1975-10-21

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Jack Marshall (Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to move a motion under the provisions of Standing Order 43. Recent moves by Mexico, Iceland and other countries, including the United States, toward declaring unilaterally 200 mile fishing zones indicates a growing dissatisfaction with the pace at which the Law of the Sea negotiations are progressing. In addition, there appears to be a consensus amongst learned participants at the conference that in spite of statements by Canada, real progress was not made. Further, as declared yesterday at the APEC meetings, any action by Canada in the declarations of action depends on the initiative of the United States.
In view of the fact that the United States has declared its intention in Congress to impose a 200 mile fisheries zone, and in view of the fact that this contradicts a statement by the foreign secretary of state that his country agreed with the position of Canada to continue to negotiate internationally, I move, seconded by the hon. member for South Shore (Mr. Crouse):
That this House orders that the Secretary of State for External Affairs make a statement on motions at the earliest opportunity to disclose all factors arising out of recent Canada-U.S. meetings on fisheries held in Ottawa on their relative positions vis-a-vis the declaration of fisheries zones.


Mr. Speaker:: Rule 43 requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Mr. Eudore Allard (Rimouski):: Mr. Speaker, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, I ask the unanimous consent of the House to introduce a motion dealing with a vital issue.
Since the core of the inflation problem resides in prices, taking into consideration the fact that most price controls throughout the world have failed and since also such controls have induced imbalances throughout the world generally, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Richmond (Mr. Beaudoin):
That this House consider immediately the opportunity of subsidizing the consumption of food products through a retail discount whose main effect would be to lower the price of those products to make them more readily available to the entire Canadian public.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The House has heard the motion of the hon. member. Under the provisions of Standing Order 43, this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there such consent?


Some hon. Members:: Yes.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: There is not unanimous consent. Therefore the motion cannot be put.


PROPOSED COMMITTEE STUDY OF REASONS FOR REDUCTION OF SURVEILLANCE BY PATROL VESSELS-MOTION UNDER S.O.
Mr. Donald W. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich):: Mr. Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 to propose a motion on a matter of dramatically urgent and pressing necessity, particularly in view of our pretensions to make jurisdictional claims out to the 200-mile limit and beyond. The necessity arises from the fact that fisheries patrol vessels on our two coasts are in imminent danger of having to cut back drastically, perhaps even cease, temporarily, their surveillance and patrol operations through lack of resources, and this only halfway through the fiscal year. For that reason, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe (Mr. Marshall):
That this House approve immediately an appropriate reference permitting the Standing Committee on the Environment to meet without delay to examine the rootcauses of this deplorable situation and make recommendations as to how it can be remedied.


Mr. Speaker:: Standing Order 43 requires the unanimous consent of the House for this motion. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.
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October 21, 1975
Income Tax


NATIONAL REVENUE
Mr. Dan McKenzie (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 to present a motion on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity.
My motion arises out of a matter I raised in the adjournment debate last evening and the complete non-answer I received from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Cyr). Perhaps those on the other side of the House do not consider the waste of millions of taxpayers' dollars on a totally inadequate building for the new tax data centre in Winnipeg a matter of importance.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. If the hon. member has a motion perhaps he could put it.


A. Daniel McKenzie: I move, seconded by the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Ritchie):
That the government's blunder in entering into a costly lease for the CAE building to house the tax data centre in Winnipeg be referred to the Standing Committee on Public Works, that the committee be empowered to call for all documents concerning this matter, and that the Ministers of National Defence, Public Works, Justice and National Revenue be called before the committee to explain their role in this misapplication of public funds.


Mr. Speaker:: Pursuant to Standing Order 43, this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


INCOME TAX
Mr. Harvie Andre (Calgary Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 on a matter of urgency. In view of escalating rents and severe shortages in rental apartment accommodation, in view of a seriously insufficient number of new apartment starts and in observance of the successful stimulation in the past of new apartment building projects provided by the ability of persons to deduct losses resulting from investment in such projects from their taxable income, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Moose Jaw (Mr. Neil):
That this House recommend to the government and the Minister of Finance that the period enabling individuals to deduct losses resulting from investment in new rental apartment projects from their taxable income as provided for in the budget of November 18, 1974, be extended beyond its December 31, 1975, deadline.


Mr. Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion as required by Standing Order 43?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


CONSUMER AFFAIRS
Mr. Armand Caouette (Villeneuve):: Mr. Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 to present a motion of pressing public necessity and importance.
Since there can be a difference of as much as 10 cents a gallon between the cost of gasoline bought in Montreal and Abitibi or Gaspesia, for example, and since this difference is not proportionate to the cost of transport, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Rimouski (Mr. Allard):
That a standing committee of this House be requested to examine the reasons for this tremendous difference between the price of gasoline from one area to the other and to make recommendation to the House to take necessary steps to prevent that areas such as Abitibi and Gaspesia, among others, suffer from disproportionate gas prices as compared with other areas of the country.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The House has heard the hon. member's motion. Pursuant to 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:: As there is not unanimous consent, the motion cannot be put.


OLYMPIC GAMES
Mr. Otto Jelinek (High Park-Humber Valley):: Mr. Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 to present a motion on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. My motion arises out of recent reports from Montreal indicating that the cost of the 1976 Olympics is likely to exceed $1 billion, a cost estimate which, I gather, does not take into account the added costs certain to result from labour disruptions of the kind we now have at the Olympic site. I well realize that this government takes the position that these soaring costs are someone's else's problem. But the fact is, as we all know, that the federal government itself has heavy direct-


Some hon. Members:: Order!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. If the hon. member has a motion, will he put it forthwith?


Otto John Jelinek: In order that we in parliament as well as the people of Canada might have a more up to date and complete accounting of the federal position on this matter, I would move, seconded by the hon. member for York-Simcoe (Mr. Stevens):
October 21, 1975

That the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates be ordered forthwith to inquire into the current and projected cost commitments, both direct and indirect, of the federal government to the 1976 Olympic Games and to report to the House both as to the level of those commitments and the adequacy of existing cost control mechanisms over them.


Mr. Speaker:: The motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Leeds.


Some hon. Members:: No!


Mr. Tom Cossitt (Leeds):: Mr. Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 to move a motion arising from the statement made recently by the Secretary of State for External Affairs in which he denied there was any morale problem in his department. I would move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre:
That the Secretary of State for External Affairs make a statement to the House giving full details of a secret six-member committee to investigate low morale in his department and that the minister also release to the House the now completed report on interviews on the subject of morale made with numerous department employees by a sub-committee including in its membership Pierre Brien, Michael Mace and Shirley Boles and, finally, that the minister advise the House when the recommendations to improve morale will be carried out.


Mr. Speaker:: Pursuant to Standing Order 43 this motion requires unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Robert L. Stanfield (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, a question to the Acting Prime Minister in the absence of the Postmaster General. I understand that the executive of the Postal Workers Union has called for a national strike. I should like to ask the Acting Prime Minister whether it is the view of the government that the union is in a position to call a legal strike and that the Government of Canada is now seized with a legal national strike by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
Oral Questions


Hon. Mitchell Sharp (Acting Prime Minister):: That is my understanding. I made inquiries this morning and I understand there has been a call for a strike which is being observed.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: In the light of the statement made recently by the Postmaster General concerning the possible necessity of a long strike-perhaps three months-to resolve this issue, has the government decided, in the event of rotating strikes by the union, to shut down all postal services across the country in keeping with the remarks made by the Postmaster General for as long as it takes to reach a collective agreement?


Mitchell William Sharp: I hope an agreement can be reached without any prolonged delay in the operation of the Post Office As to the particular question which the Leader of the Opposition has directed to me, I believe it should be directed, rather, to the Postmaster General.


An hon. Member:: Where is he?


Mitchell William Sharp: The Postmaster General is in Windsor today; I expect he will be in the House either tomorrow or the next day. I know he has no desire to avoid answering questions raised by the hon. gentleman. The cabinet has not yet considered what action will be taken if the employees indulge in rotating strikes.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: The Postmaster General has also told us that the government has contingency plans for the distribution of essential government mail and social security cheques. Has the government prepared a contingency plan designed to help small businessmen and other Canadians who face severe, perhaps unendurable hardship as a result of a strike? Has the government such a plan and, if so, when will the public hear about it?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I think it would be misleading to suggest that the public is not going to suffer if there is a post office strike. This is one of the penalties of collective bargaining, and I think it is one that is accepted by members on both sides of this House. They would not want to deprive any particular group of the right to strike. So I would not hold out the hope that a post office strike would not harm many individuals, big and small.


GOVERNMENT ACTION TO ENSURE LEGALITY OF STRIKE-ALLEGED TAPPING OF POSTMASTER GENERAL'S TELEPHONE-GOVERNMENT ACTION
Hon. W. G. Dinsdale (Brandon-Souris):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question which I will direct to the Acting Prime Minister. In view of the statement by the Postmaster General that the vote conducted recently by the CUPW union does not necessarily constitute a mandate to call a strike-and it is to be regretted that the Postmaster General is not in the House today on this most significant occasion to deal with this problem-and in view of the further announcement that I believe was made this morning by the postal unions that the negotiations broke down on the wage packet rather than the fringe benefits which have been in public focus during recent days, what action is the government taking to ensure that
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October 21, 1975
Oral Questions
the strike that the unions have now embarked upon is a legal strike?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I have not addressed a question of that kind to the Minister of Justice or to any official who might have a legal opinion. All I know is that the right to strike has not been officially questioned, and I think we should accept it that the union has the right to call a legal strike. I think this is the question that has been put to me directly and it is the one I have attempted to answer.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: A further supplementary question, Mr. Speaker, which I will direct to the Solicitor General. In view of numerous charges made in the press about irregularities in the voting procedure, and in view of the statement made in Windsor today, which should have been made in the House, to the effect that the Postmaster General has asked the Solicitor General, or has asked the RCMP through the Solicitor General, to investigate wiretapping on his telephone, what action is the Solicitor General taking in this regard?


Hon. Warren Allmand (Solicitor General):: Mr. Speaker, it is possible that the Postmaster General approached the RCMP directly, but I have not been advised of that. I will check into it.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Mr. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa-Whitby):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Finance. In view of the minister's express concern that the package of economic proposals that the government has presented to the House will benefit the average and low income people, notwithstanding the fact that there is nothing in it directly for them, I should like to ask the minister whether a decision by the Quebec government yesterday not to proceed with an increase in the minimum wage, which in that province was scheduled to go up next month to $2.92, but instead to increase it next January simply to $2.86 instead of $2.92, is in the minister's view in the spirit of the guidelines to which the minister has referred a number of times?


Hon. Donald S. Macdonald (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I would just correct the statement of the hon. gentleman. Any measure that protects the position of those not in a position by economic power to continue to get their fair share of the growth of Canada's economy is obviously one that is in their favour, and this applies directly to those of low income. I have not had an opportunity to speak to provincial officials generally since our meeting of a week ago Monday. I will have the opportunity tomorrow and the next day, and undoubtedly this is among other questions that will arise. I would not comment before I have had an opportunity to discuss the matter.


John Edward Broadbent: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Since more than 1,700,000 Canadians living in the province of Quebec are directly affected by this negative decision by the premier of Quebec, I should like to ask the minister, when he meets with the finance ministers of all the prov-

inces and particularly with the minister of the province of Quebec, whether he would make it clear that it is not the government's intention that this approach should be taken to minimum wages at the provincial level. In fact, would he positively encourage the provincial premiers to increase the minimum wages in their provinces?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, I think we would want to talk particularly about the situation of those in lower income groups, not only in Quebec but across Canada.


SUGGESTED INCREASE IN FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, I have a final supplementary question in an area that is the direct responsibility of the government. Given the fact that the federal wage in 1970 was 55 per cent of the average manufacturing wage in Canada and that for 1975 this has dropped to a mere 51 per cent of the average manufacturing wage in this country, which means that low-income federal employees or people under federal jurisdiction have been getting a declining share of the economic pie, would the minister take direct action to the benefit of such low-income Canadians, within the government's responsibility, by raising the federal minimum wage?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, I am obliged to the hon. gentleman who has given a very good example of the way in which those on low incomes suffer when those with economic power can force up their own compensation. I would certainly be prepared to look at the level of compensation within the federal public service area to see whether people have suffered because of the exercise of economic power by others.


MANPOWER
Mr. Adrien Lambert (Bellechasse):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to put a question to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration.
As lumbermen, Canadian and American, have been confronting each other for several days now at the boundary between the state of Maine and the province of Quebec, right across from the riding of Bellechasse, on matters concerning wage and working conditions of the Canadians working in the States, as the situation seems to be deteriorating from day to day, and as I have been requested to ask the Minister of Manpower whether he has been advised of the situation, can he tell us what steps he intends to take to ensure that Canadian workers are protected as they should be, and that they can continue to work for the American lumber industry?


Hon. Robert K. Andras (Minister of Manpower and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, if I understood the question
October 21, 1975

properly, and there may have been some difficulty in the translation, this is really a question of Canadian workers operating in the State of Maine and is certainly beyond my own jurisdiction. It is not a matter that would fall within the ambit of the Department of Manpower and Immigration. Having said that, I will certainly be interested in more details to see if this is matter for discussion with either the authorities of the State of Maine or the United States, and which might lend itself to some negotiation. It is not within my responsibility.


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary for the Minister of Manpower and Immigration.
In view of the reply of the minister, and considering ministerial solidarity, may I ask the minister to kindly acquaint one of his colleagues, possibly the Minister of Labour, with this problem, with a view to ensuring some measure of justice to the Canadian workers who rely on the government of Canada to make sure that their rights are respected?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I will certainly discuss this with the appropriate minister and my colleague in Cabinet, but I am not sure in this case whether it would be the Minister of Labour who could take action with regard to practices in another sovereign state. However, we will look into it.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Mr. John A. Fraser (Vancouver South):: Mr. Speaker, on Friday last the Postmaster General said:
In a democracy such as ours some segments of the economy must be severely, sometimes unjustifiably, inconvenienced, but that is the price of our particular system.
Would the Acting Prime Minister advise the House whether the government has made any estimate of the damage to the Canadian economy of a prolonged postal strike and, if so, has the government calculated that the Canadian economy can withstand a long strike?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I doubt very much whether it would be possible to make a calculation of that kind. What I do suggest to my hon. friend is I think there is a great deal at stake in this particular issue especially in relation to the program of restraint which I hope he supports.


John Allen Fraser: Mr. Speaker, is the minister advising the House that the government is drifting into a prolonged strike without any idea of the consequences?


Mitchell William Sharp: No. We understand very well the serious consequences of a postal strike. We also understand, as I hope he appreciates, the serious consequences of breaking the government's own guidelines.
Oral Questions


John Allen Fraser: Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that it was several months ago that the Postmaster General threatened to close down the post office for three months if necessary, could the Acting Prime Minister tell the House whether that was then and is still government policy.


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, the Postmaster General I think has made an offer that is very fair and just. He has offered the inside postal workers the same deal accepted by the letter carriers. That is the government's position and that is within the terms of the guidelines. On other matters, the government is ready to negotiate and stands ready to negotiate at any time.


FINANCE
Mr. G. W. Baldwin (Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Finance. I should like to ask the minister whether he has been advised of the fact that one of the chartered banks intends to raise its rates for handling cheques by 12 Vi per cent and whether this constitutes a breach of the guidelines and the intent of the white paper.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, I am obliged to the hon. gentleman. I will be pleased to pass this on to the Anti-Inflation Board.


REQUEST FOR ESTIMATE OF BUDGETARY DEFICIT- GOVERNMENT ACTION TO RESTRAIN GROWTH OF MONEY SUPPLY
Mr. Sinclair Stevens (York-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, I too have a question for the Minister of Finance. As a review of federal government financial operations during the first four months of the current fiscal year indicates that revenues are below and spending is considerably above, the levels required to achieve the revenue and expenditure forecasts of the June 23 budget, would the minister tell the House if he has revised the June 23 forecast of a budgetary deficit of $3.2 billion, and if so what is his new estimate of the federal budgetary deficit for this year?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Not
as yet, Mr. Speaker.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary again is directed to the Minister of Finance. As we have had much rhetoric concerning restraint and the assurances of the minister that the money supply in this country will be in restraint in future, would the minister indicate when we will see some actual and concrete evidence of restraint with regard to the growth of our money system, it having grown 16 per cent in the last 12 months alone.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I could draw to the attention of the hon. gentleman the increase of the bank rate of three-quarters of one per cent

October 21, 1975
Oral Questions
early in September which has as a direct consequence the moderating of the rate of increase in the money supply.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, I have a further supplementary, again addressed to the Minister of Finance. With regard to the minister's observation that a rising prime rate will ensure restraint in respect of the growth of the money system, would he indicate to the House why that has not taken place over the last three years when our money supply has jumped by over 60 per cent?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I could suggest to the hon. gentleman to his benefit that he study the very eloquent remarks of the Governor of the Bank of Canada in this respect.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Agriculture and is prompted by his statement that Canadians have nothing to fear from well-run marketing agencies. In view of the statement contained in the report of the Food Prices Review Board on the broiler industry in Canada that the average return on equity to many producers in the broiler industry is extremely high by normal business standards, and further in view of the charge of the board that the federal government will take more vigorous action to combat and eliminate constraints to interprovincial trade by the broiler industry which is contrary to the BNA Act, I ask the minister will he respond to the very serious charges and does he intend to investigate them?


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: Well, Mr. Speaker, I have not had time to study the new report the Food Prices Review Board has submitted. But I would just remind the hon. member that broiler prices in Canada went up 14 per cent last year while they went up 23 per cent in the United States, and there is no control on imports into Canada. Imports went up from 3,209,000, pounds to 10,373,000, pounds. So there is really no control; we have no control on supply-management. Each of the provinces has its own individual broiler program and before a national agency for broiler marketing is put into force, public hearings would have to be held in accordance with the legislation which this parliament passed some time ago.


SUGGESTED REFERENCE TO ANTI-INFLATION BOARD OF CHARGES MADE AGAINST PRODUCERS OF BROILERS
James Aloysius McGrath: My question is addressed to the Minister of Finance. Would the minister refer to the Anti-Inflation Board the charge made by the Food Prices Review Board that the return on equity to producers in the broiler industry is extremely high by normal business standards?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: have reason to believe that the facts in this respect may already be well known to at least one member of the anti-inflation review board, but I will make a point of reminding her of it.


TRANSPORT
Mr. C. Douglas (Bruce-Grey):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. In view of the fact that the Ontario Beef Improvement Association has expressed grave concern with both CNR and CPR about increased freight rates over the last year-three very substantial increases totalling 49 per cent have been imposed and last week the association was informed that another increase of 15 per cent would be imposed on November 15, making it the fourth increase in less than a year, which would indeed be a hardship on the beef producers of Ontario- would the minister urge both CNR and CPR to withhold any increase until a later date in the interest of combatting inflation, and will he also arrange a meeting with the Ontario Beef Improvement Association in the near future to discuss all aspects of freight rate increases and the alarming decrease in rail service over the past year?


Hon. Otto E. Lang (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I certainly share the hon. member's concern and that of associations in both the east and the west in relation to higher freight rates on beef and other meat. I hope that at the very least the railways may be reviewing their proposed increases in the light of the guidelines. I think it would also be appropriate for the proposals to be brought to the attention of the anti-inflation review board. I would of course be delighted to meet with the beef associations.


FEDERAL-PROVINCIAL RELATIONS SUGGESTION MEETING WITH PROVINCIAL FINANCE MINISTERS BE HELD IN PUBLIC
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. Has the government received representations from any of the provinces suggesting that meetings of the finance ministers which will be held Wednesday and Thursday be held in public?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, if there have been such representations, they have not come to my attention. I do hope to receive a briefing from my officials later this afternoon following their meetings this morning with provincial officials. I will be in a better position later today to respond to the hon. member's question.


David Orlikow: In view of the need of the Canadian people to know as much as possible about the anti-inflation program proposed by the government, and how it will affect them, if they are to co-operate to make the program work, will the minister give serious consideration to the
October 21, 1975

suggestions which I think will be made that the discussions tomorrow and on Thursday be open to the media and the public?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: I will be glad to consider that.


MANPOWER
Mr. Leonel Beaudoin (Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to ask a question which is supplementary to that of my colleague, the hon. member for Bellechasse. It is directed to the President of the Privy Council, a former Secretary of State for External Affairs.
Could he advise the House whether the problem Canadian forest workers are faced with in connection with the United States has been discussed by the cabinet and what action, if any, the government will take to correct this situation which I suggest is covered by the provision of the Immigration Act governing seasonal workers under contract who are staying in a foreign country?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, when I was secretary of state for external affairs problems of this kind were discussed in the department. I find myself in general agreement with my colleagues, however, that these are the laws of the United States. However, I will get in touch with the Secretary of State for External Affairs when he returns and will ask him to see if there is anything useful that the Canadian government might do.


Léonel Beaudoin: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a supplementary question to the President of the Privy Council.
On behalf of the government, could he advise the House whether forest workers under long and medium term contracts will be able to work till the end of their contracts, so that these petty quarrels may be settled as soon as possible?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I doubt whether our authority would extend in that direction. But I understand that there is some problem there and I can assure the hon. member we will inquire into it to see if there is anything useful that could be done.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Hon. Marcel Lambert (Edmonton West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Finance.
Oral Questions
Under Bill C-73 while wages are not frozen, dividends are, shall we say, limited to the pay-out during the preceding fiscal year. Will the minister advise the House whether this is a roll-back or whether this includes dividends declared in 1974 but payable in 1975, and if it is a total freeze will he advise how he expects Canadian investors to maintain their investments and not invest in U.S. stocks that are freely available to them and on which there is no roll-back or freeze?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, I want to check again to see whether this is on a cash or accrual basis. In general terms, however, the intention would be that absolute dividend levels not be increased over the last completed fiscal year.


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: In actual fact is it the 1974 level of dividends that is frozen, or is it to include dividend levels of 1975 which may be higher having been declared and payable in 1975, because if it is a freeze then the minister knows what the consequences are?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: I would be glad to seek precision on that.


SARNIA-MONTREAL PIPELINE-DATE OF COMMENCEMENT OF OPERATION
Mr. Stan Schumacher (Palliser):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. Can the minister say whether or not the Sarnia-Montreal oil pipeline is being constructed according to schedule, and is he satisfied that it is proceeding properly? If so, when might we expect to find some oil actually travelling by pipeline between Sarnia and Montreal?


Hon. Alastair Gillespie (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, the last word I had on that was that there should be oil flowing through that pipeline early next year.


FISHERIES
Mr. Allan B. McKinnon (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State (Fisheries). In view of the alarming reports that 29 of the 30 fishing patrol vessels on the west coast are to be immobilized for lack of operating funds, and as 20 Japanese and Polish trawlers are at present in the vicinity of the 12 mile line, can the minister detail what steps he is taking to ensure that our 12 mile fishing zones are adequately patrolled?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of State (Fisheries)):: Mr. Speaker, I do not know where these reports come from, but there has been no decision to reduce the level of surveillance on either coast at present.

October 21, 1975
Oral Questions


Allan Bruce McKinnon: Mr. Speaker, the budget for fisheries patrolling was reduced this year, despite the rising costs of fuel, and this would automatically reduce the amount of patrolling that can be done. Does the minister deny there will be a curtailment of patrolling on the west coast?


Roméo LeBlanc: I neither deny nor confirm it. I simply say that no decision has been made. The salmon season is ending and we are reviewing all our expenditures because of obvious pressures in relation to inflation and the costs of contracts with crews as well as the cost of fuel. But no decision has been made. We are reviewing this matter and patrolling is continuing on both coasts.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Mr. F. Oberle (Prince George-Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance who said during his speech on the introduction of the white paper and the bill dealing with inflation that he, his department and the anti-inflation review board expect to be confronted with perplexing questions. I wonder if it has been possible for his department to deal with the perplexing question of how many employees will be required to administer the program and what kind of budget has been established for carrying out the duties of the board.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, we are currently looking at the prospect of approximately 200 employees with direct responsibility here. The level of the budget is not final since is not yet clear as to whether some of the employees will be seconded and therefore referred from other departments or brought into the public service. Obviously, the preference would be not to increase the budget by any substantial degree.


OIL-SALE PRICE OF OIL DISCOVERED ON CAMERON ISLAND-ACTION TO ENSURE NORTHERN OIL REACHES CANADIAN MARKET
Mr. James Gillies (Don Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. Is the government contemplating allowing the oil discovered on Cameron Island to be sold at world prices, as requested by the president of Panarctic?


Alastair William Gillespie: Mr. Speaker, the government has made it quite clear in the past that the policy of the government would be that oil prices would move up towards world prices.


James McPhail Gillies: Given the fact that the president of Panarctic has said that there is no way in which this oil could be brought into the Canadian market unless it is at world prices, what alternative position will the government offer in order that this oil may be available to Canadian consumers?


Alastair William Gillespie: One can only hope that the Panarctic discovery will lead to many more, and that there will be a sufficient reserve of oil to exploit.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Alastair William Gillespie: Hon. members opposite do not take this very seriously. I do; I think it is very important.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


James McPhail Gillies: I would indicate to the minister that we take this terribly seriously, and we are concerned that there has been no conservation of Canadian oil and nothing done to increase the supply of oil. Again I ask the minister, what he will do to ensure that this oil does in fact reach the Canadian market, and I hope that he will refrain from frivolous statements.


Alastair William Gillespie: We have made it very clear in the past that there are many measures we are taking. One of the more important measures is to find ways of moving that oil and gas out of the Arctic. My department has taken this position with regard to the Polar gas project with a view to determining the feasibility of moving petroleum products out of the north.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Maurice Dupras (Labelle):: Mr. Speaker, since the Secretary of State for External Affairs is not in the House, I would like to direct a question to his parliamentary secretary.
Could the parliamentary secretary reassure the House on the fate of the Canadian missionnaries, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, from Hamilton? Are the reports that those two missionnaries would be released true?


Miss Monique Begin (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to assure the hon. member who just asked this question that the representations made by the Canadian authorities seem to have got a very positive ending. I am told that Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, according to an official communication addressed to our Peking embassy by the Provisional Revolutionary Government, will be released. Furthermore, I would like to add that we have already been in touch with the High Commission for Refugees in Geneva and that there is no new development yet regarding the release date.
October 21, 1975


TRANSPORT
Mr. Les Benjamin (Regina-Lake Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Transport. In view of the fact that his predecessor requested the two major railroads in Canada to submit proposals to the government for an integrated intercity rail passenger service, and that the presidents of those railroads wrote to the former minister of transport on December 20 of last year submitting a proposal, I ask the minister if there was a reply to that letter? If so, when, and what was the nature of that reply?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I will check the correspondence.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: I am sorry the minister said that he will look into this matter. I gave him notice of this question this morning.


An hon. Member:: He's worse than Marchand.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: In view of the fact that the two major railroads requested that this matter be resolved and agreed to by March 1 so that they could commence this new intercity rail service by this October, if it is the intention of the government to reply, will the minister table the letter which the railroads sent to the former minister last year, and does the government intend to agree to their proposals?


Otto Emil Lang: Of course, the issue is very important and requires due consideration. Whether I should or will table the correspondence is something I will determine after I have looked at it.
sic *	*


POST OFFICE
Mr. J. H. Horner (Crowfoot):: Mr. Speaker-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John (Jack) Henry Horner: I would like to direct my question to the Acting Prime Minister. I hope all my questions are greeted with such pleasure by the government of the day and I hope the pleasure of hon. members is demonstrated by their willingness to answer my questions.
Because of the concern of the people of Canada as to whether the government really intends to proceed with the intent of the anti-inflationary legislation in Bill C-73, has the cabinet considered back to work legislation for the postal workers if the strike persists?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this first question from the hon. member, and I am very glad to know that he is still associated with Crowfoot. After viewing the television
Oral Questions
interview last night, I wondered whether he was from Toronto.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh! .


Mitchell William Sharp: The program which the government has put forward in its attack on inflation may produce some strikes. We hope it will not. The government, of course, does not preclude the possibility that parliament may want to take action to send workers back to work. That is something only parliament can decide, and the government may or may not make such recommendations. I hope, however, that the postal workers will accept the same deal as was offered to the letter carriers, so that ordinary postal service can be resumed quickly.


John (Jack) Henry Horner: I might say to the Acting Prime Minister that I would welcome his sons to contest the constituency of Crowfoot. I am sure they would well remember my presence there for a long time in the future.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John (Jack) Henry Horner: I would like to ask the Acting Prime Minister whether the people of Canada can take the legislation of the government seriously if the government is not prepared to act on the very first strike which occurs after its announcement. If the government allows this strike to go on, is it not setting a precedent for all other union leaders and workers across Canada?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mitchell William Sharp: As the government has indicated, it is our hope that this program of restraint, which will apply and be enforced against certain elements in the community, will be supported on all sides. I would have thought that the kind of action being suggested by the hon. member, although I understand his motivation, would not contribute to the policy which is the result of a consensus with regard to restraint.


REGIONAL ECONOMIC EXPANSION
Hon. J. A. MacLean (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion and ask him if it is his intention in the near future to sign an agreement with the province of Prince Edward Island regarding the second phase of the so-called comprehensive development plan. Would he also indicate for what period such an agreement will be in effect?


Hon. Marcel Lessard (Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I can inform the hon. member that our department will ratify the second phase of the agreement on the development of
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October 21, 1975
Oral Questions
Prince Edward Island. I will be in that province as early as tomorrow and will probably sign the agreement with the premier of P.E.I. on Thursday. As understood during our negotiations, the agreement will cover a five-year period.


MANPOWER
Mr. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Mr. Speaker, I want to put a question to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration.
As the President of the Treasury Board said last week that no additional funds would be given for LIP projects and since 75 per cent of those projects will be turned down because of lack of funds, I would like to ask the minister, in the circumstances, in view of the disappointment of hundreds of promoters, whether he is considering recommending additional supplies to the Cabinet, in order to accept a more reasonable number of projects?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I believe I answered this question the other day. I do not intend, in the face of the current restraint program, to make such a recommendation. The budget of June 23 provided $450 million for this kind of stimulation involving local initiatives programs, federal labour intensive programs, training and others to be spread over the next 18 months. That is as far as we can go now.


FISHERIES
Mr. Lloyd R. Crouse (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, my question was to be directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. In his absence I shall direct it to the Minister of Fisheries. According to reports emanating from 200 delegates at the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council meeting in St. John's, Newfoundland, the Canadian government on its own does not intend to declare a 200-mile limit within the next three years. As President Ford indicated he would be prepared to sign a unilateral declaration establishing the limit, effective January 1, 1977, will the government make available to this House the basis of the discussions recently held on this matter with Dr. Kissinger. We have learned just about everything else which took place at that meeting. Perhaps we could learn what was said about the fisheries.


Roméo LeBlanc: Mr. Speaker, the premise of the hon. member's question escapes me completely. We said clearly that unilateral action is still very much an option. I may say to the hon. member that I am surprised that delegates to the meeting in St. John's have not read what the former minister of fisheries for Newfoundland said in a letter to me, that his province, because of our success at ICNAF, is not pressing 
for action before the next Law of the Sea Conference. The Fisheries Council of Canada has also expressed this view. So, I will take the word of these gentlemen, instead of the word of some academics.


POST OFFICE
Mr. Walter Baker (Grenville-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct my question to the Acting Prime Minister? It arises from the breaking off of negotiations last night and the indication that a tape was made of that conversation which indicates that the chief negotiator for the government had taken the position that the government was locking out postal employees-whatever that position may mean. Is the Acting Prime Minister aware of the existence of that tape? Would he be prepared to table it in the House, if he is aware of it, and can he tell us if the tape contains a record of the government's position vis-a-vis the postal unions.


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I understand-and this is only based on reports I have received-that the tape was made without the authorization of the people who were present. In other words, it was a surreptitious taping. I would think it is the kind of report which should not be published, in the interests of preservation of privacy. May I make this point: So far as the government is concerned, the only point on which the government is absolutely adamant is the question of wages. The same deal has been offered to the inside postal workers as has been offered to the letter carriers and accepted by them. Other matters are open for negotiation and we stand ready to resume negotiations at any time.


Walter David Baker: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. I understand the Acting Prime Minister's position, that he is not personally aware of the tape, but is only aware of it through reports. Can he undertake to the House to investigate the existence of that tape. If he can, will he listen to it? Will he undertake to table that tape in the House, so that members of parliament can listen to it and understand the purport of the recorded conversations?


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mitchell William Sharp: No, Mr. Speaker, I would not undertake that.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mitchell William Sharp: If the negotiator had authorized the taping and it were part of the official record, I should certainly consider the request. I am surprised that the hon. gentleman should make such a suggestion.
October 21, 1975


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Don Mazankowski (Vegreville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Agriculture. Last Friday, speaking to the Fort St. John and district chamber of commerce in British Columbia, the minister went to great lengths in praising the provisions of the agricultural stabilization legislation. He was so bold as to suggest, and I quote, that:
Farmers will not be left out in the cold when rapidly rising costs push the cost of production past returns.
I am sure the minister realizes that the cow-calf producers of this country are not only left out in the cold but are being practically frozen out of existence. Can the minister tell the House and the cow-calf operators of Canada when a program will be implemented and announced in this House for the aid of this important industry which, at present, is severely distressed? I ask this as many cow-calf operators are presently selling their animals for distress prices. The fall rush will soon be on us. I ask the minister to acknowledge the admonition of his own department, which indicates that there will be a cattle shortage in the near future, a shortage which may have the effect of raising consumer prices.


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, I should tell the hon. member that I met representatives of the cow-calf producers in the Peace River area, both from Alberta and from British Columbia. They attended the breakfast meeting in Fort St. John. They expressed deep concern. They told me they had better forage, better supplies and better grain crops than they had ever had in that area. The crops are all harvested but the producers are deeply concerned. They have made submissions and will make further submissions to provincial ministers. Some of them will be presented this week in Ottawa.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. The minister, once again, has evaded my question. I was not asking for a detailed explanation as to what he was doing. Nor did I ask him for a bunch of rhetorical fluff. I ask him, as the producers of Canada ask him, either to put up or shut up.


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member should know that the producers of Canada, the Canadian Cattlemen's Association and the Saskatchewan stock producers are asking that practically nothing be done and that some provinces have programs of their own. So, I am listening to what the producers of Canada are saying.
Privilege-Mr. O'Connell



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Hon. Martin O'Connell (Scarborough East):: Mr. Speaker, on Monday, October 20, and Tuesday, October 21, the newspapers Le Devoir and the Globe and Mail, respectively, published, without authorization, excerpts from the confidential draft of a report of the Special Joint Committee of Parliament on Immigration Policy. This preliminary draft, and each and every page of it, is clearly stamped "Confidential until presented in the House" and is the result of proceedings conducted with closed doors. The unauthorized publication of documents such as this, prepared in this manner, is expressly prohibited by the rules of this House and constitutes a breach of the privileges of the House, in support of which I cite Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, fourth edition, chapter IX, section (5) of citation 320, page 250. I quote section (5):
No act done at any committee should be divulged before the same be reported to the House. Upon this principle the Commons, on April 21, 1837, resolved "That the evidence taken by any select committee of this House, and the documents presented to such committee and which have not been reported to the House, ought not to be published by any member of such committee or by any other person." Where the public is admitted this rule is usually not enforced. The publication of proceedings of committees conducted with closed doors or of reports of committees before they are available to members will, however, constitute a breach of privilege.
A special committee of parliament has been mandated to consider and report upon this sensitive and complex area of public policy. The unauthorized publication of this preliminary and confidential draft, which does not reflect the final conclusions of the committee and in fact has not yet been discussed as such by the committee, reduces the ability of this special committee of parliament to deal effectively with its mandate and can only be misleading to the public.
The circumstances of the unauthorized publications seem to be within the four corners of the breach of privilege as described in the citation I have given Your Honour. It is for this reason that I move, seconded by the hon. member for Kent-Essex (Mr. Daudlin):
That the unauthorized publication of the confidential draft of a report of the Special Joint Committee of Parliament on Immigration Policy be referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Andrew Brewin (Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I want to say a few words in support of the motion moved by the hon. member for Scarborough East (Mr. O'Connell), one of the chairmen of the special joint committee. The publication of this report as the view of the committee was false and misleading. As the hon. member made clear, there are many points which we have not discussed. There are many points which we have discussed and not yet agreed on. I and other members of the committee disagree with some of the points mentioned in the report.
29669-481/2

October 21, 1975
Privilege-Mr. O'Connell
I am in the process of trying to persuade my colleagues, and I have some hope of doing so, to change some of the items in this particular report. In any event, the whole context of the committee system can be broken down if confidential documents are leaked and then printed in the press. It was clearly marked, as the hon. member said, as confidential until released in this House. The publication of this report means that hearings in camera and documents held in confidence by any committee of this House are no longer subject to any security whatever.
It is sometimes said that a charge has to be made. I consider that within the terms of this motion a charge is made because the citation from Beauchesne's clearly states that disclosure "ought not to be published by any member of such committee or by any other person." However, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and at least two leading newspapers published in detail, and to some extent even inaccurately, some of the details of the report.


Mr. Jake Epp (Provencher):: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the motion of privilege that the hon. member for Scarborough East (Mr. O'Connell) has placed before this House, I would like to state that the members of the committee from this side of the House support the position he has taken on behalf of the committee.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: I believe members of the committee from all sides of the House have appreciated the manner in which the co-chairmen have conducted the affairs of the committee. They have been eminently fair in their approach to all members and to discussions in a very sensitive area of public policy.
The fact that the report had obviously been leaked through the media has been discussed by members. I think all of us feel that the work we have done up to this point must be kept in clear perspective and that we are not deterred from our purpose, namely, to present to parliament what we believe are findings in the best interests of Canada's future.
It is our hope that despite the fact the report has been leaked and published in the media, the committee's work will not be compromised but, rather, when the report is tabled in this House-which was the mandate given us by the House-it will be considered at that time having in mind the importance which I believe it has.


Mr. Arnold Peters (Timiskaming):: Mr. Speaker, I have listened to the question of privilege. I am not a member of the joint committee, but I ask: Is it within the purview of the House of Commons Privileges and Elections Committee to deal with this kind of question of privilege without someone being named? This raises a very interesting question. We may find it was a member of the other place who was guilty of leaking this report. I therefore raise the point as to whether it is within our competence to deal with this matter through the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections without someone being named, when it may affect other than members of this House.


Léonel Beaudoin: Mr. Speaker, I support the motion of the hon. member for Scarborough East

(Mr. O'Connell) who is the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Immigration Policy. I think he is right in part, Mr. Speaker, but there is one thing I wonder about: As 400, 500 or perhaps 600 copies were distributed almost everywhere, namely to hon. members, in secretarial offices and so on, I think, Mr. Speaker, that this inquiry is almost useless. Also the fact that the report is only one side of a final report which must be introduced later takes off much of the importance of this motion. In particular, I would not like to see a witch hunt here to determine whether such or such thing was produced in relation to a draft report. It is not at all a report but draft report. I would like it to be considered only as such.


Mr. Lincoln M. Alexander (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to enter into a discussion of the merits of the question which has been raised. The point directed to your attention by one of the co-chairmen of the special joint committee was well made. I understand, though, that the other co-chairman, who is a member of the other place, will be submitting an identical question of privilege in the Senate in order to deflate the argument- and I say it was a good argument-put forward by the hon. member for Timiscamingue (Mr. Peters). So we should all be apprized of the seriousness of this matter; it is being raised not only in this House but it is being raised in the other place with a view to ascertaining what type of direction shall be given in this regard.


Mr. Claude-Andre Lachance (Lafontaine-Rosemont):: Mr. Speaker, as an ad hoc member of the immigration committee, I would like first to set things in their context and say that the committee and the secretaries of the committee have distributed only about forty copies of the report and that it is very easy to trace back those copies. It was not a matter of 400 or 500 copies: it was a working paper and only members of the committee and those of the immediate staff had access to it. So I think there is indeed a matter of privilege.


Thomas Charles Cossitt: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I might be permitted to make one brief comment. I believe it is the view of members in all quarters of the House that the principle of the freedom of the press, and the right of the press to publish information which is received, must be protected. The function of the press in any democratic country is to seek out and publish news. When this sort of thing happens, as illustrated by one of the joint chairmen in his motion, it would seem to me that the fault does not lie with the press but, rather, with whoever connected with the committee leaked this information to the press.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Thomas Charles Cossitt: It seems to me that the press has no alternative to publishing information it receives, when that information is believed to be accurate and legitimate. Therefore, I do not believe this motion can be deemed as one chastising the press; rather, it is one calling for an investigation of how this happened in the committee itself.
October 21, 1975


Mr. Speaker:: As there does not appear to be any other member wishing to continue this discussion, let me say at the outset that there can be no question about its seriousness. There was some difficulty put forward based on the fact that this is a joint committee, and some comment on the fact that a similar motion or a similar application is expected to be made later this day in the other place. It might be interesting to speculate on what would happen if different results ensue in both places. Let me say at the outset that I propose to reserve my ruling and examine the arguments and reconsider the precedents.
The question is not without difficulty. In the first place, there is precedent that the leak of confidential documents or their publication does in fact constitute a question of privilege. But does that mean a question of privilege in the abstract, or a question of privilege involving a specific member of the House of Commons who may be accused of having given out information which is confidential? The Chair will need to examine the precedents in detail, not simply the citations, to see what were the facts of those previous cases.
There is also a long-standing practice that it is unusual, perhaps even without precedent, for one committee of the House of Commons to examine the operations or the transgressions, as it were, of another committee. That question is particularly complicated when a joint committee of the two Houses is involved. This touches the point which was raised by the hon. member for Timiskaming (Mr. Peters). If we are to embrace the principle that an investigation can be carried out, as a result of this question of privilege, to find out whether in fact a question of privilege exists, then we shall have extended considerably the premises of a question of privilege.
It is suggested that the fact of the publication of a confidential draft report becomes in itself a prima facie question of privilege, the details to be filled in when it gets to the committee. On the face of it, that seems to me to be an extension of the question of privilege as we have known it, and if there is not a specific allegation of a transgression by someone it is most difficult to rule that there is a prima facie question of privilege. On the other hand, there is an obvious disposition in the House that some investigation of this matter should take place.
It may be that it does not qualify as a question of privilege as we know it, and certainly there is no desire to extend the definition of a question of privilege. It may be that a substantive motion to investigate this matter would be acceptable and might receive the unanimous support of members of the House without its being treated as a question of privilege. In any case, in a day or two the answers to some of these questions may be a little clearer than they are at the present time.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Order Paper Questions
Mr.   J.-J. Blais@Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: 1,848, 1,849, 2,623, 2,891, 2,962, 2,981, 3,009, 3,017, 3,024, 3,036 and 3,156.


Mr. Schumacher: 1.	By name, how many countries participated in the International Festival of Francophone Youth in Quebec, August 1974?
2.	By title or designation, how many individuals attended from each country and what was the extent of their participation in the Festival?
3.	By title or designation, how many individuals attended the Festival from Canadian provinces and which provinces were represented?
4.	For each group, from each country or province, what was the cost of (a) travel (b) accommodation (c) meals (d) local transportation (e) per diem expenses (f) packing (g) unpacking (h) shipping (i) insuring any equipment and/or materials and by whom were such costs met?
5.	Was any coverage by any branch of the media paid for and, if so (a) what was the nature of such coverage (b) the cost involved in each case (c) by whom were such costs met?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: 1. The 25 member countries of the Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation participated in the International Festival of Francophone Youth; they are: Belgium, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Dahomey, France, Gabon, Haiti, Upper Volta, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malagasy, Mali, Mauritius, Monaco, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Chad, Togo, Tunisia, Vietnam, Laos (associated State), and Canada (including Quebec as participating government).
2.	The total number of delegates was 1,621. The average number of participants per delegation was 62 including the head of the delegation, responsible officers for cultural and sports activities, some 30 participants to the cultural side and some 30 participants to the athletic side.
3.	(a) Quebec (participating government): 101 delegates including one leader, 32 participants to the cultural side and 68 to the athletic side, (b) New-Brunswick: 38 delegates including 12 participants to the cultural side and 26 to the athletic side, (c) Ontario: 41 delegates including 15 participants to the cultural side and 26 to the athletic side, (d) Manitoba: 32 delegates including 6 participants to the cultural side and 26 to the athletic side.
4.	(a) The Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation paid for the international travel of 60 delegates from each country, (b) The Societe d'Accueil du Festival international de la Jeunesse francophone paid for the lodging of all delegates at a rate of $4/night per person, (c) The Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation paid $5/day per person to provide meals to the delegates. All in all, the international travel and the meals provided to the delegates cost approximately $1.3 million to the Agency, (d) The interprovincial travel of Canadian delegates coming from New-Brunswick, Ontario and Manitoba was paid for by the Federal Government; this represented an expenditure of $17,800 contributed by the Department of National Health and Welfare, (e) No "per diem" expenses were provided, except in the case of a theatrical group that rehearsed in Quebec City for eight weeks prior to the opening of the Festival. The Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation paid for these expenses, (f) Paid

October 21, 1975
Order Paper Questions
for by the Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation, (g) Paid for by the Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation, (h) Paid for by the Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation, (i) Paid for by the Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation.
5.	(a) No. On the other hand, various Federal Departments and Agencies contributed to the publication of the official programme by paying for complimentary pages. The Department of External Affairs also paid for the editing of a souvenir-album and contributed to the production, by the National Film Board, of a documentary on the Festival, (b) The official programme: $30,000 contributed by the Department of the Secretary of State, the Department of National Health and Welfare and the Canadian International Development Agency.-The souvenir-album: $75,000 provided by the Department of External Affairs.- The film: $40,000 provided by the Department of External Affairs, (c) See (b) above.


Mr. Schumacher: 1.	On what date was the Societe d'accueil du festival international de la jeunesse francophone incorporated?
2.	Who was named as (a) President (b) Vice-President (c) Secretary (d)Treasurer?
3.	Who was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Society and, in each case, was the appointment by the Federal or Quebec Provincial Government?
4.	What remuneration was given to each member of the Executive and Board of Directors and by whom?
5.	What was the period of office of each member of the Executive and Board of Directors?
6.	Were the members of the Executive and Board of Directors associated with any other companies, associations and/or organizations (a) prior to (b) during (c) after their period of duties concerning the International Festival of Francophone Youth in Quebec, August 1974 and, if so, in each case (i) what was the nature of their associations (ii) positions held (iii) salaries received from other companies, associations and/or organizations?
7.	What was the budget of the Society for the Festival?
8.	Is the Society still in operation and, if so (a) have there been any changes in the Executive or Directorship (b) what was the nature of such changes?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: 1. The Societe d'Accueil du Festival international de la Jeunesse francophone was incorporated on June 7th, 1973, according to Part III of the Canada Corporations Act.
2.	a) President: Mr. Richard Drouin; b) No vice-president; c) Secretary-treasurer: Mr. Pierre Lefrangois.
3.	All members of the Board of Directors were appointed by both the Canadian and Quebec governments. They were: Mr. Richard Drouin, Mr. Guy Beaulne, Mrs. Yolande Bonenfant, Mr. Rene de Chantal, the Rev. Marcel de la Sablonniere, Mr. Pierre Dionne and Mr. Richard Garneau.
4.	Mr. Richard Drouin, President of the Board of Directors received $35,000 a year for the period of June 7, 1973 to October 31, 1974. The members of the Board were paid $50.00 for each meeting of the Board, up to a maximum of two meetings a day and their presence was controlled by a token. The Societe d'Accueil took care of that remuneration. There was no Executive Board.
5.	From June 7, 1973 to October 31, 1974.
6.	At the time they were appointed to the Board of Directors and during their period of office, members of the Board were associated with the following companies, associations and organizations: Mr. Richard Drouin, Barrister and Solicitor in Quebec City; Mr. Pierre Dionne-Vice-President of the Quebec Confederation of Recreation, General Commissioner of the Boy Scouts Association of Canada and Member of the Board of Directors of Tourbec; Mrs. Yoland Bonenfant-Member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Institute; Mr. Guy Beaulne-General Director of the Grand Theatre, Member of the Boards of Directors of the Theatre populaire du Quebec, of the Quebec Opera and the Societe Civitas; Mr. Rene de Chantal-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the Universite de Montreal, Member of the Royal Society of Canada and Member of l'Academie canadienne-frangaise; The Reverend Marcel de la Sablonniere-President and Director of the Centre Immaculee Conception, Vice-President (Communications) of the Olympic Association of Canada; Mr. Richard Garneau-President of the Quebec Federation of Athletics, sports commentator with Radio-Canada. The salaries received from these companies, associations and organizations are of a confidential nature.
7.	The budgetary forecasts approved in 1973 were the following: (a) Total budget: $3 millions for both the international and national aspects, (b) This total amount was divided into two distinct parts: 1. $1.6 million to be paid by the Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation for the international aspect of the event. 2. $1.4 million to be paid by the host country for local expenses; this amount was subdivided as follows: (a) a federal contribution of $900,000 (or 64.25 per cent of the Canadian contribution) paid by the Department of External Affairs; (b) a contribution of the Quebec government of $500,000 (or 35.75 per cent of the Canadian contribution). At the end of the Festival, the Societe d'Accueil du Festival international de la Jeunesse francophone faced an excess of expenditures over revenues of $582,704 which was solved by supplementary contributions of $374,385.32 (or 64.25 per cent) of the deficit) provided by the Federal government on April 1, 1975, and of $208,316.68 provided by the Quebec government (or 35.75 per cent of the deficit), on January 29, 1975.
8.	The procedures to end the incorporation were started on April 1, 1975 and are nearly completed, (a) No; (b) not applicable.


Mr. Cossitt: 1.	Did the Minister of Transport authorize the Member for South Western Nova to announce on May 26, 1975, a $175,000 Assistance Grant for the airport at Digby, Nova Scotia under the Department of Transport's Community Airport Assistance Programme and, if so, for what reason?
2.	Is it government policy that such announcements of grants, work projects, etc., are normally made through a Member of Parliament and, if so (a) does the policy apply equally to all Members (b) for what reason was the above announcement made by the Member for South Western Nova?


Mitchell William Sharp: 1 and 2(b). From time to time the minister asks members

October 21, 1975

to make announcements on his behalf of projects in their constituencies. The Member for South Western Nova had been actively promoting this grant for the airport at Digby which is in her constituency.
2 and 2(a)(b). There is no general policy in this respect.


Mr. Cossitt: 1.	Did the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development authorize the Member for Wellington to announce on June 30, 1975 the transfer of the Regional office of Parks Canada from Cornwall to Guelph in the Constituency of Wellington and, if so, for what reason?
2.	Is it government policy that such announcements of grants, work projects, etc., are normally made through a Member of Parliament and, if so (a) does the policy apply equally to all Members (b) for what reason was the above announcement made by the Member for Wellington?


Mitchell William Sharp: I am informed by the Departments of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Public Works as follows: 1. Yes, because the new location is in the Member for Wellington's constituency.
2. There is no general policy in this respect.


Mr. Corbin: Did the Province of New Brunswick request financial assistance from the government for spruce budworm spraying programmes for the years (a) 1975 (b) 1974 (c) 1973 (d) 1972 (e) 1971 (f) 1970 (g) 1976 and, if so, in each case what was the government's response?


Mitchell William Sharp: In so far as the Department of the Environment is concerned: (a) Yes-no assistance is provided; (b) yes- assistance was provided; (c) yes-assistance was provided; (d) no; (e) no; (f) no; (g) no. In so far as the Department of Regional Economic Expansion is concerned: (a) Yes, the Department of Regional Economic Expansion agreed to a request from the Government of New Brunswick for assistance to undertake experimental programs in budworm control. The Department will provide $60,000 for windfield studies and $40,000 for adult budworm spray studies, (b) Yes, DREE agreed to a provincial request for $480,000 for an experimental adult budworm spray program; (c) no; (d) no; (e) no; (f) no; (g) no.


Mr. Clark (Rocky Mountain): By department and agency, what was the amount of money allocated (a) directly for any security or intelligence activities (b) to fund any involvement by any group or individual in any security or intelligence activity for the fiscal years (i) 1970-71 (ii) 1971-72 (iii) 1972-73 (iv) 1973-74 (v) 1974-75 (vi) 1975-76?


Mitchell William Sharp: It is not considered to be in the public interest to provide detailed information about security arrangements.
Order Paper Questions


Mr. Huntington: Since 1968, has Mr. Phillip de Gaspe Beaubien, President of Telemedia (Quebec) Ltd. been or is he a member, officer, director or in any way whatsoever associated with (a) a Crown corporation (b) the government (c) a department, agency, advisory board, council or committee and, if so (i) what position did he or does he hold (ii) with what corporation, department, agency, advisory board, council or committee
(iii)	between what dates (iv) was the position attained by appointment, contest, promotion or through a personnel agency (v) if by appointment, by whom or by what authority was he appointed?


Mitchell William Sharp: In so far as the Department of National Health and Welfare is concerned: (a) Not applicable; (b) Not applicable;
(c)	National Advisory Council on Fitness and Amateur Sport, (i) Chairman; (ii) National Advisory Council on Fitness and Amateur Sport; (iii) January 1969 to present;
(iv)	Appointment; (v) Governor in Council (Order in Council, Privy Council 1969-12/531 dated March 18, 1969). Director, Canada Development Corporation Appointment by Governor in Council (see sections 4 and 5, CDC Act). In so far as the National Design Council is concerned: (a) Not applicable; (b) Not applicable; (c) National Design Council, Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce.
(i)	Member of the National Design Council; (ii) National Design Council; (iii) May 29, 1968 to May 29, 1971; (iv) Position attained by Order of the Governor-General in Council; (v) See item (iv).


Mr. Huntington: Since 1968, has Mr. Jean-Paul Gignac, Director of Power Corporation of Canada Ltd. been or is he a member, officer, director or in any way whatsoever associated with (a) a Crown corporation (b) the government (c) a department, agency, advisory board, council or committee and, if so (i) what position did he or does he hold (ii) with what corporation, department, agency, advisory board, council or committee (iii) between what dates (iv) was the position attained by appointment, contest, promotion or through a personnel agency (v) if by appointment, by whom or by what authority was he appointed?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Jean-Paul Gignac was a Member of the National Research Council of Canada during the period May 22 1969 through to March 31, 1972. He was appointed under authority of the Governor in Council appointment No. P.C. 1969-1056 dated May 22, 1969.


Mr. Huntington: Since 1968, has the Honourable Jean-Luc Pepin of Power Corporation of Canada Ltd. been or is he a member, officer, director or in any way whatsoever associated with (a) a Crown corporation (b) the government (c) a department, agency, advisory board, council or committee and, if so (i) what position did he or does he hold (ii) with what corporation, department, agency, advisory board, council or committee (iii) between what dates (iv) was the position attained by appointment, contest, promotion or through a personnel agency (v) if by appointment, by whom or by what authority was he appointed?


Mitchell William Sharp: In so far as the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources is concerned: (a), (b) and (c) Yes. (i) Minister;
(ii)	Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, Cape Breton Development

October 21, 1975
Order Paper Questions
Corporation, Eldorado Mining & Refining Limited (Company's corporate name changed to Eldorado Nuclear Limited June 6, 1968) and its wholly-owned subsidiary Eldorado Aviation Limited, Atomic Energy Control Board, Dominion Coal Board, National Energy Board, Board of Examiners for Dominion Land Surveyors, Columbia River Treaty Permanent Engineering Board, Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names and Five Interprovincial Boundary Commissions i.e: Manitoba-Saskat-chewan, Alberta-Northwest Territories, British Columbia-Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan-Northwest Territories and Alberta-British Columbia, (iii) October 3, 1966-July 6, 1968; (iv) By appointment; (v) Mr. Pepin was appointed by Commission under the Great Seal of Canada as Minister of the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources and in that capacity was designated Minister responsible for the aforesaid agencies. In so far as the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce is concerned: (a) See below; (b) See below; (c) Yes. (i), (ii) and (iii) Mr. J-L. Pepin was the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce from July 6, 1968 to November 27, 1972 and in that capacity was associated with those agencies, advisory boards, councils or committees that report to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. They are: Automotive Adjustment Assistance Board, Export Development Corporation, General Adjustment Assistance Board, Machinery and Equipment Advisory Board, National Design Council, Pharmaceutical Industrial Development Advisory Committee, Metric Commission, Standards Council of Canada, Textiles and Clothing Board. In so far as the Export Development Corporation is concerned: (a) Yes; (b) To be answered elsewhere; (c) To be answered elsewhere; (i) While Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce he was the Minister designated by the Governor in Council for the purposes of the Export Development Act.


Mr. Huntington: Since 1968, has Mr. Harold Anthony Hampson, Director of Texas Gulf Inc. been or is he a member, officer, director or in any way whatsoever associated with (a) a Crown corporation (b) the government (c) a department, agency, advisory board, council or committee and, if so (i) what position did he or does he hold (ii) with what corporation, department, agency, advisory board, council or committee
(iii)	between what dates (iv) was the position attained by appointment, contest, promotion or through a personnel agency (v) if by appointment, by whom or by what authority was he appointed?


Mitchell William Sharp: In so far as the General Adjustment Assistance Board, Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce is concerned: (a) not applicable; (b) not applicable; (c) General Adjustment Assistance Board, Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce, (i) Chairman of the General Adjustment Assistance Office; (ii) General Adjustment Assistance Board; (iii) April 3, 1968 to December 2, 1971;
(iv)	Position attained by Order-in-Council; (v) See Item (iv). President, Chief Executive Officer and Member of Executive Committee, Canada Development Corporation. Appointment by Governor in Council (see sections 4 and 5, CDC Act).


Mr. Reynolds: What was the amount of money paid to outside consultants by the government in the years 1973, 1974 and what is the estimate for 1975?


Mitchell William Sharp: See replies to Questions No. 897 of November 19, 1974, No. 151 of October 1, 1974, and Nos. 97 to 137 inclusive of January 4, 1973, and the Public Accounts for the appropriate year.


Mr.   J.-J. Blais@Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council: I ask, Mr. Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Speaker:: Do the remaining questions stand?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed, from Monday, October 20, consideration of the motion of Mr. Macdonald (Rosedale) that Bill C-73, to provide for the restraint of profit margins, prices, dividends and compensation in Canada, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs.
William Arnold Peters: Last night, Mr. Speaker, I was pointing out that the bill before us is a unique piece of legislation. It contains very little detail, though its implications are far reaching. All the operative portions of the measure will be carried out by regulations through a board which is yet to be established. The result will be a number of actions which have not been carried out before except under extraordinary legislation such as the War Measures Act or the wartime prices and trade legislation implemented under the provisions covering peace, order and good government.
As to the constitutional aspects of the measure, we know that a meeting was called between the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and the premiers of the provinces, though I doubt any attempt was made at that time to go into any detail. Indeed, it is not likely that any details were available; there were obviously none when the bill was drafted. We shall all have to await the regulations. The bill allows for the investigation of individual tax returns of corporations and individuals, something which is altogether abnormal in our society. It also provides for a number of exemptions, though the particulars are not spelled out in the bill.
Today we are faced with a postal strike, partly as a result of this legislation although it is not yet in effect.
October 21, 1975

Postal workers are concerned whether or not the result of negotiations between themselves and the Postmaster General (Mr. Mackasey) will be effective. Both are negotiating, as far as wages are concerned, on the basis that they will be exempt from the terms of this legislation. Of course, this indicates that there will be a large number of exemptions, and exemption may be the rule rather than the regulations being the rule.
This raises a fundamental problem for the minister and the country. I think it is safe to say that most Canadians have been of the opinion for a number of months, in fact for several years, that the federal government should take some action to eliminate many of the perils ordinary Canadians fare due to inflation. All Canadians agree something must be done about inflation. But if anything is to be done on a national basis, the various segments that will be affected must be dealt with equally.
It is very easy for the minister to legislate against labour. Most people feel that big labour is in the same position as big corporations; they can make decisions which are not necessarily in the national interest and in some cases are not even in the interests of their own industry. However, when the ordinary people of this country are asked to restrain voluntarily their desire for a wage increase, for an increase in fees for services or their salaries, they should be assured that this restraint is applied equally across the board.
During the last war some people were of the opinion that if you had enough money, you did not have to go to war; you could get out of being conscripted or of having to volunteer your services. If you were well enough off, you could buy your way out. Great objection was taken to this. I will not mention some of the famous people involved, but I am sure there is still resentment among those who served because everybody was not treated in exactly the same way.
There will be inequality under this legislation, and in the main it will be two classes of people who will suffer. The first is those who have entered into negotiations, which might have gone on for a considerable period of time, and who are not able to convince the Anti-Inflation Board that they should be exempt and allowed to get the full benefit of any wage increase for which they are bargaining. The other class of people is those who are not able to bargain effectively for an increase in their wage structure-the unorganized.
Less than 25 per cent of the labour force in Canada is organized or in a position to bargain in some manner. The other 75 per cent is not in a position to bargain. Will they be assured the minimum $600 or maximum $2,400 increase? In no way will they. There is no equality or fairness in that case. Those at the low end of the income scale are likely to stay there; those at the top end, such as members of parliament and others, will get the full $2,400. I hope they will not get any more, but they will get the $2,400. Old age pensioners, those on assistance, war veterans, those who receive the minimum wage, have no way of bargaining for their minimum $600 increase, and I can see no way that the minister will give these people their equal right to the minimum $600 for which other people can negotiate.
Anti-Inflation Act
In days to come when people find there are no controls over commodities they have to buy and when they know that the large food chains will be able to justify every quarter the income from their total operations, the seven or eight commodities which are the necessities of life for the people of this country who are living at the old age pension level, on assistance or who receive the minimum wage in the provinces, are going to increase in price.
Without equality, it seems to me that this legislation is going to fail. It is going to fail because it will not have the support of those who know that their incomes are being controlled because it is easy to control them-mainly wage earners who negotiate their own wages. The corporations will remain uncontrolled because they will be able to publish their profits and distribute them in such a way that they appear to be limited. The small, independent people of the nation will find themselves the victims of increased prices. The indication is that the price of basic commodities will rise from 9 per cent to 12 per cent in the coming year, and these people will find no corresponding increase in their incomes to enable them to buy these commodities.
This is not good legislation. It is not the sort of legislation that we should ask the ordinary Canadian to put up with. No action has been taken to control the financial institutions, and are they not partly responsible for the trouble we are in? Is the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) not surprised to find, when he deposits $10 in the bank, that the bank can lend that money and get 10 per cent interest on it? The bank can make almost as much money by way of interest as the amount that is deposited in their bank.
Is it not time that we examined some of the segments of the economy that we can do something about? One is housing. We can do a lot about housing if only we are smart enough to control the banks to the extent that they have to make available mortgage money at 6 per cent. At the moment they are making a killing. I suggest that nobody buy the stocks of mining or oil companies any more; let them buy the stock of a bank where they will make more money. I suggest there must be something wrong with a system that means a person has paid $125,000 for a $35,000 house when the mortgage is paid off. This one aspect the minister has not looked at at all.
Another facet that has not been referred to to any extent is the indication given by all financial institutions that these restrictions will mean that unemployment in Canada will increase. Companies in a given industry will be unable to compete with their competitors because they will be unable to get an exemption. As a result, it seems to me we will have more unemployment. This, in turn, will mean that agencies responsible for providing at least some sustenance for those unable to work over a long period of time will require additional funds, which will add to the burden of the municipalities, the provincial governments and should add to the burden of the federal government.
When I asked the other day if the minister had any intention with respect to programs he was going to institute to compensate the unemployed in the country because of the effects of this legislation, he said the government

October 21, 1975
Anti-Inflation Act
had not considered this matter. He said there were no public works or enterprises to be undertaken that would provide basic sustenance other than that obtained through the normal channels of welfare, unemployment insurance and the other schemes we have devised to help those who are unable to look after themselves.
I predict that in six or eight months it will be obvious to all Canadians that we are not accomplishing what we want to accomplish by this anti-inflation measure. Canadians want to see the beginning of a decrease in the cost of living so that organized labour does not have to chase after increases to cover the increasing cost of living. Canadians want to see a beginning, through normal restraint, in our attempt to live within our means. This legislation is not going to accomplish that because it is not going to control the prices the housewife will be looking at when she goes to the grocery store.
This legislation will not accomplish what we desire, because it will not help workers and people on low or fixed incomes to pay the increases in rent, the cost of cars or the many other increasing expenditures necessary in our day-to-day existence. Unless we can assure the workers, those on fixed incomes and those unable to look after themselves that there is to be a decrease in the cost of living, any talk about anti-inflationary legislation will only be talk and will not accomplish anything and, therefore, will not deserve the support of the people of this nation.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member for Rocky Mountain.


An hon. Member:: The rocky member for Hamilton!


Mr. Gus MacFarlane (Hamilton Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, I am not running for the leadership.


An hon. Member:: With your record, you shouldn't.


Angus (Gus) MacFarlane: I think the hon. member for Rocky Mountain (Mr. Clark) has a good maritime background, so I think that he and I would have some things in common, and we both have great respect for the hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Stanfield). That actually gives me a good lead into my remarks, in that I want to say that I, for one, have said in all sincerity, even during a recent election campaign, that I do not doubt the sincerity of the hon. member for Halifax even though I may disagree with his timing and some of the substance of his suggestions. We have reached the stage now when I do not find it difficult to accept fully the premise put forward by this government. In saying that, I know I will have to answer to my constituents who heard me talk about prices and wages in a derogatory way at the time, and I have no embarrassment at all about this.


An hon. Member:: Yes, but I do.


Angus (Gus) MacFarlane: That is your problem; it is certainly not mine. It is important to remember that some adjustments always have to be made, and if we truly look at this proposal for what it is-


Robert Lorne Stanfield: When the wind shifts, you have to shift your sails.


Angus (Gus) MacFarlane: Yes, sometimes we do. At this time we have to remember that when we are talking about a war- and some people have referred to this as a war-you do not always win the war just because you have won certain individual battles. I think that is the situation we are facing. We now have to look at the long-haul situation. We have, again, to make the efforts we made in the past. We must really consider the situation that existed in the past.
When we are considering our youth at this time, we must realize that those of us who served in the Second World War, and our fathers before us who served in the First World War, did indeed believe we were serving for reasons that were ultimately important to all of Canada. Those of us here who did not serve during a wartime period did not have that particular challenge, but whether they like it or not, we all served in that regard and now hope that today's youth will not be called upon to meet a similar challenge.
The challenge before us today, if properly put to our young people, may well be a challenge to which they will respond. It is likely that we will have to call upon the "one dollar a year men". If we were justified in calling upon people to come out of business activity and work for a dollar a year ferrying aircraft overseas during the last war, then surely we should be able to call on senior business personnel to work for a dollar a year during this war on avarice. Why can't we call on our leaders in very senior positions to serve in capacities in which they would not be a drain on the government but could help us in this war on avarice?
We should have no doubt about the situation, because this is a war on avarice. We should not say that the situation we are faced with today is the fault of one government, the fault of a series of governments, the fault of a group of workers, or the fault of a group of people who are trying to take too much out of the economy. This is a war on avarice. Let me give hon members the example of an advertisement that appeared in a newspaper yesterday. Can you imagine someone advertising that they will cash post-dated old age pension cheques for a charge of 10 per cent? Imagine someone at this point in time wanting to make 10 per cent from an old age pension cheque because the cheques were mailed out early in the event of a postal strike! This would seem to indicate that there is a tremendous problem facing the country at this time.
We all have to get into the fray. We all have to be ready to stand strong in this economic fight. There is just no doubt in my mind about whether we can get the proper response from the youth of the country as well as from the aged. Many of these pensioners are the poeple we could call upon to assist us. There are many of us here who would be willing to perform extra tasks without looking for extra benefits and still withstand the criticism we are receiving for taking the raise which was voted in this House. We do not feel that the situation at this time makes us any better or any worse than anyone else. We feel that the public of Canada is ready to respond to the clear clarion call to come forward to fight in the battle in this war on avarice.
We suggest that this measure should be in existence for a long-term period in order to avoid some of the pitfalls that have occurred in other countries and on other continents. It does seem that when a definite and short period of time is set out, there is a feeling among the people that
October 21, 1975

they will put up with things, but as soon as the time expires they will increase prices again in order to recover the money they did not obtain.
It seems that the proposed period of time should be considered in the same way as the last war, when people thought it might last for only three or four years but once they realized it was going to be longer they made an all-out effort in the direction of winning. They then made an all-out effort against what they considered the common enemy. Let me use that small island's symbol again: I hope the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) is saving his blood, sweat and tears speech to convince the people, if it becomes necessary, that we have to fight the battle over the long haul to the end.
I think we underestimate the Canadian public if we do not ask the people to put forward their best effort at this time. I think we underestimate ourselves if we think we are not ready to stand and take the barbs, the kicks, the hits and the jabs, whether they come from the media or from the public. I think the media is about ready for a lesson. I suspect that soon they will be hearing the public say that we want to hear something positive about this war and something positive about our future, and we are not going to accept anything less. I believe there are members in this House from all parties who are prepared to go ahead in that fashion. I have no doubt that all parties will be represented in this before it is over. I welcome the fact that in the heat of conflict the spark of truth is blown. I welcome the criticisms which come in this direction, whether they come from the NDP, the Conservatives, the Social Crediters or from within the Liberal ranks. I believe it is important to have this criticism.
I think the bill of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) will come forward as a bill which we will stand for and support. We will not only go forward as a government, but will go forward as a parliament which took this decision at this time.


An hon. Member:: A backward one.


Angus (Gus) MacFarlane: No. Some people may go backward, but I prefer to go forward because I like to see where I am going. I might fall over, otherwise. I am not really interested in rhetoric now. I am trying to say honestly how I and the people in my riding feel. It is not easy to speak for a riding one end of which possibly resembles an area like Westmount in Montreal and another area that is sort of like an Outremont or another area which is possibly like Verdun on the Island of Montreal, or Point St. Charles. We have a mix of people which includes union people, people who run their own businesses and people who have academic and professional careers. It is difficult for all of them to see things the same way, but hon. members may rest assured that they are united behind the kind of leadership they will receive.
It is a matter of whether we are willing to go forward at this point. We cannot always go the way we want. I do not say there is one correct answer, nor do I say there could be one answer. However, there is an answer for the Canadian public. The answer is that every time the government proposes, instead of parliament disposing we just have a
Anti-Inflation Act
game of chess. We have no time for a game of chess now. There is no point in checkmating or in deciding to move our rook in one direction, just for a little game, to delay bills. This is a time when we have no desire in a crude way to shove anything down the throat of the opposition.
We say that many people have asked for leadership. Whether hon. members opposite think we on this side of the House are the leaders, or whether our government is the leader, really is unimportant. This is where the responsibility rests, and that is why the bill is coming forward from here. In coming forward, it gives all of us the opportunity to have something to say about how we should proceed in these dreadful days. These are the best and the worst times. We should remember that. We should not for one instant fall weak to the very thing that has caused it. The fact is, we are living quite well; things are going well for some of us. We must think of those people at the lower end of the scale and those people who have no real power to express themselves.
This is where I find, in my riding, I can turn to the labour unions and to the workers with great confidence. I receive phone calls from them every day, in which they express concern and a spirit of willingness to co-operate because they, more than others, recognize that in their unions they work together and have the power to achieve for themselves. Yet they realize there are other people who cannot achieve for themselves. Those people are at the mercy of what is happening to those of us who are more fortunate.
I really believe we can expect from every decent Canadian the kind of support that will make this control system work. It is not supposed to be easy. It never was easy to take a bitter pill or bad medicine. In fact, when one takes an aspirin it does not get rid of the disease or the germ, but sometimes the aspirin lets one get on a little further with life and do something important. Then sometimes one can treat the germ.
So we must remember at this moment that this is the bad, tough medicine that has been offered to the country by this government, without fear, with responsibility and with willingness to face the full consequences of that responsibility. We are asking only one thing. We are not asking for complete agreement on the part of people on the other side. We are not asking the media to roll over and play dead. But we sure as hell are asking that they treat it as seriously as we do, and that they come forward and say we are in serious times. In these serious times we should be thinking seriously about the matter, and not playing chess or moving back and forth to see who can gain a moment of political opportunity. These are important things. There are very few new things in the world that I have seen.


Mr. Woolliams:: I wonder whether the hon. member would honour a question.


Angus (Gus) MacFarlane: No, I would not honour a question at this moment. With due respect-although I am sorry-I think I would rather conclude what I have to say.


An hon. Member:: You like making speeches.


Angus (Gus) MacFarlane: I think I should answer that comment. I tell you, without any embarrassment whatsoever, that

October 21, 1975
Anti-Inflation Act
my voice sounded very good when I said wage and price controls would not work. I had no embarrassment in saying that. The timing was wrong. The short period was wrong and the freeze was wrong so far as I was concerned. Like many others I have no great priority on what is absolutely right. If hon. members have listened they will know that I said pretty strongly what I did say. I referred to this problem as a war. I believe that if we do not get that through to the Canadian public we will not achieve what we want to achieve.
I think you will remember there was a man called Chamberlain who was criticized roundly for what he did, but he did give a reprieve while people prepared for the onslaught. We might very well have had a reprieve in this case. That may have been the wrong time, and this may be exactly the right time. The historians who write about this will not be in this House; we will all be gone then. But the people may read it.


An hon. Member:: You say it with a smile.


Angus (Gus) MacFarlane: I did not intend to smile much in this speech. I want to conclude by saying we would be extremely wrong, on all sides of the House, if we did not recognize that the Canadian public can really be aroused and brought to their feet, working together in a way that would be a war-like attitude in peacetime days. I think we must accept and say over and over again a thousand times that the policy really is to try to make things better for those who are not in the power groups, because if we do in some way improve the situation their lot will be better. This must be said over and over again.
Finally, it must be said that this is indeed a war on avarice. I am very much afraid there are many people who are far better economists than I who want to place it all in the business realm or in the wages realm, but I would say at this time that we had better be prepared for the fact that this is not easy. I do not expect in the next few months to find any cheers. I expect to be going to every shopping centre in my riding. I expect to be going to every legion hall, I expect, particularly, to be visiting union halls. I hope to be visiting those who happen to be Conservatives, members of the NDP and members of the Social Credit party in my area. I will give them special attention because they will have some things they will want to say to me. I expect to do that, but I expect to be doing it six months and one year from now. If three years from now, or at any time, we can stand up and say the battle is 10 per cent won, you will find me cheering the loudest. Remember, it is that serious.
I do not believe any war in which we have been involved has ever been won on any other basis. I do not believe we knew that Vimy Ridge would occur, that Ypres would occur or that the Battle of Britain would occur in the way it did. We had to go into these things with the desire of placing ourselves on the line and placing ourselves before people to take the criticisms, the barbs and make the decisions. I think if people over there are talking about history, they may very well find that out of this so-called war on avarice people will be written up in history, none the least of whom will be the present Minister of Finance.


Mr. Paul Yewch.uk (Athabasca):: Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago when I heard that the hon. member for Rosedale (Mr. Macdonald), who was then minister of energy, mines and resources, was to be the new minister of finance, the first thought that came to my mind was, "Oh, oh; watch out. Canada will get clobbered." That came to my mind because over the past seven years since I have been in the House the minister has created the impression of being a tough guy with the spiked club for the government. It seems that the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) uses him as a clobbering tool or a tool for confrontations.
We can review the history which shows that. In 1969 there were the rule changes when the present Minister of Finance, who was then House leader, clobbered the House of Commons. He took away our right to examine government spending and brought in closure to muzzle the opposition. Then he was appointed the minister of energy, mines and resources and acted in the same style at a crucial period in the life of the country when the spectre of energy shortages first appeared on the horizon. The same minister was used to clobber the provinces over the constitution, and indeed to really clobber the oil industry. Now, in his position as finance minister, he can clobber with this bill everybody who had not been clobbered before. With the power that he is seeking in this bill, he will certainly be able to do it at will.
When the former minister of finance resigned, there was speculation that he did so because he wanted to bring in a prices and incomes policy but could not do it because he could not get cabinet to support the idea. Now it is obvious that the opposite was the case. It is more likely that he was asked by the Prime Minister to step aside because what was needed was a man with a spiked club, not one with a silver tongue, the silver tongue having failed to obtain consensus following his consultations.
Before I speak on Bill C-73 and the principle behind it, let me note some comments that have been made by the Prime Minister and the former minister of finance on income and price controls which were proposed during the course of the past IV2 to two years. During the course of my remarks I would not like to appear to be serving up for the Prime Minister or members on his side a delectable dish of crow, since I did not prescribe this diet for the Prime Minister-he has his own counsellors to thank for that-but by the end of the debate on the measure I suppose someone will see that he eats it. Eating crow, perhaps because of the bitter flavour of the meat, is an excellent remedy for overwhelming pride, or possibly for lack of honesty with the people of Canada.
Let me start with this tidbit trimmed out of a question and answer session starring the Prime Minister, held at the Lindsay Collegiate and Vocational School at Lindsay, Ontario, on May 23 of this year. Someone in the audience, troubled by the way the government seemed to be saying one thing and doing another, very reasonably asked:
Mr. Trudeau, why does your proposed policy regarding wage and price freezing closely resemble that of the Conservatives last year?
It was not recorded out of which side of his mouth the Prime Minister made his reply, but his words have been reported as follows:
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Well, the point is that it doesn't resemble it at all. You will recall that they were in favour of compulsory, statutory price and wage controls, they wanted a law which would freeze everything and control everything. We have taken exactly the opposite approach.
That was in May of 1975, only five or six months ago. The Liberals did take the opposite approach at that time, the Prime Minister might have added in his statement, wasting the eleven months since he had bamboozled the Canadian people into electing him one more time. On June 8, 1974, he said "hocus-pocus" when describing the same Conservative prices and incomes policy. In a speech delivered in Oakville, Ontario, he sneered at what he said was a price and wages policy and went on to ask, "Why doesn't Davis control the price of houses?"-little guessing that not much more than one year later he would proclaim his own government's prices and wages policy and not foreseeing that control of the price of housing would not be one of its strong points. "I am told that labour leaders in Canada won't accept price and wage controls", he went on, arguing so persuasively that possibly even he believed it at that time. He also asserted that people in managerial positions could easily be reclassified so that they could obtain increases despite controls.
Speaking in Vancouver on July 3, 1974, less than a week before the election, the Prime Minister laughed at the program of controls advanced by my party. "Food is out," he cried, "imports are out. . . housing is out". These words must have sounded like something black and cawing even at the time, for a woman answered from the audience "And you're out". Unfortunately, he was not turned out; he stayed in. The Prime Minister was ingenuous in finding excuses for sidestepping wage and price controls. Apart from the difficulties already mentioned, he cited the unhappy experience of controls which our country had during the Second World War, controls which, as he said:
-even with the motivation of a national emergency .. . meant thousands of bureaucrats running the economic decisions of millions of Canadian .. . blackmarketeering and the court cases that went with that. . . and illegal strikes and government intervention into even the smallest sectors of the economy.
That little bit of sophistry went winging into the annals of Canadian politics as recently as May 23, 1975. But the Prime Minister's strongest argument against anti-inflation controls-and no doubt the only one he relies on now- was that the inflation experienced in Canada was a "good" sort of inflation, not like that nasty kind that simultaneously affected the United States, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and dozens of other nations around the world. According to La Presse of June 13, 1974, he believed, and he still professes to believe that in Canada-

Part of the increase is due to the rise in the prices of imported products and another part to the rising food prices following an increase in demand. Inflation is a worldwide problem and the situation in Canada is better than in some other countries, like England or the United States.

Well, evidently it is not "meilleur" any more, although there is probably not one economist in the country who can say how changes in the international scene have suddenly altered the tune of the times. As the Prime Minister himself said, with that knack he has for uttering
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the right words in the wrong context, "Let's not get obsessed with inflation". He is not a man easily obsessed, except perhaps with holding on to power. That is probably why, when he found that he would have to bring in mandatory price and wage controls, he decided to cashier that clever talking-bird, formerly known as the minister of finance, whom he had trained to utter phony arguments against just such controls. It was the former minister of finance, it will be remembered, who said:
The problem is worldwide in origin, with the major source of upward pressure between the sharp increase in prices of agricultural and industrial commodities caused by the unprecedented upsurge simultaneously in the economies of all the industrial nations at a time when a number of these commodities were already in short supply.
I am not sure what that means, but that is what the minister of finance said that time as an excuse for the reason prices and incomes controls would not work. However, it is not clear whether it was the Prime Minister who could not stomach the bird, or the bird that could not stomach what he was saying. We are still awaiting an explanation from him as to what has changed in Canada or in the world to transform good inflation to bad inflation. Will the Prime Minister, the former minister of finance or, indeed, the current Minister of Finance, tell us, for it was not possible for me to see why the government did not bring these prices and incomes controls in a year ago, and it is certainly not easy for me to understand why at this particular time the government seems to have changed its mind?
Perhaps I am not being altogether candid in saying that it is not clear to me. I think I do know what has changed. The winds of political circumstance, have changed. Most of the citizens of Canada were opposed to prices and incomes controls, not having been sure of the true picture of the economy on which to base their judgment, so the governing party drifted to election victory on the warm breeze of overconfidence. Now that the government feels the chilly draft of public unease on its neck, it smoothly alters course like tumbleweed on the prairies, unprincipled and shifting with the wind. Indeed, this government could become known as the tumbleweed government. The policies of this government are like a mature dandelion; they could suddenly blow away with the smallest puff of wind.
The economic picture is no different now than it was a year ago. Nothing much has changed except that perhaps things are now a little better. I have some statistics here which were provided by Information Canada, which Information Canada obtained in turn from Statistics Canada, showing that in June of 1974 the unadjusted consumer price index had increased by 1.3. In September of 1975, which is just a month ago, the last month for which we have figures, it rose by 0.2, so that increase was certainly much less than it was a year ago when we suggested these controls. Looking at the current annual rate of change in the seasonally adjusted consumer price index, in June of 1974 it was 14.3. In September of 1975, the last month for which we have figures, it was 10.2, substantially better than 1 Vi years ago.
I wonder why things are suddenly so much worse, when the figures show that things are somewhat better? Looking at the unadjusted consumer price index figures for all

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of Canada, the average for 1974 was 11.4; the average for 1975 was 10.6. So, again, it leads one to wonder very seriously how convincing an argument can be made that things are suddenly worse now, in terms of inflation, price increases, and so on, than they were a year and a half ago. Indeed, we can make a much more plausible argument for saying that things are better now, as shown by the statistics which I have just quoted. So basically nothing has changed except for the better. We know it, the people of Canada know it, and the government knows it. Neither inflation nor unemployment is worse than it was 15 months ago. They have simply continued at the same high levels or slightly better, putting the country on a collision course until, as if in some colossal game of "chicken", the government's nerve finally broke. Whatever the reasons, the government is now for controls. Little wonder the people of Canada are asking, which is the real Pierre?
I wonder which of his own statements the Prime Minister believes. He has been strangely silent in this debate. He spoke on television a week ago, on Thanksgiving Day, announcing the program; but in the House he has been totally passive. The question is, why? Could it be that he, himself, does not believe in this program? Perhaps he finds it too repulsive to defend. He may simply be going along with it because, in typical Liberal fashion, he feels that the wind is blowing right for the program at this time, or perhaps he realizes the danger for him and for his job as Prime Minister of bringing in a program which could well lead to the downfall of his government. He must be aware of the fact that he may come out of this as Peter the Great, or Ivan the Terrible. To ensure that he is not the latter, or possibly to save his own hide, he has chosen to remain silent, at least for the time being.
Let us look at some of the ways which the new Minister of Finance has defined this sudden, momentous change. In his white paper entitled "Attack on Inflation" the minister approaches this matter from several angles, all of them oblique. He says:
In a speech he made to this House on October 14 the minister encountered further difficulties, like an aesthete trying to point out some beauty in a painting so subtle that perhaps it does not exist. He said:
__the powerful and deeply entrenched inflationary forces racking our
economy now imperil our prospects for the future. We have reached the point where there is a very real danger that if inflation is not halted and reversed, it will grow to even larger proportions When inflation reaches a certain point... Inflation ultimately inflicts grievous damage ... We in Canada are already beginning to live some of these experiences ... The risk has mounted-
It must be admitted that the minister's speech also alluded to some vague deterioration in our economic stance vis-a-vis the other major trading nations of the world. No doubt this sudden knowledge appeared in the first week of October. It is still very difficult to accept the explanations for the sudden change. While we are in the midst of admissions, the minister has made one or two of his own. In both the white paper and his speech he admitted that the real reason he and his government are at last taking action is that the Canadian people have finally pushed them into it. In the white paper he says that the evidence of widespread and deep-seated concern in the country shows that rising inflation and unemployment is unacceptable to all Canadians. We told him that a long

time ago, at least two years ago. In his speech he said the following:
-I think the vast majority of Canadians are convinced that the time has come when we must all pull back.
In other words, when finally the majority of the Canadian people, with all their limited access to economic information and expertise, can themselves see the intolerable nature of continued double-digit inflation, then the government decides to move-and this is the party which campaigned during the last election on a platform of leadership! It reminds me of a person watching the way in which a group of people is going, and then running in front to lead them in that direction.
This is the wrong time to begin a fight against inflation in Canada. It should have begun over a year ago. The government's proposals for the fight are the wrong proposals. They are weak where they should be strong, harsh where they should be mild, ramified where they should be fundamental, and insufficiently worked out where they should be rigorous and thoroughgoing. For example, with regard to housing, how can any one deduce from the legislation being put forward how the cost of housing will be reduced? How will the construction industry be controlled? We have not seen anything at all suggesting certain monetary policy changes which must accompany this kind of legislation, if indeed in the long term anything useful will come from an attempt to fight inflation.
Right from the start, before this legislation even exists, the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) has been campaigning to have marketing boards excepted from the anti-inflation program, and the Postmaster General (Mr. Mackasey) has made it clear that postal workers whose contract is now being negotiated will also have a free hand. It leads one to wonder how much cabinet solidarity there is on this matter when as soon as this program is announced two ministers struggle and fight for exceptions within the areas of their own jurisdiction.
The proposed legislation comes down hard on wages and salaries but offers no machinery to match the labyrinth of possibilities for thwarting the intent of the law through unjustified increases in prices. There are already indications that this is happening, that profits and prices will increase rapidly before the machinery for monitoring them is in place. The anti-inflation board which the government is in the process of establishing will, under the proposed terms of this bill, be far too independent of parliament-except in the opinion of the government which seeks to create it. Moreover, it will be more liberally endowed with power than is necessary for it to accomplish its task.
Monetary and fiscal measures which were part of the anti-inflation plan my party put forward in 1974 have received scant attention. There is evidence to suggest the government assembled this program hastily during a weekend. We know that controls by themselves cannot succeed; that is, they can succeed only to a limited degree. We know that other long-term policies must be introduced if there is to be long-term success. As to the government's self-restraint, how likely is that to happen, considering the attitude of the party in power? There will be virtually no new cutbacks in government spending in the current
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fiscal year. The civil service is to grow. More than 200 employees are to be added for the proposed anti-inflation review board. The program we proposed comtemplated the employment of the existing civil service; we did not intend to enlarge the civil service in order to achieve our goal.
Government members have said in so many words that if this program does not work we shall soon see complete price and salary controls. If the government carries on as it has been doing, they will not be long in coming. I say that because the program as now envisaged surely cannot succeed.
But what concerns me most of all is that this government has no mandate for this program. Its mandate does not include the imposition of income and price controls. It was elected to do the opposite of that which it is doing. Although in many ways the program the government is proposing is different from the one we proposed, in many ways there are great similarities in principle. Therefore, the government cannot hide behind the excuse that this is a different program. No wonder citizens of this country frequently express cynical attitudes about the morality and honesty of politicians. In any event, the government's program is unclear and fuzzy and is doomed to failure, I suggest, as it will not accomplish its aims for the economy.
Why do I say that, Mr. Speaker? Our economic problems do not merely involve inflation; they also involve massive unemployment. Also, as the program is selective it appears to be unfair to labour. If such a program is to succeed, it must not only be fair but it must appear to be fair. Only then will all in this country support it. At best, this is a stopgap measure. We shall need to introduce other measures to complement the program, as it alone will not bring about the long-term solutions we need.
Let us examine the long-term implications of this program. In the short-term, the proposed solution may be compared to people fighting for the best chair on the deck of the Titanic. One could compare the prospects of the Titanic to the prospects of our economy. Inflation is fed by growing expectations; greed, if you like. That word may be more easily understood. These expectations are in no small part the result of this government's past policies, policies which were designed to buy votes and which involved during the past seven years huge government extravagance. The total federal budget in 1968, when I was first elected, was just under $11 billion. Seven years later the budget has tripled, the reason being grossly extravagant government policies designed to buy votes. Some of these policies are hand-outs. I am thinking of the Local Initiatives program which is a good example: It creates dependence on government and the feeling among Canadians that you should look to the government for the solution to all your problems. It makes people tend to look too much to the government for programs which directly create employment.
The LIP program was a stopgap measure. The intention was to complement it with long-term programs, which would make LIP unnecessary, but we have seen no such long-term programs introduced. Instead, we have seen repeatedly stopgap measures introduced. One could refer, as well, to widespread abuses of welfare in this country. I do not say everybody abuses the system, yet many Canadians agree that there is widespread abuse of our
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welfare system and widespread abuse of unemployment insurance. The latter program is not really an insurance program at all, but another sort of welfare program. We know from as far back as the days of Robin Hood that you cannot eliminate poverty and solve economic difficulties simply by taking from the rich and giving to the poor. We need much more fundamental changes in government policy before we can reach the target of full employment and the elimination of poverty in our country. Clearly, the programs of this government have fed the growing expectations of Canadians. Government policies have created too many takers and too few doers and givers, meaning taxpayers.
Government policies have encouraged too much dependence on government. Growing expectations are due in no small part to the government's own attitude. The Prime Minister and other government members have run around the country scoffing at the idea of work, scoffing at the work ethic and scoffing at the idea that people must have the initiative to look after themselves and their own. The government has created the idea that every citizen has the right to something for nothing. We must change that. Deep in our hearts we know that what is happening cannot go on forever. If it goes on much longer we know that our civilization will eventually go the way of the Roman empire and other empires which did not pay heed to their economic affairs.
We ought to realize that we cannot solve our economic difficulties by depending on the government to do it. They will be solved only by the sweat of our brow; by contributing to our country and society at least as much as, or more than, we take from it; by increasing our productivity individually and as a nation; by increasing our self-reliance and reducing our dependence on the government to do everything for us; by increasing our individual independence and initiative. Unless we do this we are lost, as there is no way that price and income controls alone will solve the economic problems facing this country.
No stopgap measure designed to put the lid on the economy will lead to economic well-being. No such policy will make us go in the right direction. If we are to solve our economic difficulties and beat inflation, we must ask every citizen to do what is necessary. Our people must reduce their expectations. We need a government which will not increase expectations by the introduction of programs designed to buy votes, as such programs lead only downhill and we do not want to go downhill.


Hon. Jean Chretien (President of Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate this afternoon and to give my wholehearted support to the program which has been put forward by my colleague, the very dedicated and able new Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) appointed a month ago.
As we all know, Mr. Speaker, the government's decision in this matter was not an easy one. I heard the hon. member who has just resumed his seat blame us for having fought the last election on the issue of the inadvisability of imposing controls within the economy, of freezing wages and prices.

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We did make that point indeed and do not deny it, since we had found that in 1973, 1972 and early in 1974, before the opposition signed its death warrant by forcing an election, the two preceding years had been extremely buoyant with regard to corporation profits, while most Canadian workers who are governed by collective bargaining had been outdistanced by the runaway inflation which was then prevailing. At that time, we had deliberately turned down the suggestion of freezing wages and prices, especially wages, because those workers who had been instrumental in increasing production in this country and who had to hear the brunt of an uncontrolled inflation, had not had the opportunity to catch up with it by 1974, which was election year.
That is why even at that time, in 1974, on several occasions when I was in the House, the Opposition asked us whether we were considering that problem. I remember quite well that the hon. member for Ottawa-Carleton (Mr. Turner), who was then Minister of Finance, said:
We are considering that possibility, we are drawing up plans which could be carried out if necessary at a given time.
At no time did we say in 1974 that this solution would never be chosen. We always maintained that such a program would have been disastrous for labour in 1974. That is why we did not act then, because we were aware that a great number of people would be unable to catch up. Thus, in the legislation introduced by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) we paid attention to a very important date in the history of inflation in our country: we said that all collective agreements would be covered by the new policy, but that in cases where labour contracts were negotiated before 1974 the guidelines of the finance minister's policy would apply but since those contracts were prior to 1974, the anti-inflation board would be authorized to allow special considerations.
And it is in accordance with that principle about contracts not reopened since 1973 that in the present negotiations with the Post Office workers, which unfortunately failed today, that the Treasury Board had knowingly authorized the Postmaster General (Mr. Mackasey) to offer the employees, commonly designated as the postmen, the equivalent of what they might have obtained in June. It is a question of basic justice, because over the past 2 years, they had no opportunity to catch up with inflation.
Of course, there are people who blame us for having introduced some flexibility, though controled, with the board chaired by hon. Jean-Luc Pepin, because we want to establish as much social justice between our various social groups as it is possible. Unfortunately, we shall be at fault. And I must commend the Leader of the Opposition for stating a few days ago in similar circumstances that all situations cannot be covered, that there will always be what he called "rough justice", an expression which I cannot translate in French. And I feel that in circumstances such as these, some people will certainly be a little more favoured than others. But, in my opinion, for society as a whole, the Minister of Finance's program shows enough flexibility to allow us to say that there will really not be any glaring injustice.
But what I now deplore, Mr. Speaker, is that public opinion is giving far too much importance to the salary item only. I was glad to hear today the hon. member for

Edmonton West (Mr. Lambert) asking what effect the guidelines set up by the Minister of Finance would have on profits. I think that this aspect has been completely overlooked and perhaps voluntarily by many-I do not mean members of the House-particularly by the press in general, because they have emphasized a little more the salary aspect.
The other facet of the program is that we are not freezing salaries only. We have also decided to freeze the profits by our guidelines which, in my opinion, are extremely hard on businesses. It is prescribed in the Minister of Finance's guidelines that businesses would not be authorized to raise their prices unless they could prove that the increase is due to higher costs, and this without including any provision for profits. Profits will not be allowed to exceed 95 per cent of the average profits in the last four or five years. That, Mr. Speaker, in view of the current situation, constitute an extremely important element of the program, and too many people would have us believe that it applies only to the workers while in fact we want businesses as well to be governed by the guidelines of the minister.
As President of the Treasury Board, I should like to point out an important element of the program. Some people would have liked it to apply to everyone, but I believed that because of present circumstances it would be wiser to aim at the leaders in our economy, the powerful groups, that is big business or big unions, which exerted considerable influence on the economic growth of our society. We therefore decided to aim at all businesses with more than 500 employees. We are convinced that by dealing with those people, in whom we see the leaders, the market forces are going to intervene so that the smaller firms follow the guidelines; if they fail to do so, they will be put outside the normal competition process in a market economy.
If we want this exercise to be a success, I think, Mr. Speaker, that it is extremely important at this time to explain this aspect of the program to the people to assure them, and I quote the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield), that there will be rough justice for all Canadians, but a justice which applies to all groups of society.

As I have said, it is not very easy for the government to put this program into place. I have been involved in collective bargaining on behalf of the government for 14 or 15 months. I could see the pressure on the economy. The policies of this government have been that we wanted, in our collective negotiations, not to become the leader in society but to give comparable compensation to our civil servants. I think that is only fair.
Of course, in the past year I have been confronted with five strikes because I stuck to the policy of the government. I was not too happy about that; nobody is very happy when he has to take a strike, especially in circumstances like ours, because it would have been easy for us to solve all our problems. The people should know that only 1.4 per cent of the budget of the federal government goes to provide for the salaries of our civil servants. So even if we had acted, during the last year, a bit irresponsibly and had given the civil servants a bit more than we
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had allocated for, it would have been only 1.4 per cent more in our budget and it would not have been a disaster for us. But it would have meant passing the problem to the other sector of the economy.
Because of this position of responsibility by the federal government, we have taken five strikes. We are entering a sixth one today, because we do not want to become the leaders in the society. I think the offer made to the postal workers is a very fair one, comparable to that accepted by the groups which signed a contract in the spring while the guidelines were not in force. Of course, it was normal for us to make that offer. It was not, as the hon. member for Athabasca (Mr. Yewchuk) said, because ministers are fighting about it. It is written in the guidelines. Their contract had expired before 1974. This applies to any other contract in the same position across the land. So it was not due to internal fights. We are not Tories; we are Liberals. We stick together when times are difficult. It is not a question of one trying to protect the other. It is written in the white paper which we have tabled in the House.
In my view, contrary to what the hon. member for Athabasca was saying, the situation is deteriorating every day. I hope it will stop. With this psychology of inflation, everyone went ahead in trying to get what was being given to other employees, and so on, and the employees were making all sorts of excessive demands and trying to forecast far enough ahead that they would be completely protected against inflation. In the last year we have tried very seriously to bring about a program in consultation with all the elements in society, but unfortunately-


Robert Lorne Stanfield: That has destroyed your credibility altogether.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: We will see in three years time, sir, what it is all about, and I am confident that we have not. As I am explaining, this policy is a different one. We never close the door. Perhaps some got the impression it was completely closed, but when members opposite were asking questions before 1974-I refer particularly to the hon. member for Don Valley (Mr. Gillies)-the minister of finance of the day told him many times we were working on contingency plans to deal with the situation. I think it will be recalled it was always a possible option for the government but, as I explained earlier, the timing was off in 1974.
I would say that what happened to the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield) was not that he was completely wrong. When he came forward with his policy the first time his timing was better, but by the time we were into the election his timing was completely off, because it was a time when we had to give labour a chance to catch up because the corporations had made very great profits in the previous year. It was pure bad luck for him. I respect his intelligence. He stuck with his policy, but it came off badly because of the timing. I think that now the timing is good. It is why we are here today and it is why we are getting the support of the Leader of the Opposition.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I am glad do hear the hon. member for Athabasca agreeing with me as usual.


Paul Yewchuk: I am not agreeing with you.
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Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I am just referring to the hon. member because he is here and we dealt together when I was minister of Indian affairs and northern development. I listened to his speech. For example, I was amazed when he said we should look at local initiatives; it was an awful program and we should not touch it. But members over there should try to reach a little bit of understanding among themselves this afternoon.
The hon. member for Joliette (Mr. La Salle) rose in his place and asked the Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. Andras) a question. He said, "The President of the Treasury Board doesn't want to give more money to the Local Initiatives Program. Will you put a little pressure on him to put more money into the Local Initiatives Program?" He asked that question during the question period, and a short while later the hon. member for Athabasca rises and says the program is no good.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I think the Leader of the Opposition should get his members together so that his party might present some kind of consistency in policy.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner (London East)):: Order, please. The minister has the floor.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I am asking hon. gentlemen opposite to make up their minds, that is all. We have made up our minds. We decided in the budget of last June that we would put more money into the Local Initiatives Program this year. But we cannot put in enough money to satisfy all the demand; that is the problem. It is not that the program is not good; it is that the demands are too great. But that is past, now. I was just making the point in passing. It was not my intention to offend anybody; I am too nice for that, as everyone knows. Perhaps I should revert to my role as President of Treasury Board for a few minutes.
There are some critics who say we have not accompanied this policy with a program of restraint. I do think hon. members need be reminded that on June 21, 1975, I explained to the House that very substantial cuts had been made in our spending program. The cuts were to affect every department of government. I was supported at that time by the then minister of finance. I reported to the House that the total expenditures which would not be proceeded with this year because of the necessity to restrain the actual programs which had been approved by the government, amounting to $967 million in one year. For people to say that there was no cut at all is, I think, a shame. But I cannot take this kind of action twice in the same year.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: How big is the deficit going to be?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: It is going to be big. I do not know exactly, but it is going to be in the billions of dollars. Everyone speaks about the amount of money the government is spending. Perhaps the hon. member would like me to table these three sheets. I do not want to go through them, but I have details of all the factors. The statutory payments of the government account for $17.8 billion; 56.4 per cent of the expenditures of the government are con-

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trolled by the laws of this parliament. There is no possibility that I can touch them, because all parties have voted for them. Very seldom have measures like OIS and GIS been voted against by hon. members. How many hon. members have voted against fiscal transfers to the provinces? How many have voted, for example, against family allowances, which cost $2 billion?
How many hon. members voted against hospital care? How many would like us to cut those services? How many would like to put an end to the unemployment insurance scheme which today is costing the government a lot of money? I could go on and recite a long list, but I will not go into details. However, the majority of the government's budget is controlled by these kinds of programs.
Let me take, as another example, national defence. This year we are spending $2.7 billion. The number of requests received by the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Richardson) from all parts of Canada today to increase this budget is unbelievable. I think there are good arguments for doing this, but in the present context it is difficult to do so. Then there are payments which are very important to the economy today and which we did not have to make a few years ago. There is the scheme to compensate people east of the Ottawa Valley for the increase in the price of imported oil.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: You get a little tax from the exports, don't you, Jean?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I am dealing with expenditures. When hon. members refer to the expenditures of the government, they do not mention the tax revenue we receive from the Americans. This is why I am explaining the situation. When hon. members appear to be frustrated and shattered by the expenditures of the government, these aspects deserve mention.
The point I am trying to make is this. I should like hon. members to make suggestions. We had a debate on this matter in July; it was a lot of fun, not at all dull. I remember that my good friend from Edmonton Centre (Mr. Paproski) referred in that debate to Information Canada; it was the only organization he identified. We have a budget of $35 billion, and if we were to cut Information Canada tomorrow our maximum saving would be something like $4 million to $5 million. So it would make no sense. My professor of mathematics used to tell me that although five million is big, there are a thousand million in a billion. In other words, there must be a relationship between the two. I should like hon. members to make suggestions.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: You are the government. How big is this deficit to be?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: We are defending the policy of the government. We are not running away from our responsibilities. What annoys me is the people who vote for all these programs I have mentioned and who do not have the guts now to admit they made a mistake. There is no shame in that admission. I am not in a comfortable position in talking about expenditures, because I am caught between one party which says I am not spending enough, and the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles)

who says I am. The Leader of the Opposition himself has sometimes called me Dr. Scrooge, but I am doing my best. It is difficult, but fun.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: I do not think the government's deficit is fun at all. How big will it be?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: If the deficit is big, we will borrow the money to pay for it. We have done this in the past. We operate the business of government in a very Liberal way; we do not go to the extremes of the NDP or to the extremes of the far right. We are trying to develop a policy that is acceptable to the majority of Canadians.
I think this program is a well balanced one. We have decided not to have too much bureaucracy. During the two years before I became President of the Treasury Board there was-I have to recognize this-an increase in the bureaucracy of almost 7 per cent a year. Then I started to reduce it, the first year to 4.1 per cent and then in June by another point to 3.1 per cent. Next year's program calls for an increase in the civil service of only 1.5 per cent. When this policy is put into place, the majority of government departments will have to live with the same number of people that they have this year. Many vacant jobs will remain unfilled so as to achieve that goal. This will not be easy.
Some departments are calling for the provision of more services. In the present context it will be very difficult not to permit the RCMP to have less men than they want, which is more than last year. In addition, we need more penitentiary guards, and the Department of National Revenue requires more staff. Our population is growing and the people are asking for additional services. There will be a few hundred additional civil servants employed to run the anti-inflation program, but relatively speaking the situation will be much tighter than it has been for a long time.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: It is out of control, Jean.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: It is not. If the hon. gentleman says it is out of control at 1.5 per cent, then I do not know what is in control.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: I mean your deficit is out of control.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I do not think so. If it was, then I think we would have problems which, happily, we do not have at the present time. The hon. member knows that as well as I do. We have decided to try to control the expenditures of every department; that is apparent in the white paper of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald).


Mr. Coates:: A whitewash paper.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I do not know what the hon. members means by "whitewash", but if we were to whitewash inflation, then things would be all right. Because nous pourrions laver 1'inflation, et nous serions heureux. We will try to control expenditures even more, but I know it will not be easy. We have given an indication in the white paper of what we are trying to do.
I cannot say there will be no increase in expenditure next year; that is impossible. This parliament has made it impossible by indexing family allowances and old age pensions and by establishing the oil compensation pro-
October 21, 1975

gram. Oil prices abroad are going up. I read this afternoon in the newspaper that Venezuela is about to raise its price, so the people in eastern Canada will have to pay more for oil and it will cost the government more to compensate them. Although that is seen as an expenditure, in fact it is a transfer of payments, partly coming from the tax the United States pays on oil exported from Alberta and Saskatchewan.
I think this program will work and I am hoping that the people of Canada will accept it. Of course they are not happy about it and will want to be sure that everyone will be caught in the net. Following second reading debate the bill will go to committee, and if hon. members have some good suggestions to make, I am sure the minister will consider them.
I would like the people to understand that this program is in the best interests of our country. Inflation is probably a disease that hurts most the people in our society who can protect themselves the least. There are big groups both on the business and union sides who really have abused the situation lately at the expense of the rest of society. The Canadian economic pie has not grown in the last year, so when someone takes an extra piece of that pie-


An hon. Member:: But it has grown.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: It has not grown, if you compare the economic situation in Canada with that of our friends to the south who have been in a recession for 22 months. At least in Canada we have been able to maintain a much better performance than the United States.


An hon. Member:: Not so.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: For the first time in the history of relations between Canada and the United States, in terms of economic comparability, there was less unemployment last winter in Canada than there was in the United States. That was the first time ever.


An hon. Member:: And 4 per cent more now.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Of course there is unemployment; I do not deny that. What I want to convey is that our performance has not been perfect, by far; but it has been quite good compared to that of the United States.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I am glad you applaud both statements. Don't take one; take the two of them. I think we have to work together to make sure this program is a success, and if we succeed in making the program a reality, particularly in the minds of those people who set the trends in our society, I am confident that the economic growth in our society will accelerate and that our competitive position with other countries will be ameliorated so that the future of Canada will be even brighter than it is right now.
I am very glad to be here today to join in the invitation of my colleagues to hon. members across the aisle to do their _part. We are a long way from the next election. We are not trying to win an election now, and will not be for three years. Right now, what we have to do is all pull in
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one direction to make sure the future of this country will be greater than it is today.


Lloyd Roseville Crouse: Mr. Speaker, would the minister permit one question? In his speech, which I listened to very carefully, he asked for the immediate suggestions of hon. members. My question relates to the 1975-76 booklet on how our tax dollar is spent. There is an indication in this booklet that almost $1 billion is available for consultants' fees. Would the minister consider cutting back on that tremendous amount being spent on consultants' fees, particularly in view of the large number of people presently employed in various departments of government?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to answer the question of the hon. member. There is a provision in the white paper through which I have asked every department to cut by 10 per cent the hiring of outside consultants. I should like to point out that although this is shown in those terms in the booklet, if you break down this $1 billion you will find that the majority of it-I am speaking from memory-is for adult training programs in the provinces. We make the money available to the provinces to train the unemployed or those who want to upgrade their skills. It is spent in that sense of consultants' fees, rather than in the terms which the hon. gentleman has in mind. It is for those programs and for the teachers who give courses to the unemployed. I am happy to respond to the hon. member in that regard, and I think I am quite right.


An hon. Member:: Most of it is under the Department of Transport.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I have ordered, in respect of the consultants' fees that the hon. member has in mind, a reduction of 10 per cent in dollar terms for next year.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner (London East)):: It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 40, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Halifax-East Hants (Mr. McCleave)-Veterans Affairs-Proposed Camp Hill complex at Halifax-Date of tender call; the hon. member for Parkdale (Mr. Haidasz)-Health-Possible revision of maximum levels for mercury chloride and PCB; the hon. member for Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe (Mr. Marshall)-Fisheries-Possible discussion of extension of control over resources with United States.

October 21, 1975
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GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Macdonald (Rosedale) that Bill C-73, to provide for the restraint of profit margins, prices, dividends and compensation in Canada, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs.
Robert Carman Coates: Mr. Speaker, it is a rare opportunity for one to follow the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Chretien) who has come before us in an endeavour to explain some of the reasons he feels hon. members of this House should support the government's proposed wage and price controls which we are now debating. I am pleased he took the time to come before us, as this does not appear to have been the policy of government members up to now. Perhaps he will have set an example that will encourage other ministers to participate in this debate.
I have in mind the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan), who seems to have some pretty strong views about how this legislation should be applied to the rural aspects of Canadian society and our economy, as well as the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Goyer), who is spending a great deal of the taxpayers' dollars on various things. I am looking forward to his participation in this debate in the hope that he will explain how he is going to cut many millions of dollars from his spending so that Canadians will be given the kind of example necessary if we hope to make this policy work. I am pleased, also, to see the Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. Andras) in the House. Canadians are desperately anxious to have him indicate how we are going to do away with the runaway deficits we are facing in respect of the Unemployment Insurance Commission.
In my opinion, there is no way this policy can work, with the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) out on a pilgrimage across this country when he should be here in the House of Commons attempting to put before the elected representatives of the people the ways in which the policy can be made to work, in order that we in Ottawa, who are the ones to whom the people will be listening, can explain those ways to the people. From all I have read and heard up to now, I would suggest the program that has been presented is unworkable because it is geared heavily against the workingman, the poor and the underprivileged of this nation. It will not work because it will not receive the kind of support required from the people of this nation; and whether the government realizes it or not, the majority of the people of this nation are the poor, the underprivileged and the working. They are the people who will be hit the hardest as they are ground into the earth by this program.
It would be most helpful and useful-and we expect this-if all the ministers of the government came forward before this bill is voted on at second reading to explain how they intend to do some of the things the people in Canada want and expect to be done in so far as govern-
[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner (London East)).]
ment cutbacks are concerned. If we are asking everybody in this country to tighten their belts, the first place to start is right here, and right now. That will not happen with this legislation. As usual, it is the wage earner who will be clipped, while big business and the multinationals will be the fat cats because they have the ways and means of getting around the legislation. Those ways and means are not available to the average man in this country.
One of the things the President of the Treasury Board said which interested me very much was that we always come here and talk about government cutbacks, but the only real suggestion we ever make is that we should get rid of Information Canada. That would certainly be a good sign for the people of Canada: it would indicate that the government intended to do something about cutting back, even though getting rid of Information Canada, so far as I am concerned, would be merely a drop in the bucket.
As the hon. member for South Shore (Mr. Crouse) said in questioning the minister, there are many consultants among those who are a bunch of leeches on the government, and a bunch of Grits as well, who are getting hand-outs from this government. It is time for them to go, if this government is serious about cutting back expenditures. I realize that included among these people are consultants whose services may be justifiable, but the amount of $875 million is involved and so far as I am concerned there is a great deal of room for extensive cutting back.
We should not stop there. The President of the Treasury Board explained how good he is at cutting back the growth of the public service of Canada. Well, my peers tell me that the public service of Canada stands at 347,357 employees. The minister indicates he is willing to reduce the amount of hiring to 1.5 per cent a year, or 5,210 people. That represents half the people in my home town. If we place this in its proper perspective, it means that this year the government will hire a number equal to half the population of Amherst, yet the government says it is cutting back.
I say there should be no increase in the public service. As a matter of fact, there should and can be a decrease in the public service merely by allowing attrition to take its course. That would be another example to the taxpayers of this nation that this government is really serious about doing something about the high cost of government in Canada. This should happen right away. One of the ministers should be telling us that rather than reducing the amount of hiring from 7 per cent over a period of time to 1.5 per cent, this is what will be done.
Another thing that should and can take place is a reduction in the tremendous deficit in the unemployment insurance fund. There is no way we can continue with this program in its present form. The Minister of Manpower and Immigration should face up to this fact and do something about it. The cost of operating the unemployment insurance plan is becoming prohibitive. In 1974-75, the total benefit payments amounted to $2.3 billion, with the government picking up $700 million. Benefit payments in 1975-76 are expected to exceed $3.75 billion, placing a total cost on the government of approximately $1.75 billion, an increase of approximately 150 per cent over the previous year.
October 21, 1975

This total increase reflects in part the increase in unemployment. Unemployment in 1974 averaged 5.4 per cent and has been running this year at an annual rate of 7.2 per cent, an increase of 31 per cent; and there are indications it will rise to at least 8 per cent by the end of the year. However, unemployment statistics as such do not account for all the increase in pay-outs. While unemployment rose by 31 per cent, the total cost of UIC from April, 1974, to April, 1975, rose by 69 per cent. More important is the fact that the length of benefit period for recipients increased by 51 per cent over the same period.
Since I have been a Member of Parliament it has been my understanding that the unemployment insurance plan is a stopgap scheme to assist the person who becomes unemployed. It is to assist him to get over the period until he is again employed. The way the scheme works now, with the amount of benefits being provided, it has become almost a way of life to may Canadians. A great many Canadians misuse the unemployment insurance fund, and this misuse must be stopped. Further, a great many people pay into the fund who never receive any benefit from it. In effect, they subsidize those who rightfully and wrongfully secure benefits. The people to whom I refer receive no benefit whatsoever during a lifetime of work, although they contribute a tremendous amount of money to the fund. As Members of Parliament, we must see that the unemployment insurance fund gets back on the right track again. We must see that it gets back on the road to reality, because some of the things that happen now are unreal.
If one is looking for ways to save money, there are a number of ways this can be done. One way would be to combine the Unemployment Insurance Commission with the Manpower operation in this country. We made a major mistake in separating them. The sooner government accepts that this is the time to bring the two together, the sooner the problems associated with the fund will be eliminated. I see that the minister nods his head and I assume he agrees the two operations should be combined.
I believe we could save money by packaging the two operations together. In this way the service could be improved and the public would be given the assurance that the man in the unemployment insurance office was aware of the jobs that were availabe. Also, in this way, I believe, a service could be provided to business people and others who require employees, because they would be able to go to the same office and determine from the manager which people were unemployed and available for work in the required categories. This would do much to streamline the operation and to save money.
We must also have a more basic realistic benefit qualification period. Too short a time is involved when in a period of eight weeks one can qualify for unemployment insurance for a period of 40 weeks. This is just not realistic. There may be many things we should do in order to get the fund in more realistic balance, but one thing we must do is extend the period of qualification from eight weeks to at least 12 weeks as we suggested when the legislation was first before the House. If it should be found that a period of 12 weeks would not bring the fund into a realistic balance, then we would have to consider a period of 16
Anti-Inflation Act
weeks, which is the period which existed under the old legislation.
So far as the amounts available are concerned, I say we should go step by step in an effort to extend the period of time for qualification and see what the result is before we attempt anything further. I believe we should also determine whether the amounts to be paid are too high in comparison with what is available on the street if a person is employed. There is not much fun working if one can receive as much money while not working.
The problem that exists in many parts of Canada is that business operations have a competitor in the form of the unemployment insurance plan. This situation exists in my area. At the same time, unemployment insurance is a godsend to most people in my part of Canada. It is crucial to the livelihood of many people in the Atlantic provinces, because most of the people who look for jobs, especially at this time of the year, are unable to find them no matter how hard they look. At the same time, however, there are employers who have difficulty finding people to work for them. While people are in receipt of unemployment insurance there are many jobs for which they are not available.
I am sure each of us is aware of cases where employers are looking for people to do a job and cannot find them.
There has to be realism, but there is no realism when you have the Prime Minister telling people they do not have to work if they do not want to. That is the kind of philosophy we must overcome, the kind of philosophy that has done a great deal to produce some of the problems we are facing.


An hon. Member:: Oh, oh!


Robert Carman Coates: I do not know what the hon. gentleman across the way is saying.


Mr. Muir:: It doesn't matter what he said, because he never says anything worth while.


Robert Carman Coates: I would suggest to you, my friend, that I will come into the House without a text any time at all, as I am doing right now. Try to emulate me, that is all. Sit around here a while, learn a little, and perhaps you will get to be a bright boy. But now you are a long way from that. Talk to the fellow beside you who has brains and knows what he is doing.
I want to make a suggestion to the Minister of Agriculture. I was very concerned about the near accident in which he and his family were involved, as I am sure all hon. members were. But I suggest to him seriously-not because he almost happened to be in an accident-that one of the examples he could set for the taxpayers of this nation is to convince the government to put the fleet of executive jets at their disposal in cold storage, and say to the cabinet ministers and everyone else that this nation has airlines which most people have to use, and there is no reason why government members should not use them except in circumstances of great urgency where the use of a government jet is required.
In most instances there is no real reason to use the fleet of government aircraft used by cabinet ministers today. I think the Canadian people would be really impressed if

October 21, 1975
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the government would put the fleet of aircraft in mothballs and in this way set an example in paring government expenditures. I can give an example. One day I was at the airport in Ottawa, on my way to the maritimes, with a stopover in Montreal, and I was talking to a cabinet minister who was also going to Montreal. I interrupted the conversation to stand in line to board the plane, and when I looked around the minister had disappeared. The first thing I knew, I saw an executive jet with "Government of Canada" on it taking off. The minister was going to Montreal on that jet when an Air Canada flight was leaving at the same time, a flight which he could have taken. Instead, we paid for the gasoline which we are supposed to be saving.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Robert Carman Coates: Someone says "Oh". I tell you, if people in this nation are cynical about politicians, it is because of the extravagances in which they indulge with the taxpayers' money, such as flying around in government aircraft when there is no need for it. That is the kind of thing that will destroy any chance of making this program work, because people believe we want them to take on all the things that are required to make the program work, while we do not want to do that ourselves. We must show, first of all, that we will do the job and set an example. When we set the example, they will follow. Mr. Speaker, there are many ways in which we can set examples.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Robert Carman Coates: One is to tell the people of Canada that we will set the example, not follow their example; that we will carry out the cutbacks first and show them we can produce. Then we can expect them to produce. We will have to show the wage earner, the little guy, that he will be as well protected as the big guy. I am not at all sure that he is convinced or will be convinced until he hears the Minister of Labour (Mr. Munro) make a speech in the House outlining the ways in which we will do it. When that is done, maybe he will get the kind of support which the Prime Minister is asking the people of Canada to give him in producing the policy that he has outlined to us piece by piece.
I would like to put on the record, for the attention of the President of the Treasury Board and in repetition, a statement made by the hon. member for York-Simcoe (Mr. Stevens) on October 14 which is a realistic assessment of the reason the government has to set the example. This is what the hon. member said, as recorded at page 8213 of Hansard:
Since the Prime Minister took power in April, 1968, the money supply in this country has risen by an astounding 111 per cent, a 15 per cent increase in the last 12 months alone. In the same period we find that inflation has gone up 58 per cent. This is the inflation that the Prime Minister spoke of breaking back in 1969.
Perhaps most significantly during this period, the government's own spending has jumped by 192 per cent, it has almost doubled, yet in 1969 we had a prime minister who had the nerve to suggest that his government in future years was going to be a government of restraint with respect to monetary growth and government spending.
The 192 per cent increase in government spending is the reason most Canadians will not believe the Prime Minister and will not believe us when we are talking about

restraint. What we must do very soon is show the Canadian public that there is real restraint in the minds of the Government of Canada and members of parliament, and then perhaps we will get them to support us and make this program work.


Eudore Allard: Mr. Speaker, the steps advocated by the government are no doubt essential under the circumstances. It is obvious that Canada is facing a serious inflation problem, but we must also admit that if our country continues to suffer from the excessive rate of inflation, it is merely ascribable to the various ineffective measures advocated by the government for years to eradicate the said evil.
There is no doubt, Mr. Speaker, that it is more than ever essential to find some solutions in the shortest possible time to thwart that serious problem, but if the malaise persists or continues to worsen at this rate, it will surely compromise the already precarious economic balance consequently increasing the rate of inflation throughout the country.
Of course, I agree that in our present system there is no easy way to solve the infaltion problem. But I doubt that the proposed government measures to control inflation will produce the expected results. Furthermore, the battle undertaken by the Prime Minister on October 13 is puzzling a great many people and is causing more apprehension than satisfaction.
Again I feel almost sure that the proposed austerity measures and the efforts of the government and its economists in the next three years will not cope with this problem. There is no doubt whatever we are living in a very critical period, we are in fact on the threshold of a depression that may take catastrophic proportions and perturb our society.
Mr. Speaker, the measures the government intends to take are unclear, but at least one thing seems very clear to me; it is that the anti-inflation program emphasized the seriousness of the economic situation in Canada and at the same time focussed the attention of the whole population on the problem about which we are most concerned.
We notice, Mr. Speaker, that all governments have been invited to cut their expenditure but not to freeze them. Moreover, businesses will be able to boost their prices only by as much as their production costs have increased, but ordinary people do not know how to figure out the cost of production. I sincerely believe there is plenty of room for acrobatics in that area.
It is very easy to show once and for all we want to do is to control wages and bring the unions down to heel to save our country from the disaster that awaits us if we are not careful. There is no doubt either that to succeed we must control prices.
As a matter of fact, I was just reading an article containing the comments of the Quebec Food Council and the Quebec Producers Union. The government should at least have prevented grain prices from being determined on the open market by the Winnipeg or Chicago grain exchanges.
October 21, 1975

I understand that the government is unwilling or afraid to set a price for the producers of western grain on the international market. But it could bring part of the production under a quota system for the domestic market and set the price for this grain.
In this way, the cost of feed grain would remain firm and thus ensure a better price to the consumers. As to the prices of fertilizers, carbohydrates and gas, since they are imported goods, the government has hardly any control over them.
If I may, I should like to quote part of the article dealing with the control of grain prices. The government could intervene at the border by limiting meat imports and exports, because hog prices are going up in the United States and, consequently, in Canada as well. But to close our border would create such delicate international problems that Ottawa seems unwilling to face them. Finally, it remains that on the great majority of basic commodities such as vegetables, fruit, sugar, coffee, cocoa, spices, etc., the government cannot exert any control, for they are imported for the most part.
Now, Mr. Speaker, the fact remains that under the present circumstances it is very easy for the government to increase prices, but whatever the government may do, it remains that when it comes to control food stuffs products things become more difficult.
It seems to me that the government has taken no measure to overcome such difficulties. That is why, in the long run, it will be forced to pay citizens' organisations to succeed in controlling prices set by businesses. However, some special squads will have to be set up. They will be responsible for watching big food chain stores, or to rely on federal public servants which will be appointed for that purpose.
With regard to penalties for lack of compliance, will the government have to determine prices, instead of the companies? In case of monopolies, will there be some flexibility with regard to corporations which have to face a harsh domestic or foreign competition? Those are the questions that come to my mind.
Finally, Madam Speaker, everybody knows that the root of inflation is in prices, and moreover, until now experience has shown that the majority of controls that have been imposed in different countries have failed to curb prices because it has been shown that such controls cause economic disorders that have to be cured later anyway.
Therefore, I think that if the real cause of inflation is prices, the government should first make a serious study of the structure of prices in relation to the monetary system. In any case, since the process of determining prices is itself a part of the monetary system, such a study should necessarily include a comprehensive review of the way the system works. It would then be easier to wonder why in certain respects that process is inadequate.
Because of today's pricing system, the public in general has to shoulder the total production costs over a given period whereas, in normal times, it should only pay for the total consumption in that same period. In other words, if I buy $5's worth of goods and have to pay $10 for them, obviously the cost of living is inflated.
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It is common knowledge that the rigidity of traditions has proved to be one of the main obstacles to progress in man's discoveries and that, most of the time, it takes but a flash to realize that we are on the verge of a crisis. We of the Social Credit Party have often warned this government of the impending danger of inflation which is now hitting us head-on, but our warnings fell on deaf ears. Madam Speaker, we are now facing such a problem. This is, in the main, the result of errors made in the past by our monetary and fiscal authorities.
In my view, it is extremely urgent for us to get out of this financial system which is not really consistent with the realities of production and consumption, since in the face of spiralling prices we need an increase in the purchasing power too. Finally, if the purchasing power is allowed to increase without a reduction in prices, it is necessary, of course, to distribute more money among consumers.
Now, Madam Speaker, under the present system, it is realized that money is only distributed according to a participation in production. It is then that all the costs are reflected in prices. It is essential to provide the goods to meet adequately the normal needs of the people. Then inflation would no longer exist.
Madam Speaker, since the purpose of production of goods and services is to meet the needs of the individuals who make up the nation, everything else, both labour and capital, are only instruments, means of achieving an end. In other words, the sole purpose of the product itself is to make life easier for adult citizens, but that same profit should not become all-important in society as a whole.
All our economic ills stern from that. Profit which is good in itself becomes bad and harmful when it becomes excessive. That is why in our great country both rich and prosperous, the rich become richer and the poor more numerous. As a result, the unbalance in our economy is borne by our children, the low wage earners, the unemployed, those without an adequate income to enjoy our wealth because of the prices being charged.
Madam Speaker, we, of the Social Credit Party of Canada, seriously believe that the monetary system accounting is truly wrong, because if the financial system were realistic, inflation would surely not exist and prices would not rise. On the contrary, the people would witness a gradual decline in prices technological progress and production methods would improve.
There is no doubt that if the federal government really intends to combat the steady and deep-rooted inflation, which I do not question, it must consider more seriously, the concret proposals put forward by our party, for I am sure they are the solution to inflation and unjustified price increases.
Madam Speaker, among the measures annouced by the federal government on October 13th, I think they should have included provisions for protecting low income people by raising, for instance, $6,000 to $10,000 the low income ceiling, that is the salaries of workers who will not be entitled to an increase of over 10 per cent. It is essential that the fight be not waged at the expense of the low-income class. Besides, would it not have been more sen-

October 21, 1975
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sible for the federal government to provide that advertising, the primary purpose of which is to induce people to buy more, be somehow restricted as well? As they stand now, the measures will penalize the little guy, the low-income worker. But what about the media television, radio and press alike, that are trying by all means thinkable to urge people to ignore those measures, instead of tightening their belts, as the government is advocating?
Actually, Madam Speaker, governments are in the final analysis responsible for inflation, first of all because they are the biggest employers in the country and also because they do not produce genuine wealth.


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: They produce debts!


Eudore Allard: Mainly taxes and debts, as my colleague from Bellechasse has so aptly put it.
Once again, Madam Speaker, I want to repeat it, the time is ripe for new measures that will guarantee fairness in dealing with producers and consumers, in a word the entire nation. I therefore appeal to the government once and for all to assume its responsibilities and give full satisfaction to all Canadians. And to do it, the present majority government should take the necessary arrangements to propose an intelligent, serious and efficient solution to the present situation.
However, Madam Speaker, I doubt very much that within the present system we have the oppotunity to act as I think we should. On the contrary, we, from the Social Credit Party of Canada, have been for many years looking for every possible way to bring the government to study our sensible and practical solutions to fight inflation. And my colleague, the hon. member for Abitibi (Mr. Laprise) raised last week one of these solutions, the compensated discount allowing producers to make a just and reasonable profit and at the same time giving to the consumer a chance to pay a reasonable price to meet his vital needs.
Furthermore, Madam Speaker, the government should have taken action to reduce excessive interest rates and bring them back at the same level as at the time when our economic situation was satisfying. Let us not forget that these interest rates have been in force for twenty years, if my memory serves me well from 1944 to 1960 and during that time, our economy was stable and everybody seemed to be happy. If we look around us, we see that, in the residential construction field particularly, everything is not alright. Why? It is only because of the excessive interest rates we now have. Are there many people able to buy a house when interest rates reach 12 per cent? Really, I do not know many of them.
If you cast a glance at the cost for building single family dwellings in Montreal since the seventies, you realize that it cost $13.42 a square foot in 1970. In 1973, the same square foot cost $17.22 and today in 1975 it costs about $27: what a shame!
We can therefore infer that within five years, prices have doubled. As you may see, Madam Speaker, it has become urgent for the government to take measures and I therefore seriously think that before anything else interest rates should be lowered in order to give a new impetus to housing construction, to increase output capacity and thus check unemployment and meet the needs of all Canadians.
I also think it is time for the government to try by all means to have the Bank of Canada,-the bank of Canadians, an institution which derives its policies from the government and from ourselves here in Parliament-to have the Bank of Canada assume its real responsibilities, namely control credit in the interest of our economy and people. It has undoubtedly become a matter of urgent necessity that the Bank of Canada should aim its credit lending policy at ensuring a smooth growth of our whole economy.
Madam Speaker, if the aim of the central government is to find means of checking inflation, I wish with all my heart that they would take the necessary measures to review more seriously the concrete suggestions of our party, for I am convinced that therein lies the solution to inflation and the unjustified soaring of prices.


Mr. Serge Joyal (Maisonneuve-Rosemont):: Madam Speaker, in a debate involving a policy as important and as novel to Canadians as this one, it is essential in my view that every member in this House keep in mind the consequences of the proposals now before us.
The President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Chretien) indicated the government wants these measures to be fair to all.
May I remind you, Madam Speaker, of a principle of social policy that should be reflected in every measure under discussion. That principle is that any fiscal or financial action that does not aim at narrowing the income range is socially backward, and can have adverse social repercussions in an economy of free circulating capital and labour as ours. If we look at the social groups affected by these measures, it is easily seen that this legislation will create in a very short time an unacceptable imbalance.
Before I speak of three groups of workers I feel are more severely affected than others, I would recall briefly two causes of inflation whose effects deserve to be mentioned. The first of these causes is the government spending policy followed by the governments of Canada in the course of the last few years. Evidently, in a federal structure as ours, the power to spend is inherent in every level of jurisdiction. It so happens that the federal government controls some 40 per cent of the overall government expenditures, and that the remaining 60 per cent are shared by provincial and municipal governments.
We have seen during the last few years, for example, that in the construction industry governments were unable to do the kind of coordination that would have prevented the current rate of inflation, the rate experienced last year for instance and which is in the order of 28 per cent in the building industry. Provincial governments including the Quebec government, municipal governments as the city of Montreal for instance, the federal government, introduced big programs without really considering the effects that they would have on wages, on materials and, in general, on the normal relationships among the main agents in the field of construction.
During the last two years, the building industry has known an inflation rate which has no equivalent in any other field in Canada. Today, the government realizes the importance of coordinating these programs and initiatives.

October 21, 1975

I therefore hope, Madam Speaker, that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) will have enough leadership to force Canadian municipalities to meet around the same coordinating table, which would enable us to prevent expenses which could cause or continue to cause galloping inflation within this industry.
I have to add, Madam Speaker, that labour relations, mostly in other manufacturing sectors, have been a direct cause of inflation in Canada. We set records last year. According to the statistics published by [DOT] the OECD, Canada is one of the countries which has lost the greatest number of man-weeks of work, which is certainly unprecedented in the history of Canada. I do not want to blame these strikes on the workers who decided to stop work for all the reasons that can be judged good and acceptable in an economy such as ours. However, Madam Speaker, social problems and the problems caused by these many strikes and the losses of man-weeks in Canadian economy have also been a very important inflationary factor. We must not think that legislation such as that which we are now discussing will bring a solution, a remedy to all these problems which are, in my view, inherent in the federal structure of our country and the economic structure in which we live.
There is also, Madam Speaker, another cause of inflation which, in my opinion, is given too little attention in the bill which we are now discussing. I want to speak about the wild prices policy practised by certain Canadian industries. I shall only mention the case of the sugar industry, which is a basic element in the manufacture of all the food that we eat in Canada. It is unacceptable that we experienced a rise in the price of sugar of more than 200 per cent whereas, within the same industry, the supply, the rate of supply remained at a normal and acceptable level.
Of course, legal procedures were launched and resulted in slowing down and even reducing increases, but obvisou-ly the manufacturing industry is largely responsible for the tremendous increase in costs in some sectors of supply.
It must also be pointed out, Madam Speaker, that some distribution agents practiced a disastrous supply policy. Suffice to recall that last summer we witnessed helplessly the destruction of hundreds of tons of turnips, cabbage and other vegetables because the other food chains would not buy the products the Canadian economy could supply on the pretense that they now had annual food' contracts and the seasonal policy that used to be practiced was no longer adequate in our economy. How can one think, Madam Speaker, that in such an economy which is somewhat off course the causes of inflation are only the responsibility of wage earners.
I think, Madam Speaker, that it is time to draw the line and that the bill we are now discussing will not be enough to ensure balanced income, salary and price growth if we do not launch an overall attack on all fronts and not only through Bill C-73 but through the combines bill we passed last week and an unprecedented coordination of public expenditures in the political history of this country.
I pointed out at the outset, Madam Speaker, that the measures contained in Bill C-73 must be fair to everyone. I think after reading this bill that unfortunately it will not be fair to everyone. The first group of wage earners to be affected in an unbearable way by this bill is those wage
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earners whose incomes are below the average minimum income or the poverty line as defined by the Economic Council of Canada.
In a report published by a Senate task force in 1971, income brackets were set for families of three, four and five children. In 1972, for example, Madam Speaker, the minimum average income for a family of five children had to be $6,850. If we add the 10 per cent inflation for the years 1973-74, we arrive at an average minimum income of $8,200.
However, if we look at the incomes of those groups of wage earners within the classes of the minimum wage scale, we find a total income of $6,850; in other words a family whose only income would be the minimum wage or the minimum wage scale would be below the poverty line as defined by the Economic Council of Canada and the Senate report on poverty.
Madam Speaker, we learned in the press during the weekend that at least one provincial government refused to follow a recommendation to increase the minimum wage on November 1. The Province of Quebec had a minimum wage of $2.60 an hour and it was to be increased to $2.90 an hour on November 1, 1975, that is within about 10 days. That 32 cents increment was made up of 15 cents for catching up and 17 cents for indexation. Therefore, the 15 cents constitute about a 6 per cent increment. Madam Speaker, in the wage scale which has been made public by the Minister of Finance, we see that an 8 per cent rate would be acceptable.
Consequently, all workers, particularly the 500,000 workers in Quebec who come under that minimum wage decree, will have to suffer the burden of the fight against inflation in coming months without even being allowed the 8 per cent indexation which seems generally observed everywhere.
Madam Speaker, I think we cannot accept a legislation whose effect would be to have wage earners who have no defence except a government decree carry the burden of the fight against inflation. It is essential that the burden of this attack on inflation be shared fairly across Canada and supported equitably by every Canadian.
I do not think, Madam Speaker, that we would improve the social climate if we were to force 500,000 workers in a province to provide for their needs with an income whose purchasing power is perpetually eroding. One has to have net people subject to the decree on minimum wages to understand how those people are directly affected by every parliamentary measures.
Madam Speaker, the worker earning the minimum wage rate for 40 hours' work gets $6,800 a year. Because of the inflation which continually erodes the family budget, this worker has to work overtime to be able to maintain his income at or slightly above the poverty line.
I think, Madam Speaker, that the object of Bill C-73 is not to place the excessive burden of our attack on inflation on the backs of the small wage earners. The reasons put forward by the president of the Minimum Wage Commission in Quebec seem unjustifiable to me in the present economic situation.
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The first of these reasons is that only the Minimum Wage Commission or the Minister of Labour has the authority to proclaim such an increase and that the government has taken no decision as yet. That is not a sufficient reason, Madam Speaker. If the government has the authority to enact a minimum wage, it does not have to beat around the bush and consult everybody. It can determine the minimum wage on the basis of current economic indexes supported by statistics.
The second reason put forward is that since the Commission was not formally authorized to enact such an increase, nobody could do it after the necessary consultations with the industry and the unions.
Madam Speaker, it is the same as saying that someone is responsible for the minimum wage without knowing who he is. So, let us try to find out who it is, and then we can do the proper consulting. Can a responsible government behave this way in an economy in which the wage earner's purchasing power governed by a decree is constantly gnawed away by inflation?
To my mind, Madam Speaker, such a statement is proof of irresponsibility. A third reason was given, namely that the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Jamieson) intervened pretexting that a 32-cent increase would have a bad effect on the industries governed by the decree.
Now, Madam Speaker, what industries fall within the jurisdiction of the minimum salary decree? They are mainly the sewing, clothing and shoe industries. They are also the food, confectionery industries, and those which transform food products in one way or the other. And generally it concerns all the employees, all the smaller industries with a market which is restricted to a given province or a given territory.
Therefore, Madam Speaker, if we are to help more these industries thrive in competitive markets, it is not by making the wage earners of these industries bear the burden that we will succeed in reinforcing the structure of the Canadian economy.
Rather we will succeed in improving their output by turning directly to the structure or to the components of these industries, to their competitive position, to their competitiveness, to their productivity. We will not succeed directly in improving their competitiveness by freezing the salaries of the wage earners in these industries.
Of course, Madam Speaker, one could allege that by increasing immediately the wage scale of the workers in this group we could add to inflation. Madam Speaker, for a family of five, with three children and two spouses earning $6,850 a year, even if you add to this $500 a year it is hardly enough to meet the bare necessities. There is no inflationary effect as a result of the demand, when one family is simply allowed to meet its basic needs, such as lodging, food and clothing.
Instead one should look for the inflationary effect in higher categories with annual incomes of $24,000 or more. Now what do we find out in these categories? We find out that the authorized increase will be about $2,400. Obviously, the Minister of Finance has remarked that the tax measures will allow the treasury to recoup a substantial amount of that $2,400 rise.

Madam Speaker, let us look at the tax tables to see the amounts allocated to public funds. In 1974, the Quebec provincial income tax was putting only 42 per cent of that $2,400 increase back into the coffers of the province, which means that a salaried man or a professional with an income of $24,000 would still be in a better position than the wage earner whose salary is below the poverty line.
And, Madam Speaker, I agree fully with the Minister of Finance that it is not by overtaxing salary increases per se that we can get to the root of inflation.
The Minister of Finance was right in making the proposals he did, but the recommendation which seems to me essential at this point is the one which aims at limiting those increases in the comparative scale to the salary level of workers whose earnings are below the poverty line.
Therefore, Madam Speaker, I hope that the minister who, tomorrow or the day after, will have the opportunity to meet the provincial ministers, will ask them to reconsider their whole attitude towards those workers who are governed by the ruling on minimum wage, so that those wage earners may at least benefit from the increases which the legislation provides.
Moreover, Madam Speaker, I think that even if those raises could be granted to wage earners, they would clearly remain below the average minimum income for those families.
The Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) has already advised the House in previous months that he is working on the development of a guaranteed annual income scheme and to my knowledge, every member in this House is deeply interested in the implementation of such schemes. How could we now be satisfied when the wages of those under the poverty level will be definitely frozen, while union members who can resort to the usual bargaining powers will still obtain the raises allowed under that bill?
I think that during the next few days, we should make a special effort to make every member realize that the consequences of that bill should be equitable for all. Unfortunately, during the past years, we have noted that the forces exercised on the market have not always given the anticipated results.
There are several pieces of legislation which the House is willing to consider and adopt. They must be applied without delay. I feel it is necessary for the Minister of Finance to contact his colleagues as soon as possible and realize that the co-ordination of public expenses has become an imperative of our political structure. He must also realize that all wage earners covered by the minimum wage provision cannot be satisfied with the wage freeze as it now exists. They are even worse off than our public service employees.
It is recognized within the salary scales which appear in the bill that public service employees will be at least entitled to this increase, even if it is greatly below what they were asking for. On the other hand, when the time comes to deal with wage earners, with the 500,000 Quebec workers covered by the minimum wage provision, they say: "You will not get more than $2.60 an hour." In my opinion, this demonstrates a serious lack of social justice and I truly doubt that this policy is clearly reformist.
October 21, 1975

Madam Speaker, I do not think that pieces of legislation such as those we adopted over the previous months to increase by 10 cents the price of the gallon of gas for wage earners, for workers who commute, shorten the gap between those who earn less and those who earn more. In the present economic conditions, a government must essentially propose as the aim of its fiscal, monetary and economic policy to shorten the gap between those at the very bottom of the wage scale and those at the very top.
Madam Speaker, I ask for the support of my colleagues so that we can all put pressure, not only on the federal Minister of Finance, but also on our respective provincial finance ministers so that employees subject to those minimum wage decrees can at least obtain increases equal to thoke provided for in the legislation. I think that is the least we can do if, as the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Chretien) suggested, we want to see to it that the legislation applies to everyone and that the burden of the fight against inflation is justly borne by all Canadians whatever their income level.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: It being six o'clock, I do now leave the chair until eight o'clock this evening.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.
Mr. John Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Madam Speaker, before we broke for the supper hour the hon. member for Cumberland-Colchester North (Mr. Coates) said that the whole matter of fighting inflation and being responsible for bringing inflation under control rested with the example we set and gave to others. He was, of course, referring to ministers of the government in the way they conducted their departments. I think the way we conduct ourselves in this House is an example to the Canadian people.
The hon. member forgot some other very important aspects of how we conduct ourselves in the House of Commons. For example, we ought to be prepared to eliminate the subsidized meals served in this building. We ought to be able to say that the prices in the cafeteria and restaurant of the House of Commons are the same as working class Canadians pay when they buy their lunch.
We ought to be able to say that members of parliament who want to fly to Europe should not use Canadian armed forces planes to go on holidays. One of the arguments made in this House for increased indemnities for members was that they should be permitted a wage that they can live on and do things other Canadians do. It seems to me no private Canadian citizen can climb on to what is called euphemistically "Richardson's airline" and fly on holiday to Europe. This kind of belt tightening must be demonstrated to the public.
The hon. member for Maisonneuve-Rosemont (Mr. Joyal), a government member, made a good speech. He criticized the bill presented to the House in a way that New Democrats on this side of the House would describe it. I suspect that, when amendments are brought forward and the time comes to vote, that member will stand up and
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be counted with the members of this party who intend to oppose this legislation.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) certainly has a flair for the theatre. This is very apropos. It does not surprise me that on the fifth anniversary of the invocation of the War Measures Act, which was last Thursday, the Prime Minister introduced Bill C-73 to control wages and prices in Canada. For the past year, including during the last federal election campaign, the government has been saying that wage and price controls were not workable.
Since the federal campaign of 1974 the former finance minister and an assortment of other ministers have been going around the country laying the blame for inflation on the backs of the workers. They have been saying that it was the workers of Canada, in their exorbitant demands, who have caused inflation in Canada. In addition, their productivity has been criticized. It is said that our workers are not as productive as workers in the United States or in other industrialized countries. The claim was made that the expectations of Canadian workers were out of line, that they wanted the highest wages but were not prepared to work hard to satisfy their expectations.
What was in fact happening was that Canadian workers were responding to spiralling inflation, much of which was precipitated by the government. For example, in the housing field, it was fairly obvious to the most casual observer that land costs were escalating beyond the means of Canadian workers. As far as mortgage interest rates were concerned, they were completely out of whack with what the workers of Canada could afford. The aspiration of a Canadian worker to own a home or a single family dwelling is certainly not out of whack, but lo and behold when he goes to purchase a home the mortgage rate and the payments per month are completely beyond his ability to pay.
Another area of concern for Canada and the Canadian workman is increased food prices. The government, as a result of rocketing food prices which had no relation to what farmers were getting, established the Food Prices Review Board, and Mrs. Plumptre was named as its chairperson. Many predatory price practices were identified by her posse, including double ticketing and products artificially enhanced by the use of such things as red lights over meat counters, etc., etc. She, apparently, gave the green light to monopoly pricing by large corporations such as the Weston empire, and she also began to attack labour in Canada, completely disregarding the structure of the so-called free enterprise system. With this monopoly pricing the effect of the present anti-combines legislation is as useless as horns on a cow. This is not the first time we in Canada have seen an all-out attack on inflation by the Liberal government.


An hon. Member:: That shows how much you know about cows.


John R. Rodriguez: I don't know much about bulls either. You will remember that the year was 1971, which was not so long ago, when this government was full of the attack on inflation. We all remember that; it was the first war on inflation. The unemployment rate in Canada at that time
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was 4.8 per cent and the inflation rate was 3.3 per cent. At that time that was a rate the government could not tolerate, and during that famous war unemployment was increased to 6 per cent. The Prime Minister and the country ought to be reminded of his statement. Then he called his policy "strong medicine", and he said at a press conference:
There are a lot of people in this country who are bargaining that, oh well, the government can't hang tough for too long because the government will only get frightened when it sees unemployment go up to six per cent. But if people think we are going to lose our nerve now, they should think again; we're not.
No wonder the Prime Minister does not like the press, because it sometimes reports what he says. The government did not win that battle against inflation. As a matter of fact, now we not only have high unemployment we also have high inflation. Who were the fall out victims of that war? They were the unemployed, some 700,000 of them. Let us not forget who were the ones really hurt by that high unemployment. Those who were hurt the worst in that war on inflation were those workers under the age of 25. The youngest workers in Canada were hurt by that war on inflation. The unemployment rate among the under 25 age group became the highest among all groups unemployed in Canada, and inflation hit double digit figures. That was the battle the government fought then.
Now the Liberals have decided that once again inflation is their enemy No. 1, and once again we are to be treated with another dose of strong medicine. This time they will not admit that they are starting out deliberately to increase unemployment. But thousands and thousands of Canadians will be out of work, which will perhaps be somewhat of an embarrassment to the government.
This time the government is controlling the wages of Canadian workers in spite of the fact that many of them have not even started to catch up with inflation and corporate profits over the last few years. Fortunately in the United States and in most of the rest of the world there are some indications that inflation has already started to come down. This time, unlike the last time, the Liberals may not be able to double our rate of unemployment through their mismanagement. The government is now proposing wage and price controls, which makes it obvious that the Liberals are willing to steal a policy from anyone who happens to have one.


Walter David Baker: And they are not very good thieves.


John R. Rodriguez: No, they are not. This reminds me very much of a story printed in primary readers about the jackdaw and the peacock. The jackdaw was such a dreary looking creature that he wanted to enhance his looks. He saw a peacock strutting around the farm yard, and when feathers fell from the peacock he took those feathers and stuck them into his body and strutted around the barnyard. The jackdaws rejected him because he was obviously not a jackdaw and they could see that, and of course he was not a peacock because he had stolen the feathers. As a result he was lonely and out in the cold.
What have the Liberals done this time? They have picked up a Conservative policy, an incredibly cynical move considering they fought an election and won on

opposition to price controls. In that campaign the Prime Minister called the controls "a proven disaster looking for a place to happen".
In his budget speech in May of last year the former finance minister said:
In our fight against inflation, I have rejected two possible approaches ... the second approach, urged upon us by the official opposition, is to impose a general system of price and wage controls. This would be totally ineffective in overcoming the kind of inflationary problem we have been and still are facing. What we need, still, is not controls, but an increase in supply.
Just this month in an interview with Peter Newman of Maclean's magazine the Prime Minister admitted that controls were useless. This is what the Prime Minister said: Controls themselves, whether it be a full freeze or control of prices and incomes, do not solve the underlying malaise of people generally trying to get more out of the economy than they put into it. If controls were a proper and effective device to change that psychology, we'd say, "Well, it's easy. Let's put on controls and one year down the road we'll take them off, and there'll be no more inflation." But I think every experience I know of-most recently the United States and the British experiences-is to the effect that when you take controls off you begin more or less where you were before.
Obviously the Prime Minister as late as within the last few weeks was admitting that wage and price controls are not the answer to the underlying malaise affecting the economy.
The entire anti-inflation program presented to us is in four parts, and it is worth while examining those parts.
The white paper lists the first part as being:
-fiscal and monetary policy aimed at increasing total demand and production at a rate consistent with the climbing inflation.
For years the government has tried to treat inflation as a simple problem of demand management. Using high interest rates and other deterrents the government has not only managed to decrease seriously the use of our industrial capacity, but it has almost destroyed the chances for average Canadians to own their own homes. It is doubtful that the government's use of monetary and fiscal controls will be any more effective or sensitive to the needs of the Canadian people than it has ever been.
The second plank in the government's platform is: Government expenditure policies aimed at limiting the growth of public expenditures and the rate of increase in Public Service employment.
How coincidental it is that just a couple of weeks ago the mandarins in the federal civil service received very handsome increases indeed, and all before midnight of Thanksgiving! How convenient that this policy did not come down until after the Bank of Canada's glass tower was up a few blocks from here, at a cost of $35 million!
Under what rationale or logic did the government spend $250,000 in taxpayers' money for a party for 3,000 honoured guests at Mirabel? The government spent $250,000 for a meal for 3,000 people, most of whom are probably well-heeled enough to afford their own. This is $250,000 of taxpayers' money down the drain for a party. I do not understand how the government can turn to the Canadian people, pointing a finger at them and saying that those people out there have to start tightening their belts, when the place to start tightening the belt is right here. I think
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it is phony, false, and hypocritical of it to say in effect, "don't do what I do, do what I say".
I think the people are quite right in saying to the government: "Up your noses. Until you start doing the kind of things you ought to do, giving the example you ought to give as parliamentarians, we will not follow."
It seems to me there are certainly large areas of public expense which could be cut, or even eliminated. The President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Chretien) asked for suggestions. Since I have been here I have heard the opposition consistently calling for the abolition of Information Canada. That is a splendid example of something that could be cut and would not be missed at all. But there are better examples yet.
I understand the estimated advertising budget for the federal government is over $35 million, by far the highest advertising budget of any marketing organization in the country. It has been suggested that the public relations function of the government may add as much as another $50 million to this bill. What are they trying to sell us for all these millions upon millions of dollars? The latest example we will be paying for is the scandalous wage and control monstrosity entitled Bill C-73, where members of the board who have already been named will be earning in the vicinity of $50,000 to $60,000. If that is the kind of restraint being urged upon the Canadian people then I cannot blame the Canadian people for being cynical about the kind of legislation being brought forward in this bill.
It would indeed be interesting to tally up the full amount the government finally spends on advertising and the p.r. work to sell this wage and price package to a skeptical public which is in no mood to accept the glib solutions the government would like to put before it.
When the government starts swinging its axe to cut expenditures, however, it will not be advertising or Information Canada which feels the blade. Instead it will be such areas as unemployment insurance and medicare, in respect of which the government has already indicated its desire to reduce spending.
It is rather interesting to note that the government will be coming forward in a couple of weeks with Bill C-69 which will change the financing of unemployment insurance, and which will say to the Canadian people that the government is no longer prepared to accept 4 per cent as a normal unemployment rate and will pick up any deficit in the account over that. The government wants to raise that figure to about 6 per cent. So in effect those who are working and those who are employers who employ workers will be picking up whatever deficits there are. In other words, when the government embarks upon programs which create unemployment it is the unemployed who pay, and it is the workers who work and those who are earning who will carry the burden of the mistakes of the government.
Of course it is those who are unemployed who are blamed. They are called lazy, they are called non-productive; and we have the advertisements about those who go to ski in Alberta and collect unemployment insurance. Those are the headlines that are used to beat them over the head. Benefits are reduced to the people who then are
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out of work. Indeed this must be some kind of very rough justice. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) talks about rough justice. Maybe that is what he means by rough justice. It is pretty tough on those who do not have jobs.
The third area where the government tells us it is planning to take action involves structural policies to deal with the special problems of energy, food, and housing, to ensure a more efficient and competitive economy and to improve labour-management relations. Since I have been here the first back-to-work legislation I experienced in this House was in 1973.
In the summer of 1973 we put the railway workers back to work. In the debate on that piece of legislation the Minister of Labour (Mr. Munro) and the other speakers on the government side got up and said that we must have another look at the collective bargaining process. There has been no look taken at it. Nothing ever gets done. When they are into this particular crisis now they whip out these little glib solutions of wage and price controls, which end up being wage controls, and talk in grandiose terms about improved labour-management relations. That is all I ever hear about around here. They will probably set up a committee to study it. Part of this area, we are told, relates to the need for substantial upward adjustment in particular areas of the price structure if adequate new supplies are to be forthcoming.
The second problem relates to the need for more competition and flexibility in the economy. The government is obviously referring to energy when it speaks of the need for prices to rise, in spite of the fact that oil company profits have risen despite the freeze on oil prices in several provinces. But it would at least be very interesting to know to what other particular areas it is referring. And it would also be interesting to know if this need for upward prices refers only to a chance for other industries to increase their profits with the government's blessing.
Discussion of the need for increased competition perhaps best reveals exactly how cynical the government is about this new legislation. It is the large, powerful, and concentrated corporations that have been the cause of much, and certainly reaped the benefit of most, of the inflation. This point was recognized by the former minister of consumer and corporate affairs, the hon. member for Windsor West (Mr. Gray), when he spoke to a Rotary club recently in Windsor. In his talk he quoted an American economist, Gardner C. Means, who had found that in the 12 months of economic decline starting at December, 1973, companies with a high degree of market power increased their wholesale prices by 27 per cent, while wholesale prices in firms in competitive industries rose by less than 5 per cent.
The former minister went on further to say that while the economist's research presumably deals with companies located in the United States, the similar organization of our economy made it likely that such research in Canada would show similar results. He also suggested that while the ability of companies to impose administered prices on the market place was not the only cause of inflation, it is an area of concern that should not be overlooked. But overlooked this problem has been for the last ten years since the government referred the whole question of competition to the Economic Council of Canada.

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The Economic Council had some harsh things to say about our free enterprise system. In its report on competition policy in 1969 the Economic Council of Canada said that in many areas of activity monopolistic tendencies have all but eliminated competitive market responses. The council also pointed out that in 1964 in more than one third of Canadian manufacturing industries as few as eight firms accounted for over 80 per cent of shipments in the industry. Oligopoly, or a market characterized by a few sellers rather than one or many, is probably the most common form of market structure in the Canadian economy, the report said. And they went on to say that many studies have proven that there exists, on the average a positive relationship between high levels of concentration and high profit levels.
The Economic Council of Canada pointed all this out, plus the fact that our economy was already more concentrated than the American economy and plus the fact that there tended to be a positive relationship between concentration in an industry and foreign domination of that industry.
The government's reaction to all this, to pressures even the former minister of consumer and corporate affairs seems to feel are inflationary, was to do nothing. Instead it decided the Canadian people should bear the full brunt of inflation. Instead it piddled around for nine years while concentrated industries made fatter and fatter profits and then, finally this year, it presented a piece of legislation which had been nine years in the making, the Competition Bill, called C-2, which is useless to stop the monopolistic excesses of the large corporations.
It took nine years for that bill to see the House of Commons. As a matter of fact that is the same period of time for the gestation of an elephant and many, myself included, would consider that Bill C-2 is nothing but a white elephant. We are told that Phase II of the competition bill, which will come down some day, will deal with monopolies, takeovers, all sorts of interlocking directorships and so on. I understand that before this can happen the minister intends to present the bill again for discussion. I thought the friends of the government who had already got to go over the bill had said enough, but apparently they feel they have not. So, while nothing is being done about oligopolies and their contribution to inflation, we have Phase IV of the government's program, wage controls. I say wage controls because it is obvious that in many cases prices are already out of control. The controls are described in this way:
A prices and incomes policy which establishes guidelines for responsible social behaviour in determining prices and incomes of groups, together with machinery for administering these guidelines and ensure compliance where necessary.
Almost everything about this bill is unacceptable to myself, my party and, I am sure, to the majority of the Canadian people. Wage controls, for example, are childishly simple to use, and it is obvious the government is itching to use them. But ministers have designed a bill whereby they will not even find it necessary to dirty their hands by dealing directly with the unions. Instead they can simply order an employer not to go outside of the guidelines by paying wages that might have been negotiated. And we are sure it will break the heart of many of those 1,500 so called large employers to say, "Sorry boys,

but we cannot give you that wage increase because the government says we cannot give you any more than 10 per cent, and if we do we are liable to a fine, imprisonment, or both".
If the large employers will find it easy to tell their unions that, then how much easier will it be for the smaller, non-unionized firms to tell their employees they cannot give them an increase. I am sure the Prime Minister will get all the co-operation he wants from employers when it comes to voluntary restraints. They will refuse wage hikes under the smoke screen of patriotism. I am sure we will hear the word "patriotism" bandied about. It is patriotic not to give more than 10 per cent. That reminds me of the saying that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
The government has repeatedly said that these controls are designed to help the little guy. The Minister of Finance said on television that if these controls are not followed "it is the people at the bottom of the scale who will be worse off". Yet what this legislation does is to maintain and increase the inequities that are already built into our society.
Lower wages in different parts of the country will be frozen at their present differentials. Perhaps most important, the people at the bottom end of the scale will be frozen at a position that has grown relatively worse over the last five years. In July of 1970, when the federal minimum wage was set at $1.65, it represented 55 per cent of the hourly wage in the manufacturing industry. By July, 1975, the federal minimum wage was raised to $2.60, but a level that then represented only 51 per cent of hourly manufacturing earnings.
In the five year period from July, 1970, to July, 1975, the federal minimum wage increased by 58 per cent, while during the same period, hourly earnings in manufacturing increased by 70 per cent. Now the federal government is suggesting a 10 per cent increase for these people. Even if they get this increase-and there is no reason to suspect that all of them will-they would only catch up to the position they enjoyed in 1970 in relation to the manufacturing industry.
In unionized companies labour will now face a double control. It seems to me that what has happened here is the introduction of another level in the collective bargaining process. When you have a group of workers who are organized, they negotiate with their employer under the collective bargaining laws of this country, and they either come to an agreement or they do not. They might order a strike, and then matters sort themselves out through the collective bargaining process. What we have done now is to introduce another level of bargaining for those who are in the collective situation.
Right now companies are saying to those who represent the unions in the bargaining process, "Go to the anti-inflation tribunal and get an approval beyond the 10 per cent". The union representatives go to the tribunal, which says to them, "We cannot deal with the hypothetical case. Make a mutual representation from the employer and the employees, and we will consider it". It seems to me that that is not the way the manufacturers are treated.
October 21, 1975

It is interesting to note that on page 18 of the white paper there is a discrepancy between the way workers are treated and the way manufacturers are treated. The process is outlined thus:
It, however, a firm can demonstrate to the Anti-Inflation Board that it would be impractical or harmful to the national interest for it to price in the domestic market differently than the international market, the firm will not be regarded as having failed to fellow the guidelines if it prices all its products at international prices, but would be subject to the special levy on all its profits. Once firms have received permission to be treated in a particular way, they will continue to be treated that way for the whole of the program.
So here we are going to have manufacturers and producers going to the Anti-Inflation Board and asking, "Will you approve this price increase, this pricing system?". In effect it has been the practice in Canada that when such tribunals give such advice to corporations which come before them they advise them in the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law.
However, the union cannot go to the Anti-Inflation Board and ask to be advised whether its demand, which is in line with that of the international union in the United States, such as would be the case with the UAW, will be all right in the domestic market when dealing with the company. Surely the Anti-Inflation Board will say it cannot deal with a hypothetical situation in a unilateral way, and will advise them to make a representation with the company so that both of them come together before the board for approval. There is a discrepancy here, and an injustice in the way in which workers are treated as opposed to the treatment of those who manufacture products for sale.
The companies will have a great deal else to be happy about. Even the Minister of Finance admitted that it was arguable that "there is no way of preventing an army of company accountants circumventing the guidelines by padding costs and manipulating profits". His argument, however, was that the NDP had wanted a board which would also watch and possibly roll back some of the oligopoly prices. It is the government's legislation which is under debate, not this party's. There is a large difference between a board proposed by the NDP and the one proposed under this legislation. The difference is one of attitude at least, and in a will to use the legislation it handles.
It is impossible to believe that the odd couple now running the Anti-Inflation Board are serious about controlling company profits.
Who is this chap, Jean-Luc Pepin? He is the scion of some of the greatest corporations in Canada, namely, the Power Corporation, Canada Celanese, Canadian Steamship, Sidbec Corporation, etc. It is he who will decide what is an acceptable wage for the working class people, this man who is on the board of directors of several large corporations, and earns a salary of $50,000 to $60,000 a year. He will say to the workers making $4.10 a hour and who want $1.50 more, "You are too greedy, tighten your belt." I tell you, it is quite a pair you have there. This man's experiences are such that he represents the privileged class in this country, and this is the kind of discrepancy at which the working people will be looking. They will be saying, "Who is this fellow making $60,000 a year and telling us that $5 an hour is greedy?" All I can say is that this government has a lot of gall.
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And who is Beryl Plumptre? She has made it clear where her sympathies lie. One of the members of my party made the point the other day that when it came to reasons for food cost increases Plumptre could see only two things-producers and marketing boards. He was right as far as he went, but he forgot that she can also see labour and blame them, as she did recently during a grocery clerks' strike in British Columbia.
When she looked at corporate profits, in spite of the fact that some industries had increased their profits dramatically, she concluded that because other companies had increased their profits dramatically also, this was all right.
When it came to marketing boards, she was even worse. When chicken producers increased their return by 3 cents a pound, she howled, in spite of the fact that their percentage of the retail price had declined and despite the fact that the price of chicken had risen by 20 cents. Where did the other 17 cents go, and why was she not concerned about that?
Even the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) noticed that she was visibly upset by every gain to producers through marketing boards, yet when pork, which is not controlled, increased in price by 100 per cent, she made no comment; suddenly she was silent.
The Minister of Finance has told us repeatedly that profits can be controlled anyway because "for a long time we've had an effective income tax system to catch profits". If that is the case, then for a long time my party has been arguing that we need a new catcher. Every week papers such as the Financial Post publish a new loophole in which profits can be hidden, not to mention the obvious loophole which the government has deliberately created. This bill says nothing about capital gains, and surely this is one way in which companies, by retaining earnings and driving up stock values, will be able to return money to their investors.
Company profits will rise under this bill. First, as has already been pointed out, because profit levels are based on the previous five years, profits will rise over the next two years as the five year base moves. Second, productivity is bound to rise in this country as a natural recovery occurs in the world economy. Government policies of the last few years have ensured that the capacity of the manufacturing industry was underutilized. So, if natural improvements in the world economy take place and the present excess capacity begins to be used, it will be impossible for the corporations not to make large gains in productivity, and with them large gains in profit. These controls admit quite openly that large gains in productivity "resulting from the efforts of the firm, or of favourable cost developments which could not reasonably have been anticipated" will be allowed to the firm. Working people, on the other hand, have been strictly limited to a 2 per cent share in the increased productivity. I presume that this is more rough justice.
I noted before that when it comes to concentrated industries and their inflationary profits, the Economic Council of Canada has made clear that many of these firms were foreign dominated. They will have no difficulty dreaming up new expenses for their Canadian subsidiaries to pass

October 21, 1975
Anti-Inflation Act
through the economy and home to head office in New York. Even Northern Electric is setting up its international office in the United States, so Canadian companies too will be able to avoid these provisions.
Even some of Canada's business leaders, while giving cautious support to the bill, have had some reservations. Both the president of the Bank of Montreal and representatives of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association have indicated that while the bill might do some good, it would have been a great deal more useful 18 months ago. My party does not agree with this, of course, but it is an interesting comment on the ability of the government to make its timing and programs useless to everyone.
Soon we will be stuck with a bill which gives unprecedented power to government bureaucrats and hacks of various kinds, without any review by parliament. The government wants the right to change the guidelines at will without having to suffer the indignity of going before parliament and justifying its actions.
It is at least reasonable that the government will not want to discuss this bill again, for it can have only one of two effects-either its restraints will be successful in stopping any economic recovery, thereby throwing thousands more Canadians out of work, or the economy will recover in spite of it. The Minister of Finance has admitted that much of our inflation is imported, so just perhaps, Madam Speaker, we can import our recovery in spite of this bill.
I read recently that there has been a downturn in inflation throughout the world. The United States has just enjoyed the largest percentage gain in its GNP in 20 years. Inflation in the world, particularly in our closest trading partner, is in a downward spiral, and I tend to be very cynical about this kind of measure. The wage and price controls are to come off in three years, and it is also very significant that in three years there will be a federal election. I wonder if because inflation is on a downward spiral the government throws up this sham, Bill C-73; then of course in spite of the bill inflation will come down, and the government in 1978 will lift its wage and price controls and claim that its policy worked, at the same time claiming good government as a reason for re-election. That is the kind of scenario I see, and it is a cynical one on the part of the government.
It seems to me that common sense would make government members see the inequities in this wage control bill. Surely they can see that those who are unorganized and poor will not even receive the benefit of the 10 per cent on an average wages of $6,000 per year, or $600. They will not necessarily receive that. The fact is that they will probably receive much less. Surely hon. members opposite can see the inadequacies and the injustice of this bill.
The minister on television the other night said that this bill would go through second reading tomorrow or in a couple of days. I do not know what he was reading, but because of the need to amend this bill in a very effective way and to give it some kind of justice-it ought to be comprehensive and just, which it is not-it seems to me that hon. members should not permit this bill to become law until many of the inequities are corrected, so that we can pass legislation which is fair to all, whether they be high income earners or poor people in Canada.


Mr. Heward Grafftey (Brome-Missisquoi):: Madam Speaker-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some hon. Members:: Leader!


William Heward Grafftey: As we address ourselves to this bill, we cannot debate it in particular without a brief economic review of Canada over the past four years, and of what has brought about the necessity of imposing this kind of harsh legislation.
After seven and a half years of Trudeau socialism, and that is what we must call it-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: Order, please. All hon. members who wish to participate will be allowed to do so later. The hon. member for Brome-Missisquoi (Mr. Grafftey) now has the floor.


William Heward Grafftey: As I go across the country and people ask me what I mean by Trudeau socialism, I say that it is a very easy story to tell.


An hon. Member:: Speak on the bill.


William Heward Grafftey: I can understand the frustration of the hon. member, but she will just have to sit there and bear it.
Between 1958 and 1962 when there were mostly Liberals and Conservatives in this House I remember going back to my province, the province of Quebec, and very often around the island of Montreal there would be various forums in which people wanted the Liberal Party, the Progressive Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party to be represented. It was easy to find members from the Liberal side and the Progressive Conservative side, but in a noblesse oblige fashion the various institutions invariably invited the NDP to send a representative to these many meetings. The same person always turned up, and he gave the extreme socialist line-the present Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), who at that time was a part time professor at the university of Montreal-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


William Heward Grafftey: This may be difficult to listen to, but sit back and listen.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: I know that hon. members opposite do not like this story, but it is going to be told, and told again and again.
In the 1963 elections the Prime Minister voted for, worked for, and contributed to the New Democratic Party-caught the political bug, if you will-but he knew one thing we do not do in Quebec; that we do not send socialists to Ottawa. Instead of working with such honourable Canadians as Charles Taylor to build up the NDP, the Prime Minister took on the Liberal Party and, whether we like it or not, what we have in Canada today is Trudeau socialism.
October 21, 1975


Some hon. Members:: Shame!


William Heward Grafftey: It is because of Trudeau socialism, purely and simply, that we have this kind of legislation before us today. After seven and a half years of Trudeau socialism, what do we have? We have something which is almost impossible to attain in any country in the modern western world-record inflation, record unemployment, record regional disparities, and what is even worse, a record balance of payments deficit.
Spokesmen for the government keep prattling the same propaganda that, compared to the other countries in the western world, we are not doing too badly. I say that we are doing very badly compared to most countries in the western world. If you consider our potential, consider what we could do if the government would direct the economy of Canada decently, we are doing very badly indeed.
I hear government spokesmen justifying the government's abominable economic record. When I hear such spokesmen comparing our country with other countries of the western world, they remind me of the boy who has not done one bit of studying in school and who, when facing his exams, says, "I don't care if I flunk, because everybody else is flunking with me." Is that not a grand attitude? Hearing comparisons between our country and other countries of the western world is no solace for those who have suffered because of the government's mismanagement of the economy.
Compare our present situation with that of 15 years ago. Who, today, can purchase his own home in this country?


Mr. Hees:: Hardly anyone.


William Heward Grafftey: How much encouragement is given for the small businessman to buy his own business?


George Harris Hees: None at all.


William Heward Grafftey: How much encouragement are you giving the farmer either to stay on or to buy his own farm?


George Harris Hees: None at all.


William Heward Grafftey: And, compared with other countries of the western world, how much legislation is there on our statute books to encourage Canadian investment in Canadian enterprise?


George Harris Hees: Precious little.


William Heward Grafftey: Madam Speaker, that is the background we must consider when debating the present negative legislation. After seven and a half years of Trudeau socialism-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


William Heward Grafftey: -we have lost much of our economic freedom.


An hon. Member:: Say that outside the House.


William Heward Grafftey: We said it in Hochelaga.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
Anti-Inflation Act


William Heward Grafftey: And we shall keep on saying it in the next election, when we shall win many seats in Quebec.
After seven and a half years of Trudeau socialism we, in this country, have lost much of our economic freedom. If you do not think so just cross this country and ask individual Canadians. I think-and on this I agree with the NDP-that there are many aspects of freedom other than economic freedom; yet I firmly believe that when we lose much of our economic freedom, we lose much of our political freedom. Future historians will say that never in the history of Canada was this country directed by such a bunch of economic illiterates as we have today.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: What else has happened to the Canadian economy since it came under the dictates of Trudeau socialism seven and a half years ago? When the Prime Minister took over the direction of this government seven and half short years ago-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: -only 30 per cent of our Gross National Product was taken up by the public sector. Now the share taken by the public sector has risen from 30 per cent to practically 40 per cent. Yet Sweden, a country calling itself the jewel of socialism in the western world, directs only 32 per cent of its gross national product to its public sector, proportionately a full 8 percentage points less than Canada directs to the public sector.
Perhaps one should not make these kinds of comparisons with other countries. Nonetheless, whatever you may think about the Swedish system, you must concede that Sweden has introduced many dynamic programs in the fields of environment, housing, and medicare. Those programs are in place in Sweden only because they are well run and because on the statute books of that country, but not of this country, there are many positive laws which provide tax incentives and encourage the private sector to generate taxes which pay for these programs. And what has happened in this country? The government is always compromising with the NDP-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: It's the truth, and it hurts.


William Heward Grafftey: I know it hurts, and this is only the beginning. If you think it hurts now wait until we get really tough.


Mr. Guay (St. Boniface):: You are losing votes right now.


William Heward Grafftey: What sort of programs have governments introduced in this country since the end of the second world war? This government, for short-term political gain, has been compromising with the NDP. Why, many of our programs are half socialist, half free enterprise. They bilk the taxpayer and they are just not working.


Mr. Nystrom:: You sound like a frustrated Social Crediter.


William Heward Grafftey: Madam Speaker, I am not sure if the Prime Minister wanted to fire the previous minister of
8426

October 21, 1975
Anti-Inflation Act
finance, or whether the minister quit. Perhaps it was a combination of both. Perhaps, after introducing four of the worst budgets ever presented in the history of this House, the former minister tried to blame the Prime Minister, or perhaps the Prime Minister blamed the minister. I can imagine the scenario. The minister was backed into a corner. He had listened to the conventional wisdom advice proffered by the Bank of Canada and his officials, advice which was based on Keynesian economics. The point is that under the Keynesian concept, the deficit or surplus, as the case may be, was meant to be budgeted for when only 30 per cent, or at most 33 per cent, of the Gross National Product is absolved by the public sector. At present 40 per cent goes to the public sector. Hence there is no leeway in which for the government or the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) to manoeuvre. That is why we are in our present mess, a mess which the present Minister of Finance will not be able to correct without the leadership and support of the Prime Minister.
The ball game for Canada and Canadians is almost over, largely because the government has budgeted and dealt recklessly with the short-term windfalls accruing to us from our non-renewable natural resources.
As I consider the background to our plight and as I consider the mess our country is in because of the government's doctrinaire approach, I am proud to call myself a Progressive Conservative.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


William Heward Grafftey: In essence this means that we support humane, decent, and civilized social legislation but, compared to the Trudeau socialistic policies of today, conservative economic fiscal and monetary policies.
This country has suffered from the economic lunacy of the government. I am sure that ministers of the Crown would love to present a list of programs we should embark on in the field of social welfare. But, because of the negative economic policies of the government, we have not generated in this country the kind of growth in the private sector which will support dynamic programs. I say most emphatically that the truth of my remarks will be borne out by any member who wishes to cross this country, who puts his ear to the ground and listens to the grassroots. Never before in my 14 years as a member of this House have I heard the Canadian people calling more definitely and clearly for an alternative to this government, for a constructive conservative alternative to the Trudeau socialism we are getting today.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: Speaking in more detail in relation to the specific legislation we are discussing, in concert with my leader-


An hon. Member:: Which one?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: We have a leader of the Progressive Conservative Party who is universally respected.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: I will not split hairs and get into the details as to whether the legislation proposed by the government is exactly like the legislation proposed by us in the last election. I will not get into the specific details as to whether our approach was different than theirs. With the government, we recognize that inflation is a problem to be licked, and with the government, putting Canada before party, we hope it will be licked, not only in Canada, but in the whole western world. However, I would like to serve notice on the government that we firmly believe this legislation cannot and should not pass through this House of Commons unless there is a little bit of give and take on third reading vis-a-vis the constructive, not partisan, amendments we will be putting forward for the good of Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: That is not to say that I am not a little suspicious. I know the government with all its good intentions. The first thing it will make sure happens is that there will be a sprawling bureaucracy. It is more than passing strange that the greatest detailed attention they gave to putting this program in effect, even before they explained to the cabinet what the program was all about, was slowly but surely to get an army of bureaucrats into the 28 regions. I am a little suspicious about the government's good intentions in terms of not wanting, demanding, or having an army of bureaucrats to implement this kind of legislation.
Speakers from this side of the House who preceded me alluded to the fact that the government must lead by example. Although we get pretty partisan on the floor of this House, members of the opposition also suffer when governments lose their credibility, as this government is losing its credibility.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: Having presided over a budget increase of $10 billion to $36 billion in seven and a half years, all of a sudden the Prime Minister on the eve of a by-election by some unknown stroke, and I would like to do a little investigating about that, got on prime time television. Having spent and spent, and spent some more, he went before the Canadian people and said, "Do as I say, not as I do."


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: Having spent this country into the worst economic mess it has been in since the last depression, he had the nerve to go on public television and say, "Forget about it all. We did not do it. You, Mr. Laborer, and you, Mr. Management, buckle your belts." It reminded me of a drunk preaching temperance.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: Let us make no mistake about it. Economists rarely agree on anything, but one thing on which
October 21, 1975

they do agree is that the number one reason for domestic inflation in Canada today has been the reckless regard of this government in terms of spending. When you compare it with any country in the western world, we come out the worst.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: I will underline, for the second and the third time, that each and every member of this House, putting country before party, hopes that this legislation- amended, mind you-will do something to better the situation for all Canadians in terms of the fight against inflation. However, I want to underline again and again that this program cannot work in a vacuum.
I am not going to get into the ballgame of quoting percentages. I know that a fixed rate of increasing the money supply by the Bank of Canada in relation to the monetary policy could, as our leader has said time and time again, create unnecessary tight money situations in many parts of this country. However, surely the time has come with an anti-inflation program of this nature to co-ordinate it with deep and profound monetary and fiscal reform.
I hope the government and its minions have learned their lesson, that you just cannot let the printing presses roll ad infinitum. There must be some co-ordinated, constructive and organized policy vis-a-vis monetary reform in the printing of money, fiscal reform, and this present program. Suffice it to say that this program will not work in a vacuum without meaningful and profound fiscal and monetary reform, and it must be indicated to Canadians, not tomorrow, but right away.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: Stop treating the Canadian people like a bunch of imbeciles. I hope not too many people read the white paper given to members on this side of the House, and which it is intended will bring restraint and leadership to restore the government's lost credibility. I read it time and again. It was plagued with loopholes and euphemisms, saying we don't really mean it. Leadership and restoring credibility are the only way this program can work.
If we do not have fiscal reform sooner than later, do not for one minute expect this ad hoc program to work in a vacuum, because it won't. Within six weeks time from this present moment, the Minister of Finance should bring down a new budget. I know that his bureaucrats will tell him it cannot be done. Having served a very great minister of finance as his parliamentary secretary over ten years ago, I know it can be done. Where there's a will, there's a way.
The government must bring down a budget within six weeks, not white papers full of loopholes but a budget indicating its real and meaningful intentions. That budget should indicate at least a $l*/2 billion tax cut across the board coupled with a $114 billion cut in current government expenditures. I am not going to fall into the old question and answer game of what specific programs should be cut.


An hon. Member:: Information Canada.
Anti-Inflation Act


William Heward Grafftey: Information Canada, right out the window, $15 million. I know the old game. It might have been relevant ten years ago. The member from the New Democratic Party who spoke just a few minutes ago, as well as the other economic illiterates, should pay some attention to better management of programs. I can suggest better management of the UIC without changing one iota of the substance of the law. In other words, there should be better co-ordination between UIC offices, in Sherbrooke and everywhere else, and Manpower offices. Better administration of this fund alone would save the taxpayer about $1 billion a year. There should be better management of medicare. This would save money. Therefore, don't ask me what programs should be cut.
If they only thought this was important, then along with the $1.5 billion tax cut which should come with a new budget within six weeks, we could secure a saving of at least $1.5 billion in current expenditure, not by eliminating programs but by increasing efficiency, and the gain in credibility would be enormous. The only way in which the government could demonstrate to the Canadian people that it was really serious about a program of restraint would be to adopt such a program as I have described. Do not expect to build up in the private sector the good will which will be needed in order to make this program effective in the absence of a positive commitment from government itself.
I should like the government to indicate that the growth in fiscal expenditures for the next budget year is to be frozen at 8 per cent and that there will be an immediate freeze in the expansion of the bureaucracy-this includes the army of minions to be set up across the country to enforce this legislation.
What is even more important, this new budget must be one designed primarily to get the economy moving again. The government must stop bad-mouthing the private sector. All the businessmen I have talked to-businessmen who are every bit as good Canadians as we are, working hand in hand with labour and making this country go- say that when they come to Ottawa they have a feeling that the Prime Minister and his cabinet think they are a bunch of criminals.


Some hon. Members:: Oh!


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Heward Grafftey: I have spoken to businessmen from one end of the country to the other, some of them well into their sixties. And they tell me that never in all their working years have they come to Ottawa and met with such a lousy and unsympathetic hearing from a government, which one day is anti-labour and another day is anti-business, depending on which minister is speaking.


An hon. Member:: And what are you?


William Heward Grafftey: I am in favour of government, labour, and business working together in co-operation.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
29669-50(4

October 21, 1975
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William Heward Grafftey: Apart from the freezing of the bureaucracy, the freezing of expenditures, and the cuts in taxation which should be a part of this budget to be brought down in six weeks, the package must inaugurate a whole area of incentives, tax and otherwise, to get the economy moving again. This means more Canadians being able to own their own homes, or own small businesses; it means more Canadians being able to buy farms or stay on their farms.
Not least important, the new budget must make room for certain provisions to encourage Canadians to invest in Canadian enterprises, be it in equities or in any other way. As a Progressive Conservative I believe that democracy is well served when an individual citizen is encouraged to have an ownership stake in his country. Under doctrinaire Trudeau socialism, conventional wisdom is that the government should own and control everything. That is one of the reasons why we are in the mess in which we find ourselves today and are obliged to resort to this kind of negative legislation.
I have tried to articulate in general outline a constructive conservative economic philosophy as opposed to the Trudeau socialism we are getting. But in the social field this budget should have many positive things to say about housing. For instance, it should provide for the complete elimination of the sales tax on building materials and for tax exemptions, if you will, in respect of mortgage interest payments and local property tax payments. And, I would add, in co-operation with the private sector, especially in large metropolitan areas, there should be provision for setting up land banks.
In conclusion, Madam Speaker, I would say we hope this legislation, be it ever so late, will do something to alleviate a situation which is largely of the government's own making.


An hon. Member:: Rubbish!


William Heward Grafftey: An hon. member says "rubbish". I am not sure he can spell it, but he says it. We shall be offering amendments and we hope for the good of Canada that members opposite, especially those on the treasury benches, will view those amendments in a bipartisan spirit, because we would not want it to fail two years from now and then have the dubious honour of saying "We told you so." I say once again that the program cannot work in a vacuum in the absence of a clear indication to the Canadian people that the government is serious about co-ordinating a fiscal and monetary policy to go along with it. If we all work together in a spirit of harmony across this House I am sure much can be done to confront the grave economic problems which are facing the Canadian people.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that on entering this debate I should make some comment about certain of the things which have been said by other participants in it. The comments of the hon. member who has just resumed his seat were somewhat confusing to me. If I understood him rightly he said we were interfering with the economy too much. Then he went on to say we should be directing the economy to a greater extent than we are. He talked about private enterprise, and I could not help thinking of that

great private enterprise province called Alberta, one which has more socialist ownership than any other region in Canada and which is daily extending this ownership under the present government out there.
One or two members made comments about cabinet ministers using the executive jet fleet we have. I think I should put it on record just how many aircraft we have in this great executive jet fleet. We have three Jet Stars, of which two were bought at the time the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker) was prime minister of this country in 1962; I am told they were kept in the hangars all through that year for some unknown reason-I do not know whether it was to curtail inflation or whether they were scared to use them. The third was bought second hand by the right hon. gentleman's successor, the late Mr. Pearson, when he was prime minister. That is the jet executive fleet that we have. All of these aircraft are older than 12 years.
Then I come to the other great executive fleet. The hon. member for Calgary South (Mr. Bawden) knows some of these planes very well. He traded in his old King Aire on a new plane, and it is available for cabinet ministers to fly in when it is not broken down. Then there are two other aircraft. They are Viscounts; one is 23 years of age and the other 24. They are kept, I am told, in top flying shape at all times but you can use them only for short trips, and so on, within the immediate area of Ottawa. Then there are the small Falcons owned by the military and which military pilots use to get in their flying hours. So they might as well fly us, as fly around just to get in their hours.
In protection of all the people who use these planes let me say this. The hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Hargrave) was at the meeting the other night when I mentioned the fact that the wind nearly blew us off the runway when we came in to land at the airport at Medicine Hat. The expert pilot immediately gunned the motor and we came round again with a little more force and landed. No one on the plane knew that he was having any difficulty at all. I do not believe he was because he had the aircraft under full control. The aircraft blew out a tire, but we did not even know about this until we pulled up in front of the little terminal at Medicine Hat. The pilots who fly both the military planes and the old Jet Stars make sure they are in as good a shape as possible, and they are pretty darned careful with them.
I used a little Falcon when I went on official government business to the Balkan countries just recently. Do you know what the common comment was when we pulled up in front of the terminal, Mr. Speaker? It was: "How come you come from such a big country and you have such a little airplane?" I said that we had a problem in Canada called inflation and that we would not be buying any new airplanes until we were in a position to say that we had cured inflation. Even these planes have to be constantly under surveillance to make sure they are in proper flying condition. The military crews do as excellent a job as the DOT crews as far as I am concerned, and I feel perfectly safe in their hands. Actually I feel safer there in these old planes that we use, which people call the jet fleet, than I do in a car on the highways.
October 21, 1975

When the former minister of finance was holding one of his anti-inflation meetings here I happened to be at the airport that day-I think I was flying Air Canada on that occasion-and I could not help but notice that each of five chief executives from the Toronto area arrived in a big jet. There were Gulfstream II's all lined up and so on. One fellow I used to know well from a mining company arrived in a big Gulfstream II, and he is one of the people the hon. member for Brome-Missisquoi (Mr. Grafftey) talked about. There are four of or five of them in the hangar which never seem to be used. I considered asking them to give us a ride now and then when ours had broken down. I remember one time when one of our old Viscounts broke down in Toronto and all of these planes were idle, and I know why the hon. Member for Calgary South traded in his old King Aire-it was not very dependable. I just wanted to put the record straight on the jet fleet that we use.
I am not ashamed to use this fleet at any time to take government to the people of this country. We could never, in this big country of ours, do this by commercial airline. We could never have the meetings we have, with all our staff and so on, in a commercial airliner. You could never get sufficient privacy for that kind of meeting. Anyone who says that a cabinet minister can use a commercial aircraft the same as anyone else just does not know the facts. The hon. member for Prince Edward-Hastings (Mr. Hees), or any other member, will tell you the same thing, Mr. Speaker.
I think we should be realistic when we listen to speeches about leadership, inflation, and government spending. Everyone asks for leadership. Why? Because the state of the economy is the most topical subject in Canada today. Everybody is talking about it. I ask hon. members to read the speeches in Hansard; they are all directed to what the federal government is doing about inflation.
We have taken some very bold steps in our fight to break inflation and the inflation syndrome. We had reached the point where inflation was feeding itself. People had come to expect inflation and were making excessive wage demands and marking up prices in the expectation that it would continue, and continue to get worse. We must bring inflation to its knees. We must change the attitude that we can take more out of the system than we put into it. If we do not change that attitude, inflation is bound to continue.
Inflation has hit the agricultural sector of our economy especially hard. Every time oil prices go up, farmers feel the pinch through increased operating costs for trucks, cars, tractors, machinery, fertilizers, feed, protein, labour and other inputs. Farmers have felt oil price rises as hard as, if not harder than, anyone in society.
Farmers have also been hit hard by wage inflation. Many farmers cannot hire farm labour because they cannot compete with the wage rates offered by industry. Land costs have gone out of sight in many parts of the country because of inflation. In many parts of Canada, land costs bear no relationship to productive agricultural value. It is a simple case of too much money being offered by people who want land-not necessarily to produce food, but as a speculation and a hedge against inflation. Canada must stop inflation in its tracks. To do this, all of us must stop asking for more from the economy than we are put-
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ting in. If people want to receive more, they should produce more.
I repeat that farmers have been especially hard hit by inflation. Farmers in all parts of Canada have been caught in the squeeze. The whole problem with inflation and farmers' costs can be illustrated by an experience one of my neighbours had last summer. Near a town called Leamington a farmer had a 14-acre field of yellow beans this summer, and the crop was a good one. That was the root of his problems. For one thing, he could not get sufficient pickers. He had to pay the minimum wage, and he could not pay more or he would have been selling his beans at a loss. The bottom had dropped out of the market for his crop; it was down to 13 cents a pound.
Although the bottom dropped out of the price this farmer could get for his beans, it did not fall out of the labour market. Nor did the bottom fall out of the cost of producing these beans, the cost of machinery, gas, fertilizer or seed. None of these commodities went down in price.
Inflation is deadly to the farm community. That is why I am sure this anti-inflation program will be in the best interests of all, the farmers included. It will also benefit consumers. This government does not want the value of the dollar to drop, and this is the core of the program. We want Canadians to get value for their dollar. However, to get value for their dollar they will have to give value for their dollar. That boils down to productivity.
No farmer is going to be afraid of any program based on productivity. After all, in the last ten years farmers more than doubled their productivity performance. Non-farm sectors only increased their productivity by an average of 40 per cent, and that includes lawyers.
Some hon. members have been critical of the program. They ask, how can farmers and fishermen be exempt from the guidelines when the operations of marketing boards must obey the guidelines? I have heard people say that that is inconsistent. I have heard others say that the anti-inflation board is out to get marketing boards. Neither is true. There is a simple explanation for having marketing boards under the guidelines and not the farmers. Most farmers and fishermen in this country are unorganized, and therefore they have little power to influence the prices they receive. If they do not have a lot of clout in the marketplace, then they cannot command an inflated price. So there is really no need for controls.
Some marketing boards do have more clout in the market place, and that is why they live by the guidelines. Now I wish to deal with the important difference-the difference between unions, professional groups and so on, and the marketing boards.
Marketing boards, even with this clout, cannot gouge. They cannot inflate prices beyond a fair level. Why is that so? It is so because the National Farm Products Marketing Council is the watchdog over national marketing boards. Who is on this council? There are representatives of labour, representatives of the consumers, representatives of producers, and representatives of business on the present council which demands that prices paid to producers be based on the cost of production and a reasonable

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return for their investment. This is scrutinized each and every week, and that is the consumer protection.
I announced this early in July, and I did so to prevent any agency under federal legislation from gouging consumers or raising prices indiscriminately.
What I am saying is that national marketing agencies are already living under the guidelines of this legislation and, in fact, they have been for months. Members of the opposition should be aware that any individual group could have appealed egg prices set by CEMA, or turkey prices set by the turkey marketing agency, the two boards that are under my jurisdiction. However, nobody did. Not one of the headline grabbers and not one of the members of the opposition who so constantly ridiculed those agencies made an appeal.
I think it is time to be honest with the farmers. They deserve to know that this government and this anti-inflation program are not making them the target of abuse. The only abuse comes from the unfounded allegations that stem from press-hungry members of the opposition and other people who have made no real investigation of how a marketing board works.
I heard one of these statements on CBC this morning in relation to a report made by the Food Prices Review Board yesterday. All I can say is that if egg farmers got paid at the same rate as that individual does for his five-minute contribution on CBC, which is about $600 an hour, you could not afford to buy an egg. Eggs at the present time are selling at the same price they were selling in 1951. I would ask anybody in this House, or any economist anywhere, to tell me what in the world you could buy for the same price today that you paid in 1951. The cheapest and best source of protein in all of Canada today is high quality eggs being produced by some of the most efficient producers of any commodity in this whole country.
Let us go one step further. Any new commodity group wishing to set up a national agency will be forced to justify its prices in the same way. It cannot set up a new agency unless it holds public hearings, and anyone can appear before that forum and state his feelings. The board then considers them and advises the Minister of Agriculture, who in turn advises the government whether there should be a new marketing board.
Strangely enough, producers across Canada are eager to justify the prices of their products and to justify them publicly through marketing boards. I remind you as well that the formula used to set prices for the national egg and turkey agencies was developed by independent experts, the best that could be found in Canada. There is nothing suspicious or inflationary built into the cost structure that presently exists in respect of these commodities, and that cost structure is made public.
The Prices Review Board's biased report on broilers refers to recent years after the provincial marketing boards saved the chicken farmers from oblivion. Why did they not go back to the 1960's when farmers borrowed heavily and invested in buildings and equipment to start in broiler production and were wiped out when the bottom dropped out of that market? You can find broiler houses all over Ontario and other parts of Canada that are as empty as can be because that happened in the 1960's, and

these producers have never been able to recoup their losses. Who do members of the opposition think paid for those losses if it was not the producers?
Why did they not investigate and relate the mortgage foreclosures and the desperate measures that broiler farmers had to take until they organized provincial broiler marketing boards in order to stay alive?
There is one statement often repeated by the Prices Review Board that is not founded on fact. Producer marketing boards, it is suggested, restrict production. The fact is that they do not restrict production at all. This is one statement that is completely unfounded on fact. It has been said that they restrict production in order to raise prices. They plan production for plenty of supply, and stabilize prices, and that is the principle of a good marketing board. I have not had time to study the report thoroughly, but the abbreviated report I received from my officials does not point out that the imports of broilers from the United States for this year have experienced a 75 per cent increase in total live and eviscerated birds. There is no border control on them whatsoever. So you can see they do not have a closed market or a monopoly. That is the most farfetched statement I have ever read at any time.
As I have said, these are provincial boards and have not become national marketing boards. They did go through the procedure of holding public hearings but I refused to let them go any further until I was satisfied with the suggestion that their boards should operate under what would really be a national concept. At no time and in no way would I become involved in that.
At no time has there been a shortage of products. In all instances products controlled by marketing boards have more than equalled consumer demand. They have actually produced for a surplus.
The report on broilers from the Prices Review Board states that "it should be possible surely to develop an alternative to supply management." Producers have been seeking methods for 50 years and I challenge the board to come up with another system which they can guarantee to work, instead of dodging their responsibilities.
While they are at it why do they not tell the manufacturers and the processors to ignore supply management? Why do they not tell the bakers to keep producing bread after the market is supplied? Perhaps they should tell the lumber mills not to close, tell the food manufacturers to continue producing, and tell the paper mills and automobile factories not to shut down when supply management warns them to curtail production. Why not have warehouses full of corn flakes? Think how wonderful it would be if newspapers would keep their presses running and sell newspapers at half price to those who cannot afford to pay full price, and here I think of those senior citizens in nursing homes, hospitals, etc. Think of the many places where they could supply these products to the people. This is all food for thought.
We met auto parts manufacturing people last night in this very building. I asked them if they produced parts without an order from some auto manufacturing company. They said: "Of course not. Do you think we are crazy? We do not turn a wheel unless we have an order because we
October 21, 1975

supply the orders and we do not speculate in respect of production in our plants."
Many people think this way in respect of food. Some economists philosophize that you should build up huge quantities of commodities and then disburse them at whatever price you can get. They call this the law of supply and demand.
One member earlier referred to some comments made by the chairman of the old Food Prices Review Board. He said the board did not mention a thing about pork. I agree that very few words are said about pork, but I can tell you that right today there are farmers signing contracts with Japan to supply pork at a price much below the speculative market price which is set from day to day in Canada. They have a clause in their contracts which states that if the cost accelerates they get more for their pork, and if costs go down they agree to sell to Japan for less.
This is a total program with signed contracts which gives them a decent and reasonable return for their investment and their productivity. They will do this for anyone in Canada if anyone wants them to do so, but many people say no, we should leave it up to the old hurly-burly, tumble type of thing involved to get what you can for the net product. This involves the livelihood of families, and they are not going to jeopardize that livelihood in that way. If they can get decent contracts they will produce.
We have lost 25 per cent of our production in one year because these producers depend on the North American market and they were selling below cost so they went out of production. No stabilization board can guarantee them a decent return unless it is done under a supply management program. They will sign contracts with Japan or any group in Canada that wants to take so many tons or thousands of tons of pork, and they will gladly supply it.
When we talk about food costs in Canada I think we should remind ourselves that it is not what some people make it out to be. Inflation in Canada has raised the cost of some foods to higher levels than in the United States. The main reason for the differences is higher wage settlements in Canada than in the United States. For example, average hourly earnings of workers in United States food processing and distribution areas increased by 10 per cent during 1974. In Canada, on the other hand, they went up by 20 per cent. The average hourly earnings in all retailing in Canada increased around 14 per cent.
Other reasons for higher food prices in Canada can be illustrated through profit margins. In many industries in the United States, such as egg production or milk production, farmers are losing money. In Canada, farmers are recovering their cost of production plus a profit in relation to size and investment. They have locked in their prices in respect of dairy production in Canada and cannot get an increase unless the review board goes over their costs, and so on.
There are plenty of examples of where Canadian food cost increases have lagged behind United States increases. Meat costs went up 8.6 per cent in Canada last year; 17 per cent in the United States. Poultry went up 14 per cent in Canada while United States prices jumped 23.8 per cent.
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Fish went up a little over 1 per cent in Canada while United States prices jumped 9.4 per cent.
Some people in the news media say that Canada lacks a national food policy. This kind of criticism crops up every so often. We have a food policy. I have spoken to farm leaders about this program and they do not think this program locks them into any system. It allows incentive for production. It allows a reasonable increase for extra costs to which they may be subjected. It is something which I think most of them are living with at the present time and have no objection to this program, which I call a program of reason for reasonable people.


John (Jack) Henry Horner: Mr. Speaker, this bill in respect of Canada's economic position today is one which gives me a heavy heart indeed. I entered Canadian politics because I was concerned about Canada. I ran in the last election because I was deeply concerned about Canada. I fully believe that the economic plight in which we find ourselves today is a direct responsibility of the federal government.
It is interesting to note that in 1974 when the Leader of the Conservative Party (Mr. Stanfield) advocated wage and price controls, or an incomes policy, the minister of finance at that time and the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) advocated up and down across this country that we were in no such dire need of the economic rigidity that would be entailed in such a policy.
The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan), who just finished a nonsensical kind of speech which is not even worthy of comment in the limited time available to me tonight, during the last election campaign said that we could not have wage and price controls or freezes on foodstuffs without those prices going right through the farm gate. He campaigned throughout Ontario and stated that food prices would be controlled. He said that control would go right through the farm gate to the manure pile. That was a popular statement during the last campaign. But now he stands up and says these things are necessary and that no farm groups and no established market boards, under the legislation or under the marketing council, will have a word of complaint to say about this legislation particularly after he gets done talking to them because he is such a persuasive speaker.


Mr. Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: It depends on whose manure pile you are talking about.


John (Jack) Henry Horner: Yes, I guess it depends on whose manure pile you are talking about. It is widely believed and widely-accepted that in 1974 I was not exactly fussy about wage and price controls. I was not fussy because I could foresee some of the rigidities that would be built into our society. I could foresee some of the difficulties that might come about through loss of productivity because of it. I could also foresee in 1974 that the inflationary cycle, which started in what might be called the western world, was started because of a rapid devaluation of the United States dollar. Our dollar was devalued at about the same rate right along with it, prior to December of 1973.
We have a little different situation now, and certainly we have quite a different program to answer the different problem today. One might say the first cycle in inflation

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was caused by the rapid devaluation of the dollar, and that the second round of inflation was caused by what might be called excessive demand through labour or collective bargaining by unions in our society. Today we see a government come forward with wage and price controls in a very sloppy and haphazard manner.
I think it is important to recognize that in 1974 the Conservative Party advocated a 90-day freeze and then a regular flow from that freeze. Today we see the sloppy application of a freeze, and a tightening over a 3 Vz year period. If there is rough justice to begin with it will be a lot rougher, and rigidity will be a lot firmer after 3 Vi years. To me this policy brings about a much deeper concern within me for this country of ours than I ever thought possible some 17 or 18 years ago when I first entered politics.
At page 8192 of Hansard for October 14 the minister is reported as having put forward this argument:
The hard fact is that the Canadian economy today is being subjected to underlying, domestically-generated inflationary forces that are far more severe than those being experienced by most of our major trading partners.
I do not accept that philosophy. The severe conditions which exist here today exist among our major trading partners. I admit that our major trading partners are handling those severe conditions much better than this government. President Ford has advocated a severe cutback of $28 billion in federal government expenditures in the United States. What do we see in this white paper, this glorified document? What do we see about government cut-backs in spending? Is there any comparable figure? Is there an amount of $2.8 billion, one tenth of the figure for the United States?


An hon. Member:: There was an amount of $1 billion on June 3.


John (Jack) Henry Horner: That was nonsensical. That was a wishful dream. We see the establishment of a board. The one critic who was really making hay with the consumers around here, whom I call the consumer advocate, is Mrs. Plump-tre. She has been gobbled up by this new board and relegated to second position. No more will we hear from her, although she parted with dire warnings about the present situation.
At page 8193 of Hansard we see the following:
We are suggesting that some members of this panel be nominated by provincial governments.
This is in reference to the Anti-Inflation Board.
One of the functions of the board will be to carry out discussions with all parties involved in an effort to bring about compliance with the guidelines. If the issue cannot be resolved satisfactorily, the board may refer it to the enforcement authority-
I say to the minister and to the country that in many cases the provincial governments welcome this because it gets them off the hook. If the minister wants to subject that board to some kind of checking balance, let him place some members of the opposition parties on that panel. Never mind the provincial governments, they are glad to see Ottawa take the blame and they can say it is Ottawa's fault, their guidelines did not work. Let the government place some members of the opposition parties in the federal House on that panel. It is the federal House that governs

all of Canada. It is from this place that Canada is governed, and that is the way it should be conceived and operated.
It is interesting to follow the defence by the Minister of Agriculture of the great marketing boards. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) referred to agriculture twice. The first time, as recorded at 8193 of Hansard, he spoke about farm prices received by farmers and fishermen for their products which, he said, will be exempt from the guidelines. Then he said, as recorded on page 8194 of Hansard, talking about farm prices, that the government must ensure that its price and marketing system is not structured to maintain inefficient agricultural production and distribution.
I say to you, Mr. Speaker, and to members of the House that there is not one member of CEMA, and of the National Marketing Council governing CEMA, who does not know that distribution of eggs under CEMA is a catastrophe. It does not follow any natural, normal lines whatsoever. Evidently eggs are moving as they were a few years ago when they shipped eggs from Newfoundland to British Columbia and it was costing them 19 cents a dozen to ship them over that distance. Is there economic sense in moving eggs from Newfoundland to B.C.? When they got to B.C. they were rotten and had to be thrown out. The same system is being followed today. The only difference is that CEMA is doing a better job of covering it up.
If they want to study the distribution methods of agricultural products under the marketing boards, then they should be studied and they are there to be studied. I hope that Madam Plumptre and Mr. Jean-Luc Pepin can examine this very fully because I believe the inefficiencies are there in large doses.
Let us take a look at what they are doing. As I said earlier, this is a sloppy freeze doomed to failure. What is the consumer concerned about? First of all he is concerned about food. These controls do not control food prices at all. The board will look into the distribution of food and will look at the inefficiencies, but will they concern themselves with the prices? Not at all. Will there be a freeze on freight rates? No; this legislation will not control transportation freight rates, nor will it control the second most needed commodity in this country, namely, housing. New houses can fetch any price; this will not be controlled. They had a great scare in this country brought about by the inefficiencies of the Minister of Finance.
Will this piece of legislation control energy costs? Not at all. What three things does the average consumer need in this country? Food, housing and heat. This legislation does not control any one of these three things. Let us suppose you want to do something else besides eating and keeping warm. Let us suppose you want to venture out into society. For that you want to borrow money. Before we can go anywhere, we must become productive.
This bill does not control interest rates. The cost of money is rising. Money has become very necessary in doing business. What else does this legislation not control? The Prime Minister went up and down the country during the 1974 campaign stating clearly that wage and price controls or an incomes policy would not control the price
October 21, 1975

of imported goods and therefore would not work. The government admits it will not even attempt to control the price of imported goods. How many component parts going into goods manufactured in Canada are imported? Quite a few.
I do not see how this legislation can work. What will it control? There is some suggestion that it might control the prices of manufactured goods. Let us take a look at how this can be done. Let us look at page 17 of the white paper where it is stated under the heading "Firms which are unable to allocate costs to individual products":
If a firm finds it impossible to allocate costs to individual products, it should price its products in such a way as to leave its percentage pre-tax net profit margin no higher than 95 per cent of its average percentage pre-tax net profit margin-
You can see the foolishness of this. If you cannot allocate costs, how can you say it will be 95 per cent of the previous year's costs? Anybody who has taken grade 12 math could fix the books so that the allocation is only 95 per cent of last year's costs. The next paragraph, under the heading of "Definition of costs" reads:
The regulations will include a detailed list of items which should be excluded from allowable costs. Included in this list will be such items as losses resulting from occurrences which are not typical of the normal business activities of the supplier-
So you can exclude a lot of things.
Then we come to the next paragraph headed "Frequency of price changes". It reads:
Firms are expected to refrain from increasing the price of any individual product more frequently than once every three months-
I have heard about inflation being calculated yearly, semi-annually and quarterly, but I did not know it was permissible to increase the price of goods under this freeze every three months. What will this do? It will clearly apply a freeze on wages.
I know it is popular today to condemn the workers, but the way to control inflation is to increase productivity. If you freeze workers' wages, do you think they will produce more? This party believes in increasing workers' wages to obtain greater productivity. If you allow a businessman to make a profit, he can plough that profit back into his business. A labourer with proper tools can produce more goods, and only through the production of more goods can we bring about a cure to inflation.
Then we have the grave matter of Canadian ownership and investment. If we freeze dividends, where will we find any money that is free in Canada? It will all go to the United States to make money for the companies down there, and the dividends will not be frozen.
In my view this bill is a shocking admission of the ineptitude of the government, and I think it should be and will be rejected by all Canadians as soon as they learn the truth about what this white paper encompasses.
Adjournment Debate



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

Mr. Robert McCleave (Halifax-East Hants):: Mr. Speaker, before I raise the topic which brings us here this evening, may I announce the baseball World Series present score for those who stayed here assiduously and did not go to the lobbies. It is: Boston 4, Cincinnati nothing; and Mr. Luis Tiant is still chewing his original wad of tobacco.
I hope I and the veterans of Nova Scotia will find out the future of the proposed rebuilding of the Camp Hill veterans' complex. This prompted my question the other day to the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. MacDonald), and brings me here this evening to find out what, if anything, is to be done to this building.
The Minister of Veterans Affairs in a speech to the 1975 convention of the Royal Canadian Legion held in Halifax on May 18 of this year noted:
There are about two million potential clients of the Department of Veterans Affairs-veterans and the dependants of veterans-in Canada today.
The department's responsibility to them, far from decreasing, has probably not yet reached its peak. As the average world war two veteran is still below normal retirement age, the number of DVA clients is growing larger, and will continue to do so for at least a short period of time before it starts to decline.
A few moments later in that same speech the minister said, "The department has 17,000 such clients in Nova Scotia".
It might be noted that Halifax is the metropolitan centre for Nova Scotia, indeed for Atlantic Canada, and attracts patients from many parts of the province to its hospital, so I think the problem of what to do about this aging hospital, built sometime around the second world war or immediately after-and of wooden buildings at that-is an appropriate one to raise here this evening.
On October 22 of last year I joined the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs briefly to ask about Camp Hill, and one of the replies given to me by Dr. A. F. Jones, Director General, treatment services, Department of Veterans Affairs on that occasion is found in the minutes, issue No. 2 of that committee, as follows:
The target dates for the planning are one year from September, and hopefully the tenders will be let a year from September. This was the target frame proposed at the time the announcement was made.
I said: "A year from last September," and Dr. Jones said: "That is right."
September has come and gone, but the hospital tenders have not been called. I gather that the hold up may be some negotiation with the provincial government which might deal with a widening of the use of the hospital, beyond the purely curative treatment of veterans, into

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other aspects of hospital care. That might be the problem, or there may be some other reason. I hope we do find the answer.
The assistant deputy minister of the Department of Veterans Affairs, W. B. Brittain of Ottawa, is quoted in the Chronicle-Herald of last Saturday as saying that "financial restraints"-that is, the current program with which we are now dealing in our business here- "have not been an issue yet in the matter." It is also noted in the same article by Miss Barbara Hinds, that the armed forces have declared themselves out; that is, they do not want to form a part of that particular complex. But this was known by myself, and I am sure by many other people, at least a year ago, so that the decision of the armed forces could not have been the reason for the delay in going ahead with the plans for Camp Hill.
The province is probably being consulted. I do not know why it is not making a decision as to whether it would have an interest in the long term future of the hospital, but the minister of health for the province, Mr. William MacEachern, at one time known very well and favourably here in the press gallery, said:
The DVA has always said they would be proceeding with the project whether the province took part in it or not.
Quoting him again from Miss Hinds' article, he said: "It is unclear if Ottawa is going ahead or not". Finally, to quote the Dean of Medicine at Dalhousie University, Dr. Lloyd B. MacPherson:
The metro area has a far lower ratio of beds to population than any other part of Nova Scotia-
And remember, we also have a lot of referrals from all other parts of the province.
In short, given the fact that there does not appear to be an austerity reason for the delay in building this hospital, there must be other reasons, but I am damned if I know what they are. I hope that when the parliamentary secretary replies he will be able to give me and the people in Nova Scotia the assurance that that hospital will get going very shortly.


Mr. S. Victor Railton (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Veterans Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Halifax-East Hants (Mr. McCleave) has covered the historic questions and negotiations concerning this matter extremely thoroughly. For a long time there have been under way long range plans for the rebuilding and rehabilitation of Camp Hill hospital and eventual negotiations with the University of Dalhousie. In view of, shall we say, my inexperience with veterans affairs procedures, I ought not to make any statement which I have not discussed with the minister. I therefore hope that the prepared statement in my hand will satisfy the hon. member. If not I will take the hon. member's remarks as notice and discuss them with the minister.
I am happy and pleased to be able to speak on behalf of the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. MacDonald) in replying to the question asked by the hon. member for Halifax-East Hants on the subject of the proposed Camp Hill hospital complex in Halifax.
Planning by the Department of Veterans Affairs, in conjunction with the consultants who were appointed some months ago and with planners from Dalhousie University, has been proceeding in the usual way. Within the next month the minister hopes to have preliminary proposals as to the nature of the new active treatment part of the hospital. That, I think, is fairly clear.
The proposal which we made was that we would develop plans for a 400-bed active treatment unit based on the premise that the government of Nova Scotia would ultimately accept that Camp Hill hospital should be transferred from the department, for the benefit of the community, subject to our reserving adequate numbers of priority beds for veterans and the transfer of our staff. In fact the Minister of Veterans Affairs was speaking today with the provincial minister of health for Nova Scotia and I can assure you, indeed, that discussions are moving forward on this matter.
If the hon. member wishes to raise further questions, I shall be pleased to bring them to the minister's attention.


Robert Jardine McCleave: I shall write.


HEALTH-POSSIBLE REVISION OF MAXIMUM LEVELS FOR MERCURY CHLORIDE AND PCB
Hon. Stanley Haidasz (Parkdale):: Mr. Speaker, it is becoming increasingly evident that we are living in a period of environmental disease. Increasing unbanization and industrialization, especially expanding technology, have altered our environment to such an extent that humans, animals, and plants are being exposed to an ever-growing number of harmful pollutants.
Recently a medical scientist at the National Cancer Institute stated that cancer in the last quarter of this century can be considered as a disease whose cause and control are rooted in the technology and economy of our society. Last week a biochemist and research worker at McMaster University in Hamilton was quoted in a newspaper article as saying that environmental effects cause up to 90 per cent of cancers and that current efforts are directed to a cure rather than elimination of causes.
In view of these remarks and mounting evidence of new toxic substances poisoning the environment, a comprehensive investigation of environmental pollutants should be undertaken by our governments in co-operation with university and industrial scientists without further delay. The eradication of present harmful pollutants and the prevention of toxic substances in future will not only contribute to the improvement to health but also reduce the cost of our hospital and medical programs and save many man hours and years in our industries.
The alarming statistics and new revelations of the harmful effect caused by environmental pollutants prompted me on October 14 to inquire of the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) whether any revised maximum permissible levels for mercury chloride and poly-chlorinated-biphenyls have been decided upon by officials of his department. In his answer the minister revealed that results of recent studies in the U.S.A. on the harmful effects of PCBs are causing serious concern for his department, and that his officials are examining the advisability of introducing standards which may be even more strict than those in force in the United States.
October 21, 1975

It is now widely accepted that vinyl chloride, a colourless gas that is the basic ingredient in the poly-chloride-vinyl industry, is the cause of an increasing number of cases of angio-sareoma of the liver. There is also great concern expressed that poly-chloride-vinyl present in containers and plastic wraps for food and drinks can leach into these food products and could cause cancer, birth defects, and diseases of the liver and kidneys.
What should be more alarming is the failure in the past of adequate screening and testing of toxic substances on the market and detecting them before they reach the air we breathe and the food we eat. It appears that most of the Canadian decisions relating to environmental pollutants and their maximum permissible levels are based upon work done by American scientists and regulations made by the health authorities in Washington.
I believe Canadian health authorities should take greater initiatives in starting investigations and making regulations by using more Canadian expertise instead of waiting and sometimes blindly following foreign sources. It is high time that we in Canada re-examine the present approach to public health, the present state of toxicology, the present anti-pollution laws. We must do better to prevent new toxic substances from entering the environment, as well as examining present pollutants, food additives, and drugs. Further delay in taking appropriate action will only compound our problems and cause irreparable damage. We cannot wait much longer before other disasters strike an unprepared public.


Mr. Bob Kaplan (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has identified an area which is right in the front of concern in Canada today. Before I turn to it, I know the hon. member will agree with me that in general, Canada does not ignore problems of pollution. In fact, in establishing legal frameworks and technological advances, Canada is a world leader.
The Department of National Health and Welfare, as the hon. member will certainly recall, is moving in its new perspectives on health to an ever greater concern for environment as a cause of illness. We look forward to even greater concerns from the department for advancing Canadian health through activities directed at the environment.
To deal with the matter of PCBs, I am glad to have the opportunity to bring new and important information to the attention of hon. members.
On October 3, 1975, the Ontario ministry of health recommended that Coho salmon caught in the Credit River should not be eaten more than once a week and that pregnant women should not eat the fish. This action was taken because residue levels of up to 20 ppm were being found in edible portions of Coho salmon. There is no commercial fishing that we know of there, but some are caught and eaten by sportsmen.
Surveys by the Fisheries Inspection Branch, Environment Canada, indicate that saltwater fish and most freshwater fish contain residues of PCBs well below 5 ppm. Surveys by the Health Protection Branch show that con-
Adjournment Debate
tamination of other foods with PCBs such as dairy products, eggs, and poultry is consistently low and often not detectable.
The U.S. food and drug administration set a tolerance for PCB's in fish of 5 ppm in 1972 based on the limited toxicological data available at that time. But it must be pointed out that much more information bearing on the safety of PCBs is now becoming available. Departmental officials did not recommend tolerance levels at that time because there was insufficient monitoring and toxicological data then available to make meaningful recommendations based on sound science. They have been working hard to acquire such data and have expanded their contacts with scientists around the world who are concerned about PCBs.
It is important that Canada should undertake its own research, as the hon. member has suggested, and as he knows we do, but at the same time we should not ignore international research activity.
Two major international meetings, one sponsored by the World Health Organization and the other by the U.S. Environmental Agency, are being held within the next two months to assess the PCB problem. It had been hoped we could await the outcome of these meetings before setting legal tolerances for PCBs in fish, in order to collate world knowledge in this area. In the light of our examination of the unpublished U.S. data, however, the matter appears to be too urgent to wait for the outcome of these meetings. Consequently, officers of the department are meeting with officers of the Fisheries and Marine Services, Environment Canada, to discuss immediate action. These discussions are now in progress and it is hoped the minister will be able to propose tolerances for PCBs in Canadian foods within the next few days.


FISHERIES-POSSIBLE DISCUSSION OF EXTENSION OF CONTROL OVER RESOURCES WITH UNITED STATES
Jack Marshall: Mr. Speaker, I wish to congratulate the hon. member for Saint-Michel (Miss Begin) on her appointment as Parliamentary Secretary to the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
I find it difficult to reconcile the position of Canada in its relationship with the United States as it applies to a unilateral declaration of a 200 mile fisheries zone-I repeat, Mr. Speaker, a fisheries zone, not a 200-mile economic zone or an extension to our continental shelf which we all agree will hopefully come about as a result of further negotiations.
As a result of recent discussions between the minister and his colleagues with the United States foreign affairs secretary, certain matters were discussed relating to fisheries and subsequently, according to press reports, Mr. Kissinger stated that the U.S. agrees with Canada's position regarding further negotiations to achieve its ultimate goals. But what was left unsaid-and still remains unanswered-is what discussions took place with regard to the bill which stands before the Senate and the House of Representatives in the Congress of the United States-Bill HR 200 entitled "The Establishment of United States Fisheries Conservation and Management Zone extending to

October 21, 1975
Adjournment Debate
the 200-mile limit." I therefore wish to ask the parliamentary secretary whether Mr. Kissinger was asked about his or the U.S. President's position in regard to this bill.
It is also difficult for me to reconcile; the growing numbers of nations that are declaring 200-mile fishing limits unilaterally, nations like Mexico, Iceland, Norway and, indeed, the United States, and I understand that this action is being taken because of their growing dissatisfaction with the pace at which the Law of the Sea negotiations are progressing. If all is well, as the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. MacEachen) keeps assuring us, then why have these nations declared their intentions since the last Law of the Sea Conference?
It is worth while noting the concern expressed at the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council deliberations on the Law of the Sea when the frightening revelation came forth from Mr. Cabot Martin, a dedicated student of ocean law, that any action by Canada would depend on United States initiatives. It was even more alarming to note that Mr. Martin, who has taken part in Law of the Sea Conferences, was informed by his American counterparts that the President of the United States supports the bill as presented to the House and Senate, as long as it did not take effect until January, 1977, which means that Canada would not declare if she was so disposed until after that date.
On a recent visit to the United States with a parliamentary delegation, discussions revealed that indeed such was the case, and I think that members opposite who attended will confirm that this was so. Let's look also at some of the statements made by international experts, Mr. Speaker. First, I quote from Mr. Jean Angrand, a specialist in international law, taken from an issue of International Perspective:
The recent conferences at Geneva and Caracas have produced no new solutions; in fact, the situation has become more complicated for several reasons, the main ones arising from the dissimilar positions taken by the participants and from the interaction of political claims and economic demands.
And I quote from a paper by Barry Duzan in the same publication, a gentleman who is preparing a book-length study on the Law of the Sea negotiations. One comment he made on one of the committees, committee II, is as follows;
In committee II dealing with nearly all the traditional law of the sea terms, developments bordered on the disastrous. Because of its extensive, complex and controversial agenda, this committee needed a significant move forward, a move which did not occur and indeed scarcely any progress was made. The committee spent two fruitless weeks reviewing the work of the Caracas session and did not even begin to meet until the last two weeks of the session.
Finally, this comment by the same expert:
The single negotiating texts did not commit anybody to anything, but it is hoped that they would attract sufficient support to act as a focus for subsequent negotiations, and thereby release delegates from the ruts of their oft repeated preferences as expressed in the numerous alternative articles in existing texts.
These were not made public until the last few minutes of the session, the idea being to avoid controversy, to give delegates time to reflect on the single texts outside the
pressure of the conference and to prepare their responses as a basis for the next session. A welcome side effect was their value as a visible product to justify the Geneva session. So I find it very difficult to believe the minister of external affairs, who all during the summer recess kept proclaiming across the country, and particularly in the maritimes, that all was well, that progress was being made, and that Canada was leading the conference toward victory.
I have more faith in what the fisheries minister is doing in his bilateral negotiations with those countries that are willing to co-operate on surveillance and quotas. But I deplore that I am expected to believe that solutions are just around the corner and that by continuing negotiating we will achieve our aims. It is obvious that this is going to take many more conferences. There is only one answer to the problem until international agreement is reached, and I repeat that is that Canada must take unilateral action immediately to protect our fish stocks by declaring a 200 mile fisheries zone before we are negotiated right out of the fishing industry. If the United States deems it important enough, why do we continue to procrastinate? Surely, then, we can continue to negotiate on offshore resources, sea passage, and the other main objectives to proclaim management and control out to our continental shelf, and I ask the minister to address himself to such action as I suggest.


Monique Bégin: Mr. Speaker, first of all I should like to thank my hon. colleague opposite for his very kind words regarding my recent appointment to this new responsibility. I also take it for granted that he will excuse my deficient knowledge of the English language, my lack of mastery of the law of the sea and the technical language that goes with such an important issue, one that is highly specialized. Since I have been in this House I have come to realize very deeply his concern, and that of his colleagues and my colleagues who represent fishing communities and fishing interests-in other words, Canadian interests-for this very acute problem. I have had the opportunity of being able to observe some of the lengthy deliberations that took place at the deliberations in New York during the penultimate session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
To relate my remarks more directly to the hon. member's present question, I might say that the question of the extension of fisheries jurisdiction to 200 miles was discussed on the occasion of Dr. Kissinger's visit to Ottawa. I am here referring to the discussions that took place between the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. MacEachen) and other Canadian ministers and the United States Secretary of State, Dr. Kissinger. I cannot speak here about the conversations that took place between the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and Dr. Kissinger; I should like to make that quite clear.
The hon. member will understand that I wish my minister had the occasion to answer this question for himself in the House, both because he would be far more aware of the exact tone of the deliberations and because I feel it would have been courteous on my part to let him do so. Unfortu-
October 21, 1975

nately, the Secretary of State for External Affairs, as my colleague knows, is now in England and Scotland opening the Institute for Canadian Studies. However, the hon. member for Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe (Mr. Marshall) can be assured that I will carry to him the exact meaning and concern of his question.
Both Canada and the United States attach great importance to early extension of their respective areas of fisheries jurisdiction. This matter has been the subject of consultation between the two countries for some time now, as the hon. member knows very well. I understand that the meeting with Dr. Kissinger was most useful. I am not in a position to explain, since I was not present, exactly what that "most useful" means. I do hope the question will be directed to the minister in that regard.
Adjournment Debate
I think it has been made quite clear on more than one occasion that the Government of Canada is determined to extend Canada's jurisdiction out to 200 miles. It has also been made quite clear that although we would wish to do that through an international treaty we are not waiting for the conclusion of that treaty to take action. Has my time expired, Mr. Speaker?


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until two o'clock tomorrow afternoon.
Motion agreed to and the House adjourned at 10.30 p.m.

Wednesday, October 22, 1975