1975-05-23

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. G. W. Baldwin (Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 to request the unanimous consent of the House for the proposal of a motion concerning the budget. The urgency concerns the statement alleged to have been made by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) on his provincial election trip through southern Ontario last night. In this statement, which could involve a serious breach of parliamentary ethics, he is reported by Canadian Press to have given some details of the contents of the budget by saying that the forthcoming federal budget will bring higher taxes to restrain the economy. Thereby he scooped the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner). I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe (Mr. Wagner):
That this House call upon the Minister of Finance to introduce his budget at once, to prevent further leaks of the contents of that budget.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The motion proposed pursuant to Standing Order 43 cannot be presented without the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


SOCIAL SECURITY
Mr. Adrien Lambert (Bellechasse):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 43, I seek the unanimous consent of the House to move a motion on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity.
The Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) having very clearly stated in the House last night that the bill he will shortly introduce on the old age security pension will concern only spouses aged between 60 and 65, I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Roberval (Mr. Gauthier):
That in the opinion of the House the needs of other groups, widowers, widows, single and others between 55 and 65 years of age should be taken into consideration without delay and the Minister of National Health and Welfare requested to bring forward immediately a bill providing income security for those groups whose situation is truly difficult.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The House has heard the hon. member's motion. Pursuant to Standing Order 43, it requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: There being no unanimous consent, the motion cannot be put.


POST OFFICE
Hon. W. G. Dinsdale (Brandon-Souris):: Mr. Speaker, I ask leave of the House to present a motion under Standing Order 43 on a matter of growing urgency. My motion concerns the work stoppages in the Post Office that are spreading across Canada, creating havoc in communications and causing economic chaos. In view of the contradictory statements being made with respect to the present state of collective bargaining for a new contract with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. McKenzie):
That the government and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers get to the bargaining table immediately, to work out a fair and equitable contract that will include adequate safeguards for the postal workers, including the impact of technological change, so that Canadians might be assured the high quality of postal service that has been denied them for the past eight years.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The motion proposed pursuant to Standing Order 43 cannot be presented without the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Wagner:: Mr. Speaker, the minister agreed.

May 23, 1975
Oral Questions



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Robert L. Stanfield (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for that not so artful dodger, the Minister of National Health and Welfare, about his responsibilities under the Food and Drugs Act, a federal statute which makes no reference to provincial inspectors or even to federal inspectors, but which requires the Minister of National Health and Welfare to ensure that food not fit for human consumption is not peddled to Canadians. Since the minister freely admitted yesterday that his department was aware of the problems with regard to meat inspection in the province of Quebec at least two years ago, I ask the minister pointedly not what he has done in terms of discussions, but what he has done to draw this problem to the attention of the government of the province of Quebec and to the attention of his colleague, the Minister of Agriculture, so that these very evident shortcomings in the meat inspection system in that province could be corrected?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: As I have already indicated, as soon as rumours started going round some two years ago, the inspectors of my department started to look into them in order to check whether there was any truth to them; upon finding concrete evidence that there was, they immediately asked the appropriate police force to make the necessary inquiry. The Quebec government was advised of the matter at that time, since the Quebec police force as well as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were involved in the police inquiry of which we see the results today.


GOVERNMENT ACTION IN PROVINCES OTHER THAN QUEBEC TO ASSURE MEAT UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION NOT SOLD
Robert Lorne Stanfield: will ask the minister another question with respect to his responsibilities under this act. What action has he taken with regard to canvassing the situation in other provinces? Having been well aware of the situation in the province of Quebec, what action has he taken with respect to other provinces to ensure that the kind of laxity and confusion which has been indicated in Quebec does not exist elsewhere in Canada?


Marc Lalonde: As I have just indicated, with regard to the situation in Quebec, none of the packing plants implicated are inspected by the federal Department of Agriculture. At the present time, there are no indications that packing plants in other provinces under the jurisdiction of the federal government are involved in practices similar to

those discovered in Quebec. However, should any come to light, my officials will look into the matter immediately and take whatever steps are necessary. Still, I must remind the Leader of the Opposition that a number of those packing plants are inspected by representatives of the federal Department of Agriculture. Other are inspected by provincial inspectors; in still other cases, some provinces have delegated to federal inspectors of the Department of Agriculture the responsibility of checking operations of packing plants, within their respective jurisdictions.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Now that we are aware of the shocking situation in the province of Quebec, I will give the minister one further chance to tell this House whether he has conducted any survey with regard to the quality of inspection in the other provinces and whether he has done anything at all-not to pass off excuses or red herrings about federal inspection-to discharge his responsibility. Is he in a position to tell this House that meat is in fact being adequately inspected in the other provinces today?


Marc Lalonde: I have already answered that question, Mr. Speaker, when the hon. Leader of the Opposition put his first one.


GOVERNMENT ACTION TO PROTECT QUEBEC CONSUMERS FROM MEAT UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION
Mr. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, in view of the statement made yesterday by the Quebec minister of agriculture that the Minister of National Health and Welfare was shirking his responsibility and not discharging his statutory responsibilities to the people of Quebec, what is the minister now doing in light of the daily revelations in Quebec, the latest of which indicated that prepared meats are made from contaminated or diseased beef? What is the minister doing now to put at ease the minds of consumers in the province of Quebec that meat has been properly inspected to protect them?


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I still believe that the best proof that steps-have been taken is the investigation going on right now in Montreal. And, as the hon. member knows, the packing plants concerned have had their permit withdrawn by the Quebec government. As for the statement of the Quebec minister of agriculture, I am not aware of it. I shall look into what he may have said but it has nothing to do with the facts which everybody can check. Institutions being investigated at the present time fall under the Quebec government's jurisdiction.


James Aloysius McGrath: A supplementary question. The inquiry taking place in Quebec is a provincial inquiry. The minister cannot come to the House and tell us that he has no jurisdiction because clearly under the Food and Drugs Act he has complete jurisdiction over all packing houses. I ask the minister, in discharging that responsibility, if he will do as much now as he did last fall when Canadians were
May 23, 1975

faced with the prospect of eating contaminated hamburger. Will he give the House some assurance that an effort is being made to muster all the inspection capabilities he has, to send inspectors into the province of Quebec and discharge his own responsibilities and lay charges where they are warranted?


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, surely the hon. member's suggestion does not deserve to be retained for the simple reason that, as I mentioned before, it is because of the work carried out by my inspectors in the province of Quebec and the current investigation that results have been obtained. The time to send investigators into the field has been long gone: the job was done over the past two years with the co-operation of the police force concerned and some of my departmental inspectors.


REASON FOR FAILURE TO PROSECUTE QUEBEC MERCHANTS SELLING MEAT UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION
James Aloysius McGrath: A final supplementary. If the minister now tells the House that the present revelations are as a result of the work done by his department perhaps he can explain to the House why he has not laid charges himself under the Food and Drugs Act.


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, this is probably the third time the hon. member has asked this question. The reply is quite clear and simple: before instituting proceedings, we must collect the necessary evidence if we do not want to see our petition get thrown out of court. This is exactly what we have been doing for the past few months and the case is before the board of inquiry. I have personally contacted the chairman of this board. He fully agrees that we should let the investigation continue so as to bring out all the facts, before instituting legal procedures, which might otherwise cause prejudice to the current investigation.


FINANCE
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Finance along the lines of questions I put to him yesterday about the layoffs at the Firestone Rubber plant in Whitby and whether this could be attributed to the reduction in tariffs by the Canadian government. I should like to ask the minister now if he is aware that the deficit from the balance of trade for the sale and purchase of tires in the United States which has been running in the neighbourhood of $25 million a year last year jumped to $155 million and for the first two months of this year was $24 million. In other words, if the trend continues we will have a deficit in the balance of payments of more than $150 million. What inquiries are being made and what does the
Oral Questions
minister and his colleague the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce propose to do about this very serious situation?


Hon. John N. Turner (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the hon. member's questions yesterday I asked that the facts be brought to me. Because of the additional aspects brought forward by the hon. member this morning I will have further consultations with the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, and in view of the fact that the lay-off of almost 300 people at Whitby is not the only lay-off in the industry as there will be more in other cities in Ontario resulting in close to 2,000 people being laid off, will the minister discuss this matter with his colleague if he has not already done so? Also, what discussions are being held, if any, with representatives of the rubber industry about the problems of our worsening trade with the United States in tires and tubes?


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I understand there have been discussions with the industry but I should like to bring the whole matter up to date and get in touch with the hon. member.


REQUEST FOR MEASURES TO ASSURE CANADA'S SHARE OF NORTH AMERICAN TIRE MARKET
David Orlikow: Would the minister discuss with his colleague, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, the necessity, let alone the desirability, of meeting with representatives of the industry to attempt to get some assurance from them that new investment in Canada over the next few years will be at least proportional to our share of purchasing on the North American market because, as I have indicated, in recent years there has been a very sharp decrease in our share and a worsening in the situation of the whole industry and of workers?


John Napier Turner: On that aspect as well, my recollection is that certain representatives of the unions concerned have been in touch with our people.


CONSUMER AFFAIRS
Mr. C. A. Gauthier (Roberval):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
The minister says that he has held an inquiry regarding the meat market and it is still going on. Has the minister considered setting up an inquiry regarding the processing and packing of imported butter to protect the consumer against the sale of adulterated butter, to know if the consumer eats really pure butter at 50 per cent or 100 per cent?

May 23, 1975
Oral Questions


Marc Lalonde: It is obvious, Mr. Speaker, that this question should be directed to my colleague, the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. It is no doubt a matter of fraudulent publicity. I suggest the question be put to the minister when he will be in the House.

will he indicate to the House if the government will take a definitive position on guidelines on or prior to June 23?


John Napier Turner: It is my
understanding that further technical meetings have been held. I gave a full report on the consensus process in the House in response to a motion put by the parliamentary leader of the NDP and that was debated last week.


THE BUDGET
Mr. Sinclair Stevens (York-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. As it is now over 40 days since the minister announced he would likely bring down the budget before the end of May and now that the minister's efforts to achieve consensus among labour and business have subsided, can the minister tell the House whether he has been successful in achieving consensus among the Prime Minister, his party House leader and himself as to when the budget will be presented?


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, without accepting the tone of the preamble to the question asked by the hon. gentleman, I have to report to the House that because of the recent calling of the summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at Brussels, the Prime Minister must be out of the country from May 27 to 31. Thus, he will not be available for the necessary consultations on the final decisions for an early budget as we had hoped. Shortly after his return from the NATO meeting, I myself am required to be in Paris to chair the special sessions of the interim committee of the International Monetary Fund. That committee has been assigned the responsibility for international monetary development in world trading and monetary patterns which are very important to Canada, especially following the oil crisis last year.
In the circumstances I now intend, after my return and after a period of intensive final preparation-


Gerald William Baldwin: And prayer.


John Napier Turner: -to present the budget to the House a month from today on Monday evening, June 23.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Sinclair McKnight Stevens: In view of the uncertainty concerning the status of the consensus discussions shown by conflicting statements by the Prime Minister and the Acting Prime Minister today, would the minister indicate if the government plans to hold further consensus talks between now and June 23, will the minister be in charge of the discussions and, more specifically,


MINISTER'S VIEW OF INCREASED TAXATION AS A BUDGETARY OPTION
Sinclair McKnight Stevens: In our slowing economy with its rising unemployment as reflected in UIC payments now being predicted by the C. D. Howe Institute and the Financial Times as being $3.3 billion to $3.5 billion this year compared with $2 billion last year, would the minister indicate whether the Prime Minister made a premature comment when he said that taxes would be rising in the budget in that rising taxes would mean a restrictive budget? In truth, is that a responsible option at the present time for the minister?


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I did not hear the Prime Minister's comment.


SUGGESTION PRIME MINISTER NOT MAKE STATEMENTS ON ECONOMIC MATTERS
Gerald William Baldwin: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Acting Prime Minister. It is a request. Will the Acting Prime Minister convey to the Prime Minister the view of this party that he confine himself for the rest of his tour to things with which he is familiar, such as swimming pools and chandeliers, and leave the serious issues of the economy to the Minister of Finance who, for all his defects, still has the constitutional responsibility?


Hon. Mitchell Sharp (Acting Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I suggest to the House leader of the official opposition that all the expertise on swimming pools and chandeliers is on the other side of the House.


LABOUR CONDITIONS
Mr. John A. Fraser (Vancouver South):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Acting Prime Minister. Can he advise whether the Minister of Labour's comments on Wednesday that "Ontario authorities were strangely unhelpful" regarding allegations concerning the SIU were made with the full approval of the government or whether, in view of the specific denial issued yesterday by the acting solicitor general for the government of Ontario, will the Acting Prime Minister take this opportunity to clarify the unfortunate impression created by the Minister of Labour's remarks on Wednesday?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I have no correction to make to the statement made by the Minister of Labour. The situation was canvassed many times in cabinet. What the Minister of Labour said was fully justified.


John Allen Fraser: Yesterday the Hon. John Clement said in a statement, and I quote:
All the information provided in this House by the hon. member from High Park on November 19 was forwarded to senior federal officials on December 10. Information related to charges made under the Criminal Code is in the public domain and has been freely available to federal authorities since last May.
In view of that statement, how can the government say today that the province of Ontario did not co-operate with the federal government? Can the Acting Prime Minister give us an explanation in view of that specific denial yesterday?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, this question was raised on many occasions. The Minister of Labour and the Minister of Justice sought information that would justify the kind of inquiry the government of Ontario had been demanding. The information we received came very reluctantly. It was not very full. As a result, we had to wait to make our decision to see what the basis was for the charges that were being made. I am sure the hon. member would agree that in matters like this, one must proceed on the basis of having as much information as possible. I support what the Minister of Labour said, namely that the information was scanty and it was slow in coming. I think the Minister of Labour was fully justified in the statement he made.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


REQUEST FOR TABLING OF DOCUMENTS TO SUPPORT
John Allen Fraser: Will the Acting Prime Minister undertake today to give to this House details and minutes of the requests, communications and exchanges by telephone calls or otherwise between the federal government and the government of the province of Ontario to justify the allegations made by the Minister of Labour on Wednesday and reiterated by the Acting Prime Minister in this House today?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, the government authorized the Minister of Labour to make an investigation. This investigation will go forward. Whether it would be advisable under these circumstances to comply with this request, I am not quite sure. At any rate, I can assure the hon. member that the information provided by Ontario was of the kind that had been described by the Minister of Labour. I am very happy that now at last an inquiry is under way.
Oral Questions


PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE
Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prince Albert):: Mr. Speaker, a moment ago the Acting Prime Minister referred to swimming pools. I would ask him this. The Prime Minister stated he had no knowledge as to the donors- and unfortunately I was not in the House yesterday afternoon-but a few days ago it was stated that the Department of National Revenue had this information. I ask him whether on Monday he would produce the names of these so-called philanthropists who made the contribution totalling $200,000 for a swimming pool in the Prime Minister's home yard and who, before they made the contribution, sought and secured the consent of the Department of National Revenue that whatever they contributed could be deducted from their income taxes. In other words, the people of Canada would pay for the pool? Since the Prime Minister has told the House that he does not have this information but that the Department of National Revenue has it, can this information be made available so that the sham endeavoured to be perpetrated on the Canadian people that the pool is a gift when, in fact, it will be paid for ultimately by the Canadian people may be exposed?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mitchell William Sharp: The
right hon. member knows very well that one of the kinds of information which is not made available at any time concerns the tax returns of any individual. This applies when gifts are made to the Crown. Many gifts are made to the Crown; many people were ready to make contributions, for instance, to the residence of the Leader of the Official Opposition. Those details were not revealed at the time. No one raised questions of this niggling kind about the generosity of Canadians who wanted to contribute to our parliamentary system by providing a house for the Leader of the Opposition, and I am surprised that the right hon. gentleman should now be so concerned about a matter in which he showed so little interest some time ago.


John George Diefenbaker: Subterfuge answers like that get one nowhere. The people of Canada have a right to know who these individuals are so that they will be able to see, whether, later on, some of them are appointed senators.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


An hon. Member:: Or get more dredging contracts.


PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. Lloyd Francis (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, I had intended to put a question to the Minister of National Defence, but in his absence I will direct it to the President of the Treasury Board. Can the minister inform the House when the 17 nurses locked out for the last two weeks by
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May 23, 1975
Oral Questions
the National Defence Medical Centre will be returned to work or, alternatively, when separation certificates will be issued to enable these nurses to qualify for unemployment insurance?


Hon. Jean Chretien (President of Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, I made an inquiry. All nurses who were permanent employees have been rehired. Some of them were temporary employees. As there is not so much work at this time, they were dismissed. As to their dismissal certificate, I asked that it be issued bearing the date of the day on which the government dismissed them.


REQUEST THAT CERTAIN CONDITIONS BE ATTACHED TO GOVERNMENT'S PURCHASE OF HEAVY WATER PLANT AT PORT HAWKESBURY
Mr. Cyril Symes (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources I should like to direct a question to the Acting Prime Minister concerning the decision to purchase the heavy water plant in Nova Scotia. In view of the fact that Canadian General Electric contracted to provide Atomic Energy of Canada with something in the neighbourhood of 4,000 tons of heavy water over a 12'/2-year period, and in view of the fact that in the five years of operation CGE has reportedly only supplied one-quarter of this amount, has the shortfall been considered in arriving at the purchase price of CGE's Port Hawkesbury plant?


Mitchell William Sharp: I should explain that both the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources and the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce are attending a meeting at the present time having to do with the conservation of energy; they regret they cannot be here in the House today. I will pass on this inquiry to the minister concerned who will reply when he returns.


Reginald Cyril Symes: Thank you. I should like the Acting Prime Minister to pass on, also, the following supplementary. In view of the fact that this heavy water plant operated by private industry has never produced at capacity due to technical difficulties-over the first four years it reportedly operated at less than 50 per cent capacity-and in view of the fact that the purchase deal between AECL and CGE includes $5 million for technical renovation paid by AECL, can the minister assure us that payment of the full purchase price of approximately $93 million is contingent upon the plant operating at full capacity?


Mitchell William Sharp: I will pass on that question also.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. James Gillies (Don Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Acting Prime Minister. Has the government, formally or informally, protested to France about the resumption of nuclear testing?


Mitchell William Sharp: The
Canadian government has made its views known to France on a number of occasions. We protested very strongly against tests in the atmosphere. As a member of the non-proliferation treaty, we have urged France to join with us in trying to control the spread of nuclear weapons and to co-operate with other members. So far, France has decided not to be a member. We are, of course, glad that tests in the atmosphere have been ended, but we regret it should be considered necessary to go on testing in any environment.


James McPhail Gillies: Perhaps the hon. gentleman did not understand my question. I will repeat it. Has Canada protested, either formally or informally, now, to the government of France, with regard to its planned resumption of nuclear testing?


Mitchell William Sharp: I would doubt it, but I could make inquiries. The attitude of the government of Canada is so well known to France that it is not necessary for us to reiterate our position each time tests are underway. We also objected to testing in the United States, the Soviet Union and China.


Miss Flora MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, my question is supplementary to those directed to the Minister of State for Urban Affairs by the hon. member for York-Simcoe.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. Unless the questions are of extreme urgency I am reluctant to allow them, bearing in mind that the hon. lady is one of the initiators of the opposition motion today under which this whole subject will be discussed. Unless there are very valid reasons, I would prefer to defer questions on that topic in the interest of other hon. members present.


SUPPLY AND SERVICES
Mr. Dan McKenzie (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Supply and Services. The Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence both made promises prior to the July 8 election that 800 aerospace jobs would be created in Winnipeg. Can the minister announce when new contracts will be announced so as to create these jobs?


Hon. Jean-Pierre Goyer (Minister of Supply and Services):: Mr. Speaker, we have already announced some
May 23, 1975

contracts and I hope that I shall soon be able to announce a new contract with a company from Winnipeg. I must say that as far as aeronautics are concerned the Winnipeg area is privileged in comparison with the other parts of Canada.


A. Daniel McKenzie: As the CAE plant in Winnipeg is laying off its employees-there is now only a skeleton staff left- will any of these new contracts be allotted to that plant?


Jean-Pierre Goyer: Mr. Speaker, I must say that Transair, for instance, hired many employees and will continue to do so during the coming year. Bristol Aerospace engaged more workers than last year and, I repeat again, the general aeronautical situation in Winnipeg is much more advantageous than in any other region of Canada.


MANPOWER
Mr. Robert Muir (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. In the light of the ever increasing unemployment rate in the Atlantic provinces, is the minister in a position today to announce what special efforts are being made, or what new programs may be implemented, to deal with this serious situation?


Hon. Robert K. Andras (Minister of Manpower and Immigration):: I am not in a position today to announce a program of the nature referred to by the hon. member. Obviously, these matters are under serious and constant review. When a decision is made it will be announced in the House.


Robert Muir: Having in mind the tragic unemployment rate on Cape Breton Island where it is ranging at the moment between 15 and 20 per cent, has the minister made special representations to the Minister of Finance regarding this serious question so that possibly after June 23 something may be done?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I do not think I could elaborate on my previous answer, except to reiterate that these matters are under very serious consideration, reflecting our concern for them.


AIR TRANSPORT
Mr. Jack Murta (Lisgar):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. May I ask the minister whether the air fare increases will go into effect on
Oral Questions
Monday regardless whether or not a decision has been handed down at that time by the Canadian Transport Commission?


Hon. Jean Marchand (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I have no reason to believe they are not going to be implemented.


Jack Burnett Murta: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker, which relates to an article in the Montreal Gazette this morning which said an increase would be brought down regardless whether or not a decision has been made at that time. Since the minister has the power, with cabinet approval, under section 64(1) of the National Transportation Act to suspend or disallow the increases, why is he not taking steps to do so? If he is taking steps to do so, would he report to the House?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, I think I have already mentioned to the House what steps I have taken, in my discussions with the airlines, in order to protect those who are located in the extreme parts of this country. Outside of that, the hon. member has only to look at the financial situation of the airlines to see there is only one way to improve the situation, and that is to increase fares.


MANPOWER
Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Mr. Speaker, since unemployment increases at an alarming rate, especially in the province of Quebec and in my area, may I ask the Minister of Manpower and Immigration whether he plans to authorize in the immediate future the extension of LIP projects now under way and, secondly, to accept a certain number of others \*Glich have been presented and are extremely valuable, in order to reduce unemployment effects in Quebec with the assistance of private enterprise?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, it is very similar to the previous question asked by another hon. member a few minutes ago. I would have to say that it would be raising false hopes for sponsors of LIP projects to expect an extension past the period for which their contract calls. Any other measures that might be decided upon, as I indicated earlier, will be announced in the House in due course.


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister of Finance.
A moment ago, the Minister of Finance informed the House that he will bring down his budget on June 23, that is 30 days from today. I should like to ask him whether he will consider in the meantime the fact that unemployment has become an excessively serious problem and that considerable funds will be earmarked for the Department of Manpower and Immigration to implement many valuable
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May 23, 1975
Oral Questions
local initiatives programs, because we don't want any other.


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the Minister of Manpower and Immigration, and I are keeping in rather close consultation.


POST OFFICE
Mr. Marcel Lessard (Lac-Saint-Jean):: Mr. Speaker, I want to put a question to the Postmaster General, if he can give me his attention for a few moments.
Yesterday the postal system was disrupted again in Quebec and especially in Montreal by a new sudden illness of the employees in that area. Could the Postmaster General inform the House of the state of health of these employees, particularly in Montreal, and does he intend to request a royal commission of inquiry, perhaps medical, or to place the union under the trusteeship of a responsible person, in order to put an end to the troubles we have known in the province of Quebec, particularly as regards the postal system?


Hon. Bryce Mackasey (Postmaster General):: Mr. Speaker, I have been informed that the workers are suffering from what they call the "Mackasey flu". I do not know whether it is of very short duration or a prolonged illness. We do not want anyone back on the job who is ill; we may have to provide adequate medical facilities in order to make certain that they are not back on the job unless in excellent health. In the meantime, I think we must show a little patience and understanding of the frustration of these workers, who have been without any visible sign of a collective agreement for six months because their union negotiators have been preoccupied with the problem in Montreal, rather than with what should be preoccupying them, which is obtaining a collective agreement, as suggested by the hon. member for Brandon-Souris.


REQUEST FOR ASSURANCE INSPECTION PERSONNEL IN QUEBEC AS RESPONSIBLE AS THOSE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
Mr. Ron Huntington (Capilano):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of National Health and Welfare. It has been my experience that the government has every right to be very proud of the federal government inspection services and staff that it provides in the province of British Columbia. From recent events it is very evident that a wide variance exists in the quality and integrity of this service across Canada. Can the minister assure the House that the federal government inspection personnel and services in Quebec are as responsible and have as much integrity as those in British Columbia?


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I can give that complete and total assurance to the hon. member.


TRANSPORT
Mr. Don Mazankowski (Vegreville):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Transport which arises out of the request by the truckers for payment of compensation as a result of losses suffered due to the freight rate freeze. Has the minister met with the trucking industry, has an agreement been reached as to the amount of compensation to be paid, and has the submission yet received cabinet approval?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, we did not, of course, have the same commitment to the trucking industry as we had to the railways, but I think there is a case to be made there. I received the submission of the trucking association and I also received a certain number of claims and letters from them-I do not know how many, but I think 30 or 35. I intend to bring the matter to the attention of the cabinet and try to resolve it.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Since these negotiations and discussions have been taking place for quite some time, can the minister indicate to the House when a formal announcement may be made and cabinet approval granted?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member's guess is as good as mine, but as far as the Minister of Transport is concerned, it is going to go before cabinet very rapidly.


REQUEST FOR REPORT ON ACTION TAKEN FOLLOWING DISCOVERY OF CONTAMINATED HAMBURG
Mr. Paul Yewchuk (Athabasca):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health and is supplementary to that asked by my leader. In view of reports several weeks ago that hamburger sold in this country contained unacceptable amounts of contamination, bacterial contamination and otherwise, would the minister indicate what follow up studies have been made, whether a report has been presented to him and he has taken any action as a result of such report?


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I made a statement in the House on that matter several months ago, following which additional personnel had been appointed for that purpose. That personnel has carried out its work throughout the country, and in each identified case where a violation of the Food
May 23, 1975

and Drugs Act is found, proceedings are instituted according to the usual procedure.


Paul Yewchuk: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether the minister would assure the House that Canadians are indeed getting hamburger that is up to standard and no longer the contaminated material that was previously sold?


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, quite obviously, it is impossible for me to give such assurance concerning each and every establishment throughout the country. All I can say is that every available inspector within my department is at work and makes regular inquiries into this field and that every time some offense is discovered, prosecutions take place or action is taken to correct the situation.

Oral Questions


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Joe Clark (Rocky Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of the Environment my question is directed to the Acting Prime Minister. It concerns the meeting of the International Whaling Commission scheduled for London in June. Since the present selective moratorium on whale killing to which Canada is a party, and which Canada supports, has the effect of only shifting the location of the kill and the species to be killed, and still drives whales toward extinction, will Canada at London press for a moratorium which will honour the unanimous agreement of the Stockholm Conference, of which Canada was also a party, for a ten-year ban on all whaling.


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. gentleman for the suggestion. It is a serious one and I will see that it is conveyed to the minister.


TRANSPORT
Mr. Andy Hogan (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Transport. Can the minister inform the House whether the Ministry of Transport provided an aircraft last month to take reporters and civil servants to Saskatoon to provide entertainment for the Saskatchewan Press Club?


Jean Marchand: I will try to get the information, Mr. Speaker. I do not have it at this moment.


ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Mr. Jack Marshall (Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Justice I wonder whether I could direct my question to the Acting Prime Minister. Is the Acting Prime Minister prepared to announce the appointment of a judge to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court of the Province of Newfoundland.


An hon. Member:: Jack Marshall.


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, at the last cabinet meeting we did approve some appointments. I am not quite certain whether these included a judge for Newfoundland, but as soon as the appointment is made it will certainly be announced.


FINANCE
Mr. Gordon Ritchie (Dauphin):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Finance. In preparation for his budget is the minister considering, instead of the mandatory controls he seems to feel may be necessary, a form of refundable tax on wages and profits that are above certain guidelines similar to that used during the Second World War.


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the hon. gentleman's point of view.


AIR CANADA
Mr. Bob Brisco (Kootenay West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Transport. In view of the fact that the directors and staff of the Society for the Study of the Heritage of Canada admitted in bankruptcy testimony that they travelled across Canada and to Europe both first class and economy on free passes issued by Air Canada, would the minister inform the House if the issuance of free passes to travel agencies and others is a general practice of Air Canada endorsed by the minister?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, I think it is a general practice of all airlines to

May 23, 1975
Oral Questions
give passes to travel agencies. I know that some passes have been given. I regret that the hon. member for Hamilton West is not here, because I think he was one of the officials of Heritage Canada and he might tell us how he travelled.


Robert Hylton Brisco: Mr. Speaker, without accepting the remarks of the Minister of Transport with regard to the hon. member for Hamilton West which I consider to be a low blow, I should like to ask the minister if he has some indication of the cost to the taxpayers of all these free passes.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Surely that information should be sought in another way.


NORTHERN AFFAIRS
Hon. Alvin Hamilton (Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. In view of the fact that the Canadian government has a policy of Canadian content in respect of the construction of pipelines within Canada, has the government issued any Canadian content guidelines in connection with the plant construction and engineering services along these pipelines in the territories.


Hon. Judd Buchanan (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Not that I am aware of, Mr. Speaker, but it is certainly something very pertinent. As the hon. member for Calgary Centre knows, we have been discussing this situation vis-a-vis Canadian participation in the department and with the oil companies involved. I feel very strongly that the prime control should be Canadian, maximizing Canadian content.


ALLEGATION CALGARY FIRM GAVE CONTRACT TO NON-CANADIAN ENGINEERS-REQUEST FOR REPORT
Francis Alvin George Hamilton: Mr. Speaker, would the minister inquire into the truth or otherwise of the report that a contract was given in the last two weeks to a firm in Calgary which turned the work over to non-Canadian engineers in view of the very high quality of Canadian engineering in this field.


J. Judd Buchanan: I will be very happy to look into that. I am not aware of any Calgary company receiving such a contract.


ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Mr. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Mr. Speaker, the Solicitor General and the Minister of Justice being absent, I wish to ask a question of the Acting Prime Minister.
About a dozen days ago the Quebec Justice Minister announced that he would recommend to the federal government and to the responsible authorities annulment of a pardon already granted Mr. Desjardins, a well known personality in Quebec construction circles. Could the minister tell us if the government or the minister in charge has received such an official request and, secondly, if such is the case, could he tell us what will be the attitude taken by the government or if a decision has already been made with regard to the request from the Quebec Minister of Justice?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of any such request. The minister will be here on Monday and will, I hope, reply to the question.


CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Mr. Walter Baker (Grenville-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the President of the Treasury Board. On May 9, 1975 I put certain questions to the President of the Treasury Board in the course of his estimates with regard to the contract given to Price, Rubin without Treasury Board approval. I have not yet had an answer from the minister. Earlier I said I would give him an opportunity to give me an answer by letter if he wished. Is the minister prepared to answer that series of questions.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I take pleasure in sending the letter immediately to the hon. member.


INQUIRY AS TO INSTRUCTIONS TO KEEP MEAT UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION OFF MARKET IN QUEBEC PENDING INVESTIGATION
Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the Minister of National Health and Welfare a further question about this very shocking incident where apparently putrid meat continued to move on to the market in Quebec some two years after the minister's inspectors were aware of this. In view of the power of the inspectors of the minister to seize and

hold from the market meat that is unfit for human consumption, what instructions did the minister give his inspectors to keep this meat off the market while the investigation was going on.


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, it was an extremely complex inquiry, once again, which involved criminal elements as well as following up and conducting the inquiry once the first indications being identified were referred to the police. Therefore, the police forces conducted the inquiry until they were able to get sufficient evidence for the Inquiry Commission on Organized Crime to proceed.


REQUEST FOR TABLING OF CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN QUEBEC AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CONCERNING MEAT INSPECTION
[Stage Direction]
Horn Robert L. Stanfield (Leader of the Opposition):
Mr. Speaker, that is pure evasion. I should like to ask the minister whether he would consult with the government of Quebec and seek permission of the government of Quebec to table in the House any communication between himself or the leader of the Government of Canada and a minister or the Prime Minister of the province of Quebec on the subject of the inspection of meat in that province during the last two years.
Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, as far as I know, there were no written exchanges of that kind.


Walter David Baker: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wish to refer to a question I asked during the course of the question period. On May 9, 1975, I asked the President of the Treasury Board certain very specific questions. He said that he had the answer to those questions in a letter he delivered to me. I will publicly release the contents of the letter, but I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that this is a distortion of the whole purpose of the estimates and the whole purpose of the question period. The President of the Treasury Board should be ashamed of himself for not dealing fairly with this House. This is what he said-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member realizes that the quality of any answer given by any minister at any time is not a subject for debate at this time.


Walter David Baker: The quality is like that of the meat in Quebec.


Mr. Kaplan:: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the question of privilege which is now before you. I appreciate that you propose to rule on the matter next Monday. In view of the way in which the hon. member for York-Simcoe attempted yesterday to join his question of privilege-which you have ruled invalid-with my own, I want to make it clear that I am not making any complaint about anything that took place outside this chamber, in committee, either as to the conduct of the hon. member in committee or the
Order Paper Questions
procedure of the committee. The question that I raised relates entirely to the language of the hon. member in this House.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, my question of privilege is in response to the question of privilege raised recently by the hon. member for York Centre. I just want to point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that I received a copy of the letter which the hon. member sent to you and in my opinion he appears to be reversing the position that he had taken earlier in his question of privilege. Today I felt that he confirmed that reversal, and I would draw Your Honour's attention to the actual request that he made in his initial question of privilege, which was that the ruling be referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections and that nothing be done concerning language in this House, as the hon. member has indicated today.


Mr. Speaker:: I propose to consider all elements of the question raised by hon. members and will make a decision at three o'clock on Monday afternoon.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. Charles Turner (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 1,983, 2,032, 2,121, 2,153, 2,158, 2,268, 2,360 and 2,377.
Mr. Speaker, if question No. 1,116 and starred question No.1,910 could be made orders for return, these returns would be tabled immediately.
I ask, Mr. Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Reynolds: Was a contract awarded by the Department of Supply and Services in September 1973 to Systems Approach Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario for consulting services at Ottawa and, if so (a) for what purpose (b) were tenders requested on this contract?


Jean-Pierre Goyer: Yes. (a) This contract was placed on behalf of the Department of National Defence to develop an analytical model which would indicate the absolute and time-dependent effects of various Forces-development decisions in relation to future DND budgetary requirements, (b) Tenders were not called for this requirement. DND requested the services of this specific contractor due to the time constraint and because he was the only known con-

May 23, 1975
Order Paper Questions
tractor possessing the combined capabilities needed to minimize technical and financial risk. This required experience with military problems and a composite knowledge of input-output analysis, computerized information systems and economics related to this subject.


Mr. Masniuk: 1.	(a) How much money is allocated annually for the installation and maintenance of tropical plants in all government buildings in the City of Ottawa (b) what is the breakdown for each department (i) yearly (ii) monthly, if this is not simply a twelve month average?
2.	What is (a) the length of the contracts (b) how often and when are they normally tendered?
3.	Who is eligible to tender for (a) new installations (b) maintenance contracts for existing installations?


Hon. C. M. Drury (Minister of Public Works):: 1. (a)
There is no annual allocation of money specifically for this purpose. However, in the fiscal year 1974-75 the Department of Public Works expended $222,621 for the purchase and maintenance of plants in government buildings in the city of Ottawa, (b) (i) The breakdown of expenditures by the department for the fiscal year 1974-75 is as follows: Defence Research Board, $798; Department of Public Works, $1,546; Energy, Mines & Resources, $42,959; External Affairs, $655; Finance & Treasury Board, $300; Industry, Trade & Commerce, $375; Department of Insurance, $3,600; Ministry of Transport, $11,919; National Health & Welfare, $60; National Research Council, $8,555; National Revenue, $45,994; House of Commons, $755; Privy Council, $1,280; Public Service Commission, $12,369; Secretary of State, $15; Science & Technology, $613; Solicitor General, $14,899; Statistics Canada, $71,570; Supply & Services, $3,159; Royal Canadian Mounted Police, $1,200; Total $222,621. (ii) Not applicable.
2.	(a) Contracts for plant maintenance vary from one month to several years in length, (b) Maintenance contracts are tendered on an "as required basis".
3.	(a) New installations of more than $100 are purchased through the Department of Supply & Services. Installations up to $100 are acquired through local purchase order, (b) Maintenance contracts in excess of $5,000 are publicly advertised and everyone is eligible to tender. Contracts under $5,000 are awarded subsequent to invited tenders from firms judged to be capable of performing the work involved.


Mr. Lambert (Bellechasse): 1.	In the Province of Quebec, how many employers were prosecuted under Clause 146 of the Unemployment Insurance Regulations in (a) 1973 (b) 1974?
2.	How many of such prosecutions were successful?


Robert Knight Andras: Insofar as the Unemployment Insurance Commission is concerned: 1. (a) in 1973, one prosecution; (b) in 1974, seven prosecutions; Total: eight prosecutions.
2. In the eight (8) cases, the accused employers were found guilty and fined as follows: one was fined, $25.00;

one was fined, $50.00; two were fined $100.00 each; two were fined $300.00 each; two were fined $500.00 each; Total: $1,875.00.


Mr. Gauthier (Roberval): Can a physician's decision be overruled by an officer of UIC and, if so, as of what date?


Robert Knight Andras: Yes. However, the decision is appealable to a board of referees and in certain cases to an umpire who is a judge of the Federal Court.


Mr. Gauthier (Roberval): 1.	Has UIC discontinued the Claimants Assistance Programme as provided for in section 106 of the Act and, if so (a) on what date (b) for what reason?
2.	Has the Claimants Assistance Programme been replaced by the Special Interview Programme and, if so, on what date?


Robert Knight Andras: 1. No. (a) Not applicable, (b) Not
applicable.
2. No.


Mr. Howie: 1.	What areas of New Brunswick will be sprayed to prevent spruce budworm damage this year?
2.	On what date will spraying take place and with what chemicals?
3.	How much money will the government contribute to such spraying in New Brunswick?


Mr. Len Marchand (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment):: 1. Under the authority of the government of New Brunswick, approximately 6.5 million acres of fir-spruce forests mainly in central and northern New Brunswick will be sprayed in 1975 to prevent budworm damage.
2.	The bulk of the spraying will be done in late May or early June depending on host tree development and weather. Materials to be used include Fenitrothion, Phos-phamidon, Matacil and Dylox which have all been registered for use in Canada in 1975.
3.	No funds for pest control assistance were included in the 1975-76 estimates. Future federal assistance to the provinces is now under review.


Mr. Brisco: Since the Official Languages Act came into force on August 1, 1972 (a) how many Anglophones have been hired by CRTC and, how many (i) were fluently bilingual (ii) underwent French-language training (iii) completed French-language training (iv) passed the French-language test (b) how many Francophones have been hired by CRTC and,
May 23, 1975

how many (i) were fluently bilingual (ii) underwent English-language training (iii) underwent English-language testing (iv) passed English-language training?


Hon. Gerard Pelletier (Minister of Communications):: In so far as the Canadian Radio-Television Commission is concerned: (a) Anglophones, 56; (i) Bilingual Anglophones, 12; (ii) Language training, 19; (iii) Completed language training, 6; (iv) Passed test, 6; (b) Francophones, 72; (i) Bilingual Francophones, 59; (ii) Language training, 2; (iii) Completed language training, 2; (iv) Passed test, 2.


Mr. Herbert: 1.	Have there been any discussions between officials of the Department of Transport and Hydro-Quebec or the Government of Quebec concerning the locations at which the high tension electrical lines to export power to New York State will cross the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers?
2.	Have any decisions or agreements been made?
3.	Is this matter of concern to the Minister of Transport?


Jean Marchand: 1. Discussions have been held with Hydro-Quebec relating to high tension electrical lines crossing the Ottawa River below Carillon and the St. Lawrence River above Beauharnois.
2.	No.
3.	All overhead power transmission lines are of concern to the Ministry of Transport from the point of view of clearance above water level for the protection of navigation.



QUESTIONS PASSED AS ORDERS FOR RETURNS


Mr. Laprise: 1.	Since the establishment of DREE, what were the amounts granted by province each year for the creation of new jobs (a) for Canadian businesses (b) for foreign businesses?
2.	For each amount, how much was allocated to the (a) timber industry (b) lumber industry (c) pulp and paper industry?
Return tabled.



COST OF NATIONAL AND PROVINCIAL MEDICARE 1973 AND 1974

Mr. Rynard: 1.	For the years 1973 and 1974, how much was spent on (a) national and provincial medicare (b) hospital care?
2.	By province, what is the (a) total health care costs for (i) acute (ii) mental (iii) chronic (b) number of chronic care units and what is the cost per bed?
3.	What is the contribution per bed by the government (a) in active treatment hospitals (b) for chronic care units?
Return tabled.


Mr. Paproski:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order which again stems from the reply by the Secretary of State for External Affairs regarding my questions on the
Housing
order paper Nos. 1,480 to 1,511 inclusive. The minister said in reply:
-I believe that to answer all the hon. gentleman's questions fully would cost in excess of $10,000. Maybe a more selective approach on the part of the hon. member would relieve me of concern in that area and possibly provide him with the information he is seeking.
I would suggest, through you, Mr. Speaker, that if the hon. member would like to send over the files I would be able to pick out the information and I am sure it would not cost $10,000.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Flora Isabel MacDonald: That this House urges the government to take strong and immediate action to reverse the decline in residential construction so that Canadians again can have access to decent housing at prices they can afford.
She said: Mr. Speaker, today we have a debate in this chamber because we are experiencing at present a crisis in the residential construction industry. For the past year the health of this vital sector of our economy has deteriorated from warning symptoms to an acute illness. It has deteriorated because of the government's failure to recognize the severity of the problem in the housing sector and its failure to take any effective action. There should be no crisis today, but the government ignored the warnings, disregarded the facts and misjudged the economic situation in this country.
I could quote the words, promises and intentions with regard to housing made by the government over the past 15 months, but that exercise would be as fruitless as the measures they have taken to deal with the crisis. Let me assure the minister, who last fall stated that the "situation is a problem rather than a crisis", that the crisis has now escalated to emergency proportions. The housing situation today in Canada is critical. Without strong and effective action by the federal government it can only worsen in the months ahead to the point where we will be facing a genuine housing crisis in the full sense of the term.
In effect, we have two major housing problems today. We have a supply problem. At the current rate of activity we simply are not going to build enough new housing units in Canada this year even to meet our minimal requirements in terms of new family formations. We also have a serious cost problem, particularly in regard to mortgage interest rates. At current cost, many Canadians simply cannot afford to purchase a home of their own; many others are forced to spend a disproportionate amount of their disposable incomes on housing in order to meet these high costs.
A word or two on the supply issue. Even with some improvement during the month, new housing starts in
6060

May 23, 1975
Housing
April were running at an annual rate of about 180,000. The minister himself has admitted over and over again that we need at least 210,000 starts as a minimum objective. We on this side of the House believe that a target of 250,000 starts is not an unrealistic objective for a government which really cares about housing and is prepared to give it some priority.
This sharp reduction in residential housing activity is bad enough in itself for Canadians seeking to enter the housing market and who now face the propect of being unable to acquire a new house at the currently inflated prices, but it has even broader economic implications. Employment in the construction industry is down about 20 per cent from a year ago, and we all know that slack in the residential construction industry has a very real rippling effect on other sectors of the economy, including suppliers of household furnishings and building materials. Indeed, it should be obvious even to the government that housing is one area where we can consider expansionary programs without the threat of setting off new inflationary pressures.
There is plenty of slack in this industry now, and it could be taken up without adding to inflation. It should be taken up as one answer to our growing unemployment problem, and to meet the basic housing needs of the Canadian people. But as things now stand, lack of any government leadership to stimulate the Canadian housing industry is going to have an adverse effect on inflation in this country. I would remind the minister of that very forcibly because he is well aware, I am sure, that real estate experts are already telling us that without an immediate improvement in new housing construction we are in for a new round of housing price escalation before the end of this year. I am told that in some markets, at least, unless conditions improve housing prices will rise by at least 15 per cent within a year. That is hardly a pleasant prospect for a country in which housing prices are already far too high for many thousands of its citizens.
Housing prices will in fact have a double impact on inflation. Not only will the price of housing increase but more pressure will be put on wage and salary earners to demand even higher increases to meet escalating costs for this largest single item in the family budget. So there is a double impact on inflation. Surely, on these grounds alone, putting aside whether he even cares about the housing needs of the Canadian people, one might think the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) would show more interest and more concern in dealing with this problem than he has to date.
The other major housing problem of the day is the sheer cost of it. Costs have continued to rise in most of the component areas of housing: land, servicing and construction. But unquestionably the major factor in pricing housing beyond the reach of so many Canadians is the high cost of mortgage financing. Indeed, no element in the present situation is more disturbing than the fact that mortgage interest rates, rather than falling are actually on the upswing again. After a drop to about 10 !4 per cent they have risen to 11 per cent and beyond, and there are now predictions that rates may well go to 11 lA per cent or 12 per cent before the end of the year.

The effect of such increases, of course, is to add significantly to the monthly carrying costs faced by a home purchaser to the point where many Canadians simply cannot entertain the possibility of buying a home even if they are prepared to devote 30 per cent or more of their income to shelter costs. That is the tragic situation which exists at this particular time.
In a very real sense, then, these rising mortgage rates mean that Canadians, in their housing budgets, are being asked to bear the financial brunt of the international balance of payments difficulties now facing the government. With the prospect of a current account deficit as high as $5 billion this year, the government is forced to maintain interest rates at a very high level in order to attract short-term flows of foreign capital. Whether that is the proper policy from a balance of payments point of view is one question, but there is no question that this high interest rate policy is a disaster as far as Canadian housing needs are concerned.
As I have already noted, high mortgage rates are preventing many Canadians from buying homes. One has only to talk to builders to know that mortgage rates are probably the single most important factor in deterring new residential construction in this country. Builders simply are reluctant to put new housing stock on the market as long as prospective buyers will have to face interest rates as high as 11 per cent or more; and, I might add, as long as we have a government in Ottawa in which the building industry, along with so many other Canadians, has no faith with regard to getting inflation under control.
Given the fundamental importance of housing to Canadians and to the Canadian economy, and given the magnitude of the problems now facing the country, it is certainly an understatement of the first order to describe this government's response to the housing crisis as inadequate. Indeed, with this government it is not even a case of recognizing the urgency of the problem, but of initiating the wrong response. As far as the housing crisis is concerned, this government simply has made no response.
We have discussed on many previous occasions the inadequacy of the CMHC capital budget. The year to year increase in it has been barely sufficient to offset the costs of inflation, yet the remainder of the federal spending program-we only have to look at it-continues to grow by leaps and bounds. So much for housing as a priority concern with this Minister of Finance and this government. We only have to look at the expenditures on housing compared with other sectors to know that it has a very low priority indeed.
In recent days we have seen yet another indication of the little importance which the government attaches to the whole question of housing. The Minister of State for Urban Affairs (Mr. Danson) had invited the provincial housing ministers to Ottawa on Wednesday of this week to discuss further housing initiatives, in advance-one presumes-of a new budget. He even asked them to bring along revised spending forecasts for their provincial housing budgets. At the last minute, with no real explanation, the minister cancelled the meeting. Why? Was the Minister of State for Urban Affairs slapped down again by his colleague the Minister of Finance? Has housing been
May 23, 1975

shunted to the back burner again, in terms of the priorities of this government? If that is the case, then perhaps we have reached the point where we are entitled to ask the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) whether it is not time he appointed a minister of urban affairs with a bit more influence on his colleagues.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: With a little more respect for him.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: The minister might tell us, when he responds in this debate, whether he has rescheduled a date for the meeting with provincial cabinet ministers, as he undertook to do in the telegram to them of last Friday when he said:
-I expect to be in a better position to suggest an alternate date towards the end of next week-
That means this week, and today is the last business day of this week.
-appreciating both the value and the urgency of this discussion to all concerned.
To date he has not done that. One wonders about the value and urgency which he attaches to it. The only other explanation I can suggest is that the minister really does not care what the provinces think about housing. Perhaps he has succumbed completely to the viewpoint of his chief adviser, the "know it all" president of CMHC who, clearly, would like the provinces and, one assumes, the municipalities too, to go away and let him run the whole show. We already have seen evidence of that attitude in the capital budget, with 60 per cent of the over-all allocation reserved to two programs, AHOP and Limited Dividend, in which the federal government deals directly with the marketplace without any requirement to consult other levels of government. Where it can, the federal government completely ignores dealing with the provincial and municipal governments in a field as sensitive as housing.
If that is his new philosophy, then I say to the minister that he is on a dangerous course-indeed, a disastrous one in so far as the housing needs of the Canadian people are concerned. It is not an issue of constitutional supremacy; it is a sheer question of what will work to produce houses for Canadians. I have no hesitation in saying that even a man of Mr. Teron's self-confidence simply is not going to be able to run roughshod over the needs and wishes of our other two levels of government. It may feed his ego to try it, but it will be at the cost of housing for Canadians.
A new "we know best" strategy is not what we need at this point to get residential construction back on the rails in this country. What we do need is a major, concerted effort by all levels of government to deal with the two basic housing problems now facing our country. We need effective policies to stimulate housing supply, to get more units built and to get them built as quickly as possible, and we need better policies to ease the impact of a national high interest rate policy on the housing market.
In so far as housing supply is concerned, one area where the federal government can and should increase its support is in bringing more serviced land onto the market. A shortage of serviced land has been a chronic problem of the Canadian housing industry, particularly in the major urban areas. I realize that CMHC now has a municipal
Housing
infrastructure program, but even the minister, I am sure, would be forced to admit that it does not begin to meet the need in this area. Indeed, I understand that the government of Ontario alone could use another $100 million this year to bring onto the market land which is ready for servicing and development if funding were available.
I would suggest, too, that the current Assisted Home Ownership Program, including the new elements about which the minister boasted so glowingly last fall, simply is not doing the job. Certainly, it is not producing anywhere near the flow of private funds into the mortgage market which the minister so confidently predicted it would earlier this year. I believe there are a number of reasons why it is not doing the job. I understand, for example, that without an adequate secondary mortgage market, and we come back again to the inexplicable delay by the government in getting its own vehicle into operation in this area, and there has been no explanation for this delay, after a year and a half, by either the minister in charge of housing or the Minister of Finance-


Robert Lorne Stanfield: It is an insult to parliament.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: He is waiting for more defeated Liberal candidates. Without such a secondary mortgage market, some institutions simply will not accept the 35-year amortization which the minister and his officials insist on under the current AHOP program. But beyond that, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that a large part of the problem with AHOP is that it is stifled by bureaucratic red tape. The minister and his officials just cannot seem to resist the temptation to set as many rules and regulations as they can dream up, so we have artificial income limits established on top of unrealistic maximum house prices.
I am not suggesting that the program should not have any limits, but I am saying that a simple guideline in terms of the maximum amount of a mortgage to be supported by this kind of interest subsidy would have done the job in a way that would not discourage so many Canadians from even trying to participate in it.
A third kind of initiative the government could take, and one we have advocated for many months, is to allow at least some part of the cost of mortgage interest as a deductible expense for income tax purposes. Our party during the last campaign advocated that such costs above 8 per cent-which used to be an average mortgage rate until inflation broke loose under this government-be deductible up to a maximum of $1,000. A program like that would not be overly expensive but it would be extremely helpful to Canadians trying to carry the very high costs of home ownership in today's economy. It would have considerable symbolic value, too, Mr. Speaker, as an indication that the government and the Minister of Finance at least rate home ownership as important in individual investment terms as speculating on the stock market.
Mr. Speaker, there are areas where the government can take effective action to help meet the housing needs of the Canadian people. Programs can be undertaken in this area without adding new inflationary pressures to our economy but which will have significant benefits in terms of stimulating employment and economic recovery. What is missing from this government is the will to act and a degree of concern which gives housing a reasonable place in the
29 561-40V2

May 23, 1975
Housing
government's scale of national priorities. The tragedy is that in many respects it is already too late to achieve the maximum potential impact for 1975. We are already too far into the building season to get as many new units up and completed as would have been the case if the government had responded weeks and even months ago as we on this side of the House urged them to do.
Today we learned that the budget has been delayed until June 23. In view of this delay, and in view of the fact that the peak of the construction season will be over by the end of June, I ask the minister if he is prepared to bring in immediately the contingency housing plan that was referred to earlier this month so that there will not be a further delay in the construction of much needed housing. But with this government, Mr. Speaker, one is forced to accept the fact that the best one can hope to achieve, really, is too little and too late. So I urge the minister to at least give the Canadian people that much, to at least take action now so that, in the words of our motion, the people of Canada again can have access-as they deserve to have access-to decent housing at prices they can afford.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Houses before swimming pools; that's what I say.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald) began her speech by saying that we are facing a housing crisis. I think she is right. However, it is a sign of how deeply the public, and particularly the media, feel about this problem that in the press gallery at the moment there is only one journalist.
At the beginning of this year the minister announced that it was the government's intention to build in the neighbourhood of 210,000 housing units in 1975. At the end of March, no doubt to the consternation and disappointment of the minister, we were building houses at the annual rate of 144,000 units. There was some improvement in April, but we were only building at the rate of 180,000 new homes a year, which is a far cry from the 210,000 units the minister predicted would be built, and much lower than the number of houses we need. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands wants to see 250,000 new homes built. I think that figure is too low.
The minister prides himself on his proposals to encourage starts for rental housing. He is providing $200 million in subsidies. They can produce 10,000 units at the outside, a mere drop in the bucket. The response of developers, to say the least, has been unenthusiastic because grants are too low to support rental projects even with the federal subsidy. Many people are predicting 180,000 housing starts for this year, compared with 220,000 in 1974 and 268,000 in 1973.
The interest rate on NHA mortgages now is 11.25 per cent. The rate on conventional mortgages is somewhat higher, 11.5 per cent. Mr. Peter Carter, of the Royal Bank said at the end of April that interest rates were probably at their low point. Heavy demand for corporate and government financing both in Canada and in the United

States will keep interest rates high. Not only are interest rates high; the supply of mortgage funds is tight. A recent survey by the Mortgage Insurance Company of Canada found the supply of money for NHA and conventional mortgages limited. Lenders are restricting loans to prime real estate and scrutinizing applicants carefully to make sure they can afford the high monthly payments.
I do not have time to discuss how large one's income should be if one is to qualify for a mortgage. The minister has done nothing to bring down interest rates. Actually, his AHOP program helps to keep rates up by subsidizing the monthly payments of borrowers. His new, private AHOP program stipulates that a family shall obtain a mortgage from a conventional lender. The mortgage will then be subsidized, but the catch is obtaining mortgage funds when they are in short supply.
The minister has misconceived what is happening in the housing field and what is needed. He has placed unwarranted faith in the housing industry, being under the illusion it can meet the housing needs of the people of Canada. The result is that we are not building enough houses for people who need them. Another result has been the rapid increase in house prices. The average price of a house sold through multiple listing increased by only 9.2 per cent in the first quarter of 1975. High interest rates and shortage of mortgages have had a dampening effect on house prices. Even so, the cost of the average house is still more than the average Canadian family can afford.
A comparison of house prices in the first quarter of 1975 compared with prices in the same period of 1974 is shocking. In Ontario, the average price of a house in 1974 was $46,000-odd. One year later the price had jumped to over $48,800. In British Columbia, the average house cost $37,600 in 1974, and $49,632 in the first quarter of 1975. In Alberta, the average price jumped from $35,013 in 1974 to $42,972 in 1975. In Manitoba, the average price jumped from $24,369 in 1974 to $31,097 in 1975. In Quebec, house prices jumped from $30,381 in 1974 to $32,095 in 1975. You can see what has happened while the minister has been fiddling with his plans. Not one of them amounts to more than a patch on the hull of a sinking ship.
The total emphasis of this minister-indeed, of all ministers who have been responsible for housing in the last 20 years-has been to increase the number of housing starts. But no one has asked about the quality of the housing we are building. So far as I know, neither the minister, the department nor Central Mortgage and Housing have investigated the quality of the housing we are building. For example, do we know how many young people, newly married couples, and poor people are getting houses, or how many rich people are buying houses? If the minister, the department or Central Mortgage and Housing have done such studies, I can only say they must be kept in a very deep freeze.
British Columbia has implemented rent controls, and Ontario is talking about them. Here we are, having built houses at record rates for 20 years, and we have to talk about rent controls. Why? I suggest the reason is that we have not built for people in the lower and middle income groups, for those who really need houses, but for those who are already well housed and want to improve their housing. We have encouraged the well-to-do to improve
May 23, 1975

their standards and not done much for people in the low and middle income brackets. Central Mortgage and Housing have sponsored innumerable design competitions for individual, single-family detached houses. It has awarded innumerable prizes for good design. But how many prizes have been awarded for the design of multiple-family housing units, or housing units for mixed socio-economic groups? According to a reliable source, Central Mortgage and Housing has sponsored only one such competition. If I am wrong, I hope the minister will correct me and tell me where such studies can be found.
In an earlier speech I spoke about housing in Germany and Scandinavia. Last week I was in Israel. I know the minister has been there too. I was in the old city of Jerusalem where, as the minister knows, houses are built from stone locally available. One can see many amazing things in Israel. Possibly the most amazing thing I saw was a housing development in the heart of old Jerusalem, overlooking the Wailing Wall and the Blue Mosque. It was a tremendous project. It consisted of one storey, multiplehousing units. There were courtyards between and around the housing units to provide fresh air in that hot climate. I have not seen that in any city in this country. Israel lives under a constant threat of war. It devotes more than 50 per cent of its national budget to defence purposes, but it does things for housing which put a wealthy country like Canada to shame.
I want to raise one more question. This housing crisis will not last only for 1975. You cannot build good, sensible housing accommodation by following the stop, start and go policies which Canadian governments have followed for so many years with regard to housing. The number of houses built in Canada is not determined by the needs of the Canadian people but by what the government feels is the economic situation. That is how the decision is made as to how many houses will be built. We have all the physical materials needed to build houses, we have all the necessary manpower and some of the best builders in the world. I saw housing in Israel which, if it was not designed by Mr. Safdie who designed Habitat, was certainly designed by some of his students. We have all we need to build good houses. We do not build them because the decision as to how many houses will be built each year is made once a year for the coming year, not on the basis of need but on the basis of other facts. The most efficient industry in the world could not operate at maximum capacity under those circumstances.
What we need is long-range planning in the field of housing. We need a commitment from this government for three to five years ahead. As the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands said so eloquently, this government should sit down with the provinces and the municipalities and say, "This is what we can afford for 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, and so on. How much land will we need? How much servicing will be required? How much money will be needed? What kind of housing should we build? How much of that housing should be devoted to middle income people and how much should be devoted to low income people?"
That is the kind of planning which needs to be done. I am not talking about a utopian situation or some socialist
Housing
never-never land. That is the kind of planning being done in not just the Scandinavian countries but in every country in western Europe. It is being done in Germany, which has a social democratic government. It is also being done in Belgium, Holland and France which has not had a socialist government since a few years after World War II. As I said, that is the kind of planning being done in Israel. However, such planning is not being done on the North American continent, neither in the United States nor Canada.
There is much to be admired in the United States, such as their energy, drive and technical know-how. However, if there is one place we should not take a lesson from, and one place we should not use as an example on how to meet our housing needs, it is the United States. Their free enterprise has not only gone wild; it has gone mad. No country with such resources has done as poor a job in the field of housing as the United States.
We ought to be putting our planners, architects, engineers and builders to work now on plans for the future. They should not just be planning the building of 200,000, 225,000, 250,000 or even the unimaginable 300,000 units a year, because if those housing units are built for people with adequate housing we will not only have failed but will have perverted the whole purpose of a housing policy for Canada.
I will conclude as I have on several other occasions. We are apparently going to have a summer break. During the summer months, I ask the minister to give serious consideration to rethinking what we have been doing. He should visit some of the countries I have mentioned to see what is being done there. If he will go to those countries with an open mind and look at what they have done, I am sure he will scrap a great deal, if not all, of what he and his predecessors have been doing. He will bring forward programs which will at least begin to meet the needs of people in every city of this country. There are still people in this country living on incomes of $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, $6,000 a year. They cannot afford to buy or to rent adequate accommodation even if they avail themselves of every one of the programs the minister has proposed up until today. I hope the minister will think seriously about these problems and that when we return this fall we will see a real change in the government's direction and policy with regard to housing.


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Mr. Speaker, the House deals today with a very serious matter, namely housing for Canadian people. The supplies of the Minister of State for Urban Affairs (Mr. Danson), as well as the implementation of all housing acts the minister is responsible for, deserve objective examination by members of parliament.
Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe that partisan considerations with respect to the representation of constituencies in Parliament interfere with the implementation of those housing acts. However, when I consider how slowly some agreements were reached with provinces, especially between the province of Quebec and the federal government,
I am satisfied that there have been squabbles, not economic ones, but political squabbles which have been prejudicial to the interests of municipalities in our provinces, and

May 23, 1975
Housing
especially in Quebec, and also to the interests of taxpayers who expected to benefit from certain national acts passed by Parliament to benefit not only taxpayers living in some municipality or other but also municipalities themselves.
Mr. Speaker, it is very well to consider the passing of excellent housing legislation by the Parliament of Canada, but we should also get the means of implementing those acts so that they can fully benefit municipalities and taxpayers.
May I draw the attention of the minister to a matter of particular concern in Quebec and especially in the constituency I represent, namely Bellechasse, the matter of implementation of the housing act and the Neighbourhood Improvement Program.
Mr. Speaker, I remember taking a very active part in the discussions on Bill C-133 and cooperating, I believe, most sincerely with the minister to have that bill passed so that it would benefit Canadian families and also that municipalities with insufficient incomes to implement a Neighbourhood Improvement Program would benefit from a legislation which in my opinion is, and was at the time, extremely positive, so that all families in a municipality or a neighbourhood enjoy equal opportunities and services as compared to the residents of another municipality or another neighbourhood. In September 1974, the present minister of State for Urban Affairs succeeded in signing with the Quebec authorities an agreement clearly stipulating that such and such municipality may take advantage of the provisions of Bill C-133, and this agreement refers to the municipalities of Montreal, Quebec, Saint-Hubert, Laprairie, Donacona, Farnham, Saint-Georges, Saint-Hya-cinthe, Saint-Jean, Solomon, Montreal a second time, as far as Carmel Park is concerned, Quebec City, with regard to a second pocket in Saint-Sauveur, Montreal North, Lachute, Jonquiere and Longueuil. But I am surprised, Mr. Speaker, at not finding the name of Montmagny on that list.
And it was precisely in order to enable the town of Montmagny to develop a neighbourhood called "quartier sud" that I worked especially in order to provide the residents of that district with the public utilities they need and which exist in other neighbourhoods.
The agreement provided also-and I agree-that the neighbourhood should be first designated and then approved by the province at the request of the municipality. This means that any municipality can apply to the Quebec Housing Corporation or to the Minister of Municipal Affairs. If the government of that province recognizes that the district designated by the municipality falls within Bill C-133 with regard to the neighbourhood improvement program, it is only then that the federal government can step in through the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation and grant subsidies directly to the municipality and to the taxpayers living in the designated neighbourhood.
I hope that during this discussion, the Minister of State for Urban Affairs will be able to tell us what procedure must be followed by the municipalities that wish to benefit from this legislation.
Last week, the mayor of Montmagny was here in Ottawa. He met with the officials of various departments

and was well received. The problems he submitted to the various departments were fully looked into. However, he was given information he did not have on the procedure to be followed by municipalities, whether rural or urban, in order to benefit from this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, may I call it one o'clock?


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.
Mr. Prosper Boulanger (Mercier):: Where are the official opposition members?


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Mr. Speaker, I just heard a government member ask: Where are opposition members.


Prosper Boulanger: Members of the official opposition!


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Yes, he specifies the official opposition! Well, Mr. Speaker, it is understandable that people are late on a Friday when the heat is stifling and the humidity high and there is not air conditioning everywhere as in the House. I think that despite . . .


An hon. Member:: We should perhaps have a swimming pool built in the House.


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Someone says that it might be necessary to build a swimming pool inside Parliament. It think it would be somewhat audacious. We might start by using the pool of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), because it is very big. There would be room for several members at a time.


An hon. Member:: He will certainly invite us.


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: This being said, Mr. Speaker, I should like to return very seriously to the subject we were dealing with earlier this morning, but more specifically with the ratepayers within a number of municipalities and also with the municipalities which are responsible for their own housing.
Well, I have before me a well-prepared document, dated in April of this year, which may prove very useful to municipal administrators who want to avail themselves of some benefits available from federal sources, but in conjunction with the provinces. Although this is a very well-prepared document, it would be necessary


An hon. Member:: Who prepared it?


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: I have just been asked who prepared it. I do not know.


An hon. Member:: Civil servants.
May 23, 1975


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Our employees are certainly very well paid anyway, so they ought to be able to do a good job once in a while.
So, when it is well done, we are happy to say so, Mr. Speaker, and I want to add this: that document should be made available to all municipal administrators. As far as I am concerned, I have tried to get a number of copies to allow municipal administrators to have a look at it and submit in due course requests regarding those acts.
Here is what we can read on page 20 of the program:


An hon. Member:: Which page?


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Page 20.


An hon. Member:: We haven't got it!


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: You haven't got it? That is very regrettable, you are behind the times, because you are supposed to have it in the House today when the estimates of the Department of Urban Affairs are discussed.
The federal government, through the Neighbourhood Improvement Program of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, helps municipalities and local residents to keep up and improve the essential urban neighbourhoods threatened with decay and destruction.
Such dilapidated districts can be found in various areas across Canada where services are lacking and should be improved. It is to improve this situation that Parliament voted this legislation.
Districts for which assistance is intended must be mostly residential...
It is one of the major conditions.
. . . and not occupied primarily ...


An hon. Member:: That is all well and good.


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: You make your speech later on and we will listen to you.


Some hon. Members:: Order!


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: ... by low income people ...


An hon. Member:: You read well.


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: You, sir, the member for Saint-Denis (Mr. Prud'homme)-
... in these places


An hon. Member:: You are out of order. One must say "the hon. member for Saint-Denis".


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: The hon. member for Saint-Denis likes to be respected. I hope he will respect others by setting the example.
In those cases, the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation will finance half the cost of certain types of improvements, and one-fourth of the others. Subsidies are provided for helping to select the neighbourhoods, draw up plans, purchase the land intended for housing, social and recreation facilities, improve municipal facilities and other types of improvements. Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation will also loan the municipality up to 75 per cent of its share of the cost of the project.
The Neighbourhood Improvement Program is subject to a federal-provincial agreement whereby municipalities are chosen in those provinces which are eligible for assistance. The municipality suggests the
Housing
neighbourhoods it would like improved. In every case, the local residents must participate in the planning and execution of the project.
Mr. Speaker, this introduction to the document I have just quoted partly is excellent provided the criteria, the standards required are applied uniformly across Canada and, as far as I am concerned, across Quebec.
We should not proceed in such a way that we give the impression there is discrimination, that some advantages are given to a municipality and refused to another.
I would like to ask the minister to look closely at the applications made to him, at the areas which are accepted by the province, in particular by the province of Quebec, so that other municipalities can have the same advantages by requiring the same conditions and the same criteria. At present, and I hope it is a wrong impression, we can see why one municipality has not been accepted, while another has been, and those are two similar municipalities. Now, I understand one can find differences in studying the records, and those differences must be known to the public, so as not to give way to erroneous judgments which could lead one to think there is patronage in any given place. Such situations must absolutely be avoided.
Now, there is another aspect of the housing problem which is contained in an act, and is still implemented in cooperation with the provinces. I agree that we should try to reach an agreement for the solution of family and low income people housing problem.
Quite recently, more exactly on April 28, the Minister of State for Urban Affairs issued a list of localities which will be eligible for benefits under that federal-provincial agreement to build 38 projects, 1,435 low-income housing units in the province of Quebec, in cooperation with the Quebec Housing Corporation.
Mr. Speaker, I would like once again to request that more information be given to the public on that subject. The matter is more delicate in Quebec than in other provinces, because people are more "touchy" there, given the particular situation, and a certain feeling, I would not say of independence, but of separation, because for my part I make between independence and separation a clear distinction, which I consider necessary. Everybody seeks independence, seeks the power to be self-sufficient, to decide for him or herself. The same holds true for associations, for municipalities and for provinces, and it should be true also for our country Canada: we must be able to decide for ourselves. The best way to make a final choice, is to have the financial means to decide and carry out the decisions made.
As I consider the lengthy list of municipalities that were accepted, I note that an amount of $30 million was involved. But there are also municipalities in my constituency where the minister has proven generous and I am grateful to him.


An hon. Member:: There was no patronage.


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Yes, I am convinced there was no patronage. One thing is sure, had there been any such patronage, I would have had the courage to say so. But I am a person who readily admits matters that are carried out objectively, and I am pleased to say so.

May 23, 1975
Housing
I would simply wish to point out to the minister that something is really unacceptable to the population as a whole, because these loans were granted at an interest of 103/s per cent over a 50-year period. Mr. Speaker, I should like to suggest to the minister that all possible efforts be made so as to permit such grants to be made to these organizations, be they at the municipal or cooperative level, but that such loans be granted at a lower interest rate because if it is calculated quite objectively and with impartiality, we will see that on a 50-year period $400,000 and $500,000 loans at 103/8 per cent will compel these corporations, these organizations to pay $1,500,000 in interest, thus trebling the construction cost, not taking into account maintenance, requisites, normal expenses to be made to keep such houses in good condition. Then no wonder, Mr. Speaker, that with such excessive rates of interest, low income people are in a difficult position even though they might receive two old age pensions. Directors cannot perform miracles. They have to ask more so as to be able to give as much as they are asked. I see, Mr. Speaker, that you are standing and that you want to interrupt me. I thank you. I still would have a lot to say but I want to give other members the opportunity to talk.


Hon. Barney Danson (Minister of State for Urban Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to respond in the debate on the motion introduced by the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald) which directs itself to the provision of decent housing for Canadians at prices they can afford. So our objectives remain precisely the same and our programs support those objectives. Indeed, the total thrust of the housing program of the government is to provide decent housing at a price Canadians can afford.
We have come through a cycle when there was a lot of housing, when housing starts were at record levels but at prices people could not afford. They assumed the obligations in an inflationary period, but at last, my goodness, people have said that they have been paying too much and will not pay any more. They say that when interest rates rise too much, they will not pay those rates. The government has responded to that very positive reaction of people, which is essential if we are to deal with the inflationary spiral and the continuing escalation of need that we have been getting away with for so long.
The suggestion that the government is neither concerned nor aware is not dealing with the facts. As hon. members know, housing is a high priority with this government. The new legislation that was capable of bringing $1 billion of private sector money into the mortgage market was held up day after day and week after week by opposition members in the committee.


Some hon. Members:: Shame!


Barnett Jerome Danson: I pleaded with the members of the committee to deal with the subject, not to get away from it and not to duck out from under it. I said I would sit 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all weekend if necessary, to deal with this legislation. That has been a cause of the delay which is unfortunate indeed, because in the meantime

there has been a change in the money market which, as my hon. friend knows, has affected the flow of money into the mortgage market. But, again, our programs are directed at bringing those funds out, supplying more funds and subsidizing those rates so that Canadians can afford houses that are needed for people in the moderate and low-income groups especially, because they must have priority.
The fact that these programs are working so well seems to annoy some members of the opposition. I was quite surprised to receive some recent figures which indicate how well these programs are being received by the building industry and the lending institutions. The insured lendings in April were encouraging construction at a rate of over 4,000 units. If you translate this into an annual rate, it indicates an annual rate of some 60,000 units. In the same jargon, last year it was only 25,000 units. That does not really translate itself into the direct start figures we are talking about, but it does indicate that people in the industry recognize the value of NHA programs under CMHC and are not only prepared, but anxious to become qualified and to become insured under NHA legislation.
The remarkable success of AHOP, I know, is something which really gets under the skin of the opposition.


An hon. Member:: There is too much red tape.


Barnett Jerome Danson: As of May 15, under the Assisted Home Ownership Program we committed $216 million for low-cost loans to families to enable them to buy their own homes. Another $84 million was being processed at that time, as of May 15. This means that we are very close to having committed our entire AHOP budget of $350 million. If that suggests red tape, I really do not know what we could have loaned out if there was not red tape.
The suggestion is that there are unrealistic regulations on income, on standards and on housing prices; unrealistic in the sense that the building industry said before that it could not build houses at these prices. They referred to the average, as did the hon. member for Winnipeg North (Mr. Orlikow), given by the real estate board in respect of the cost of houses. We are building for the average. A lot of builders were stuck with those so-called average prices. They said they could not build at those lower prices for the low income groups. What happened? Last year, when the program was started by my predecessor with $300 million and a further $150 million, or a total of $450 million, they found they could build for those income ranges, at those price ranges, although previously they never thought they could. The success this year is showing how great the reception is in that area.
Consider our accelerated rental program or the limited dividend program. I know that perhaps they are awkward for the rich developers in Alberta who want to build luxury housing.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: That is not true.


Walter David Baker: Don't play games with a serious subject.
May 23, 1975


Barnett Jerome Danson: Our priority is the workingman, the average income man.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Barnett Jerome Danson: We offered $200 million at 8 per cent interest to builders who would create modest rental accommodation in agreement with CMHC, but people said, "No, that implies rent control; we don't want to go into those rental agreements". When we offered $200 million there was enough response for us to offer a further $200 million. There are proposals which are presently under review and which meet good standards of housing at rents people can afford.
In addition, private lenders are being urged into that area. Programs are set up under which 25 per cent of the units are to be made available to municipalities and provinces for low-income housing for people who even at those subsidized rates do not have sufficient income to pay for their shelter. In the past we have dealt with this under our public housing programs. They have been good programs. I admit that we made some mistakes, and we have learned from those mistakes. Less than a year ago when I first took on this portfolio, I was making speeches to municipalities and telling them, "You are showing the wrong attitude. You do not want public housing projects in your municipalities". I still question their motives in that respect and I think their concerns were rather narrow. Also, it was a reaction to programs from which we were learning and which were not the best, such as huge public housing projects in municipalities.
What we are attempting to do now is integrate people into the mainstream of society so that they are not isolated in public housing projects where social tensions and social stigmas exist, especially for children who grow up with a broader view of life when they can see their part in the total society and are not segmented in a welfare group.
I suggest we have made excellent progress. In our other programs for non-profit, co-operative housing we have committed another $28 million. All the housing funds under the direct control of CMHC will be committed before September of this year. We do not want to parcel it off bit by bit, but, rather, get it out there quickly. That is what we have been doing; we have been speeding up our rate of commitments month by month. I ask the provinces to get the money and spend it on building housing for people who need them and cannot afford them. Until April 10 we were committing funds at an average of $4 million a day. In the next month the rate increased to more than $6.5 million a day, and it is now at the rate of almost $10 million a day.
If that suggests slowness, lack of priorities or red tape, then something is wrong somewhere. To me it suggests a government that is concerned and a corporation that is doing its job under a president who knows more about building housing and developments in this country than anybody else; a man to whom we should be grateful because he has given up a career to come into the public service and serve his country; a man who cannot stand here in parliament to defend himself.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
Housing


Barnett Jerome Danson: He is a man of great dedication and talent who is known to us all and of whom we are all proud.


Steve Eugene Paproski: But he does not build houses for single families.


Barnett Jerome Danson: We are building relatively many more than just about any other country. The hon. member for Winnipeg North suggested I should go to Europe to see what they are doing there. I have been to Europe, and I am impressed. What they have done is great. But they look at us with envy. They look at the quality of our housing and our communities, and when they compare them with theirs they envy us indeed. I think we have a great deal to learn from some of their systems of land assembly and some of their systems for decentralizing population, but I am convinced more than ever that Canada takes second place to none in the quality and quantity of its housing. I do not take much pride in the fact that there are still pockets of terribly bad housing and poverty. This we cannot tolerate and I know the government is doing all in its power to overcome it.
So far as housing for senior citizens is concerned, we have built more housing for senior citizens in the life of this government than in all of our history. This indicates a priority and a commitment.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Barnett Jerome Danson: The matter of land assembly and sewage treatment was mentioned. It is a good point. We have committed $1 million a year to this program. Incidentally, we have yet to turn down a single application for sewage treatment plants in all of Canada. I hope this record can continue. I suggest that those provinces which buy up tracts of land without any wish to develop them in the foreseeable future, and then cry because they do not have money to service the land on which they will not build houses anyway, had better get their priorities straightened out. They should assemble sufficient land to be able to service it and bring it into the stream. The same provinces at a time such as this seem to have the money for doing those politically attractive things that governments are inclined to do in an election period. I do not think they should be spending that money in other ways and wanting us to tax people, giving them the money which they will spend perhaps just as loosely.
In that respect, some $300 million were allotted for provincially-initiated programs in 1975, including public housing, but less than $38 million of that has been taken up. What I am saying is that almost half the year has gone, yet they have used up less than 30 per cent of their allocation. This is not quite that simple. There are reasons for it. I agree with the hon. member who suggested that there is a need for forward planning. We are doing forward planning, and so is CMHC. Also, we are engaging in more liaison with the provinces, in more conversations- not confrontations, not great big shows before television cameras, but the type of consultations that we have on a regular basis with the provinces and conversations that I have with housing ministers.
We were trying to get together on Monday, as the hon. member suggested, because we could not meet on May 21 for reasons which one may speculate about; but it was not

May 23, 1975
Housing
totally convenient for everyone, anyway. I will be in touch with the hon. member in the first days of the week, although my staff was in touch with his office to try to evolve a date satisfactory to all of us. In the meantime, I saw the minister of housing for Newfoundland this week and I will see the minister of housing for Alberta on Monday. Within a week or so I will be seeing the housing ministers of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and British Columbia. So there is a constant contact. This is the sort of thing that is important. I am referring to one-to-one discussion so as to really understand the problems and try to set down our priorities so that we can do the type of forward planning which the hon. member for Winnipeg North suggested is essential, with which I agree.
It is not easy under our budgetary system, but surely we must be able to plan sufficiently far in advance so that within certain parameters we can develop the same sort of priorities. I do not want to talk to those who will simply say, "Give us some money and we will do what we think is best". If they think that is best, they should have the courage to tax for it. They should also have the courage and honesty to admit that the programs we have in place are working.
As a result of these consultations, we took some $70 million from other funds to turn over to the provinces, funds from programs such as AHOP and the accelerated rental program. We are waiting for that money to be used. I telephone and plead with those ministers to use the funds in constructive programs. At the same time, we are running out of funds for AHOP and limited dividend housing. Here we made a mistake. We succumbed to those provincial housing ministers. For our future discussions, I think they recognize this. They admire the success of these programs and I think they will co-operate even further because we have learned much. Some of them are doing the job now and are working extremely well with the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) and I. We are in close consultation. He is certainly aware of the problem. He gives it very high priority and understands its importance, not only socially but also in the economy. He understands the urgency of the situation. So that our contact is close and warm and I am sure we will see results which will even warm the cockles of the hearts of the opposition.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: We will pray for you.


Barnett Jerome Danson: The hon. member for Winnipeg North spoke about interest rates. They are certainly disturbing to us also. That is the reason so much of our funding is going into the subsidization of rates for low-income families. I am not a great believer of subsidies in themselves, but it is best to be honest and to say what they are, and not give them some other name. They are taxpayers' dollars and they are being used constructively. The hon. member for Winnipeg North suggests that we are maintaining an artificially high rate and that under the AHOP program we are giving the money to the lender. The money goes to the purchaser of the home directly, in monthly payments. We try to maintain our loan rates close to the market, but at the low end because that is the only realistic way to look at it. It is no more an international

commodity than capital and it flows in spite of borders. The world interest rate affects our interest rates.
There are, of course, many other factors. It is not a simple subject to debate, but we have put limits on the rates at which we will insure, because we are saying that above those rates people cannot take advantage of many of these programs and they will not receive the benefit of insured loans or insurance under the National Housing Act from CMHC if they are charged rates above what we think are fair market rates under existing conditions. Sometimes this changes rather frequently. Sometimes it changes by region, and with decentralization of CMHC regional managers of each province have considerable discretion to use judgment, which they use wisely, in determining the situation in their local markets.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North suggested that someone other than the private builder is going to build the houses. I am sure he spoke of this in regard to other countries. I have visited many other countries where the governments build houses. I do not think that is what Canadians want. I think there are better ways of doing it. We set the parameters; we set high standards; we do good planning. We have a long way to go on all those things, but we are doing much better than many other countries. They have to deliver according to those standards, at those price levels, and those income groups are the ones who have to do it. I fear the day when the government gets into building houses in this country. Because I fear it, I give tremendous emphasis to the area of third sector housing, the type of housing under our non-profit and co-operative housing programs. This is not government, it is not private sector developers, but it is people in groups or it can be other levels of government.
We are very much encouraged not only by the municipalities establishing non-profit housing units but also church groups, service groups and trade union groups who together have done an excellent job in establishing nonprofit or co-operative corporations which we subsidize 100 per cent-or at least we lend at 100 per cent at low rates of interest.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: At least you are honest.


Barnett Jerome Danson: I caught myself being dishonest. It was only a slip of the tongue, but I am associated with people who tell the truth, so I corrected myself very quickly. It is 100 per cent lending, 10 per cent forgiveness and up to $10,000 in start-up grants to help them get their corporations organized. In addition to that, we will give assistance and guidance, and in areas of very high land cost where the 10 per cent may not be enough to really help them, the federal government through Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation will purchase the land and lease it back to them at a nominal rent so that the rents will be at a level people can afford.
Through my colleague, the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. MacDonald), the Department of Veterans Affairs is granted a further 10 per cent forgiveness in that sense to encourage veterans' groups. I think this is a very special thing. I do not know of any other nation in the world which has taken veterans through another generation where instead of the needs of the young, vigorous veteran with his war bride charging home from the battles and out
May 23, 1975

the frontiers to raise crops and babies, they are all a little tired now and their needs are changing. This is directed more to the needs of veterans today, and I think Legion branches and other veterans' groups across the country have extremely good programs of which to take advantage and under which to build housing designed for the needs of veterans today. This is in addition to assistance under AHOP.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North also expressed his concern about quality as opposed to quantity. I do not know that we oppose either. They are just separate elements in the whole housing equation. I share his interest and concern. This is, of course, the reason for our neighbourhood improvement program, for our residential rehabilitation program, and also for a great deal of study which is going into this whole area not only in third sector housing but in community development, new communities and inner-core development which is so terribly important in the hon. member's home city of Winnipeg and where we are working on a trilevel basis in an attempt to improve these elements. But there is still a great deal more we have to know. Statistics Canada is now engaged in a very comprehensive housing survey for CMHC, information from which will be coming on stream very soon and it will tell us much about the present housing needs, housing standards and future housing needs of Canadians.
Further to that, we have our demonstration and development programs which are designed to deal with settlement patterns in small communities, as I mentioned, in the inner city and in satellite communities. It is involved in technological innovation, the autonomous servicing of units, the recycling of waste, sewage and garbage-


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Meat?


Barnett Jerome Danson: -in construction techniques and productivity, alternatives to housing, mixed uses of housing, new forms of housing and greater flexibility of planning and designing.


An hon. Member:: And swimming pools?


Barnett Jerome Danson: With regard to design, my hon. friend referred to the competitions sponsored by CMHC in housing design. I do not have the precise answer at my finger tips relating to those which deal with low-income and multi-family housing, but the point is not only well made but is one which the corporation and I have been discussing. We saw excellent designs which won awards, but not enough directed at the area of housing into which we are putting our greatest concentration. The corporation recognizes that because it is involved in demonstration projects taking place right here in Ottawa to develop new standards, better quality housing and low cost housing.
One thing I did see on the trip to Europe was a kind of special allocation for families buying housing which was quite adequate. It was not up to our standards, but it was a standard I think most young families would be happy with if they could afford it. I think it is important to aim for something quite livable and affordable so that people can get a start in the housing market, whether it is ownership or rental. From there, I think we must consider what has been done in some of the countries to which my hon. friend referred, which I visited with officials of the corpo-
Housing
ration and the ministry, and develop their ideas also so that they meet our particular standards.
In some cases they had the right amount of space, but were built for different climatic conditions. In other cases they settled for density and a height that we would not find acceptable. In other countries there was housing which I think would be totally unacceptable to Canadians even though the planning aspects were good and the housing might have been a big improvement over what the people of those countries enjoy today. I do not think we should try to emulate that in this country, however. Nevertheless, there was that concern. We are addressing ourselves to the problem, and shall continue to do so. As the hon. member suggested, I would not mind spending the summer visiting those other countries to see their programs. I will see what my priorities are.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: He asked you to spend the summer thinking about it.


Barnett Jerome Danson: The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield) suggests I spend the summer thinking. That is not a bad idea. One of the most frustrating parts of this business is wondering if one's ideas get to the public. They might be looking around this House today at the empty seats, wondering where the members are. At least we know that these men and women are working, that they are out in the country and at committees. We do not have a chance to refresh ourselves and see the work we are doing, in perspective. Sometimes we react too much to the urgent, rather than the important, so any opportunity to get away and look at things in perspective is valuable. I accept that and I will try to do it this summer. As it happens, I think best in my boat with a fishing rod in my hand, rather than travelling around the country. If I can get a few days of that, I will come back refreshed and vigorous to do the other work.
The hon. member for Bellechasse (Mr. Lambert) raised a number of interesting points. I never cease to be amazed at his knowledge and interest in regard to housing. Indeed, sometimes it puts me to shame. I am not sure of the precise circumstances regarding the Neighbourhood Improvement Program for Montmagny, but I shall look into it. He also spoke about the problem of identifying these programs and getting sufficient information on them. He suggests that in Quebec things are of a different nature than in other parts of the country.
I think it is important in all parts of the country that these programs are recognized and the people know what the federal government is doing. This applies as much in western Canada where they are not blessed with as many Liberals as Quebec. It is not a matter of partisan politics in Quebec but it is a matter of something that everyone in this House is concerned about. We are concerned about the unity of this country, not only in constitutional terms but-I hate to use the word "spiritual" terms, but we are concerned that there is an understanding that the federal system is working.
It is certain that the work we do here is extremely important. Although we may argue about programs and the way they are implemented, I think we are all commit-

May 23, 1975
Housing
ted to all parts of this country. It is important that Canadians know and understand where their tax dollars are being spent, by whom and in what manner. As far as I am concerned, it is fundamental in this area of federal-provincial relations.
As I said before, I do not think we should be called members of parliament. We should be called trustees. We are elected, we collect taxes, spend the money and go back to the people at election time to give an account of the trusteeship. It is very easy for other levels of government to say they do not want to be bothered with the taxing job but just with spending the funds. I realize there are areas of co-operation, but it is not as simple as the problems of getting together and saying, "You do the taxing and we will do the spending". The parliamentary system as we know it would fail. As the hon. member for Bellechasse said, it is important that these programs be clearly articulated so that not only members of parliament know about them but that constituents also know. I commend the hon. member for Bellechasse for his concern. I am going to go into this rather thoroughly to make sure the information program is enhanced and that the corporation is enthusiastic about it as well.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. Is the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton (Mr. Baker) rising for the purpose of asking a question?


Walter David Baker: I should like to ask one
short question, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: This can only be done with unanimous consent because the time of the minister has expired. Is there consent to allow a question by the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the minister could tell us whether the meeting between himself and the provincial housing ministers which was not held on May 21 has been rescheduled? If not, is it his intention that it will be held before the budget?


Barnett Jerome Danson: Mr. Speaker, I hope so, but I do not decide this unilaterally; I discuss it with my colleagues. I shall be seeing most of the housing ministers separately. I want to speak to them personally within a period of a few hours to determine this. They might find, because of our meetings in the next few weeks, that we can resolve our problems. The provincial ministers now understand, as I am beginning to understand, that it is almost better to sit down one by one and deal with each province, than have all the other ministers sitting around the table listening to problems that are different from their own.


James McPhail Gillies: Mr. Speaker, one of the agonizing chores of a member of the opposition is to watch the government mismanage the country. One that is equally agonizing and almost worse is to listen to the type of explanation we have had from the minister about what is happening to housing in this country. Does the minister not know that there is a real housing crisis in this country? He has the gall to stand here this afternoon, when the vacancy rate in Toronto is less than 1 per cent for apart-

ments, and housing starts in the country for the first three months of the year are the lowest since 1946, and make the speech he made this afternoon. How can he do that? He made a catalogue of those programs, and still we have the most disgraceful housing problem that we have ever seen in this country.
I do not get upset easily, but I am truly upset this afternoon. It is as if the minister did not know what is happening in housing. We are in a terrible mess with economic problems, as everybody knows, but does the minister not also know that housing starts are down by 100,000 from what we thought they would be? Does he not know that people are leaving Toronto because rents are increasing so rapidly? Does he not know what is happening to people in the country because no housing is being built for them? The minister has the nerve to stand up this afternoon and recite this catalogue of programs when nothing is happening. Let us be empirical about it. He can talk about these programs as long as he wants, but nothing is happening. Housing starts are down.


Barnett Jerome Danson: Ten million dollars a year!


James McPhail Gillies: Mr. Speaker, I find that answer so distressing and so incredible. Does the minister not know what is happening to housing starts in this country? What is the good of talking about $10 million a year, or this or that or the other program? The programs are not working. Look at the evidence. The Houses are not there. Housing starts are not in evidence.
[DOT] (M50)
The hon. member for Winnipeg North (Mr. Orlikow) said he hopes the minister goes to Europe. I understand the minister hopes to go fishing. I wish he would stay here and help us get some houses built in this country. We have a more serious problem in housing than we have had at any time since the early days of the Second World War. Yet here we are, postponing meetings, fooling around and wondering when the budget is going to come down, talking about AHOP, and this and that and the other program, when the entire premise on which the housing policy is based is wrong. That Canada, with all its land resources and all its building material resources, should face a situation in which the number of housing starts in the first three months of 1975 was smaller than at any time since 1946, is incomprehensible. There is something desperately wrong, and that is why the minister's approach, of giving a catalogue of programs, is totally unacceptable.
Clearly, the premise on which we are basing our housing policy is totally wrong. Housing in this country has traditionally been used by the government as an anti-cyclical instrument. When the business cycle declines, we build houses. Interest rates fall, demand goes up, and starts increase. When the business cycle is on the upswing, interest rates rise, demand falls and we do not build houses. However, now the traditional pattern of the business cycle is not present. Because of poor economic policies we are now in a situation in which there is increasing inflation and rising unemployment at the same time. We can no longer see the same pattern that was evident between 1945 and 1970. Inflation should be lessening

because unemployment is rising, but that is not happening.


An hon. Member:: Why?


James McPhail Gillies: The hon. member can make his own speech. It is time we looked at our housing policies and stopped pretending they are working. The fact is that poor operation of our economy has created an economic structure in this country in which we have high unemployment and high inflation at the same time. Consequently, housing programs in this country cannot be initiated on the same basis that was used 20 years ago. It will not work. So using outdated, ineffectual programs makes no sense.


An hon. Member:: They are not ineffectual.


James McPhail Gillies: They are totally ineffectual.
An. hon. Member: Is $450 million totally ineffectual?


James McPhail Gillies: It is all very well to talk about $450 million. The fact is, the government's programs do not build houses. Housing starts are off by 100,000 units.


An hon. Member:: What's a few houses?


James McPhail Gillies: The hon. member asks, "What's a few houses?" It is all right for members representing rural areas to say that. But how can you say that when you live in a city, when you represent urban people? Young people have always thought in Canada that they will have the opportunity to own their own home. Apparently that is not now the case. The point is, you cannot kid yourselves. The Quebec government kidded itself for a long time about its labour difficulties. You can kid yourself about a lot of things: the day of reckoning comes, and the day of reckoning in housing is here. All you have to do is look at the evidence. We shall never solve our housing difficulties with the sort of approach the minister demonstrated this afternoon. His approach is based on a view of the economy which is no longer valid.
I disagree entirely with the hon. member for Winnipeg North who said we need more government programs. The truth is that the more government programs there are, the fewer houses are built. We have so much government involvement in this area that the industry is not working effectively. As things now stand, there is little hope that conditions will improve.
What the minister said this afternoon disappointed me greatly. I thought this was a lovely Friday afternoon until I heard his speech. I came here thinking we would be finding some solutions to this problem, that we would find a way out. You cannot embark on the type of programs the minister talked about, in the general economic climate of this country. It cannot be done.
If you want housing to be built in this country, and I know this is a complicated and difficult problem, you must find some way to encourage the flow of mortgage funds into the market at rates people can afford, so that they can service the debt. People have to have houses. Canadians must be given the opportunity to buy homes of their own. They cannot do it at current prices and current mortgage rates, and you cannot bring prices down until
Housing
you control inflation. You must find some way to bring mortgage rates down.


An hon. Member:: What's your solution?


James McPhail Gillies: I came here this afternoon to hear the answers to housing problems. But what do we find? Not only do we not hear the answers, but we note that the minister does not even recognize the problems; does not see that the premises underlying the economy have changed. Still he has the gall to ask the opposition, "What should we do"? For heaven's sake, I thought the government was elected to show leadership in this country. We are witnessing the biggest decline in housing starts in 20 years.
A few years ago the Economic Council of Canada said in its annual report that Canada needs 250,000 housing units per year in order to keep up with the family formation. This year we are going to build 165,000 units. This will be the worst year in recent history. The minister has a total obligation to the people of this country to reverse this situation. I suggest that he and his departmental officials should reconsider their approach to the field of housing.
We may need to institute a program under which a certain proportion of savings deposited in savings institutions is put into the mortgage market. I have never understood why the government did not establish long ago a central mortgage bank. We may need to establish building societies or savings and loan associations which will invest their moneys in mortgages. We may need to subsidize interest rates. One may not like such programs, but we may need them. We may need to reconsider our tax structure and provide some sort of exemption on moneys lent for mortgages in order to encourage more mortgage money into the mortgage market.
As the minister knows, people cannot compete for mortgage funds, not because they are not willing to pay the rates but because they cannot qualify for the loans. We must bring mortgage interest rates down. We cannot ask individual Canadians to compete for mortgages in times of inflation, when the policy of the government has been to keep interest rates high. You cannot expect people to compete in the housing market in those circumstances. They cannot. They cannot compete with General Motors for investment funds. The government must realize this and provide people with some sort of protection in the market, if it believes that houses should be built in this country. That is the only way it can be done.
The government must bring down the cost of home ownership. Why not provide tax relief on mortgage interest rates over 8 per cent?
Why have taxes? Why not be allowed to deduct your real property taxes in the calculation of your federal income tax in order to make home ownership easier? Why not be able to get these sorts of things going that will really go after the fundamental problem, namely, the cost of mortgage money?
The only way housing prices are going to fall is by increasing the supply. Somehow we have to get the supply

May 23, 1975
Housing
higher than the demand. Prices will then start to drop. People will once again be able to afford housing.
I totally refuse to accept the proposition that in a country like Canada the average young family can never hope to have a home of their own. That is wrong. They ought to be able to buy a home of their own. They could in this country up until the past four or five years. If people were willing to save and borrow some money, they could get a home of their own. Today they cannot.
I have spoken before about the uncertainty that people are feeling at the present time. Why wouldn't they? The value system they have known is being destroyed. It was a fundamental principle in this country that if you wanted to work hard, you could get a house. Ask those in the urban communities today, those under 30 in the middle income group, if they have any hope of acquiring a house. They do not, and they know it. They are distressed about the situation. They should not have to be in such a predicament.
For the minister even to suggest that we have any sort of success in housing today is a total misunderstanding of what the Canadian people feel. It is a total misunderstanding of the facts. I just cannot understand how he could stand up and make a speech like he made this afternoon. The people of this country want more than that.
The hon. member for Grenville-Carleton (Mr. Baker) asked when the minister is going to get the provincial ministers together. You have to do a great deal more than that. You will have to be in Ottawa within the next two or three weeks with the ministers from the various provinces and the leading lenders and builders in this country. You should all get together in a room and not come out until you have solved some of the problems. You cannot expect the Canadian people to put up with this sort of situation.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: I regret to interrupt the hon. member, but he must remember that he is to address the Chair and not the minister.


James McPhail Gillies: I apologize, Madam Speaker, but I am very exercised about this particular matter. I thought Your Honour was rising to say I was running out of time.


An hon. Member:: Out of ideas.


James McPhail Gillies: I am not running out of ideas. I have put forth the fundamental reason this afternoon why housing programs are failing. It is because they are predicated and planned to operate in an economic situation where you have a trade-off between inflation and employment, a trade-off which we do not have any more. For that reason the present approaches will not work.
I again suggest, as I did a few moments ago, that the minister should not be thinking of going to Europe or anywhere else. He should stay in Ottawa, have the provincial ministers here as well as the municipal leaders, and the lenders and builders to turn this situation around so that the people of Canada once again may have housing.


Mr. Serge Joyal (Maisortneuve-Rosemont):: Madam Speaker, first I would like to thank the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald), even if she

has left the House, for her motion this afternoon because she gives us the opportunity as Canadians to examine for a few hours one of the issues which, for the past few months, has been a concern not only of federal politicians, municipal officials and provincial politicians, but also of all the taxpayers, whatever their means and their interest is in housing.
Indeed, Madam Speaker, I was amazed to note the emphasis placed by the hon. members for Kingston and the Islands and Don Valley (Mr. Gillies) on new housing starts.
Like the hon. member for Don Valley, Madam Speaker, I live in an urban constituency where unfortunately the proportion of owners is very low. In fact, 90 per cent of the people in the federal constituency of Maisonneuve-Rosemont live in rented accommodations. Moreover, 10 per cent of the owners live outside this constituency so that the housing problem in this area is completely different from the described by the previous speakers. The average income of the residents, Madam Speaker, is around $7,000 to $8,000 a year. It is therefore very obvious that some Canadians, whatever the interest rates, whatever the grants given by the government for the purchase of a home, cannot consider owning their own home.
However, Madam Speaker, we must not think that every Canadian citizen wants to have his own home. When people want to live in the core of cities, when people want to live in a high-density urban centre, it is obvious that the land cannot be divided so that every citizen can have his own home.
This is why, Madam Speaker, I was rather amazed to note during the first part of this debate that the emphasis was placed essentially on the purchase of a new property instead of on the renovation and restoration of existing homes.
Like the hon. members who have preceded me, Madam Speaker, I have tried to determine what factors may have influenced that decrease in the number of housing starts. Of course, interest rates would seem to be one of the main reasons for the reluctance of builders to start new housing development programs. But one must also realize, Madam Speaker, that interest rates are not the only factor.
Indeed, we must not either reach the conclusion that construction investment funds have suddenly and completely disappeared. For instance, I noticed that in September of 1974, in metropolitan Montreal alone, over $5 billion were spent on construction. Of those $5 billion, only $138 million were invested in housing projects. Where did those other billions and millions go, if they were not invested in the construction of family dwellings? They went into the construction of office buildings, to the tune of $200 million, into the construction of hospitals, nursing homes, and shopping centres, to that of $300 million, and into the construction of major road construction projects, highways, plants and manufactures for still another $400 million.
We realize, Madam Speaker, that under present economic circumstances, investors and promoters have lost interest in housing and turned instead to concentrate their efforts in the field of commercial and institutional build-
May 23, 1975

ing. That is one factor the hon. members who spoke before me did not bring out.
To my mind, it is one of those factors which must be taken into account if we really want to see the construction industry as it really is because, Madam Speaker, housing is not an abstract idea. Housing is based on the construction industry which is a very lucrative industry; and it is profits the investors, the promoters are concerned with at this time. So I believe more attention should be given to that first factor.
The second factor I want to emphasize this afternoon is the advent of a new form of participation in urban life by tenants and owners. Formely, people used to buy a house and live isolated and individually in their family home. Nowadays it is entirely different. Owners as well as tenants associations have been established, and they make, and rightly so, claims and requests of all kinds which are often justified but which investors and promoters obviously view as one of the new factors to be considered when they decide to invest large amounts in housing. They face complaints and claims that they must meet, and a number of those promoters would rather invest in commercial or institutional building where those factors of participation by the people do not exist.
One must also consider another factor, Madam Speaker, and that is rent control. Formerly, investors could depend on free enterprise on the housing market. They did not have to concern themselves with complaints or with government interference in setting rents. Nowadays, an investor or a promoter who invests millions in projects must also consider that in a few years, in five or ten years, the municipal or provincial government may decide to freeze rents which would decrease his profits, whereas in other fields, as I said a while ago, in shopping centres for instance, there is no such fear.
Those are so many factors which cropped up again in the building industry and must be considered when the number of housing starts shows a decrease. It is utopian to believe that a mere increase or decrease in the rates of interest will immediately bring about the spectacular result of 100 housing starts. I do not think, Madam Speaker, that the situation can be cleared up when emphasis is put only on that one factor.
There is also another element, Madam Speaker, and I am surprised the hon. member for Don Valley (Mr. Gillies) who is an economist did not mention it-and that is productivity. The construction industry in certain areas of this country-and I am thinking of the province of Quebec in particular-has registered a considerable drop in productivity in the past year. Indeed, the latest reports released by the Quebec Minister of Industry and Commerce show that productivity in the construction industry dropped by 45 per cent.
You know of course, Madam Speaker, that this past week the Quebec National Assembly passed two special pieces of legislation-Bill 29 and Bill 30. The purpose of those two bills is to restore order in the construction industry. Madam Speaker, nobody in the province of Quebec is glad about construction unions being put under trusteeship. I think, Madam Speaker, that when a situa-
Housing
tion arises where a municipality, a union must be put under trusteeship, it is because the situation is serious enough. And such a step necessarily has the effect of limiting freedom. I think, Madam Speaker, there is not a member in this House who subscribes to a social system where the possibility must be considered that eventually all of our institutions would successively be placed under trusteeship.
I read in the New York Times last week that the city of New York was soon to go bankrupt and that eventually it would be placed under trusteeship by the U.S. Government.
I am not glad, Madam Speaker, that municipalities in this country should be placed under trusteeship. When a population can no longer face their representatives, when construction union members can no longer face their representatives, they are in the same situation as when the residents of a city are forced to ask their provincial government to put their municipal administration under trusteeship. Any trusteeship, Madam Speaker, amounts to a restriction of liberties, and I do not think that this government or opposition parties include massive trusteeship as a major item in their election programs.
Madam Speaker, I think the construction industry in Quebec in recent years went through an extremely difficult period. One only has to review various projects financed by the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation to see that every month one of those projects went bankrupt either because a contractor gave up his project or because after a few months of work certain elements in the construction showed considerable defects.
I need not mention here these projects: they are well known of most hon. members. But why can tenants and owners no longer trust developers and contractors? Why have we reached, all of a sudden a point where developers no longer want to get involved with the construction industry? It has become an explosive sector, where it is not possible to foresee any more how long it will be before projects and buildings are likely to fall apart, so that prospective buyers can no longer consider them a safe investment.
I feel that one of the key factors of the 100,000 housing starts which, as was clamoured a while ago, are dangerously lacking in this country would be the cleaning up of the building industry. I insisted on the reduced productivity of the building industry in Quebec. I am not deceiving myself, I am not implying that in Vancouver, Toronto, Halifax or St. John, the housing industry is experiencing high productivity rates. The construction industry in Canada is now in a disastrous situation. I believe our responsibility as a government must be shared both with provincial authorities and developers themselves. I am amazed that opposition members, on this opposition day, did not see fit to draw the government's attention to that factor.
I can assure the House that at least all Quebec members, when in these last weeks they met with representatives of the building industry, of CHMC and the Minister of State for Urban Affairs (Mr. Danson), were extremely concerned with the situation. They are concerned because the freedom of trade unions is one of the basic rights in this country, and personally I consider it much more important

Housing
than the purchase of a house. Buying a house is buying physical materials. The freedom of trade unions is the climate in which the work is done. I think that housing starts are a priority, but first trade unions must be given back their freedom. As I said, I am amazed that hon. members opposite neglected to mention that fact.
It should be stated clearly over the next few hours, that productivity in the construction industry has declined, that some building trade unions are now under trusteeship, and that someone must be responsible for restoring stability in the building industry. It is not only a question of dollars, as the hon. member for Don Valley would have us believe. Housing starts are not automatic.
Housing starts are not vending machines where one only has to deposit 10 or 15 cents to get a chocolate bar or a cup of coffee. Housing starts occur in the context of a social climate within a society. And it is in such a context that the Minister of State for Urban Affairs met with the mayor of Montreal in March to review one of the most, and possibly the most important program in the urban areas of the country. This program is designed to preserve the present housing stock. It is all very well to start building new houses for families earning $7,000 to $8,000 per year. It's utopian to think that all Canadians will one day be able to purchase a house of their own. This is an aim supported by members of the government as well as of the opposition. But it is not the only one: our other aim in the field of housing must be in the social field, namely to preserve existing housing units.
When I stroll in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal and see all those abandoned houses, I am surprised that it does not create a scandal. It is scandalous to think that all the money invested in infrastructure, sewers, water system, schools and hospitals in those areas are now used at less than 50 or 60 per cent capacity because half the district is progressively being abandoned and houses are empty.
A dynamic policy, Madam Speaker, is a policy aimed primarily at the conservation of the housing stock. And when the mayor of Montreal and the Minister of State for Urban affairs saw fit to increase to 50 per cent the cost of rehabilitating a housing unit, they had this purpose in mind, the social aspect of the housing policy that must be given priority at this time. When Canadians hesitate to reinvest in the housing industry, we must first protect those who are more subject to market fluctuations, who cannot reinvest, who have dependants live on a fixed income.
Madam Speaker, those are the aspects of the debate I would have expected to be discussed today by members of the opposition. I am not saying that others will not point them out when they take part in the debate later on; on the contrary, I hope they will do so. It is one of the essential factors, as I said a moment ago. But to have the country believe that suddenly 100,000 housing units can be started merely by lowering the interest rate is nothing but eyewash, because at least half the urban lands are already built up, and the concern we must show to preserve the social fabric of these cities is another factor, another objective that we must keep in mind.

May 23, 1975
I do not believe that generally speaking, Canadians all dream of living in the suburbs. We all know the inconveniences of suburbia as well as its advantages. As a government, we must give the people a choice. We must allow every Canadian to choose adequate housing within his means. That is the true objective. It is not only to have housing starts.
Madam Speaker, in the time remaining before we adjourn, we must raise more questions about those aspects of the operation of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Why, for instance, does the Corporation not have a program to compensate tenants and owners against bankruptcy and shady promoters? Why do we not have an insurance scheme that would force developers, builders, tenants, owners and the government to protect themselves against the bankruptcy of those building swindlers? That is a positive thought, Madam Speaker.
Why for instance should we not review within the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation our warranty procedure, the inquiries made when a developer applies for a loan? Why should we not review those procedures? That is where lies the real failure. It is not by thinking of reducing the interest rate that all of a sudden the building industry will stabilize itself, promoters will become honest and all Canadians will live in single-family suburban homes. We should not centre our attention on that single aspect. I think there are sufficient elements in this debate for our discussion this afternoon to bear fruit.
Madam Speaker, as I said before, I live in and represent a constituency in which 90 per cent of the citizens are tenants and 70 per cent live in houses build 50 or 60 years ago. What can I tell them when I go back there and meet them? "The government has a housing start program to help you buy $32,000 homes". Madam Speaker, that is not good enough. That is not what they expect of me. What they want me to tell them is that I can prove that there is a form of assistance available to maintain their housing and their urban environment and keep them from deteriorating. That is what they want. They do not want to think that eventually the situation will improve so easily that everybody can move to the suburbs.
When I visit the suburbs of Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, I do not believe, Madam Speaker, that the aim of a social policy is basically to have everybody live in the suburbs. Opposition members suggested that the minister visit some European cities where new programs may have been implemented. Madam Speaker, one should visit the Paris or London suburbs to realize how little people wish to live in large urban centres where individualism, demythologization and loss of identity are the primary reasons or symptoms of those who move to those suburbs.
If we are to draw positive conclusions from this debate, I think those are the factors we should dwell upon. I do not think the housing situation has reached the point where it is a topic to be raised every second or third month. Instead, I would prefer that opposition members consider all the programs which come under the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs and analyze them. They are not perfect. I for one, Madam Speaker, could criticize at length any of those programs. One only has to look at them, to see how they actually work, and finally make suggestions to the minister. He is always available, always willing to
May 23, 1975

meet with his colleagues and urge them to act. I was really shocked when I heard the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands say that the Prime Minister should pick a Minister of State for Urban Affairs with more influence on his colleagues. What a laugh, Madam Speaker! Since the Ministry of Urban Affairs was created, the present minister is probably one of those most aware of the social aspects I mentioned earlier. And this is true, regardless of the succeeding Liberal ministers who were Ministers of State for Urban Affairs. I do not wish to pass judgment on their administration. The factors I underlined a while ago were unknown generally at that time to both sides of the House. But now that the facts are laid down on the table, that they are being discussed, I suggest that it will take a man like the minister to assure Canadians that the social aspect of housing, the stability within the building industry, and union freedom within the building industry, are so many objectives of the government policy.
Madam Speaker, hon. members who will rise after me this afternoon will hopefully deal with these factors, and I am always at their as well as the minister's disposal to help improve these programs. Such is our function as parliamentarians. It consists really in reviewing those programs, Madam Speaker, and not only use them as smoke screens.
It is quite easy to set 265,000 housing units as a target, with the present total of 165,000, it means a total deficit of 100,000 housing units. One need not be a great economist to figure that out, Madam Speaker, as did the hon. member for Don Valley.
As for me, I am an economist, and it was not the main mathematical operation I effected to analyze the building industry. It is a complex industry, an industry that benefits or suffers from all the trends of the economy.
I am not any happier, Madam Speaker, when the policy of the government merely consists in regulating the economic machine by injecting more money into the building industry.
As I said previously, government reports have shown this to be true. The Dennis-Fisch report, Madam Speaker, clearly demonstrated that the government's objective must be 40,000 housing starts for people with low or moderate incomes. That is one of the objectives, Madam Speaker, and it cannot readily be achieved by mathematical operations.
I hope, Madam Speaker, that in the next minutes, other members will also be able to insist on such aspects and show the government where the failures really lie, where interventions are really needed, and not simply state in a general way that 100,000 more housing units are needed.


Mr. Alex Patterson (Fraser Valley East):: Madam Speaker, rising to take part in this debate today I am reminded of the numerous warnings that my leader and other members of this party have given to the government over the last two years concerning the problem that is facing Canada in the housing field. Specific warnings were given to the government to the effect that if strong actions were not taken to stimulate activity in the housing field, there would be a serious decline in housing starts and a further increase in the already skyrocketing cost of
Housing
accommodation, as well as a deepening of the crisis situation which we find ourselves involved in throughout the country today.
All of our warnings apparently were ignored, our suggestions were laughed at and shouted down, and the government continued on its way denying that any crisis existed, hiding its head in the proverbial sand with respect to the possibility of a decline in housing starts. On many occasions the minister said, "We care", and then said, "Look at what we are doing". This was characteristic of his address to the House this afternoon. He cited the various programs his department is engaged in-AHOP, RHOP and so on. But in spite of the minister's optimism and his pride in all the various programs that have been enunciated, housing starts are still declining.
I should like to refer to a news release from the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation dated April 8, 1975, which reads, in part:
Housing starts during March were at a seasonally-adjusted rate of 138,000 for all areas of Canada, according to preliminary figures. Actual starts during the month in urban areas were 6,165, a decline of 54 per cent from the 13,291 recorded for the same month a year ago. Urban starts in the first quarter of 1975 totalled 18,271, a decline of 49 per cent from the 35,826 in the first quarter of 1974.
I should like to make a few remarks about the housing situation, not from the viewpoint of the housing itself- though I realize that this is reaching a crisis point-but from the point of view of the impact that it has on the related industries in my own province of British Columbia.
At the outset let me say that the situation in the province is critical. Part of the reason is that British Columbia has the highest population growth in Canada. If you couple this with the drastic decline in housing starts over the last year you can see the impact this has on the residents of British Columbia. In 1974, for example, the population rose to 2.4 million people, a gain of 3.5 per cent over one year earlier. This represents more than twice the average increase for Canada as a whole. It was the highest percentage gain since 1967 and the largest absolute increase during the past decade. When we look at the situation from that point of view we can see just how seriously the economy of British Columbia and, on a wider sphere, the economy of Canada, are affected by the situation existing in the housing field today.
With the great influx of residents to British Columbia from all parts of Canada and the decline in housing starts I am sure it is evident to all what a tremendous pressure there is on the housing industry in respect of the current situation in British Columbia where we have a nil vacancy rate with an ever-increasing population demand.
As an indication of how important the forest, logging and lumber industries are to British Columbia let me put a few facts on the record. British Columbia contains less than 2 per cent of the country's forest area but, at the same, it supplies about 25 per cent of the wood cut in Canada. Forest industries accounted for approximately 20 per cent, or one-fifth of all Canadian exports in 1972. In the Canadian output in the logging sector about 47 per cent of the total production comes from British Columbia.

May 23, 1975
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British Columbia accounts for most of the soft wood plywood made in Canada. Let me relate a few of these facts to the declining housing starts to show the impact the housing crisis has on this very important industry. I should like to refer to the B.C. Summary of Economic Activity 1974.
B.C.'s forest industry experienced a serious decline in the lumber component during 1974 after having enjoyed three successive years of expanding markets and good prices. Demand instability for wood products began in the first quarter of 1974 and price reductions became evident near the end of the second quarter. The reduced demand for lumber and plywood necessitated some cutbacks and lay-offs in the wood products sector during the last quarter. What was the reason given for the drastic decline in the lumber component in 1974? The major reason given is the decline in housing starts.
The summary goes on to say:
It is anticipated that no significant improvement in market conditions can be expected until mid 1975 even if dramatic measures are taken immediately to get housing construction back on an upward trend.
I should like to draw attention to the serious and drastic situation that will develop in view of the fact that there is a continuing decline in housing starts in Canada. The quantity of lumber scaled in British Columbia declined in 1974 by 21 per cent from the previous year, again due to the weakened housing market.
I could go on to deal with the various aspects of the lumber industry in British Columbia, to point out in an additional manner the way in which the drastic housing situation is affecting this province, but because of the shortage of time and because other members wish to speak I will delete some of the issues and shorten some of the others I had intended to cover rather fully.
British Columbia is a province that has been able to manage its forest products to provide employment for its citizens through the extraction sector as well as the related manufacturing and processing sector. But this industry which, as I have tried to point out, is so vital to British Columbia is also very dependent on the residential construction industry in Canada. The past year has been an extremely difficult one because of the inept policies followed by the federal government.
I do not know how many times I have heard the minister and other members of the government state that Canadians are well housed. This has been said on a number of occasions. I believe it would take more than the flowery words of the minister in charge of housing, or of any of his supporters on the other side of the House, to convince us that that is the case, because wherever one travels in this country one finds serious housing situations that are developing and which have developed not only in one category but across the board.
I believe it is time the government paid attention to this matter, and instead of doing so much talking took some action, because no matter how many statements are made and how many programs are in effect this does not mean that the problem is being effectively tackled. There is a vast difference between intentions and actual performance. I am sure we have all heard the statement that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and not only

the road to hell but the road to some far more desirable objectives is paved with good intentions. I do not question the intentions of the minister or his desire to meet the needs in the housing field, but I do question, as do other members of our party, the actual performance of the minister in carrying to fruition the plan he has announced so many times in this House.
I see that time is rapidly passing by. I should like to point out some of the obstacles in the way of an adequate and effective program to achieve the goal of decent housing at reasonable cost for Canadians. I shall cover these rather quickly. I think we start with the fundamental problem of inflation.
Throughout the budget debates over the past several years the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) indicated time and time again that the major thrust of his budgets was to combat two problems, unemployment and inflation. But we find that the more often he emphasizes this the less progress is made in meeting the challenge and the need to solve the inflationary problem. I believe the government has reached the point at which it has just given up on this proposition.
Despite the fact that during the past few months the government has been carrying on consensus discussions it has not been able to record one single shred of evidence to indicate it is being successful in its consensus program in order to meet the problem of inflation. So I say I believe the government has given up. Perhaps that is one reason for the delay in bringing in the budget as has been announced. The reason given is that the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) will be away. How much longer is Canada to be last on the list of priorities? So many times when there has been a debate in this House on a very important issue the Prime Minister has had to be away when he should have been in this House presenting propositions, meeting the challenges of the opposition, and answering questions.
Instead of being here the Prime Minister opts for something else. During the last several months, and over two or three years this pattern I have mentioned has been emerging. I believe it is time that the Prime Minister and other ministers got down to the business of administering their particular departments in a way that will not only give them direction but also indicate to the people of the country that they are actually doing something worthwhile for the benefit of the nation.
The second obstacle is the high and increasing interest rates. It is not necessary for me to go into this because it has been discussed quite fully in the debate thus far. I would point out, however, that in spite of the fact that there has been so much emphasis on interest rates continuing to rise, the government has taken absolutely no steps to ensure that people will be able to obtain mortgage money in order to build their own homes. There is no tax relief insofar as this is concerned.
Suggestions have been made concerning how the interest rate above a certain percentage should be tax deductible. But the government has consistently refused to accept the proposition. I believe that this is one area in which a real contribution could be made on behalf of those who are earnestly endeavouring to secure adequate housing.
May 23, 1975

There is no relief in the area of taxation. The minister laughed at the idea of bureaucratic red tape, but I suggest that bureaucratic red tape at various levels of government and in various agencies has discouraged both developers and individual prospective homeowners. There are restrictions upon restrictions, regulations are compounded until the procedures appear so complicated and are so time consuming that many say it is not worth it and give up in disgust and despair.
The cost and shortage of available land in British Columbia is making it impossible to construct housing. It is hard for citizens to secure adequate accommodation either through purchase or rent to house themselves and their families.
There are restrictions on federal programs. I want to read into the record a section from a letter I received. I sp'oke about the minister's statement that red tape does not cause any problem. Let me read from a letter which I received regarding an application that was made, in which it is stated that not only were these people discouraged from proceeding with that type of development, but subsequently they were denied approval by CMHC although the municipality was favourable and receptive to the overall development.
The minister can be overwhelmed by the exuberance of his verbosity, but that will not solve the problem nor will it meet this particular situation where the restrictions and the red tape surrounding the operations of CMHC and other programs are such that people are getting tired, and are giving up because of the confusion that is caused and the time that is consumed in trying to get programs through. I could go into all the details of some of the restrictions, but I will not because they have been described at other times.
The ceiling on available mortgages is too low on a regional basis, and in some cases the divisions between the regions are so arbitrary as to be-I was going to say stupid but I have been told I should not use that word-ridiculous. They are completely out of line. I believe CMHC should look at this matter and ensure that the ceilings are adequate to meet the needs of the areas. For instance, a young couple were trying to build their house in Winnipeg. I believe that the ceiling at that time was raised a little to about $33,000. A lot was being leased from an organization and CMHC insisted on placing a value on that lot of $15,000 and then expecting the couple to go ahead and build a house under the ceiling of $33,000. I say that this is true all across the country.
Another difficulty is that CMHC insists on a fixed rate rather than a floating rate. There is another letter which I received from which I would like to read. It is stated in it that trust companies and banks are experiencing difficulty in getting insured loans through CMHC because of the fact that they do not accept a floating take out rate; they want a firm rate.
These are all restrictions that are hindering the realization of the objective of having suitable housing for all the citizens of Canada. To cap it all, the minister says that he has been pouring money into this program. It seems that he has been pouring that money without limit, according
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to him. Yet the fact remains that developers and individuals are finding it absolutely impossible to get money today.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Alexander Bell Patterson: I did state that I would not charge the minister with lack of sympathy or sympathetic consideration, but I certainly question the statements he has made. Most of what he said is just talk, and there is not too much effective action in dealing with the serious problems facing Canada.


Mrs. Ursula Appolloni (York South):: Madam Speaker, there is a story that goes around about a number of multi-national students who were asked to write an essay on the general theme of an elephant. The British students decided to write about the elephant in its role as a vehicle of transportation in the British Empire. The French students decided to write about the elephant and its sex life. The students from the United States decided to write about the elephant and its market value. But when it came to the Canadian student, he entitled his essay "The elephant-is it a matter of federal, provincial or municipal responsibility?" I suggest that perhaps the same thing could well apply to housing.
I notice the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald) in speaking to her motion referred in particular to access to decent housing at prices that Canadian people can afford today. The hon. member knows better than I do that a large part of the cost of housing is in the price of serviced land. In speaking about Ontario I will refer in particular to Toronto because it is the city I know best. The average price of a fully serviced single family lot in Toronto is $20,211. What are we going to db about that? When we ask our provincial government, we find that on May 15, 1975, Bill 125 was finally passed. That is a bill dealing with land speculation. It was made retroactive to April 9, 1974.
We all know the political hue of the Ontario government which has projected a revenue of $25 million, but so far it has only received less than $1 million. I wonder what happened. On checking, we found that there is something known as ministerial discretion. The minister in Ontario is very anxious not to "create hardship," and therefore he uses his discretion in pointing out who is a land speculator. What is the definition of a land speculator?
We find also that his department accepts affidavits as to the worth of land. It is terribly touching and heart warming to find the Conservatives so sweet and trusting. They have no knowledge of the exact value of the land; they accept affidavits.
We then go on to the purchase of land by the provincial government. That in itself is a very good thing; I am not knocking it, but I believe the provincial government of Ontario is irresponsible in its purchase of land for housing.
In south Milton, just outside Toronto, three corporations-Cedar Heights Construction Limited, Lorring Developments and Bonny Don Corporation-all having the same president, purchased seven parcels of land from farmers in February of 1975, and one month later sold them to the provincial government for a profit of approxi-

May 23, 1975
Housing
mately $1 million. Of course we do not call that speculation, Madam Speaker! I am not sure what we do call it.
The biggest single threat to the acquisition of land in Ontario is the actions of the provincial government in this regard. As I said, we do not object to the acquisition of land but rather to the way in which the provincial government goes about it. It could possibly be the biggest land speculator going, and perhaps that is why it refuses to define the word "speculation" in the land speculation bill. I will give another example. Cedar Heights purchased one parcel of land for $379,095 and sold it to the provincial government for $579,095. That is a profit of $200,000. Are we talking about conscience, speculation, or what?
Then we come to the municipal level. In my riding there are people who are exceptionally handy. They can do wonders in the renovation and repair of houses. I believe that because of the high price of serviced lots we at the federal level should give some tax incentive for this kind of thing. Not only would it help people improve their present housing, especially the elderly, if they could afford to improve their housing, it would in many cases avoid their being shunted into senior citizens homes where they do not want to go anyway.
I hope the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) will consider that in his coming budget. Not only would it help housing but it would also help housing related industries. However, I find that in my own borough of York money from the home renewal program which was given to the borough about five months ago has not yet been used. Why not? It could be that I come from a borough where officials are almost paranoiac about two families living in one building, but in my riding it is the culture of the people to want to live together. I am not talking about overcrowding; I am talking about adding one extra room to a house so that another part of a family could fit in. Instead, we have something similar to paranoia.
We have officials who, not unlike McCarthy looking for communists, are looking for an extra kitchen, an extra bathroom or an extra bedroom. I agree with my leader. I think the state and the borough should keep out of the bedrooms of citizens. However, because of that, people in my riding are being refused money on the grounds that instead of asking for loans to repair their dwellings, they want to install extra bathrooms and build additions.
What is wrong with an extra bathroom or building an addition which could house another part of the family? My borough will not allow that.
I have listened to many speakers from the opposition today. Frankly, I welcome criticism when it is constructive, but having listened to some of the comments today, I must admit that many of the speakers sound a little bit like sour music critics who are themselves really only frustrated tenors.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Reginald Cyril Symes: Madam Speaker, this is indeed an important debate because we are dealing with the problem of housing in Canada, which is a crisis. It is a crisis which can be laid directly on the doorstep of

the Liberal government. We have housing programs built on crumbling foundations, and supervised by a minister whose blueprint for aiding low and middle income Canadians is totally inadequate.
I would like very briefly to outline the nature of this crisis and to make some constructive proposals to combat this growing problem. The first thing we must recognize- and I think the government has not taken it seriously-is the escalation of housing costs. I will give but a few examples. In Toronto in 1972 the average house cost $31,357. In 1974 that same house sold for $46,210, or a 50 per cent increase in two years. That kind of escalation cannot be tolerated by a government if it is serious about the housing needs of Canadians. Yet we see the price of houses today continuing to rise. In 1975 the average price of a house in the province of Ontario is $48,836, a price beyond the capability of most Ontarians to afford. So the first aspect of the housing crisis is that costs are just out of all proportion.
The second aspect of the housing crisis is the escalation in mortgage rates. It was not so long ago that mortgage rates in this country were fixed at 6 per cent. Then the government removed the upper limit and allowed the mortgage rate to float. It soon rose to 8 per cent, 9 per cent and 10 per cent. Today under the National Housing Act there is a rate of 11!4 per cent, and on the conventional market, from banks and other financial institutions, a rate of 11 Vi per cent.
Constituents in my riding of Sault Ste. Marie have come to me complaining that they cannot obtain conventional mortgage rates, and that they are so desperate for accommodation that they have been forced to go to other institutions, such as loan companies, and are paying mortgage rates as high as 15 per cent. In our society that is totally criminal. We now find also that the mortgage money supply is becoming tighter and tighter. It is being restricted by the private lending institutions to new houses. For existing houses, which most average income Canadians can afford, mortgage money is practically non existent. So the second aspect of this problem of housing is the mortgage rate escalation.
The third aspect of this crisis is the rising cost of materials and land. Lumber costs rose last year by 45 per cent, electrical supplies by some 30 per cent, and I could go on down the list and tell how costs have increased dramatically. Land costs are now outrageous. In my constituency serviced lots selling for $4,000 or $6,000 only a few years ago now cost an average of $10,000. In the city of Toronto the cost is as high as $20,000. Labour costs have gone up as well, but certainly not in proportion to building costs or land costs. It is interesting to remind ourselves that construction workers in the housing industry receive only two thirds of the average wage of construction workers as a whole, especially those building commercial buildings.
The fourth aspect of the crisis today is the decline in housing starts. To the end of March of this year the projected annual rate of new housing starts in Canada is only 144,400. That is the lowest level since 1970. The minister has set a target of 210,000 units for this year. There is no way he will be able to achieve that goal under existing policies. Indeed I have heard from officials in

CMHC-and they will have to remain unnamed-that the ministry is seriously considering revising that target, admitting a failure and dropping it to the rate of 186,000 units for the year. If that happens it will be a total admission by this minister that his policy is a failure.
There is also a decline in the departmental budget of the minister in real dollar value because of the rising inflation rate. Those are the components, the characteristics of the housing crisis today. This means that a majority of Canadians can no longer afford to buy a house even with the programs the minister is so fond of reciting when questioned or in debate. Even with those programs the majority of Canadians have been shut out from any hope of owning a house at a reasonable cost.
To qualify for assistance under the Assisted Home Ownership Plan a person has to be earning a salary of $18,000 a year in Toronto, $19,000 in Vancouver, $15,000 in Halifax. To buy a house in Sault Ste. Marie a person would need to earn $14,000 a year, but the average income in my constituency is only $10,000. To get AHOP assistance in Sault Ste. Marie under existing tight money and high housing costs one would need to earn $10,000 a year.
When 80 per cent of families in Ontario have incomes below $15,000 a year and 60 per cent of families have incomes below $11,000 a year, then we can see that the minister's pet, the AHOP program, is beyond the reach of the majority of people living in Ontario with the existing housing crisis and mortgage rates. When the average wage in Canada is $9,000 a year, who can hope to own a house?
The government says that an income earner is not supposed to pay more than 25 per cent of salary for accommodation, that is, to enable that income earner to afford the other necessities of life for himself and his family. In the province of Ontario there are 560,000 people paying over half their income for housing. That is outrageous, unjustifiable, and totally unnecessary if the government-


Mr. Watson:: On a point of order, Madam Speaker, I am sure the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie would not want to leave on the record a statement which is incorrect. He indicated that families in the Sault Ste. Marie area earning up to $14,000 a year and in the Toronto area up to $19,000 a year would not be eligible for the AHOP program. The situation is precisely the reverse of what the hon. member stated. Families earning up to those figures are eligible.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: Order, please. This is a point for debate. The hon. member may deal with the point if he speaks later on.


Reginald Cyril Symes: I am glad the hon. member for Laprairie (Mr. Watson) brought that up. When he looks at Hansard he will find that I said under the existing situation in Toronto and Sault Ste. Marie. Granted, they can qualify under the AHOP program that has come up with funding for existing housing. In my constituency they would need to be able to find a new house for under $30,000. The average income being what it is, and AHOP being designed to help people with incomes from $9,000 to $12,500, the bulk of them cannot afford it. They would
Housing
have to be earning over $10,000 a year to find any housing in the Sault under existing circumstances today. Certainly they qualify, but the circumstances prevent them from taking advantage of the program. So we have a situation that on paper the government program says people can qualify, but the realities of supply and price make it impossible for the majority of Canadians to buy a house.
What is the reaction of the Minister of State for Urban Affairs (Mr. Danson)? In a speech delivered to a real estate seminar in Toronto he said:
Central Mortgage and Housing designed its programs to give more Canadians, particularly those at low and middle incomes, access to good, affordable accommodation.
That is a very fine sounding system, but in reality CMHC policies are just not working. The minister likes to boast of the success of AHOP, but let us examine the workings of that program.
The minister says the program has a budget of $350 million. As I mentioned a few moments ago, that budget is for new homes only. They have cut out of the budget all funds for the purchase of existing housing. In some cases, of course, existing housing is less expensive than new housing. That is the housing low income Canadians depend on, but it has been cut out of the budget because of the minister's desire to put all the funds he can into building new homes so that he can meet his goal of 210,000 units.
AHOP was primarily for people in the $6,000 or $7,000 or up to $12,000 income bracket, but because of the existing housing situation it is mostly people earning between $10,000 and $12,500 who end up qualifying. Where can you get a new house for $30,000 today? If you earn $8,000, under the AHOP program you can only afford a house that does not cost more than $20,000. Where can anyone get a house at that price today? AHOP has frozen out the majority of Canadians who earn less than $10,000 a year.
The minister's program is not the great success he likes to make out it is. The minister has done nothing to bring down interest rates either. He has subsidized private lenders but has not attacked the usurious interest rates of 11 per cent and higher that we have today.
For example, for a house that costs $44,900 having a 10 per cent down payment and mortgaged at 11Vi per cent over 30 years-that is a $40,000 mortgage-taking into account the interest rate and the principal, the individual ends up paying $139,680 for that $44,900 house. That is just shameful and disgraceful in our society. Yet the minister sits back and allows the interest rate to escalate.
The New Democratic Party says that the government should instruct banks to issue mortgages at 6 per cent for low income families. Bankers should be required by law to set funds aside at the interest rate-they can easily afford it. When we look at their holdings we find that the mortgage holdings of banks represent only 8 per cent of their total assets. In 1973, the last year I have figures for, the banks paid an average interest rate of only 4.7 per cent on all deposits. Under this scheme of 6 per cent mortgages, banks would still be able to make a profit.
If we had 6 per cent mortgages there would be a significant saving for those who need it most. Comparing a 6 per cent mortgage to an 11 per cent mortgage on a $35,000

May 23, 1975
and others. That is a reflection on the Liberal members who spoke, among whom I include the minister.
Only the hon. member for Maisonneuve-Rosemount (Mr. Joyal) made a spirited and sincere speech about the problems and ferment in the construction industry. I think that was the gist of his remarks. I ask the hon. member for Maisonneuve-Rosemount what has contributed to this ferment? I suggest the main contributor has been the government, or the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) whom he supports. The government which he supports has fuddled and duddled and fiddled, not dealt with inflation, led us blindly into economic chaos, and all the while has tried to assure us that everything in the country is all right. The situation has deteriorated to the point at which, finally, the Minister of Finance has admitted that we face an economic crisis. The mounting crisis this country faces, and the instability and fear it generates, is responsible in part for union unrest and the ferment of which the hon. member spoke. I think the hon. member knows that, too.
Canada is in economic difficulties. As the hon. member for Don Valley said, the housing programs of the government are built on an economic foundation and an economic premise of a bygone age. It is important to bear in mind one statistic: as of April, 1975, housing starts are down by 42 per cent, compared with starts in the same period last year. There is no indication that the Eaton's catalogue of programs which the minister cited will turn the situation round, and therein lies the tragedy.
It is also tragic to note that, faced with the present serious situation, we heard a minister who is tired. I do not know why he is tired.


An hon. Member:: From fishing.
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house, there would be a saving of $1,356 a year. I contend it is outrageous that on a $35,000 house, with an 11 per cent mortgage, the principal amounts to only $17 a month but the interest is $320 a month!
The Liberals have failed totally to address themselves to the problem of interest rates. They will not confront their friends in the financial institutions because bankers and financiers in this country are sacrosanct as far as Liberals are concerned.
We of the New Democratic Party believe, unlike the Liberals, that owning a house is not a privilege but a social right. Nothing is as important for family upbringing as decent accommodation. Decent housing is a social right, just like education and medical services. To make that concept a reality we would do the following, and we urge the minister to consider these points seriously.
First, we should reduce mortgage interest rates and compel financial institutions to give priority to residential housing in their lending policies, and free more funds for the housing market. In addition, we would compel them to set aside a certain percentage of assets for mortgage moneys to be lent at 6 per cent to low income people. I am gratified to note that the NDP government of British Columbia has moved in that direction by setting up its own provincial bank which will lend mortgage moneys at 6 per cent to low income people.
Second, in order to get more housing units built, we would double the housing budget, even if that means deficit financing. Housing represents an important social need, and we must build more houses. Certainly by encouraging house building we will stimulate the construction industry, one of the most job intensive in the country. Our target would not be 210,000 units, but 400,000.
Third, we must involve the government directly in house construction. As the private sector is not building enough houses, especially public housing, because it is more profitable to build individual units, the government must become involved directly in housebuilding. Governments have become involved in this way in several European countries.
Fourth, we must bring land costs down. Government funds for land assembly must be increased. We must do more of the sort of thing the Manitoba government has done in land banking. For example, in Winnipeg one can buy fully serviced government assembled lots for $7,000; lots in the private sector sell for $14,000.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: Order, please. I regret to interrupt the hon. member but his time has expired.


Walter David Baker: Madam Speaker, having listened to this debate all afternoon I suggest that all Liberal members who spoke, with one exception, did not make serious contributions on this important motion and serious subject facing the country. I include the minister. The minister recited a catalogue of frivolous programs which have not worked, as demonstrated by the hon. member for Don Valley (Mr. Gillies), the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald),


Walter David Baker: I suspect he is tired from wrestling with others in the cabinet who do not share his perhaps well-intentioned views for dealing with this serious problem.
Others have spoken about their areas of Canada; I want to speak about mine, the national capital. I suppose that compared with other areas of Canada the national capital is prosperous. But, make no mistake, we face problems as well. Mayor Greenberg is reported by the Ottawa Journal of May 6, 1975, in an article headlined "Grim housing shortage predicted for Ottawa", to have said that there would be a severe shortage of housing for rent, not only in Ottawa but in the region as well. On the same day the Ottawa Citizen printed an article headlined "Rental lack foreseen in region." The article said in part:
The slowdown in housing construction is Canada-wide. In Ottawa during the first four months of this year, permits were issued for only 361 housing units, compared to 2,835 during the same period last year.
Remember, this is not a large city. I think Mayor Greenberg was being conservative in his assessment of the gravity of the crisis. But you need not talk to Mayor Greenberg or any other elected official to learn how grave is the crisis in housing. You will learn how bad conditions are if you read my mail. People write and telephone me all the time, and complain to me about their inability to obtain housing. In Grenville-Carleton many people are forced to live in highrise buildings because other housing accommodation is not available for them.

May 23, 1975

Young people cannot afford to borrow money. Although their salaries have increased each year in dollar terms, they do not earn enough to qualify for a mortgage loan. They cannot afford houses. Consequently they are trapped in these highrise buildings. I agree that some people prefer to live in highrise buildings. That is their privilege. I am not speaking about them. I am speaking about the people who are trapped in these buildings, who want a home but cannot afford one.
What is happening in our area? The Minister of State for Urban Affairs (Mr. Danson) is fighting with the regional government of this area over where development is to take place. The state of affairs in the national capital is dreadful, but the minister is arguing, fighting and threatening the regional municipality. He wants to get his own way with land use planning. I am the last to deny that the federal government does not have a unique responsibility in the national capital area. But that does not mean that the minister should force the National Capital Commission to do as he wishes, or that the federal government should ignore the wishes of the locally elected municipal government. If I may say so, because this area is the centre of gravity of the federal government, the minister has an even greater responsibility for solving the housing needs of Ottawa than he has, perhaps, for any other area.
While we are arguing as to whether the development in Carlsbad Springs ought to go ahead, or the development in the southwest quadrant of the national capital area, there are people sitting waiting for houses. There are thousands and thousands of potential units in the southwest quadrant of this city.
What does the minister have in answer to the regional municipality that wants to develop there in terms of its own official plan? He takes the cheap course and says the regional municipality is on the side of the bad guys, the developers. That is hardly consistent with what I regard to be the position of the Minister of State for Urban Affairs in terms of development of the national capital area. While this fight is going on, people are waiting for houses.
Some people seem to forget-and there are a couple of things the hon. member for Mississauga (Mr. Abbott) did not know, let alone forget-is that the land in the Carlsbad Springs area was purchased by the Ontario government as a land bank program, not for immediate development but for a program for a period of 20 years. The official plan of the regional municipality says it is to be for future development, yet the Minister of State for Urban Affairs wants to build homes as a Leda Clay monument in Gloucester township, and he wants to build them today. That flies in the face of the wishes of the local people.
There have been a lot of expressions of disrespect toward the minister because of the position he has taken. Rather than continuing this argument, he should sit down and consult in a meaningful way with the local regional officials. It might be a refreshing experience for him.
What is the result of all this? The result is that thousands of lots lie in a state of nature in the southwest quadrant of the city. The housing statistics set by Mayor Greenberg and others in the national capital area are
Housing
going to get worse. Young people and others are going to be trapped against their will in high-rise apartments and townhouses for longer periods than they ought to be. The Minister of State for Urban Affairs and his department are not serving the national capital area well. That is the result of this interesting jurisdictional dispute.
While these people wait for some action, interest rates rise, housing starts fall, mortgage moneys continue to be scarce, and the cost of construction continues to rise. In the meantime I suppose we are going to hear the hon. member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Poulin) announce for the fifth time the beginning of the park in LeBreton Flats. Every once in a while when there is nothing to say, the hon. member for Ottawa Centre trots out another announcement that LeBreton Flats will go ahead.
I do not know why the minister takes this position. I do not know why he feels the only way he can accomplish anything is to carry out an end run around the provinces and municipalities. Surely the local officials have something to say. No federal officer ought to trade compromise and consultation for the questionable tool of confrontation. However, that is what is happening. As a result, housing development is slowing down.
The federal government is saying in the local area, "Play ball or we will not let you use our land for development." That quote has been attributed to the federal government. The minister says, "Play ball or we won't pay the one third cost of servicing as we have done in every other instance." If that is an example of reasonable consultation, I guess I have not seen one before.
One of the arguments that seem to affect this area is the questionable quality of the land. A report was issued a few days ago by De Leuw Cather. I have to admit that the De Leuw Cather report does not say the Carlsbad Springs area is a swamp. However, it does not give it a complete bill of health.
If the De Leuw Cather report says anything, it is that if you can develop in another area then go ahead and do it, because it will be very costly to develop in this area. It will be costly to service the area and to put in foundations. Housing costs will be above the ordinary. There will be some difficulty with regard to providing services within the area. There will be some difficulty in so far as the timing is concerned.
The chairman of the regional municipality put it the best way possible. I quote from an article in the May 16 edition of the Ottawa Citizen:
"All I can say is that this is the worst soil in the area," Mr. Coolican said in an interview. "If you are going to find out how you can build on the land, you don't have to do it as a priority.
For some reason unknown to me and so far unexplained, the minister has taken this piece of land, generally regarded by people in the area as one of the worst, if not the worst piece of land, and decided it will be developed immediately in place of available serviced land in the southwest quadrant of the national capital area.
If the minister is making any mistake, it is that he has his role mixed up. The federal government is not the prime developer of land. It ought not to attempt to avoid its responsibility to consult with the provinces and municipalities. If it has any responsibility at all, it is to provide

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the financing to the provinces and, through them, to the municipal governments in order to allow those governments to make local decisions as to what direction development ought to follow in the particular community. There are different problems in different parts of Canada.
What are the arguments we hear from time to time with regard to this development of Carlsbad Springs, which someone has called "Fullerton's folly"? It is said we might better develop there because useful farmland would be taken up in the southwest quadrant of the city. Let me say something about that. The fact is that very little, if not all, of that useful farmland is not being farmed. It is now in the hands of developers and is in the process of being developed. They are now ready to go. Even if it were available for agriculture, the cost of farming on that high priced land would make it impossible for young farmers to afford.
There is a potential there which the government seems to ignore. I really believe there are some positive things that can be done. Some of them were mentioned by the hon. member for Don Valley. I think his speech should be commended to all. I hope that members opposite who are truly concerned about the principal urban problem in Canada and a very important rural problem listened very closely, and will read again the speech of the hon. member for Don Valley.
We can utilize the new town concept and the concept of developing around existing towns. We have the rail network in this area, and I suspect in other areas, to provide interurban transit. All of these things can be done, but I suspect they will not be done if the only imaginative proposal put before this House is a continuation of a program of spend, spend, spend. The result of that spending in terms of housing for Canadians indicates that that need is not being met. This is the tragedy of this government and this minister.


Mr. Ross Milne (Peel-Dufferin-Simcoe):: Madam
Speaker, I want to enter this debate very briefly and make just a few comments. The first is to mention the fact that I represent a constituency that has perhaps had the fastest rate of growth in urban development in all of Canada, and may be one of the fastest developing communities in all of North America. It is the location of the first satellite city in Canada-Bramalea. Since I have been here I have not heard many members rise to commend developers. But I think that today we should make an exception. I certainly want to commend the Bramalea Consolidated Development Corporation.
I was in the House back in February I guess, when a debate on housing took place, and the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Gilbert) took this company to task somewhat severely in connection with its foreign ownership and its involvement in the building and development industry in Canada as the company was then owned almost completely by outside interests. As the member representing the area in question, I should like to draw attention to the fact that, this week, the transfer has been completed to make it a wholly-owned and operated Canadian company. This move has drawn praise from both the government of Ontario and the government of Canada,

and I wish to be on record as commending them for having taken this step.
In the course of her statement the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald) said that the basic problem was that the government did not have a minister responsible for housing who was able to exercise any real influence in the Cabinet. I want her and other hon. members to know that all those of us who support the government feel very strongly about the present minister; we support him wholeheartedly, and feel we are fortunate to have a minister who reacts so well and so courageously to the ideas presented to him.
The speaker for the New Democratic Party put forward the suggestion that it would be good policy to introduce a broadly-based scheme of rent control. Many people in the constituency I represent were faced with large rent increases last year, amounting to 25 to 30 per cent. It would be natural to suppose that their reaction might be to favour rent controls, at least to some extent. I wish to oppose this idea as strongly as I can. I believe the experience in Britain, in British Columbia, and elsewhere where it has been tried, has proved it to be altogether unproductive. The only answer to high rents is competition in the market place, and I do not think there is anything which could drive competition out faster than the imposition of rent controls. Rent controls are not the answer.


James McPhail Gillies: You are opposing the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner), I see.


William Ross Milne: Many speakers touched on the subject of land banking. This is a matter which has been talked about for many years, during which little has been done. I hope the provinces take up the federal government's program seriously and really get involved. It should be appreciated, though, that there is no immediate payoff. The payoff does not come until 15 or 20 years into the future. Still, if we do not make a start now, what is the situation in the future likely to be?
One of the groups involved in house construction is made up of builders of small and medium size. Many, if not most of them, have been forced out of business in the last few years by the high cost of land; they cannot afford to carry sufficient land on their inventories to build 30 or 40, maybe 100, new houses. As a result home-building is being left to the very large developers. If the provinces do not become seriously involved in the land bank program so that builders of moderate size may have land available to them on which to build, a large group of valuable people will disappear from the building field.
Many speakers have addressed themselves to the issue of the supply of housing and the seriousness of the shortage. Is it really a question of the supply of housing or of cost? If one looks at the housing market at the present time I think it becomes clear that there is a fairly large inventory of houses which are vacant and up for sale. This would indicate that supply is not really the overriding problem but that it it is the cost of housing which really concerns people at the present time.


James McPhail Gillies: Altogether wrong!
May 23, 1975


William Ross Milne: Look around and see the amount of housing that is available. Ours is such a large country that it is ironic the price of land should be such an important factor in housing costs. I am disturbed we should be building smaller and smaller houses, cutting corners wherever we can in order to accommodate the high cost of land. This is another reason why I strongly urge governments across Canada to become seriously involved in land banking as a solution for the future.
I was disturbed by the speech made by the hon. member for Don Valley (Mr. Gillies).


James McPhail Gillies: You did not understand it.


William Ross Milne: I understood it quite well; I could not follow the logic or, rather, it was the illogic of the speech which puzzled me. I thought it was unfair for him to take such an aggressive attitude toward the minister as though all the housing problems in Canada were his fault and all blame rested on his shoulders.


James McPhail Gillies: Most of them are.


William Ross Milne: Most of the remarks the hon. member was making would have been more valid had the Mayor of Toronto and the Premier of Ontario been here representing the whole composite area. In fact we are bound to establish this type of dialogue between the three levels of government if plans in the housing field are to meet with complete success. For example, how will you resolve a problem when there is four times-


James McPhail Gillies: You do not understand the issue.


William Ross Milne: I am not referring to the hon. member at the present time. As I was saying, growth in our larger cities is running at about four times the average rate as people move into the cities to take advantage of job opportunities. One finds the municipal areas trying to pursue a no-growth type of policy, with bylaws which support that approach.
What is happening is that the core areas in the large metropolitan areas are trying to enforce what amounts to a zero growth policy. This channels growth into surburban communities around the periphery of the major centres. Such areas, as I know, since I come from one, are under tremendous pressure, and the municipalities concerned face a real problem. At one time everyone thought that the more houses which were built in an area the better off residents were from the point of view of the municipal tax structure. This appears to be no longer the case. It is necessary nowadays, to make sound judgments as to the cost of this growth.
A number of hon. members have referred to the inroads upon productive agricultural land made by urban expansion. Our attitude toward this issue appears to me to be somewhat illogical. For instance, the Minister makes an announcement concerning a major housing development within the next three years, and at the same time a good deal of concern is expressed about the need to preserve good agricultural land. I think it is very unfair to propose a program under which agricultural land around metropolitan areas will be rapidly depleted while at the same time denying farmers the benefit of their annuities, or the
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majority of those annuities, for the sake of the rest of society. If the authorities really value agricultural land, then the location of the services is of vital importance. If we want to continue extending services to good agricultural land it is very unfair to say that the farmers should bear the cost.
One of the things that really astound me, in terms of how some of the provinces are handling the situation, is the scarcity of serviced land in some of the northern towns and villages. It seems to be far more scarce than in areas surrounding our big cities. Employees who have been transferred to small towns and municipalities in northern Ontario have had to buy a very old house and remove it and build a new one just in order to get a serviced lot. This has nothing to do with the argument about preserving good agricultural land because there is none in that area. Somewhere along the line the decision must be made whether to allow development in that kind of area, and if it is, then let us get on with it.
My information is that there are probably close to 100,000 building lots across Canada which have received municipal approval but approval is being held up at the provincial level. This is why I cannot accept the argument of the hon. member for Don Valley that the problem rests entirely with the minister, because that is not the case.
I should also like strongly to support one of the points made by the minister to the effect that we must be very careful about who does the spending and who does the taxing. I thought he made that point very well. If the government were to continue, as the hon. member for Don Valley would have it, to fund the housing market across Canada and let somebody else do the spending, then I think this would be a very bad precedent. I often wonder, when I hear this sort of argument, whether we would not do better to become even more involved than we are in design, financing, and research into some of the infrastructure required, and leave the funding of the programs to the provinces which have the basic responsibility in the housing field.
Let me give an example. It is not really fair of me to comment on this situation because it is not in this jurisdiction, but let us say that in a major housing development within a very short period of time it is brought to people's attention that the municipality can no longer handle garbage removal. The whole question of disposal of waste, garbage and so on, is one to which we must address ourselves. I would not be opposed to the federal government concentrating upon this role, rather than adopt the suggestion put forward by the hon. member for Don Valley that we supply the money and have very little say in terms of how it is spent.
Some years ago it was thought that the magical answer to the housing problem would be the introduction of modular housing. The pay-off in Europe and in Great Britain has been tremendous, and a number of municipalities in the Toronto area have tried it. However, I am not aware that this is a particularly active proposition at the present time, and I wonder whether they approached it in the right way.
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May 23, 1975
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We have one of the most efficient construction industries in Canada, certainly around our large cities, so far as the building of multiple dwellings is concerned. It was almost self-evident that modular housing would not be able to compete with this kind of efficiency. But what is of interest to me is that in terms of construction costs the service modules built around the kitchen are a very good modular approach, and I think would have a tremendous pay-off if they were put together and marketed as a modular component.
I realize other speakers wish to take part in this debate before the hour of adjournment, Madam Speaker, so may I say in conclusion that the most frustrating thing to any person who is struggling to buy a house today is the amount of politics to be found in the housing industry. Until the municipalities, provinces, and the federal government get away from the media and publicity, and seriously address themselves to how to handle the no-growth situation, along with the pressures and trends established over a long period of time toward mass movement to urban development, and until we spread employment opportunities to smaller areas, there is simply no good reason to service land in such communities.
As others have said, this is a Friday afternoon and this is an interesting way to spend it. The hon. member for Don Valley has made a great oration, but I do not see how that sort of thing is going to solve the housing problems in Canada. What we need is co-operation between the three levels of government to get this job done.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: Is the hon. member for Don Valley (Mr. Gillies) rising to ask a question?


James McPhail Gillies: Yes, Madam Speaker. Would the hon. member permit a question?


William Ross Milne: Certainly.


James McPhail Gillies: I wonder whether the hon. member from Bramalea has talked to some major developers in the Bramalea area about what their principal problem is in building housing at the present time.


William Ross Milne: As a matter of fact, I have. I think they would indicate to the hon. member, if he asked them the same question-


James McPhail Gillies: I did, yesterday.


William Ross Milne: Yes, I understand that. I think he would learn from them that the private sector is not advancing sufficient housing funds.


James McPhail Gillies: That is exactly right.


William Ross Milne: Hon. members opposite are the strongest proponents of the private sector, so they should tell some of their corporate friends that if they feel any social responsibility for housing they should be making more money available.


Jack Marshall: Madam Speaker, in the few minutes I have left I am pleased to be able to make some contribution. I commend my colleague, the hon. member for Kingston and the

Islands (Miss MacDonald), for a very excellent motion and for her presentation which covered the housing crisis pretty thoroughly.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Jack Marshall: Others of my colleagues covered the waterfront, as it were. The area I want to explore for a few moments has to do with the new veterans' housing program which is now closely aligned with the responsibilities of the Minister of State for Urban Affairs (Mr. Danson) in collaboration with the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. MacDonald). This new program went into effect on May 1, and while I admit that they have struck on two programs that could fulfil the needs of many veterans, they missed a most vital and important item which would provide relief for veterans who have homes of their own but are living on fixed incomes or allowances.
First let me deal with the two sections of the act that will provide veterans with a bit of extra relief. I refer to the AHOP program whereby veterans will not have to face the restriction that they must have children to qualify, not that this is any great show of consideration when we take account of the age of the veterans to whom this measure applies. In addition, the veterans will be able to qualify for annual assistance of $600 on the purchase of an existing home. I hope the minister will soon consider reintroducing this proposal for all Canadians, as well as removing the restriction on the first time home buyer that he must have one or more children to qualify.
In this regard, even though the Minister of Veterans Affairs-whom I was hoping would be here this afternoon-has publicized the program in the newspapers and it will soon appear in the newsletters and periodicals of the veterans' organizations, I appeal to the minister to set up better communications to make every veteran aware of the program. It is well known to the Minister of Veterans Affairs, as well as to the Minister of State for Urban Affairs, that many veterans were not aware of the deadline set by parliament in 1963 for certification under the Veterans' Land Act. As a result they were denied the opportunity of taking advantage of the act after that date. I therefore appeal to both ministers to ensure, through every avenue available to them-certainly there are sufficient public relations staff in government departments today-that every veteran is made aware of the new program.
Another observation I want to make has to do with the section under the non-profit housing provisions whereby organizations may apply for a little extra relief under the start-up funds and 10 per cent assistance on capital costs. Again I wish to remind both ministers that in the design of such buildings it is important that standards be set to ensure easy mobility of the handicapped, the disabled, and the aged. I also hope that the Minister of Veterans Affairs will provide, in consultation with the veterans' organizations across the country, leadership in the provision of non-profit housing of every type needed for all veterans.
A most glaring oversight exists in the consideration the ministers have given to the provision of a housing program. I refer to the vital and important need of thousands
May 23, 1975

of veterans who own their own homes who, because of limited income, are not able to carry out the necessary repairs to maintain .those homes. For some reason or other both ministers who must be aware of this need did not include a rehabilitation factor similar to that existing under the Neighbourhood Program and the Rural Native Housing Program. The minister might give me the argument that veterans now can qualify under these two sections. I point out this inequity, however, because in order to qualify under the present terms of the act veterans must reside in one of the designated areas, and this is the responsibility of the province.
If the veterans happen to live outside the designated areas they would be denied the opportunity to qualify for the forgivable loans that are available. I submit that this is wrong. As most members are aware, under the Residential Rehabilitation Program citizens earning an income of $6,000 or less can qualify for loans of up to $5,000 to bring their homes up to a better standard. Of that amount 50 per cent may be forgiven. Indeed in a case where the need is only $2,500 it may all be forgiven.
In order to satisfy veterans, who fall within this category the easy solution would be that they be permitted to apply directly to CMHC for such loans and grants regardless of their places of residence. They should be able to do this under the criteria concerning standards laid down by the particular province. I suggest that the Minister of Veterans Affairs might consider being a little more generous in providing in his departmental funds for forgiveness loans that would be a little more generous, and in increasing the forgiveness loans from $2,500 to say $4,000. The Minister of Veterans Affairs well realizes the need for such a program because he has an example of the need in the study made by the Newfoundland and Labrador Command of the Canadian Legion which indicates that there are vast numbers of homes owned by veterans which are in need of repairs, while the veterans or the widows who exist on allowances or pensions find difficulty in living a reasonable life, let alone having the necessary funds to keep their homes in reasonable repair.
I suggest also that a survey to obtain the necessary information should be initiated by the ministers in every province of Canada. There is another alternative whereby the $600 annual grant could be used to offset the cost of repairs. I am sure some means could be found to work out a system under the AHOP program in this regard. Another alternative would be for the government, through the ministers, to expand the present home improvement loans which exist under the National Housing Act if there are any constitutional problems which exist. All that would be necessary would be to include under that program the same forgiveness factors which exist under the residential rehabilitation program.
Since I always try to be optimistic and give credit rather than criticize, I wish to say I believe I have already made some progress along the lines mentioned. When both ministers attended the committee proceedings they indicated their willingness to consider a program such as I suggest. On Wednesday past I presented a motion before the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs which asked the committee to request that the minister consider additions to the veterans housing program which would include a
Housing
provision that veterans, irrespective of their province of residence, might apply directly to CMHC and the Veterans' Land Act administration for rehabilitation loans containing forgiveness factors, similar to those which presently exist under the Neighbourhood Improvement Program and the Rural and Native Housing Program. I was very pleased that the motion was unanimously accepted. This indicates that all members of all parties recognize there is merit in the suggestion. I commend all members of the committee for their co-operation.
I now appeal to both ministers, who themselves are distinguished war veterans and who recently have been recognized in this parliament for their service-the minister responsible for Housing who was commended for his concern for people, and the Minister of Veterans Affairs who was referred to as the perfect minister-to look at these suggestions I made on behalf of my party and explore every avenue by which they might make a further contribution in meeting the needs of all our veterans across the country, and particularly those who fall within the category of most need.
The Leader of my party does not mind my making these suggestions and helping the minister devise plans to answer the problem of providing housing for our citizens. I shall continue to help, and I hope that both ministers will listen to me and implement these improvements in the same way the Minister of Veterans Affairs has accepted other realistic proposals put forth by my party in respect of the veterans charter in relation to allowances and pensions. While I do not mind throwing around a few bouquets to the other side I find I must take serious issue with a statement made in this House a week or so ago by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). At that time he was asked to give examples of how the government practises restraint in spending. The one example he gave was the restraint that would come about as a result of the phasing out of the Veterans' Land Act. I take strong issue with this statement because nothing is farther from the truth or closer to a term which may not be uttered in this House.
I wish to repeat the words I used in my question of privilege, which was ruled out of order. I said that these words were a slight to the veteran and that if this were the only example of restraint the Prime Minister could find to support the action of the government, God help Canada.
In order to prove my point, which I proved in the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, that it will not cost the people of Canada one penny to maintain the Veterans' Land Act administration, let us look at some figures. In 1973-74 the operating expenditures for the Veterans' Land Act administration were $11,879,014. In 1974 the expenditures were $12 million, the year when we forced the extension of the act, but at the same time over 3,000 new veterans were served. I shall give more details on that later.
The estimated expenditure figures for 1975-76 show an increase of only $101,125 to $12,705,548, and $71,000 of the $101,125 is made up of contributions to employee benefit plans. As a result of the extension for one year of the Veterans' Land Act 5,561 loans for new establishments were approved compared to a figure of 3,175 for the previous year. In addition there were 2,558 loans to veterans already settled. As a result of the extension to March 31,
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May 23, 1975
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1975, over 3,000 new applications were approved. I hesitate to mention the fact that according to answers to questions I placed on the order paper some 7,600 received extra benefits as a result of our phasing out of the act.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: Order, please. It being five o'clock it is my duty to inform the House that
pursuant to section 11 of Standing Order 58 the proceedings on the motion have expired.
It being five o'clock this House stands adjourned until Monday at 2 p.m.
At 5 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Monday, May 26, 1975