North Carolina or wherever it is they propose to locate if they are turned out of Toronto. It is the existence of the league that is a threat, and, despite what the minister would like to do, we cannot legislate the league out of existence; we can only knock out one of its teams, and even then we can only push that across the border. It will not make one iota of difference to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the Edmonton Eskimos, the Vancouver Lions or any other team if that team is allowed to operate out of Toronto.
It is the league itself that threatens, if indeed there is much of a threat, and I do not think there is because it has been the experience with professional sport of any kind, particularly professional football, that the more people who are exposed to the sport the higher the number will be at the box office. Today, in fact, the United Press International has reported out of Washington:
The Federal Communications Commission reported yesterday the lifting of the home game television blackout by Congress last season had little if any impact on the mounting prosperity of professional football, which enjoyed its best year in 1973.
"The anti-blackout law appears to have had minimal impact on the 26 member teams of the National Football League in its first season of operation," a report issued by the FCC read. "It is unlikely that season-ticket sales will be adversely affected by the law because there seems to be an excess demand for tickets.
"In fact, 1973 was the best season ever for the NFL-"
That simply means that a great many more people are turning out to NFL games despite the fact that they can see them in their own homes on television in some cities because they are being exposed to the game, a great many converts are being made and they want to see them in person. The same thing is true of Canadian football and of Canadian hockey. Whenever you expose more people to a sport everybody benefits.
I suggest the very same will be true of Toronto where there is a market of up to four million people. You can not buy a season-ticket in that stadium and you have not been able to in the last 10 years. You are lucky if you can get standing room even when they are losing, and that is most
April 19, 1974

of the time. I should know having been an Argonaut fan until I moved down to Ottawa, and I cannot even get tickets to the games here.
Let us consider what the Toronto Northmen have offered to pay. They have offered to pay the difference between the equalization grants, paid principally by the Argonauts to western teams, if they need it; the difference between what was paid under that heading in 1973 and any loss experienced by the Toronto Argonauts in earnings at the box office for the next 10 years. They have offered to restrict their television broadcasting to local TV; they have offered a no-raiding clause of teams in the CFL and have stressed that they will urge upon their colleagues in the WFL the same no-raiding agreement.
I ask you to consider what is going to happen if the Northmen are barred from Toronto. There will, of course, be the absence of a no-raiding agreement. They will be free to raid, and they have already started to do this. There will be absolutely no prohibition on all of the teams in the WFL from raiding the sources from which the CFL customarily gets its American imports, and we must bear in mind that all the CFL teams have a very high proportion of Americans on their payrolls. They are getting these players from the U.S. college draft and from American teams in the NFL, and now they are going to have a powerful and well financed component to bid in all in the same fields in the same places.
Unfortunately salaries are going to rise for a couple of years and everybody is going to feel the pressure. Unfortunately, the quality of play will decline because talent is going to be diluted. That happened in the NHL which is just starting to get a little better. Football leagues in both countries are going to feel the effects of the WFL and there is no mistake about that. The World Football League will continue to exist and will continue to be in opposition to the Canadian Football League regardless of what this parliament does.
I would suggest to you that what we are being asked to do here is accept a law which is pure, political protectionism, which is legislation in restraint of trade, which has as I said earlier dubious legality and constitutionality and which is a very thinly disguised attempt on the part of the federal government to do under the guise of criminal law what it could never do in civil law because of provincial jurisdiction.
We are being asked to do this at a time when more than half a million people are out of work, at a time when inflation is at an all-time high, at a time when the country is very close to being paralyzed by strikes in the public sector due to this government's incompetency, and at a time when this government has been discredited from coast to coast in the public view and would not continue to exist were it not refusing daily to submit to a test of confidence in this House.
Despite all the sophistry that floats across the floor to any member unfortunate enough to differ with the spurious arguments of the Liberal Party, despite all the sophistry about "Let us pass it now," I will say once again to the government that until the happy day when the voters of this country have a chance to express their views at the
Canadian Professional Football ballot box you-as disgusting a prospect as it may be for most-are the government, and if you bring in bad legislation in this House you need not expect the opposition parties to lie down before you and let you roll over them and enact bad law. And that is all this bill is.


Mr. Perrin Beatty (Wellington-Grey-Dufferin-Water-loo):: Mr. Speaker, my remarks this afternoon will be very short because I would be pleased to allow this matter to go to a vote as soon as possible. Indeed, the only reason I rise to speak is to express my shock and the shock of my constituents at the decision of the government to introduce this legislation affecting football as a means of disguising its abject failure to deal with the pressing social and economic problems facing this country.
Last night I indicated my concern about the failure of the government to take any action to deal with the explosion of housing costs in Canada today. I was shocked, and remain shocked, that the only recent action by the government was to further drive up interest rates and to put the cost of housing even further beyond the reach of the average Canadian. The government is not presenting any more speakers to defend its flimsy case for second reading of this bill. They have obviously received the same response from their constituents as members of parliament on this side of the House have received, namely, that the parliament of Canada should be dealing not with frivolous legislation about football but with measures to come to grips with the host of crises facing this country.
I am intrigued that hon. members opposite claim we should hurry this legislation through to committee. All of us on this side would be delighted to do so if the government had any legislation to present dealing with the problems facing Canadians. In Canada today we have more than a 10 per cent rate of inflation. Where is the government's budget that we have been demanding? The government cannot even give us a date for the budget. The cost of housing increased by 41.8 per cent in Toronto in the last year. Torontonians are demanding legislation, not to tell them what football teams they can watch but how they can own a home.
The Unemployment Insurance Commission is in disarray. Where is the legislation to deal with that problem? Half a million Canadians are without work at the present time. What does the government plan to do to deal with that situation? There are strikes at our airports, in our mail system and on our lakes. What action is the government taking to deal with these problems?


Robert Lorne Stanfield: They are probably getting ready to stop the railways.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield) says the government is probably getting ready to stop the railways now, too. If the government were prepared to introduce legislation that would deal with these matters, all of us on this side would gladly sit down. But we know, the government knows and the people of Canada know that the government has no program to present to parliament and that any legislation we will see after this bill goes to committee will be strictly housekeeping legisla-

April 19, 1974
Canadian Professional Football
tion. It will not deserve, and it will not obtain, the attention of the press or of the Canadian people.
Instead, the government is carefully preparing a well orchestrated, three-ring circus of witnesses for the committee, thinking at the same time that no one will be able to say the time of the House of Commons is being taken up by this silly bill because it will be in committee. In other words, the effect of this legislation is only that of a red herring the object of which is to distract public attention from the failure of the government to deal with the real problems facing Canadians today. I repeat, if the government has any legislation to present to cope with the high cost of housing or with the chaos caused by strikes, or if it has a budget to present, I will sit down now and my colleagues also will be silent.
What has been the record of this government? It was the intention of the government that we should not be here this week, that the problems of Canadians should not be discussed in parliament at this time. When we demanded that, as a condition of parliament's recessing, members of parliament should at least have a day this month or early next month to deal with the government's handling of the economy, the government refused because it knows it has lost the confidence of the parliament of Canada and the people of Canada and it is determined to cling to power with all its force.
When we refused to allow government members their holiday, what did the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) do? He flew off to Barbados. I was interested on Tuesday to read the article which appeared on page 9 of the Globe and Mail dealing with the Prime Minister's reaction to this particular problem. The final paragraph of the article reads as follows:
A spokesman for Mr. Trudeau said the Prime Minister, who left for Barbados on Friday with his family, would probably return to Ottawa either today or Wednesday-in time for health minister Lalonde's controversial football bill.
In other words, in the opinion of the Prime Minister and of his discredited government, the government's handling of the economy is not important enough to bother with, but this fraudulent football bill justifies the Prime Minister's return to Canada.
What is the attitude of the cabinet, the people who are supposed to be running this country? During the question period today, 60 per cent of them were missing, including the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner), the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Sharp), the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Gillespie) and the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lang). I am delighted that today the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Drury) is gracing us with his presence. As we look at the treasury benches now we find that of the 29 members of the cabinet who should be here, two are present. And these do not include the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) or his parliamentary secretary.


Some hon. Members:: Shame.


An hon. Member:: They are out blowing up the football.


Henry Perrin Beatty: This is a government that is leaderless and directionless, a government that was repudiated by the people of nine of

the ten provinces, and of both territories; a government that has the sight and the smell of decay about it. Nothing more graphically demonstrates its distorted sense of priorities in its last days than this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, the government says it wants to protect Canadian culture and Canadian athletics, although only yesterday the Minister of National Health and Welfare admitted on television that this bill will not save the CFL, that it is no panacea. In fact, there is even evidence to suggest that it will damage the CFL by encouraging American WFL teams to raid their lower-paying Canadian counterparts. I think it is worth remembering, when the government wraps itself in the robes of Canadian nationalism and takes measures to protect football, that our national sport in Canada is not football and it is not hockey; it is lacrosse which was first played here by our Canadian Indians.
I come from a town in which lacrosse has been played for generations. I invite the Minister of National Health and Welfare, who has now returned to the House, to talk to the people who play lacrosse and learn from them what assistance they have been receiving from the government and from his department. There has been precious little help, if any, for our national sport. As my colleague from Hillsborough (Mr. Macquarrie) pointed out last night, there is the prospect of our losing the game of lacrosse to the Americans as teams are created in the United States and there is virtually no assistance available for the sport from our federal government.
Last summer I wrote the Secretary of State (Mr. Faulkner) and the minister responsible for Information Canada, pointing out the importance of promoting this part of our national heritage. I was informed that the government's promotional efforts amounted to one 14-minute film produced in 1964, another produced in 1965, and a booklet on lacrosse in Canada. What a bold initiative!
Mr. Speaker, last year I had an opportunity to watch the Grey Cup game in Toronto. I could not help but have the feeling, watching these two corporations play against each other, that it is very similar to watching the struggle between General Motors and Ford. Unlike the minister, however, I do not begrudge people watching football if they wish, whether it is played by the Toronto Northmen or by the Toronto Argonauts. As individuals, they should have this opportunity. But I cannot help getting the feeling that the ultimate good of the country will be decided, not by professional athletics but by amateur athletics which have been neglected by the government. I see the minister nods his head; he is in agreement.


Marc Lalonde: With the first part, yes. With the last part, no.


Henry Perrin Beatty: repeat that this is not the time for smokescreen legislation from a dying government. This is not the time for inaction on national issues. It is the time for an honest attempt to deal with our real problems. I am afraid that such an
April 19, 1974

honest attack on our problems is more than we can expect from this government.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Mr. Speaker, I note that some members are eager to refer this bill to the committee, but I think there is much to be said about it. As for myself,
I am particularly interested in Bill C-22 now under consideration.
My interest is quite natural since I spent some years practising various sports, namely hockey, baseball and football. The latter is not unfamiliar to me, on the contrary, because I had the opportunity to follow closely and particularly the sports practised in Canada. The motivation which can be instilled into young people in connection with sports generally deserves special attention.
I find it strange, though, that members of the party sponsoring this bill be absent or remain silent because I know, especially since I come from the province of Quebec, that thousands of sports fans, especially football fans, are following the debates on this bill. From the outset, we were asked to limit the number of speeches, so that the bill might be referred to the committee and that the House might deal with more important problems.
Mr. Speaker, it is quite unbecoming on the part of the government party to tell us that we are delaying the debates and wasting the time of this House because we have been saying for two months to the government that we do not want this legislation.


Mr. Ethier:: The hon. member himself is now delaying the debate, not us.


Roch La Salle: Exactly, Mr. Speaker; the hon. member who has just interrupted me should then rise and speak right now.
We are being blamed for delaying the debates whereas we have been warning for two months the responsible minister and the government not to bring forward such a meaningless legislation. Mr. Speaker, the government has no business interfering in such an area.
And they will try to make the public believe that the Official Opposition party is wasting the time of this House, when we are calling upon the government to introduce specific measures dealing with today's problems.
I wonder, for instance, whether it is not government strategy to put forward a bill about football, in order to hide basic problems our society is faced with, such as the strike that is presently under way throughout the country. Members of Parliament are invited to speak about football in order to prevent the public from realizing the failure of the government to find solutions for several months, Mr. Speaker.
As I said earlier, Mr. Speaker, I really wanted to speak about this legislation because I am interested in sports in general. I think I can say that I have some knowledge in the whole field of sports. I think it is not exaggerated to add that putting forward a bill about football under the pretence that this is the only way of saving Canadian
Canadian Professional Football football and getting thousands of young Canadians to be interested in it, is a phoney assertion. The provisions of this bill certainly do not deserve the support of most hon. members. What is the reason for such a bill? They claim that it will foster national unity. I wonder what is the relation between that concept and football. God knows how many times we failed in respect of a great many problems a lot more important than this one.
Now they are talking about economic nationalism. A number of speakers have already urged the Minister to take more concrete steps, in the industrial area, for example, so that Canadians may own a majority of shares. In my opinion, the government should introduce measures to encourage Canadians to invest in Canadian industries, so that they may feel they are the real owners of this country's resources.


Mr. Bechard:: When we introduced such a bill, you voted against it.


An hon. Member:: The hon. member should keep his ears open and his mouth shut!


Roch La Salle: I do not think there is enough legislation fostering economic nationalism, but the government should not make us laugh. While a number of hon. members have cracked jokes which were apparently aimed at reviling members of the government but which only succeeded in making us laugh, surely the Canadian public must wonder why the government introduced such legislation which affects one particular sport only.


Albert Béchard: You are saying this, not the Canadian public.


Roch La Salle: Mr. Speaker, I will later make some revealing comments to the minister.
If he wants us to promote Canadian football, there is not one member in this House who is against giving direct support to Canadian football. I am the first one to promote this sport and I wish a law were passed to ensure that most if not all owners of these teams were Canadians. I also wish to see any possibility of competition banned in football. But I will not accept to see young Canadians deprived of motivation to achieve excellence, to better themselves in a professional sport, whether football or hockey.
The minister has stated that football is in danger. But I have here a paper that sheds light on this, which has precisely been issued by his department. And I quote: "Football is in danger". In fact, Mr. Speaker, all sports are in danger.
We talk about the importance of participation, about the quality of football players. Why don't we talk about participation in all sports, about the quality of hockey or baseball players as well as players in any other sport. That is just as important as the opportunities offered to young people by Canadian football. And why should it not be so for all other sports?
The problem in the area of football in particular will not be solved through this legislation, which is totally inade-

April 19, 1974
Canadian Professional Football quate and even unfair. I fail to see how the government could justify itself by saying that Canadian football can be promoted through such legislation.
I have here a document signed by Mr. Jean-Paul Char-trand of Montreal which says: The Minister of National Health and Welfare is not helping the Montreal Alouettes. In Ontario, football is a great deal better organized than in Quebec where it is almost nonexistent at the serious amateur level. One look at the Alouettes line up is enough to find out that our best Canadian players are not home grown, unless they attended an American college.
There is talk of actually encouraging our young people to play Canadian football. But I regret that all sports in Canada have not been included and it is certainly not necessary to pass a legislation to keep a foreign league or team from settling in this country, when this would be the only opportunity for our young people of being offered sound competition with all the advantages that this carries.
Until now funds allotted to amateur sport have been entirely restricted to a few super stars, some of whom have benefited from scholarships. What has been done for kids in grade school or high school? It is at this level that an amateur sport policy must truly be initiated. The present policy is altogether inadequate. It is not by passing legislation on football that we would remedy these anomalies. What is keeping the minister from allotting funds to our universities in order that our football players may develop in a normal way as they have the right to?
So the government's problem lies not in the need to pass a piece of legislation but in the inadequacy of the funds allotted to amateur sport while the Canadian policy in that respect is altogether inadequate and even absurd. What is required, as I have already mentioned, is the establishment, in consultation with the provinces, of a department of sports and recreation which would be responsible for physical conditioning in Canada. This will help solve many problems, besides encouraging young people to play not only football but all the other sports in which they are interested provided they are qualified to participate in them. So, this participation and the quality of the players to which reference is made in this bill make it totally unacceptable if other sports are not included. Therefore, this bill should surely not, I think, constitute a government priority.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to quote some comments I read recently, in particular one by Jean Barette, an experienced Montreal columnist. I think that he is right to ask himself several questions, and he would have desired to put some questions to the minister if the latter had been able to answer a recent invitation to come to Montreal. His absence was undoubtedly warranted.
This bill which is now before the House requires a minimum of Canadian players and sets the number of import players. Mr. Barette says, and I quote:
For example, The United States Congress could require that U.S. hockey clubs have a 60 per cent American roster. This would have tragic consequences for many Canadians who earn a very good living in the United States and who pay their taxes in our country, which provide some nice dollars to Mr. Lalonde and several politicians like him.

First of all, the following question could have been put to Mr. Lalonde:-
-and we wish we could have asked it.
... "Will you meet the deficit of the Montreal Olympic stadium following the 1976 Olympic Games?
We are quite aware of the fact that for the Olympic Games Montreal will have a most adequate stadium. I am happy to see that Toronto has a chance of getting a professional team and I wish them good luck. We know that cities like Montreal and Vancouver can have their professional football teams but this bill will not allow it. I know that the Island of Montreal at present does not have any Conservative member and I wonder if a plot is not being weaved against Montreal and the interests of the football fans of this city on account of the members remaining silent in this House. I believe it is important that the hon. members should express their views on this subject, because I have met Montreal members and they are against the passing of this bill. Of course the party line will be respected and they will vote for the bill. I know that three Montreal members are absolutely against it. I will not name them because I am discreet. Other members, also from Quebec, are not in favour of the bill. But we know the influence of the minister in the cabinet. I will not blame him for it but I know that as usual the orders given will be followed and they will deprive Montreal of any chance of having a professional football team.
People are concerned about professional teams. The Montreal Expos seem to be a good business proposition. We have witnessed a new motivation on the part of the young in baseball immediately after the coming of the Expos. Thousands of young Canadians are interested in baseball because Montrealers are proud of their professional team. The City of Montreal has become famous because of them. Every hon. member enjoys watching the Expos and seeing them win most of the time.
I am of the opinion that a professional football team would stir up the same motivation and I doubt that it would cause the death of the Canadian Football League. This is a false assumption. We know full well that businessmen would not invest huge amounts of money in cities where the endeavour would not be profitable. Cities should have been chosen which are able to encourage professional clubs. But no. The easy way out is preferred, by removing the possibility of competition, of rivalry between teams and sportsmen.
It is therefore not a waste of the time of the House to oppose such a bill that is moved by a minister who is certainly ill-advised. I have suffered too much from this type of thing when I was young. I too dreamed of going into professional sport, at the early age of 20. But there were only six professional hockey teams: many were called but few chosen. Today, the teams having multiplied, young talented Canadians have had the opportunity of bettering themselves and representing Canada admirably well throughout the world.
Therefore, these opportunities must be real for those young Canadians who play football, and this bill will eliminate those opportunities. The unwavering answer will be that the Canadian Football League will be able to
April 19, 1974

expand in Canada. We know full well that youth want perfection and that a player with a legitimate ambition cannot be satisfied with playing in a minor league. This league can be the best in the country but there can be a better one, and the sportsman who has plenty of guts will not be satisfied with playing in the first one. Personally, I am happy as a Canadian to see those superstars play all over Canada and abroad.
I believe that passage of the bill we are discussing now would be unnacceptable.
I would like to add a few words to Mr. Barrette's remarks which I just mentioned.
As for the second question that Mr. Barrette would have liked to ask the minister, I will ask it in his place:
Will you make up the deficit of the Olympic stadium?
I mean the stadium which would or could be used by such a team.
Will you take action against all sports such as golf, which comes under the control of the Royal Canadian Golf Association, which bows before the American PGA for the Canadian Open and submits to ridiculous restrictions on the number of Canadian golfers entitled to take part in the National Open of their own country? . .. we doubt that he could reply in the affirmative since the federal government, like Pontius Pilate, has washed its hands of everything that concerns the 1976 Olympic games organization. However, if Mr. Lalonde's bill eventually becomes law, it will deprive Montreal of a good source of revenue since the National Football League or the World Football League already have their eyes on the spacious stadium which will be completed in time for the Olympic games. It would have been very profitable to have an American football franchise. And this would not have prevented Mr. Berger from making his Alouettes play in the same stadium, even if the caliber of the Canadian league is clearly inferior. Some fans prefer the Canadian game to the American, whatever the quality of the players.
If the federal government does not help Montreal in the form of subsidies, the financial charge will naturally fall on the shoulders of Montrealers many of whom are supporters of our dear national "boy scout".
As for the second question, Mr. Lalonde could not have replied because, first of all, he must not even be aware of the existence of golf, even less of that of the Royal Canadian Golf Association, whose pundits have just announced that the Canadian Open will always be held in Toronto the Pure starting in 1980.
If Mr. Lalonde deigns to look into this problem of the takeover of the organization of our national Omnium by the American PGA, he will have to legislate in order to put an end to this infamous practice.
Mr. Speaker, this proves that when we discuss a bill relating only to football, arguing that it will allow thousands of Canadians to develop, we are making a mistake. At no time can the government introduce measures on recreation, physical fitness, the assessment of basic tools that we now have, or on the appropriations for our recreational organizations, in order to enable young people to develop properly.
I remember that not long ago, the hon. member for Sherbrooke (Mr. Pelletier) had called for an assessment of our recreational organizations. He talked about the addition of some buildings, if necessary, but unfortunately he will probably do the same as other members; he will not say a word because our time must be saved for other great current problems.
However, I think it is the right time to ask the responsible minister not to introduce such a bill, but rather to apply himself more, to increase appropriations and grant them to the department responsible for physical fitness. I
Canadian Professional Football think that this affects all citizens, whatever their age, not only children but also older citizens. It is very important that we agree to establish such a policy. It will be argued that we spend millions of dollars on OFY and LIP programs, but nobody ever says that half of this money is wasted because of poor submissions and selections.
I think it would be more profitable to affect those millions of dollars to a department for physical fitness, but not under the terms of a bill such as this one, because we know very well that the government has no business telling competent people how to organize a football or hockey league.
There are knowledgeable people who can take care of that. Our responsibility, of course, is to provide the thousands of Canadians who practice this sport each and every opportunity to give a first-rate performance. It is not up to us to tell them what to do.
That is why this is a ridiculous bill. We would have hoped that the minister would allocate additional funds. We are accused of wasting the time of the House; if the minister is willing to withdraw the bill, we would be quite happy to proceed to the consideration of much more important problems. But let not the minister believe that I will support his bill which goes against the liberties of all sportsmen. I think the minister will have the opportunity to read many reports from knowledgeable sport commentators which will enable him to think twice about it and to withdraw his bill. Even if it takes two weeks or two months, I will do everything to prevent the passage of this bill, which is not the right answer to the young people who are expecting new forms of assistance as well as justified and justifiable measures. We hear about encouraging young people to engage in recreative activities; that is surely not a way of accomplishing that, Mr. Speaker.


Albert Béchard: Mr. Speaker, would the hon. member allow me to ask a very serious question?


Roch La Salle: Yes, I would like him to ask his question. I have doubts about its seriousness, Mr. Speaker, but I allow him to ask it.


Albert Béchard: You will see later on.
Mr. Speaker, a while ago the hon. member for Joliette (Mr. La Salle) seemed to ridicule the relationship between Canadian football-


Some hon. Members:: Question, question!


Albert Béchard: That question is similar to that of the Leader of the Official Opposition (Mr. Stanfield)!
-and national unity. Could he tell me if he agrees with the statement from the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker) who said in 1961, and I will repeat it in Shakespeare's language, which is the language of the former Prime Minister of Canada-
The annual Grey Cup game is a great national event for all Canadians. It stimulates an interest in sports, for it has become symbolic of athletic competition. It brings east and west together and contributes to the unity of the nation.
Does he agree with that?


Roch La Salle: The answer is quite clear, Mr. Speaker. The former Prime Minister of Canada was quite right but why ask such a question? Why does this bill mention only national unity about football, while east-west competition has national overtones? In my opinion, a simple legislation

April 19, 1974
Canadian Professional Football
cannot help Canadian football, but we should make additional monies available to help young Canadians interested in football. This has no connection with the statement of the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker).


An hon. Member:: You have another question?


Albert Béchard: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary. Should we understand that he disagrees and, by the way, this would not be the first disagreement within the
Progressive Conservative Party-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Laniel):: Order.


Mr. J. R. Ellis (Hastings):: Mr. Speaker, it is too bad we could not have more speakers from the opposite side of the House.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Raymond Ellis: As my colleagues have pointed out, it is too bad that some of those who believe very strongly that this legislation, Bill C-22, is a mockery of parliament are not allowed to speak. If the minister would like to call the debate to a close, all he has to do is ask for the floor, which I will gladly relinquish, and withdraw the legislation.
In the first place, we should not be here at all this week. It was planned that we would have a recess, and I think there was need for a recess. During such recess we could have met with our constituents, discussed the problems of the day and tried to find out what is going on in those parts of the country which do not revolve around Ottawa. Sometimes I think we are here too much. It is necessary to get away from Ottawa to find out what is going on. We had planned to do this. Many of us had not planned to go to Barbados or anywhere as exotic as that. Unfortunately, the government was afraid to meet a simple test of confidence, a test they have boastfully been able to accept until now-a test they now feel they may lose.
I want to make it clear for the record, although the few of us in the House this afternoon are aware of it, that the government sets the schedule and places the bills before the House. The government sets the priorities. The Easter recess could have been called. One opposition day prior to a budget would not have made a great difference if the government is as confident as it seems to be. We are now faced with the ridiculous situation whereby after the budget is presented there will be more opposition days than government legislation days, yet the government is worried because it does not have enough time now. We need legislation to deal with the problems of this country.
Let us take a minute to look at the legislation we have dealt with so far this session and see how important some of it is. Look at Bill C-2, the Fisheries Development Act. This provides funds for conversion of fishing vessels. It is very important for fishermen, but it does not do a thing for those with inadequate housing, those who every day fight inflationary food costs. Let us look at Bill C-5, the CN financing bill. It is a very necessary housekeeping type of bill. It was not passed in 1971, 1972 or 1973 and it

does not do a great deal toward providing the extra freight cars which are needed in the west. It certainly does not do anything to clear up the transportation mess the Minister of Transport (Mr. Marchand) spoke of a few weeks ago.
Take Bill C-6, the national parks legislation. A lot of time was spent on this subject last session. But the bill does not do a thing to create land banks which would provide lots at lower cost for those wishing to own houses in Canada. Bill C-7 was designed to amend the Combines Investigation Act. A lot of time was spent on it. It should have been brought in last session because it was badly in need of revision, as are most of the bills brought forward by the government. It is restrictive and it does nothing to roll back major price increases which are likely to face us. Bill C-9, the Yukon and Northwest Territories legislation, increases the numbers of councillors in the north from 7 to 12 and from 14 to 15 respectively. It is probably very important for those who live in the north, but it does not do a thing to increase the number of officials employed by the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs who inspect delivery equipment used in the supply of fuel oil to homes. Meters in my riding have not been tested for three years and are bound to be inaccurate by now.
Bill C-14, the one we discussed a week ago, raised the ceilings on loans to farmers, fishermen and small businessmen. I spoke at some length on that bill last week and I do not intend to go into the subject again. The legislation falls short in many respects. For example, it fails to allow a person to qualify if he works away from the farm and also operates a farm. The ceilings are still not high enough to be of much practical value to business. The banks are not obliged to lend money to people who need it. As usual, it is too little and too late.
Then there was Bill C-17, the VLA measure. This was extended at the eleventh hour. Finally, it was extended under pressure from my hon. friends and myself. It was necessary, but the bill could have been brought in last session and it should have been if the government had any sympathy whatsoever for the veterans of the country. Bill C-18 was a very important bill dealing with the export tax on oil. It was necessary following the decisions reached at the meeting of first ministers. But there was nothing new in the bill, no provision which would result in a supply of energy from new sources, nothing which would encourage the development of our nuclear potential, nothing for the northern part of Hastings county where uranium which could be used to provide an alternate source of energy for the country is lying untapped.
As for Bill C-19 to amend the Canada Pension Plan which we were discussing yesterday, it does improve things for people between age 65 and 69, and certain other improvements are to be brought about, and though it is necessary legislation which I expect we shall support, it needs review in committee. It does nothing to bring down the price of food for senior citizens. It does nothing to reduce the cost of other necessities of life for senior citizens.
So with these priorities we come to Bill C-22, the football bill, and we are asked by the minister to say absolutely nothing on it. Take a look at the bill. It is supposed to protect the Canadian Football League. I personally support the Canadian Football League, unlike some of my
April 19, 1974

colleagues and, indeed, unlike some of my constituents. I prefer Canadian football; I am not a follower of the National Football League. I deplore the fact that Canadian funds are going into the Olympics field in Montreal and that the field is only being built to NFL size.
One of my constituents telephoned me some time ago. He was worried about the CFL, quite naturally, because he is an ardent football fan. This bill does not protect the CFL. It merely attempts to keep out one team of the World Football League from the city of Toronto. The constituent who called me has suddenly turned about, because the government has absolutely no business getting into professional football, baseball, hockey, basketball or lacrosse. As has been said here many times, the government might do better if it took a greater interest in minor sports, the interest of many Canadians who spend hours of their time on Saturdays and weekends coaching young players with little or no help from the federal government.
In my home city of Belleville, in the heart of Hastings county, there is a group of citizens known as the Belleville Yardmen who, with other concerned people in the area, have raised over $1 million to build a major sports complex which will enable all manner of athletes to train to a level which would allow them to compete in the Olympics. If the federal government wants to get involved in the business of sport, this is the place where it might start.
The minister said in the course of his speech that this was an emotional issue, one which stirred up deep feelings. I have news for him. The majority of people in my riding could not care less whether the Northmen play in Toronto or not. I think that on a Friday afternoon they are much more concerned about the fact that it takes more money to buy less when they go to the grocery store. Perhaps the minister might suggest that since they cannot buy as many groceries, they get a smaller car to carry them in. That is the type of thinking we have been given recently.
The minister said there was incredible interest in this subject. The hon. member for York West (Mr. Fleming) said he had received only 40 letters on it and none on inflation. I do not know whether the hon. member for York West is particularly unpopular or whether his constituents know that he will do nothing to deal with the inflationary situation. As far as I am concerned, only six people have talked to me about this football question; five of them were opposed to it and the other one changed his mind. But I have had all kinds of letters, telephone calls and personal representations on the subject of inflation because people are genuinely concerned about it.
The minister went on to say that this football issue "epitomizes the central dilemmas of our 100 years as a nation". Then he added that it was "symbolic of our history". I shall not be as polite, perhaps, as some of my hon. friends. I have been trying to think of a term which would be parliamentary and which I could use. The only word I can come up with is "balderdash". I can think, of course, of many that are stronger, but I cannot use them within the confines of this august chamber.
I find it extraordinary that we should be asked to approve legislation which proposes, among other things, a two-year jail sentence, plus a fine, for those who set up an enterprise employing persons other than Canadians in
Canadian Professional Football order to provide employment or pleasure. I note, sadly, in this connection that a man may still kill two young people-as recently happened-and incur no greater penalty than a fine of $125. But this is typical of the government and of the minister's department.
One short aside, if I may. About a year and a half ago a meeting was held in the west block, I think it was. It was referred to as Sport Canada. The meeting was attended by some hockey stars, and photographers were present. I thought my son might get a chuckle out of seeing his dad with Jean Beliveau and Johnny Ferguson. Certainly he would be far more impressed in those circumstances than he would by seeing me with the Minister of National Health and Welfare, Mr. Lalonde. The photographers took some pictures, and when the meeting was over I asked whether I could have a copy of some of them. They sent me the proofs and I said, "Yes, that's the one I should like to have." That was a year and a half ago and I still do not have the picture. I think this is typical of the hon. gentleman's department-overkill in one area and complete loss in another.
An election is coming. The Minister of National Health and Welfare felt that this was the way to placate the west. I suggest he is not at all interested in the Canadian Football League or in any other sport for that matter. The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) has been wrong before, he will be wrong again and he is wrong now. He is wrong to believe that Canadians will be fooled by this type of nonsense.
In Canada today we have strikes, transportation problems and inflation. What an opportunity for fine leadership. What a time for a leader to take firm hold and deal with these problems. Good leadership thrives on adversity. We are floundering. There is no way that I, for one, and my colleagues with me, will submit to the threats of this minister. He accuses us of holding up legislation by dealing with this bill at length. As I said, it is the government that sets up the schedule, so let it withdraw the bill. The CNR bill was discussed for three years. Let the government bring in new legislation to deal with problems in Canada.
I am not fond of sitting in an almost empty House on a Friday afternoon when I could be on the way to my riding. I do not notice the hon. member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Poulin) making any contribution, but if he wants to speak I will give him the floor. As I say, Mr. Speaker, I could be on the way to my riding where I would at least be providing some kind of useful service to my constituents. But I resent strongly the threat of the minister, and I will sit here as long as necessary until some good legislation comes forward from the government or they finally have the good grace to ask for the judgment of the Canadian people.


John Douglas Reynolds: Mr. Speaker, there is not very much time left, so I shall not go into many of the things that I wanted to say. It is interesting to sit here and watch hon. members, especially the minister, across the way with their long faces and none of them speaking. This is because they realize the stupidity of the bill. They realize they have lost the confidence of

April 19, 1974
Canadian Professional Football
the people of the country, not only on other matters but on this bill as well. The people of this country do not support the intention of the government to keep the Toronto Northmen out of Canada, and certainly the people of British Columbia do not support this bill.
After what I have said, Mr. Speaker, it is pretty obvious that I will be voting against the bill, but I also want to inform the minister that in committee I intend to move approximately 50 amendments to his bill. A lot of them will be ridiculous amendments, but they will be moved in order to delay the bill. Then when we come back to the House for third reading, I will propose the same amendments and the hon. member sitting next to me will second them. I shall speak for the full allotted time on every one because I think we have to show the people of this country the stupidity of what this government is doing. If hon. members opposite ask me why don't I vote, I say I am not prepared to vote because the minister has twisted the arms of all his members across the way, insisting that they vote along with him and not in the way their conscience dictates.
The minister talks about the number of Canadians and the number of Americans who should be on a team. What does he know about it, Mr. Speaker? I think I know a little about it because I played football in my younger days. I just cannot understand why he says there should be 15 Americans and 70 Canadians. That is none of the government's business. If he is going to make that provision, perhaps we should amend the bill to provide that there must be six women playing for every team because we have to be fair to the women of this country.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Douglas Reynolds: Perhaps we should amend the bill to provide that there be two or three men over 45 on every team so as to be fair to the older people of this country.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Douglas Reynolds: Football players in Canada cannot collect unemployment insurance. Perhaps we should amend the bill to provide that they can collect unemployment insurance. Perhaps they should also be allowed workmen's compensation. We could amend this bill in many ways.
I think the best thing we could do with the bill is to have the minister put it back on the shelf and wait until after the election. Then we will find out what will happen from the people of this country. The minister is going to ban an American team from playing in Canada. Is he going to ban the team of Simon Fraser University, one of the best college teams in Canada, from playing football in the United States? The people of British Columbia would like to know, because they are quite happy when American teams come into British Columbia to play college games. They play American rules, and we happen to like them as well.
We also happen to like our hockey in British Columbia. We have two professional teams, one in the world league and one in the national league. We get the largest crowds of any team in the World Hockey League. We get large crowds to watch the Vancouver Blazers play. The Canucks are sold out for every game-15,540 people and 2,000 stan-

dees. It has been that way since the team came there. We support two teams. The funny thing about it is that the National Hockey League team is owned by Americans. Is the minister complaining about that? No, he does not think that is so bad. The World Hockey League team is owned by a Canadian, as I think are most or all of the World Hockey League teams in Canada. The teams in Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto and Vancouver are owned by Canadians. What has the government done for the World Hockey League? Nothing at all.
In the National Hockey League Stanley Cup finals there are four American teams. They will be competing tomorrow night, next week, and so on. The CBC will be covering every game. The Toronto Toros are playing in the World Hockey League. They have made the semi-finals of the championships, yet the CBC will not televise one of their games across Canada. People in Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver deserve to see a Canadian team in the World Hockey League.
The hon. member for York West is mumbling and grumbling across the way. I can understand how sad he is at having to support the government's bill. Living in the area he does, he knows damned well what he will get when he goes back to his riding.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Laniel):: Order, please. The hon. member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Poulin) is rising on a question of privilege.


Mr. Poulin:: Mr. Speaker, I was sitting in another seat speaking to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Mr. Mar-chand) when the hon. member for Hastings (Mr. Ellis) wondered whether the hon. member for Ottawa Centre wished to contribute to this debate. Indeed I do, but in a positive way, as I have in a positive way outside the House. Additionally, I would hope to promote the amateur side of sport, to increase participation-


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, I suggest that is hardly a point of order.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member rises on a question of privilege and there are two members rising on points of order. However, the Chair brings to the attention of hon. members that it is four o'clock and time to go to private members' business.

It being four o'clock, the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members business, as listed in the order paper, namely notices of motion and public bills.


Mr. Lefebvre:: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions and I think you will find there is agreement to discuss private members' public bill C-112 standing in the name of the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath), and that private members' notice of motion No. 6 standing in the name of the hon. member for Meadow Lake (Mr. Nesdoly) will be discussed on Monday.
April 19, 1974


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Walter David Baker: On a further point of order, Mr. Speaker, might I ask the acting government House leader either to confirm or deny that we will be proceeding with this legislation on Monday, the football legislation?


Charles Mills (Bud) Drury: Mr. Speaker, it had been hoped that the debate on this particular bill would be concluded today.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Charles Mills (Bud) Drury: We will tentatively continue, and hopefully conclude, the debate on Monday, with the possibility of a further vote at a later stage. Following that we will proceed with the Export and Import Permits Act for which there has been some urgent demand on behalf of the egg producers.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BILLS


James Aloysius McGrath: that Bill C-112, to amend the Broadcasting Act (advertising on children's programs), be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Broadcasting, Films and Assistance to the Arts.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I wonder whether the record could show that the seconder of the bill is the hon. member for Cochrane (Mr. Stewart), the distinguished chairman of the Standing Committee on Broadcasting, Films and Assistance to the Arts.


Mr. Speaker:: At the moment the record shows otherwise, but this can be done with consent. With the consent of the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald) and the House, the seconder of the motion will be the hon. member for Cochrane (Mr. Stewart). Is that agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


James Aloysius McGrath: Surely this is one private member's bill whose time has come. This is the last vestige of child exploitation in Canada. To support that contention I will just very briefly fill the House in on the background to this bill. It was first introduced in the House on April 7, 1971. I might say that since the bill received first reading, considerable progress has been made in this area of long overdue reform. For example, following the introduction of the bill on October 13, 1971, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters drew up a voluntary code of conduct for advertising directed to children, and following the drafting and publication of that code the bill received second reading. At that time, I am sad to say, it was talked out. However, the germ of the idea had been planted and the box had been opened.
Broadcasting Act
Following second reading of the bill, the Quebec government, in November 1972 under the limited jurisdiction it has in this area, brought in regulations under one of its existing statutes making it all but impossible for advertisers within the province of Quebec to direct their sale messages to children or, indeed, to produce commercials directed to children. That certainly was one of the major steps forward in this direction.
The bill was again introduced in the form of Bill C-22 at the next session on January 15, 1973. To give you an idea of how much progress had been made up to that time, as a result of the initial introduction of the bill and the coming into play of public opinion and various groups that sprang up across the country in support of the bill, the House agreed to a compromise at that time whereby the bill would be withdrawn in exchange for which the subject matter of the bill would be referred to the Standing Committee on Broadcasting, Films and Assistance to the Arts.
The committee met, and after nine sittings and hearing 32 witnesses under the distinguished chairmanship of the hon. member for Cochrane it made its report to parliament in the form of five recommendations, which I might say are very interesting and with a very worth-while preamble. I will not go into that preamble but I think the record should show what the committee recommended in its report. The recommendations are as follows:
1.	that the CRTC pass regulations which would provide that advertising must not be directed exclusively to children;
2.	that the CRTC limit further the number of commercial minutes per hour during children's programs;
3.	that the CRTC require the deletion of advertising directed to children from American programming distributed on the Canadian cable systems;
4.	that the Income Tax Act be amended so that advertising directed at Canada on foreign television stations would no longer be considered deductible for income tax purposes;
5.	that ways and means be found to expand the Canadian program production industry with particular emphasis on the creation of children's programs.
We should determine exactly what is the position of this bill in relation to those five recommendations put forward by the committee. For example, during the course of the committee hearings the CAB and the CAAB announced that they would bring in further amendments in order to strengthen the broadcast code for advertising directed to children to take effect October 1, 1973, and still further amendments were to be brought in to be effective January 1, 1974. At the same time as the committee was meeting, the Consumers' Association of Canada, at its annual meeting in June 1973, in Ottawa passed a resolution urging the government to ban all advertising on television directed toward children.
The report of the committee containing the five recommendations was concurred in unanimously by the House of Commons on July 24, 1973. At that time the CRTC took some time to consider the impact of the concurrence in the committee's report by the House and did not issue its statement until October 16, 1973. At that time the CRTC responded by saying it would enforce the voluntary code but it would not subscribe to the principal recommendation of the committee, namely, the implementation of a regulation. It is rather interesting to see what the commit-

April 19, 1974
Broadcasting Act
tee said about the voluntary code and its effectiveness. It said:
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the Canadian Advertising Advisory Board presented a good case for self-regulation through the new broadcast code. However, it is the opinion of your committee that any code, regardless how excellent in itself, would need a much tougher enforcement system.
Therein lies the argument in support of putting this bill forward today. Mr. Juneau at that time was quoted as saying, and I read from the Toronto Star of October 17, 1973:
But CRTC chairman Pierre Juneau said in an interview that parliament will have to pass a law if it wants the commission to ban advertising aimed at children.
Just endorsing a committee report is not enough.
It is in compliance with that wish of the CRTC contained in that interview, notwithstanding the procedural or constitutional argument that is involved here and which I hope will be advanced by other members, that the bill has been reintroduced in a slightly revised form, with a new clause (1) added to cover any difficulties with the present law, because it has been argued with a great deal of force that the present broadcasting law does not in fact, in section 16, give the CRTC the power to implement this kind of regulation to regulate broadcasting in Canada. The bill in its present form would certainly meet the requirement put forward by the chairman of the CRTC in his statement of October last.
As I say, considerable progress has been made and I think it is worthy of noting for the record, but the fact is that parliament was frustrated in its efforts to pass a directive in the form of a recommendation to a body that had been given broad delegative authority by this House. I would refer to what Your Honour said in this House on October 24 last year, as reported at page 7174 of Hansard, in ruling on a petition I had presented to the House the previous day. I adopted this infrequently used parliamentary device to bring to the attention of the House, through Your Honour, the fact that recommendations of the House were not being implemented by a body which derives its authority from this House. Your Honour stated:
I appreciate the position of the hon. member and his suggestion that this is a matter which ought to be considered either by the House or by a committee of the House. I respectfully suggest to him, however, that the procedure which should be adopted should be some procedure other than a petititon.	[DOT]
I sought the advice of the learned counsel of the House and others, and came to the conclusion that perhaps the only avenue left open to me was to proceed again with the introduction of this bill in revised form, in the hope that the House would be disposed, having already passed judgment on the bill in the previous session, to adopt it, get on with second reading, into committee of the whole-since we have been through the standing committee stage-and give it third reading so it could go on to the other place.
1 said at the commencement of my remarks that I feel that surely here is one private members' bill whose time has come. To bring the situation up to date, further progress can still be reported. The CRTC, in its decision of March 31, 1974, concerning the application for licence renewal of the CBC, laid down certain conditions in respect of renewal of the CBC licence. Commercials were to be eliminated from children's television programs by

the end of 1974. I say that is commendable.
The CRTC has gone a long way toward meeting the wishes of this House, and indeed in meeting the wishes of the majority of the people in this country. Gallup conducted a poll in Canada early this year, in January, which was released last month. That nationwide survey was a major survey coast to coast. There were 1,037 adults included, which in the opinion of Gallup constitutes a major poll. The poll showed that 57 per cent of the people of Canada favoured a direct ban on all children's advertising in Canada.
It is very interesting to note the figures in this regard in the various areas of Canada. The Atlantic provinces favoured the plan by a margin of 65 per cent. The percentage in the province of Quebec was 55 and the Ontario percentage was 59. In the prairie provinces the percentage went down to 49, and went back up to 64 in British Columbia. So there is no question that the people of Canada obviously want the last vestige of child exploitation eliminated from Canadian society
I do not know the position of the House in respect of this bill. Certainly it must be without precedent to have the CRTC ignore a bill which has been disposed of by the House and which has had its subject matter referred to the committee-because I agree to withdraw the bill subject to its subject matter being referred to the committee-a subject matter in respect of which the committee carried on an exhaustive examination of over 30 witnesses and then laboured to bring forward what I think is a fairly exact report, notwithstanding some of the criticisms, in which the House unanimously concurred.
This is the situation at the present time. Having consulted learned counsel of the House, in accordance with your ruling on my petition last year, Mr. Speaker, I came to the conclusion that the only opportunity open to me was to bring forward this bill and take advantage of the situation to state for the record the progress that has been made in this matter. I shall not take up the time of the House by going through the evidence, because it is here. It is well documented in these nine reports of the Standing Committee on Broadcasting, Films and Assistance to the Arts.
In addition to that, on two previous occasions this bill was presented to the House, when all the evidence and statistical data was brought forward. It is all a matter of record. We have made considerable progress in Canada, but the fact is that we feel we are right in respect of this matter and that the people of Canada support us. Surely in this regard we should not to have to ask for half a loaf, because if we are right that the situation is reprehensible and unacceptable to the people of Canada, then we can only settle for this bill in its totality. That is the position I put forward to this honourable House at this time.


Mr. Ralph Stewart (Cochrane):: Mr. Speaker, my remarks will be very brief. It is a pleasure for me to second the bill of the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) because I think he had no other choice but to bring it back into the House. He should not have had to bring it back. We should not have to discuss it today, because the House has already dealt with it. The committee dealt with it at length. Many witnesses were called before the committee and the committee came up with a
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report which I think was a satisfactory one because it reached a conclusion that satisfied the majority of the people in this House. That became obvious when we asked for concurrence and the House unanimously gave concurrence.
It would seem to me that once this happens, a corporation of the Crown has a very grave obligation to follow the recommendation contained in a committee report which has been concurred in. I note that in October the chairman of the CRTC stated that parliament would have to pass a law if it wanted the commission to ban children's advertising. I believe the chairman of the CRTC stated that mere endorsement of the committee report is not sufficient. When the CRTC brought out its regulation in respect of the CBC a couple of weeks ago and spoke about not renewing the licence unless certain things came about, it seems to me the commission did not wait for a law of parliament to do that.
In addition, although legally speaking a corporation such as the CRTC does not have to go along with the committee report, it would seem that once concurrence has taken place in the House of Commons and 264 representatives of the people of Canada have endorsed the committee's report, a Crown corporation that would fly in the face of that kind of representation is taking an awful chance indeed if it refuses to comply with the wishes of parliament.
The question before us today, in my view, basically is not the bill itself. The committee recommended that a regulation be passed by the CRTC in order to prevent advertising aimed directly at children. This is essentially what the committee said. So the question is not on the pros and cons of advertising for children but, in my view, whether or not this parliament has the kind of authority that I always thought it had, which most of us feel it has and which the people of Canada expect it to have. Is it the right of a corporation of the Crown to unilaterally decide, against the advice of this House, to do such-and-such or not to do such-and-such? It seems to me this problem is far deeper than the question of children's advertising and that it goes to the very root of the authority in this country, an authority which is being removed from parliament as a result of the power held within Crown corporations.
I think that is the question to which we should be addressing ourselves in the weeks ahead, because certainly if the CRTC can ignore this House on a matter such as this and simply say it will not pass a regulation which the House says it wants passed, then it would seem that the Crown corporations can do much more which is against the will of the people of Canada. That, to me, is the essential situation with which we are faced. This is the reason I feel it is my duty to endorse this bill proposed by the hon. member for St. John's East. It is my duty to say a few words on this subject today because I feel that this House must accept the bill in order to let the CRTC know they are not running the show in Canada but that the parliament of Canada has the last word.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I join the hon. member for Cochrane (Mr. Stewart) in commending our colleague, the hon. member for St.
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John's East (Mr. McGrath), for bringing this bill before us today. Although we are dealing with a technical question, namely, how to get our will translated into practice, perhaps it is appropriate to take at least a few seconds to say that we in this party thoroughly support the substance of the proposition which is that commercial advertising should be eliminated completely from television programs directed at children. As the two previous speakers have made clear, this point has been well established and well accepted by this House and by organizations that are interested in the welfare of our children. On that point I suggest there is no serious argument. Commercial advertising should be banned completely f:	n television programs directed at children.
However, we come to the question as to how we are going to achieve this, and I have to say that in listening to my friend the hon. member for Cochrane I found myself in a strange position. Let me digress for a moment and say that I read with a good deal of interest again today the ruling Your Honour made on October 24, 1973, with respect to the petition which the hon. member for St. John's East had tabled. In that ruling Your Honour pointed out that the House had not been able to effect its will by approving certain recommendations. In other words, that course was not effective. But you also made the point that because parliament had delegated control of broadcasting to the CRTC, we could not get around the statute that had been passed and give them direction on the basis of a petition.
Then, in what I thought was a sympathetic reference on Your Honour's part, you suggested that the hon. member for St. John's East should find some other procedure. Well,
I do not know what learned counsel my friend consulted, but it would seem to me that any counsel, learned or otherwise, would come up with the obvious answer that if recommendations of the committee do not do the trick, if a petition cannot be approved, then there is no other course but to bring in a bill amending the statute that gives the CRTC its authority. Therefore, I support what the hon. member for St. John's East has done, and I shall try to keep my remarks brief in the hope that we can pass this bill within the hour.
When I said a moment ago that I find myself in a strange position, especially after listening to the hon. member for Cochrane, I had in mind that about three days ago I introduced in the House a bill to abolish the Senate. I did not get along very well with it: it was talked out. That has happened before. I have been at it for 30 years. However, I have almost succeeded; there are only two or three of Their Honours who were here when I came left in the other place. But here I am having to stand and say to the hon. member for Cochrane, I, the proponent of the abolition of the Senate: but the place exists-and since the CRTC operates under a statute that was passed not just by the House of Commons but by parliament, in other words, all three branches of this institution, we cannot, as one branch of the institution, say to that commission that it must do what we say. The authority we gave the CRTC by a statute of parliament can only be altered by amending that statute.
I do not like it that way; I would rather that my bill to abolish the Senate were carried and that the will of the elected members would prevail. But at the moment we

April 19, 1974
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still have this antiquated system under which we bow to the opinion of non-elected persons, and since that is the situation I think Your Honour was right in your ruling that the only way we can give a direction to a commission established by parliament is for parliament to amend the statute that gave that commission its authority.
Therefore, I believe that the hon. member for St. John's East is doing the right thing. Perhaps some day we will get rid of the Senate and we will be able to do this in some other way; but at the moment we have to do it this way. Therefore, I commend the hon. member for bringing in this bill, I commend him for making it so brief and so much to the point, and I commend him for drawing it up in a way that even meets the wishes of the chairman of the CRTC. I hope, therefore, that we will pass this bill and thus do our part in making it possible for parliament as a whole to say what we want done. When parliament as a whole has said it, it will be done.


Mr. Rod Blaker (Lachine-Lakeshore):: Mr. Speaker, I will not pursue the subject taken up by the hon. member for Cochrane (Mr. Stewart) and the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles), but would possibly refer to Bill C-112 itself and make an effort to see whether or not the feeling of the House is such at the moment that an alternative concept or arrangement might be satisfactory to all members present.
As the explanatory note in the bill points out, children are a captive audience. That is the evil that we are attempting to do away with, in the sense that as a captive audience they are subjected on some occasions to the abuse of a very unsatisfactory type of advertising. Alternatively, again as the explanatory note points out, the content of many of these programs directed at children is quite good, quite commendable, and it should be pointed out in all realism that the cost of producing those programs is very often borne by the revenues earned from advertising.
So we have a black and white situation in that we can call for the complete abolition of advertising and see some substantial damage done to the type of program production we would like to have, or we can look to a middle ground which over the course of six months or a year or so might prove to be more satisfactory and, I would suggest, would be worthy of our consideration.
The CRTC, in its public announcement on television advertising to children dated October 16, 1973, expressly indicated that the commission would bring its full influence to bear on broadcasters to ensure compliance with the provisions of the broadcast code on children's advertising. It was indicated that "all broadcasters would be required to provide the commission with specific individual commitments that they would abide by the code". However, it appears to be the view of members, some of whom have already spoken this afternoon, that even though the self-regulatory procedures of the broadcast code have proven somewhat effective, further assurances are required to ensure continuous, strict adherence to the code through legally enforceable procedures. The broadcasting committee, of which I had the honour and pleasure to be a member, when it presented its report in July, 1973, indicated that regardless of how excellent the procedures of self-regulation through the broadcast code might be, we

need a tougher enforcement system. That was the essence of what we proposed to the House.
I am now informed by the commission that in conformity with its previous undertaking to ensure the effectiveness of the code and to meet the agreed objectives of all members of the House, the commission would undertake, first, to notify all holders of broadcasting licences in Canada and all applicants that adherence to the provisions of the broadcast code on children's advertising would be made a specific condition of each broadcasting licence. Second, the commission would require that a representative of the CRTC should formally represent the commission at all deliberations of the children's sections of the advertising standards council which have the responsibility for pre-clearing all children's commercials. In this way the commission would participate in and have full knowledge of all advertising that was being approved for children for broadcasting in Canada.
If I may summarize, broadcasters would be warned that the very existence of their licence and the possibility of its renewal depends upon their co-operation with the CRTC in clearing up abuses in advertising. The CRTC, as mentioned, has undertaken to sit in on the meetings of the council to assure this House and the public that only the most acceptable form of advertising will be permitted.
I realize that many people are of the opinion we should do away altogether with advertising directed toward children. I suggest to the House and to the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath), to whom I pay a personal compliment for pursuing this subject for so long, that an alternative to his private member's bill might well be the regulations to which I have just referred which emanate from the CRTC. Mr. Speaker, as other members wish to speak I will cede the floor to them.


Mr. Walker:: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, as the undertakings of the commission, as repeated by the hon. member for Lachine-Lakeshore (Mr. Blaker), are most important, and as I have no copy of the statement in which the undertakings are included, I wonder if it would be possible to ask the hon. member to repeat again the particular commitments of the CRTC as outlined in his speech.


Mr. Speaker:: I do not think there is any objection to that, although I remind hon. members that all that was said by the hon. member for Lachine-Lakeshore (Mr. Blaker) will appear in Hansard on Monday. However, if hon. members wish to hear the hon. member for Lachine-Lakeshore repeat part of his speech a second time, I have no objection. Is this agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: I gather the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) rises on the question.


James Aloysius McGrath: however, that it is not necessary to repeat the undertakings as they will appear in the record.
I ask the hon. member if the position he has put forward represents the position of the Minister of Communications (Mr. Pelletier) who is the only one with authority to speak for the CRTC in this House. I think it is important to establish that. Secondly, as the hon. member referred to the fact that the CRTC would make adherence to the code a condition for obtaining a licence, and that it would insist on being represented on the committee of the advertising standards council, would the commission be prepared to help that council which I understand is underfinanced, overworked and understaffed? In other words, the council does not receive the kind of financial support it should receive from member companies and member stations.


Roderick Blaker: Mr. Speaker, answering the hon. member for St. John's East, I suggest that the CRTC, like any other government agency, answers to the minister. In that sense I suggest the hon. member ought to draw his own conclusions as to whether this constitutes an undertaking. In ordinary circumstances he would draw the obvious conclusion that if the CRTC makes such an undertaking, it would do so with the approval and understanding of the minister. With respect to financial support, I would have to disappoint the hon. member and suggest it is not relevant to the subject before us. I could not answer that question.


James Aloysius McGrath: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I listened with great attention to the suggestion put forward by the hon. member. I understand he was speaking for the minister. If that is the case, to save the House the embarrassment of having to talk out this bill, and as we have made some progress, I am prepared, with the consent of the House, to withdraw the bill and to see exactly how this new enforcement of the voluntary code will work over the next year. Perhaps we will make our decision one year from now.


Mr. Speaker:: Before recognizing the hon. member for Argenteuil-Deux-Montagnes (Mr. Fox) may I say that I understand the hon. member for St. John's East suggests that his bill might be withdrawn. Perhaps before inquiring whether there is consent for this we might allow the hon. member for Argenteuil-Deux-Montagnes, who appears to have words of wisdom for the benefit and guidance of hon. members, to speak. Is the hon. member for Madawaska-Victoria (Mr. Corbin) rising on a point of order?


Mr. Corbin:: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I too would have liked to say a few words on the bill, but I certainly agree with its proposed withdrawal, or passage, not knowing the exact terms of the agreement. However, I would like to have some comments recorded in Hansard.


Mr. Speaker:: I gather there is no translation. The hon. member is claiming the same right that the hon. member for Argenteuil-Deux-Montagnes claims. He does not object to the bill being withdrawn, subject to his right to say a few words.
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Mr. Francis Fox (Argenteuil-Deux-Montagnes):: Mr. Speaker, I followed with much interest the speeches delivered this afternoon in the course of this debate. Personally, I am against advertising aimed at children. I also listened with considerable interest to the statistics given by the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) with regard to Gallup polls. I have also had the opportunity of conducting my own miniature Gallup poll in my riding through a parliamentary report, and my statistics are even more eloquent than those we have heard. Out of 1,500 replies from my constituents, almost 99 per cent were opposed to that type of advertising.
I feel the proposal ot the hon. member for Lachine-Lakeshore (Mr. Blaker) made on behalf of CRTC shows real progress. However, I must say that this is not quite enough. I would be willing to agree to the withdrawal of the bill, but I feel we should go further. In my opinion, the conditions for the renewal of the licence recently granted to the CBC by the CRTC required that the CBC discontinue all advertising meant for children at the end of 1974. I really think that we should follow such direction.
As a temporary solution, I am ready to agree that the CRTC should closely administer the voluntary code already mentioned by the hon. member for St. John's East but I do not intend to give you again an historical account of the debate as the hon. member did.
In short, this is not only a problem of advertising for children but is also related to the production of children's programs. But there are other means to ensure the production of first-rate programs. I know that all members are aware of that problem and that it is a problem which is of concern to us all. The fact remains that with its own resources the CBC can produce first-rate children's programs. We also have in Canada the National Film Board as well as the Canadian Film Development Corporation. It might be time that the latter, which has already done a lot for film development in Canada, paid more attention to the development of good TV programs for children.
Moreover, provincial Departments of Education, like some educational TV organizations in the U.S., should allocate more funds for the development of quality children's programs.
Mr. Speaker, I think in principle that we should see to it in the future to prohibit all advertising directed at children under 13, as suggested in the bill put forward by the hon. member. As a temporary measure, it might be possible to instruct the CRTC to carefully review the present system with a view to abolishing eventually all advertising, while asking other concerned organizations that come under the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada to allocate a larger share of their financial resources for the development of children's programs of high quality.



C (1640)

James Sydney Clark Fleming: Mr. Speaker, I, too, will be very brief. I agree with the suggestion to withdraw this bill in order that it is not talked out and we can make some progress on the matter. I commend the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath). I do not often find

April 19, 1974
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myself agreeing with him, but in this matter I certainly do. I think the intent of his bill is very good.
There are several problems related to the situation were this bill accepted and passed today that I wish to mention. While I very much approve of the intent of the bill and hope that its withdrawal and the action pledged by the CRTC will improve the situation, I want to express my own very real concern. United States penetration of a great part of the Canadian market will remain a very real problem i less we find a way to fight it. In areas of Canada where U.S. television is received, children will still be able to watch programs which contain the kind of advertising we are trying to eliminate.
There is also the great danger that if a means is not found by the government or the CRTC to develop Canadian programming for children, such as animation, cartoons and other types of children's films in the private sector, it will place in jeopardy Canadian programming for Canadian youngsters. If advertising is simply removed from children's programming in Canada and some sort of pressure is not put on private broadcasters to continue children's programming, there will be not only the danger of the removal of programming for children but the aspect of driving our youngsters to watching American programming with the advertising it contains.
These were simply the points I wanted to make. I hope the government and the CRTC will be cognizant of these very real problems. We need a Canadian industry producing films for children. We need children's programming and good Canadian programming in the private broadcasting sector of Canada. One of the recommendations in the committee's report-and I am sure the hon. member for St. John's East agrees with it-is that action must be taken by the government to remove the advertising deductibility from tax for Canadian companies advertising in Canada through American channels.


Eymard G. Corbin: Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to say that the two commitments made by the CRTC, or its chairman, do not cover a situation which seems to be covered in the bill introduced by the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath).
I congratulate him and I want to say to him that he has my full support, because I have been concerned about this problem for quite a while. I was concerned about it even before he introduced his bill in this House. I think he deserves credit for publicly bringing that question to the attention of this House.
The two CRTC commitments apply specifically to advertising directed at children on children's programs, but there are identification periods for local stations between programs, commonly called station breaks, and private stations use that period for advertising that is obviously not intended for children, but that children watch nevertheless. That has been brought to my attention, and I found out myself that some television stations used that period on children's programs to advertise pornographic movies, for example.
The people in the area I represent are deeply concerned about that, all the more as they have no local television
station. They have no local production so they depend on a satellite station in the province of Quebec and cannot therefore intervene effectively.
A mother sent me a letter on December 7 along with a copy of an article she sent to a local newspaper about the station using identification periods to advertise pornographic movies for local cinemas.
I immediately brought that serious problem to the attention of the CRTC and it took a while before I received a reply but, practically speaking, Mr. J. H. McKernin, regional representative for the Atlantic provinces wrote the following to CJBR-TV station manager, Mr. Walter Ruest:
You will find herewith copy of a letter from the hon. member for Madawaska-Victoria, Mr. Eymard Corbin,-
The complaint can be divided specifically into three components:
They object to the promotion of violence and pornographic movies;
They object to the showing of such advertisements at a time when children are normally watching TV;
They object to "practically any advertisement directed to young children".
These are questions which, as you know, are of great concern to the Commission. We feel that this is a serious complaint and would you please send us your comments as well as a copy of your answer to Mr. Corbin.
They complied with this request on February 12 and, for all practical purposes, made apologies. They claimed they had lost the recording tape of this flash and that they generally keep a close watch over all material promoting pornographic movies.
And yet, Mr. Speaker, the situation is not improving. On April 4, a Madawaska newspaperman from Le Madawaska wrote to me about this situation which, instead of improving, is deteriorating. He concluded his letter with the following remark, and I quote:
By the way, please do not believe that I am a scrupulous man of the colonial era; quite the contrary, I am a 34 year old father who feels that it is ridiculous and inconceivable that someone should pollute the TV screen before the eyes of our young children.
The problem which concerns me most, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that advertising flashes before and after the station identification does not appear to be covered by the promise made today to the House by the CRTC. I therefore strongly urge the CRTC to consider also the question of advertising between programs for children.


Mr. Marcel Prud'homme (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Mr. Speaker, I would simply join my colleagues in saying that I agree that this bill be withdrawn. For quite some time, I have been concerned with this important matter because of the many representations I have received on the subject. I would simply say that it is high time that a stop be put to the creation of needs in the minds of youth, especially of young children. If those in the know would watch commercial advertising on television-and I think that the hon. member who brought forward the bill is in a better position than we to know-they will find, very often with great sorrow, how this amazingly intelligent publicity is aimed directly at children. We should consider all the unhappiness that can be brought in a great number of
April 19, 1974

homes. I refer in particular to large families in dire need of money, where the children ask incessantly for everything they see on television. It is therefore high time and most healthy that such a bill be implemented as soon as possible. So I am pleased to agree that the bill be withdrawn and I join with the hon. members who preceded me.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it agreed that the hon. member shall have leave to withdraw his bill and that the order be discharged?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
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Order discharged and bill withdrawn.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Five o'clock. [Translation]


Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House that the chair call it five o'clock?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: It being five o'clock, the House stands adjourned until two o'clock on Monday afternoon.
At five o'clock the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Monday, April 22, 1974