1975-06-13

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Stanley Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to present a motion under Standing Order 43. It is one which explains itself and I dare to believe it will receive unanimous support. I move, seconded by the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands (Mr. Douglas):
That this House welcomes the assurance of the Post Office Department that there will not be an increase in postal rates at this time and declares its opposition to any such increase.


Mr. Baldwin:: What is new or urgent about that?


Mr. Speaker:: The motion is put forward under the terms of Standing Order 43 and thus requires unanimous consent. Is there such consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


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


PENITENTIARIES
Mr. Ron Huntington (Capilano):: I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity to put forward a motion under Standing Order 43 with respect to the recent tragic events in British Columbia. In view of evidence of demoralization among the security staff in our prison system and in view of a consistently high rate of recividism among inmates in spite of an increase in costs amounting to 1100 per cent over the last 15 years, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Central Nova:
That in the opinion of this House the security, the effectiveness and the cost of correctional services administered by the Solicitor General have deteriorated to a point at which a Royal Commission should be appointed to examine and report on all aspects of our correctional institutions and services.


Mr. Speaker:: The motion being put forward under the terms of Standing Order 43 requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there such consent?


Some hon. Members:: No.


TRANSPORT
Mr. Eudore Allard (Rimouski):: Mr. Speaker, under Standing Order 43, I ask the unanimous consent of the House to move a motion of urgent and pressing necessity.
In view of the fact that the establishment of a deep sea port at Gros-Cacouna is essential to the economic development and expansion of the Lower St. Lawrence area, that such a sea port would be extremely useful to promote international trade with Canada, and that the government has already spent millions to develop such a project, I move, seconded by the member for Shefford (Mr. Rondeau):
That the House asks the Minister of Transport (Mr. Marchand) to take the necessary steps for the establishment of a sea port at Gros-Cacouna on the basis of studies carried out by the Department of Transport and that the plan be completed as soon as possible.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


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



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Robert L. Stanfield (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Agriculture arising out of evidence given yesterday at the Quebec inquiry into organized crime that Canada-approved stamps and the rollers and the ink used for grading are not subject to any particular security in terms of custody, but

June 13, 1975
Oral Questions
are left on the premises and can therefore be used by unscrupulous people to indicate official approval without any inspection having been made. I should like to ask the minister how this state of affairs has been allowed to develop and why these important stamps and other indicators have not been kept properly secure.


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, the matter has just been brought to my attention. If this stamp is being abused, security should be improved. The suggestion has been made that it has been used improperly. I would point out, Mr. Speaker, that other examples of counterfeiting stamps are known and that our laws are very strict with regard to these things. If abuse is proven, proper action will be taken.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: In view of the great concern which exists about the adequacy of inspection procedures and the significance attached to the stamp Canada-approved both by the public, in terms of public health, and by the meat industry, is the minister not in a position to tell the House what the procedures are which permit the misuse of these stamps? Has he not inquired in the past to assure himself that in fact the custodial arrangements are adequate, rather than apparently quite inadequate according to the evidence given in Quebec?
[DOT] <mo)


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, the chief meat inspector informed me that they were taking all security precautions. When discussions were first held about the possibility of these stamps being used improperly, and that cartons had these stamps on them which, according to the law they are supposed to be destroyed, I was advised that all precautions and actions necessary were taken to make sure that this was not taking place, and that security precautions would also be taken for the stamps.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: A final supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. In view of the evidence given yesterday by a federal inspector of some 32 years' service and the apparent over-confidence of the minister of health when he stated in this House on May 21 that all meat processed in plants under federal jurisdiction has been properly inspected by federal officials, I think this indicates a little complacency in the circumstances.


Mr. Lalonde:: Mr. Speaker, on a question of privilege, I would like to state quite clearly and repeat what I have said previously in the House, that up until this time there has been no evidence that any Canada approved meat had been found not meeting the standards. I have repeated that many times in this House. The Leader of the Opposition should look at the whole context rather than try to pick up pieces here and there.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry the minister of health has interrupted the question period with a phony question of privilege.


Marc Lalonde: I am doing the same thing the hon. gentleman did yesterday in this House.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: When I say phony, I mean phony. Let me read Hansard for May 21. As reported at page 5959 of Hansard the minister said:
Mr. Speaker, I can speak only for the plants being inspected under federal jurisdiction; all meat processed in those plants under federal jurisdiction has been properly inspected by federal officials. I am afraid that is the only answer I can give the Leader of the Opposition.


Marc Lalonde: That is right.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: In view of the evidence given yesterday, I suggest the minister was a little complacent. That is all I said and it was a fully justified statement on my part.


Mr. Speaker:: The Leader of the Opposition on a final supplementary.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: I have lost the train of my thought and the minister has probably lost the train of his answer. In view of the seriousness of this whole thing and the importance of the stamp "Canada approved" meaning what it says both in terms of public health and from the point of view of the industry, would the minister go beyond the kind of inquiry he has made and have a real inquiry made into what is actually going on, to what extent these stamps are left around, how easy in fact it is to forge them and to have them in the hands of abattoirs not subject to federal inspection at all, and give a full report to the House?


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, it sounds as though these stamps are just laid at ease some place, but this is not the fact. They are locked away at night. If any are broken they are immediately returned to Ottawa and replaced. It is possible, of course, to counterfeit a stamp. You can counterfeit a stamp to make money as far as that goes. It is wrong for the Leader of the Opposition to try to get across that point. There is no evidence that any federally inspected meat has been improperly inspected, and there is no evidence anything has been found wrong with federally inspected meat.


REASON FOR FAILURE TO DETECT MISSPELLING OF WORD
Mr. Gus Mitges (Grey-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Agriculture. In view of the fact that the word "approved" in the fraudulent stamp "Canada approved" was misspelt "approuved", would the minister explain how this escaped detection for over a year and whether, in view of this, does he not think closer co-coperation between federal, provincial and municipal inspectors is not only needed but should be a top priority of all officials concerned?


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, I do not think the spelling has very much to do with how properly the meat is inspected.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Eugene Whelan: I am sure that the hon. member, knowing what his profession is, knows very well the high quality of the people we have administering meat inspection in Canada for the federal department. There is no place in the world in which you could find better meat inspectors
June 13, 1975

or standards than we provide under our federal inspection services.


Constantine George (Gus) Mitges: Mr. Speaker, I am not arguing with the minister about the quality of inspection under the Health of Animals Branch. I am only suggesting that the product stamp that was used contained a word that was misspelled. In view of all that has been going on, would this not indicate and emphasize more so than ever before to the minister that meat inspection in Canada should be compulsory and under the most strict supervision of the Health of Animals Branch of the Department of Agriculture?


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, I am glad the hon. member has that much confidence in our inspection services. I do believe this is a good suggestion and we have discussed it for sometime with the provincial people concerned. I want to make sure of one thing because there seems to be confusion in what the official Leader of the Opposition has said. He was speaking of livestock


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Perhaps the minister should confine himself to answering the question.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Eugene Whelan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker-


An hon. Member:: Twelve o'clock.


Eugene Whelan: This is a very important matter.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. If any confusion has arisen perhaps it can be settled at the end of the question period.


OIL-DATE OF EFFECT AND JUSTIFICATION FOR PRICE INCREASE
Mr. T. C. Douglas (Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the right hon. Prime Minister and has to do with a statement made by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources to the press yesterday to the effect that the government has taken a firm decision to raise the price of oil, and that he expects this to be in effect on July 1. Can the Prime Minister tell the House whether such a decision has been made by the government and, if so, when this will go into effect, how much the increase in the price will be and what justification there is for raising the price of oil at this time in light of the very favourable profit position of the oil companies operating in this country?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, the decision to permit the price of oil to rise to something below world levels was announced by the government at the federal-provincial conference in April, so there is nothing new to that. The only new elements that have to be decided are the timing of the raise and the
Oral Questions
quantum of it. In this regard, I am in the process of discussing the matter with various provincial premiers by phone to see whether there is a chance of reaching a consensus on the amount and the timing. The House will recall that no premier, as far as I can remember, objected absolutely to an increase.


Mr. Woolliams:: What about Davis?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The hon. member asks about Davis. If I remember correctly, Premier Davis was at that time objecting to an increase, but that was last April.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Gerald William Baldwin: What about your summit meeting with Bob Nixon?


An hon. Member:: It's time for another helicopter visit.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


An hon. Member:: You should drop into Queen's Park.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I am a little bewildered by the disinterest of the opposition in this subject. Perhaps I could meet with the hon. member for the NDP and discuss this matter with him privately.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


OIL-PERSONS RECEIVING BENEFIT OF PRICE INCREASE AND POSSIBLE ESTABLISHMENT OF RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT FUND
Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that this is a public matter which affects the people of Canada, I would prefer to have the Prime Minister make his statements here where everyone can hear him. I want to ask the Prime Minister if the government has made any decisions concerning who will receive the benefit of any increase in the price of oil in view of the fact that the oil companies do not require additional funds since their costs have not gone up substantially in respect of production and refining. I also wish to ask the Prime Minister whether the government is now contemplating any additional price for oil being used for future exploration through a joint federal-provincial resource development fund so that oil discovered in this country will belong to the people of Canada and not the multinational corporations.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, obviously, the member is making a policy statement and is asking me to make a policy statement in reply. I shall not do that at this time. I just want to remind the hon. member, and those in the Tory party who might be interested, that he is talking about a hypothetical situation. I repeat that I am having discussions with the premiers now. We are discussing amounts and timing. Until a consensus is reached I think it is impossible to know whether we will have to act unilaterally with some province or completely alone.

June 13, 1975
Oral Questions


OIL-POSSIBLE STUDY OF EFFECT OF PRICE INCREASE ON AGRICULTURAL AND MANUFACTURED PRODUCTS
Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Mr. Speaker, assuming the price increase is $2 a barrel which has been rumoured, and in view of the fact that this would place an additional burden of almost $11/2 billion per year on the Canadian consumer thereby fueling the fires of inflation, I should like to ask the Prime Minister whether any study has been made by the Minister of Agriculture or by the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce concerning the effect this would have on the cost of agricultural products and manufactured goods and what increase it will represent in the cost of living in this country?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the question is clearly hypothetical; it is based on an assumption which is not fact. We will wait to see to what the provinces and the federal government agree. We will make an announcement in due course, and then the hon. member can ask us to do his mathematics for him at that point.


TRANSPORT
Eudore Allard: Mr. Speaker, I should like to put a question to the Minister of Transport.
Is the minister in a position to tell the House whether there are any new developments concerning the proposed Gros-Cacouna sea port, in view of the fact that area representatives have come to Ottawa to point out to the minister and the government the importance of this project for the general economy of the Lower St. Lawrence?


Hon. Jean Marchand (Minister of Transport):: I can only say again what I have said before, Mr. Speaker. I met the area representatives who came here. I told them that we were looking into the problem together with the provincial government in order to determine the impact of this new port at Gros-Cacouna on other Canadian and St. Lawrence ports. When we reach a conclusion, I shall gladly announce the results.


PENITENTIARIES
Arthur Ronald Huntington: Mr. Speaker, in view of the absence of the Solicitor General I should like to direct my question to the Prime Minister. Has the cabinet looked into the reasons for the high rate of turnover of security staff in our penitentiary system, and if so are there conclusions which can be reported to the House.


Hon. Otto E. Lang (Minister of Justice):: Mr. Speaker, I will be glad to obtain a report on that and advise the hon. member.


Arthur Ronald Huntington: Ten o'clock, Mr. Speaker.


REASON FOR REFUSAL OF PUBLIC INQUIRY INTO SECURITY CONTROL IN INSTITUTIONS-ANNOUNCEMENT OF COMPOSITION OF COMMISSION OF INQUIRY
Eldon Mattison Woolliams: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the Prime Minister this question. As the inquiry under the Penitentiary Act is restrictive, and in most cases secretive in respect of the examination, what is the government hiding when it refuses a broad and full public inquiry into the British Columbia affair and an inquiry into the general security control conditions in light of the facts that are now coming out in reference to our penitentiary system. I ask this question particularly when I look at Hansard and note that the Prime Minister said on two occasions: "I will inquire into this; I do not know". It is time the public knew even if the government does not know.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is obviously not. following very closely what has been said in the House. Both the Solicitor General and I have said quite clearly that there would be an inquiry, it would be under the Penitentiary Act, and it would be carried out by an outside person. I am told that yesterday the media conveyed a completely different impression, and perhaps that is why the hon. member is misinformed. However, it was clearly reported in yesterday's Hansard as well as Hansard of the day before that both the Solicitor General and I have said that there would be an inquiry made by an outside person. That is what will happen.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: A public inquiry?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: It will be an inquiry under the Penitentiary Act.


An hon. Member:: When will it be announced?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I can announce it now, if the hon. member wants me to do that. The Solicitor General is ill today. It will be an inquiry under Section 12 of the Penitentiary Act. It will be an open inquiry, except for those parts that the commissioners themselves judge in the public interest to have in camera. It will be the same kind of inquiry we had when Mr. Justice Swackhammer headed an inquiry into the Kingston events some years ago. I do not know all the facts, but we have said we would try to ascertain them. There is no attempt on the part of the government to keep them hidden. What we have announced is an inquiry by someone from outside the service. It will be a three man inquiry. We have already obtained the agreement of Chief Justice Farris of British Columbia to head the inquiry. He will be assisted by Mr. Jack Lynch of the John Howard Society and Mr. H. E. Popp of the Penitentiaries Service who is, I believe, the same gentleman who served on the Kingston inquiry.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
June 13, 1975


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: I should like to find out a little more about this inquiry because the Prime Minister said that certain matters that come out would be kept private and secret. Will there be a full public inquiry, will witnesses be brought before the committee under oath and give evidence, and will the whole thing come out into the open so far as the events in the B.C. penitentiary are concerned, particularly the facts that are now coming out in little drabs every day from the government, and, of course, from the media?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the events took place only a couple of days ago. I confess to the House that in the absence of the Solicitor General I did not know all the facts. We are not trying to dribble them out, as the hon. member suggests. We have announced an inquiry this morning. It will be a public inquiry, as I just announced, and only if in the opinion of the chairman information is received which should not be disclosed in the public interest, or in the interests of safety and security in penitentiaries, would such information be received in camera. This is the usual procedure and I am sure the House will agree it is the right one.


BRITISH COLUMBIA-SUGGESTED EXTENSION OF INQUIRY TO COVER CONDITIONS IN ALL INSTITUTIONS
Mr. J. P. Nowlan (Annapolis Valley):: Mr. Speaker, I gather from the Prime Minister's remarks today that this inquiry will only concentrate on the New Westminster affair and will be restricted to that, whereas many of the questions in the last two days have dealt with the whole penal system and the problem of security, control and administration of the penitentiaries service. Does the Prime Minister intend to do anything about that or will he wait until the Solicitor General comes back to the House, and can we be given an idea as to when the Solicitor General will be back in the House?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the Solicitor General will be back in the House as soon as his doctor permits him to do so. The inquiry, as I indicated, will be into the events in the British Columbia penitentiary and into the circumstances surrounding them. Obviously, efforts will be directed toward preventing the same thing from occurring in that or other penitentiaries. As to the whole penal system and penitentiaries service, the House will have the occasion to discuss this matter with the Solicitor General in debating his department's estimates.


BRITISH COLUMBIA-POSSIBILITY OF MEMBER ATTENDING ALL MEETINGS OF COMMISSION OF INQUIRY
Mr. John Reynolds (Burnaby-Richmond-Delta):: Mr. Speaker, can the Prime Minister advise whether a member of parliament could attend all the meetings at these hearings without exception?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I do not know whether it is within the Prime Minister's ambit to give that sort of opinion.
Oral Questions


John Douglas Reynolds: Mr. Speaker, on either a question of privilege or a point of order I am not asking for a legal opinion. I am asking for a point of reference.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The proper way to solve this problem is when an inquiry is set up, if the hon. member has difficulty attending, he might then bring it to the attention of the House. Whether the Prime Minister expressed that opinion or not this morning I am sure would not change the legality of it.



AGRICULTURE


Mr. Bill Jarvis (Perth-Wilmot):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Agriculture, of which he has had at least some short notice. Is the minister aware of recent press reports which indicate an apparent inequity in the Income Tax Act whereby farmers whose lands are expropriated are not burdened with a capital gains tax on the proceeds of the expropriation, but their neighbours who may sell to the expropriating authority rather than be forced into lengthy expropriation proceedings do face a capital gains tax on those proceeds?


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, we are checking into that, and I have made representations to my colleague, the Minister of Finance.


William Herbert Jarvis: I wonder if the minister would then tell the House if it is his position, at least, that a person whose farm is expropriated should be in exactly the same position vis-a-vis the Income Tax Act as a person who sells under the threat of expropriation. Is that the position of the minister?


Eugene Whelan: What the hon. member suggests sounds quite reasonable to me. If one is going to accept the threat of expropriation rather than go through all the court proceedings, he should not be penalized, as far as I am concerned, and I am checking that out with the Minister of Finance. If that is the case, I think it should be changed.



UNEQUAL TREATMENT OF ONTARIO CORN GROWERS UNDER DEFERRAL OF INCOME PROVISION OF INCOME TAX ACT-GOVERNMENT ACTION

Mr. John Wise (Elgin):: My question is also to the Minister of Agriculture. It is prompted by representations made previously to the minister by the Ontario Grain Corn Council and more recently by the Ontario minister of agriculture and food with reference to the deferral of income until cash is received on grain delivered to country and process elevators. This provision is already enjoyed by western grain producers. Has the minister made representations to his colleague, the Minister of Finance, to remove this inequity in the June 23 budget?

June 13, 1975
Oral Questions


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, we have had several discussions on this, but I would remind the hon. member that when this provision was made for western farmers, many of them did not have the right to sell their grain all in one year because they were on quotas, and the government wanted them to deliver that grain. This has never happened, and it has never been the case with corn growers in Canada.


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of any admission of negligence such as referred to by the hon. member. I shall look into the reference on which he bases his allegations and I shall be pleased to discuss this matter further at a later date. Moreover, whenever a responsibility is delegated to provincial authorities, the latter must certainly assume it. This is normal procedure in many areas.



REQUEST FOR EXTENSION OF BLOCK AVERAGING AND CAPITAL GAINS ROLLOVER PROVISIONS OF INCOME TAX ACT TO FAMILY FARM CORPORATIONS

John Wise: In his discussions with the Minister of Finance, will the Minister of Agriculture also make further representations with respect to extending the block averaging and the capital gains rollover provisions to family farm corporations?


Eugene Whelan: We are
discussing this and several other significant changes which farm organizations have made and which we think have a certain amount of merit.


* *
*



ELLIOT LAKE-SUGGESTED ACTION TO ENSURE THAT MINERS WHO LEFT BECAUSE OF UNSAFE CONDITIONS DO NOT SUFFER FINANCIALLY

Mr. John Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. Since there are reports that any former Elliot Lake miners are being refused employment by other mining companies because of the increased risk of their developing silicosis, is the government planning a program to ensure that these miners do not suffer financially as a result of having left the Elliot Lake mines due to the unsafe working conditions?



ALLEGED LACK OF ENFORCEMENT OF HEALTH STANDARDS AT ELLIOT LAKE URANIUM MINES-POSSIBILITY OF COMPENSATION FOR WIDOWS

John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Health and Welfare. In view of the admission of the government two days ago of the negligence of the federal government in delegating its responsibility for safety and health standards in the Elliot Lake uranium mines and for not ensuring that that delegated authority was properly exercised, is the government prepared to consider adequate compensation to the widows and orphans of Elliot Lake miners who have died of lung cancer or silicosis due to inadequate enforcement of health and safety standards?


Mr. Maurice Foster (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, in responding to the hon. member's question, it is my understanding that the workmen's compensation board regulations in the province of Ontario have been changed so that no miner who has worked at Elliot Lake will be discriminated against if he goes to work in another mine in Ontario.



ABORTION


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I did not catch the first part of the question, but I know nothing about the allegation which is reported to have been made by some group. Is this actually the question asked by the hon. member?


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, I will repeat my question. In view of the admission of the government two days ago of the negligence of the federal government in delegating its responsibility for safety and health standards in the Elliot Lake uranium mines and for not ensuring that that delegated authority was properly exercised, is the government prepared to consider adequate compensation to the widows and orphans of Elliot Lake miners who have died of lung cancer or silicosis due to inadequate enforcement of health and safety standards at Elliot Lake?


Mr. S. J. Korchinski (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Justice. It relates to the question of abortion. The minister indicated that there will be an inquiry as to why there are various interpretations all across this country and no uniformity. Can he indicate when this inquiry might begin, and will the question of why it appears that, despite great advances in medical science, medical science does not appear to be capable of coping with the question of health and with the question of whether there is some deficiency in the medical aspect at this particular time, or will that inquiry touch on the question at all?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure whether medical opinions are much better in this place than legal opinions, but probably not sought from me in any case.
As to the second part of the question, I think that was more a representation or a rhetorical remark. I had

indicated earlier-I think perhaps in the absence of the hon. member-that consideration would be given to the question of an inquiry, but that no decision had been taken about that, and therefore no further time frame can be announced at this point.


Stanley James Korchinski: Mr. Speaker, my question was neither a representation nor rhetoric. I am simply asking whether the inquiry will touch on the question of whether medical science is making advances along that line, or whether perhaps there should be more effort put into improving the situation so that despite the advancement in drugs and therapy which may be available to date, perhaps there is a deficiency in that area.


Otto Emil Lang: When giving consideration to the question of the inquiry, we will try to take into consideration the remarks of the hon. member.



AGRICULTURE


Mr. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is supplementary to that posed by the Leader of the Opposition to the Minister of Agriculture. Does the minister intend to ask the Attorney General of Quebec or the Attorney General of Canada to proceed to lay charges under the Criminal Code against those who have fraudulently used the Canada food seal in the province of Quebec or anywhere else?


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, first we have to have real evidence and, as I said earlier, we are checking to make sure that there have or have not been abuses before laying charges. There has been no real evidence, from what has been said, that our meat inspection program has failed in any manner, shape or form.



FOOD AND DRUGS ACT


James Aloysius McGrath: Mr, Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister of National Health and Welfare. In view of the fact that there are only 91 food inspectors under the food and drug directorate to carry out their numerous responsibilities under this important act-and that includes the 30 the minister added last October during the hamburger affair-may I ask the minister if he intends to ask parliament for money to increase the number of inspectors under the Food and Drugs Act so that Canadians can have the protection which was originally envisaged by this statute when it was passed by parliament?


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I must say in answer to the hon.
Oral Questions
member that he should add to the number he mentioned the 1,200 inspectors working for the Department of Agriculture in the food inspection area, as well as some thousands of provincial and municipal inspectors also working in this area. We must therefore take into account the total number of inspectors in Canada working in this area. As for the number of inspectors who belong to my department, I must say, of course, that I have to operate with the resources allocated to me. This fact must be taken into account when considering the total number of inspectors working in this area.



POST OFFICE


Mr. Stan Schumacher (Palliser):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the right hon. Prime Minister. I should like to know whether the Postmaster General's statement concerning a proposed postal rate increase of 33 per cent was his own idea or if he was expressing new government policy? In this regard, could the Prime Minister also explain why he and his cabinet feel compelled to make such announcements abroad and not even in this country let alone this House?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I do not
have the answer to these questions, Mr. Speaker. I have not seen the announcement and I will have to see evidence in the terms the hon. member suggests.



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE


Mr. Otto Jelinek (High Park-Humber Valley):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Justice. In view of the fact that Louis Laberge was convicted of public mischief and therefore is a convicted felon, what legal sanction, if any, was provided by the Department of Justice or the Department of Labour that would allow him to leave the country for the purpose of representing Canada at the ILO conference in Geneva while his sentence is still pending?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, there are, of course, provisions in both federal and provincial acts for that kind of thing. In this particular case, I want to investigate the actual situation.


Otto John Jelinek: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Labour I will put my supplementary to the Minister of Justice. Given the fact that delegates to the ILO conference are required to be sponsored before going there-in this case presumably by the CLC-was either the Department of Labour or the Department of Justice consulted

June 13, 1975
Oral Questions
about Mr. Laberge's presence at Geneva as technical advisor to the president of the CLC?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I will get that answer for the hon. member as well.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Ray Hnatyshyn (Saskatoon-Biggar):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the minister, I will put my question to the Acting Secretary of State for External Affairs. In view of the minister's reaffirmation of Canada's intention to assist Mozambique to enforce sanctions against Rhodesia, could he explain to the House precisely what steps the government has in mind in connection with the sanctions and would he elucidate just what the minister meant by that?


An hon. Member:: Hallucinate!


Hon. Mitchell Sharp (Acting Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I will ask the minister to elucidate when he returns, I hope on Monday.



VIET NAM-REQUEST FOR REPORT ON IMPRISONMENT OF MISSIONARIES NORMAN AND JOAN JOHNSON

Mr.   Sean@: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Acting Secretary of State for External Affairs and concerns the case of Canadians Norman and Joan Johnson. Three months is a long time for Canadians to be held as prisoners of war, particularly when they were in Viet Nam as missionaries and took no part in the politics or military affairs of that country. Can the minister advise if any progress has been made in view of the government doing, in the minister's own words "everything possible" to secure their release?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, the Department of External Affairs made representations to the PRG in Paris on May 9, 1975. They agreed to raise the matter with authorities in Saigon and promised to get in touch with our embassy in Paris as soon as information was received. They repeated earlier assurances that all foreigners in Viet Nam who were not engaged in military activities would be well treated. I can assure the House that we are continuing to pursue the matter.



INDIAN AFFAIRS


Mr. Dean Whiteway (Selkirk):: Mr. Speaker, my question for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development arises from comments he made in debate yes-

terday in answer to a question that I asked him regarding how many Indians there are in top positions. At page 6694 of Hansard the minister said:
I share his concern about the lack of Indian people in the senior echelons of the department.
At page 6695, he said that the appointment-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. If the hon. member has a question would he please put it?


Dean Waldon Whiteway: In view of these answers, would the minister indicate when he intends to bring in these guidelines that would put native people in the higher echelons of his department?


Hon. Judd Buchanan (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, I would have to examine my comments. I do not think I made any reference to any guidelines vis-a-vis that problem. Mayhe there is some misunderstanding. I share the concern, but I am not sure of the reference made there to the guidelines.


Dean Waldon Whiteway: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question to the minister is whether or not he made reference to those guidelines, could he indicate to the House his intentions as to the sentiment he expressed concerning the appointment of native Canadians to such positions within his department?


J. Judd Buchanan: Mr. Speaker, I have some thoughts in these areas and am currently pursuing them with my colleagues in cabinet.



IMMIGRATION


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Manpower and Immigration, may I direct my question to the Acting Minister or to the Prime Minister. In view of the fact that we have been assured that the government is checking on how Dang Van Quang got into Canada and the possibility of his being deported, may the House be told how it is that a similar character in the person of Cao Hao Hon got here through the same route? Can we be told what the relationships are between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the intelligence authorities in the United States that result in our getting the characters that they do not want to keep in that country?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I do not think that the concluding words of the hon. member's question are at all valid. The person in question had a relative here who was a landed immigrant and, as a result, in the attempt to deal quickly with persons who were in the refugee situation some immediate attention was given to this situation. In this case as well, all the various procedures that are gone through before final status is confirmed are under way.
June 13, 1975


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary question. Will the Minister of Justice ask his colleague to make a full statement on how these characters get in after such short interviews?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I think the minister has already indicated that in these circumstances we attempt, for humanitarian reasons about which the hon. member would normally press us, to deal quickly with persons who may come here. We set a quota of a number of thousands of refugees that we undertook to receive. We attempted to deal quickly with those who had relatives here as Canadians or resident here and in this way a certain expedition took place in order to move them to a final destination. In both cases, the persons are here on ministerial permits which means their status is not final until a review has been taken.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Does it require humanitarian reasons to get people from the United States into Canada? Are they not safe in the United States?


Otto Emil Lang: The question is that of trying to reunite people who have families and relatives living here. We did undertake to receive a certain number of people who were in camp in the United States and get them to their final destination quickly. There is still time for checking various matters of concern to the nation before their final status is determined.



SOCIAL SECURITY


Mr. Gilbert Rondeau (Shefford):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
Is the minister aware of the fact that the old age security pension cheque of older people is reduced to refund the unemployment insurance overpayments made to their spouse?


Marc Lalonde: No, Mr. Speaker. I will be pleased, of course, to investigate specific cases if any, and I imagine this will be done under the act in its present form.



NATIONAL SECURITY


Mr. Tom Cossitt (Leeds):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. It arises from a statement attributed to the Solicitor General in a press interview yesterday concerning the reasons Soviet journalist Konstantin Gei-vandov was refused re-entry to Canada. The following words were used:
Oral Questions
Presumably the Russians know why and there is ho reason for anyone else to be interested.
Will the Prime Minister tell the House if this statement by the Solicitor General represents government policy, that there is no reason for parliament or the Canadian people to be interested in matters that involve the national security?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, on questions of security it is not customary to reveal to all concerned matters that are better kept confidential.


Thomas Charles Cossitt: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary question for the Prime Minister. Is the government now prepared in the interests of full democratic disclosure to make public by tabling in this House the contents of the files of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with respect to Soviet journalist Geivandov and all those who have been connected with him, including Mark Starowicz? If so, when and if not, why not?


Mitchell William Sharp: If I may continue answering, Mr. Speaker, the answer to the question first asked is no.



TRANSPORT


Mr. Donald W. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich):: Mr. Speaker, my question follows up the one I put to the Minister of Transport on April 14.
Can the minister now advise us of the findings of the inquiry he made, at my request, into the loss of lives and fishing vessels off the Pacific coast?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, we have received the report on the inquiry made by our inspectors into the shipwrecks which occurred on the Pacific coast. The causes differ in each case. It is not for the same reason one vessel sank and another did not. I believe the department is now supervising more closely the building and use of fishing vessels. There is not much else we can do to help at this time.
Some vessels were overloaded on the second deck and could not keep their balance; others sank for other reasons. We have that report and are trying to remedy the situation.


Donald W. Munro: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary for the minister.
Does not the department want or intend to reveal the findings of the inquiries?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, the inquiry made on the Pacific coast was not a formal one. It was made by our investigators so that we could find out what had happened. There is no formal report I could table tomorrow. There are partial reports; there is nothing mys-
6734

June 13, 1975
Oral Questions
terious about that. It may be possible to indicate what the main causes were of the incidents or accidents, but we are not dealing here with an official report such as that which follows the work of a commission of inquiry.


Donald W. Munro: Mr. Speaker, I should like to put another supplementary question to the minister. Would the minister be prepared to let me have a look at this report?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, I shall find out what documents we have and early next week I shall be able to tell the hon. member what we can do.



NEWFOUNDLAND-COST-SHARING AGREEMENT FOR UPGRADING OF TRANS-CANADA HIGHWAY

Mr. Jack Marshall (Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. Will the minister indicate whether, as a result of his meetings with the Atlantic ministers of transport, any decisions were made as to an upgrading or strengthening program for the Trans-Canada Highway in the Atlantic region and what formula was offered?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, there is an agreement between the federal Minister of Transport and the provincial ministers of transport, whether they are in the west or in the maritimes, that all that is said after our meetings is what is in the official press release. Outside of that, we do not comment.


Jack Marshall: The original Trans-Canada Highway agreement between the federal government and the province of Newfoundland was on a 90/10 basis. In view of the fact the Trans-Canada Highway was never built to acceptable standards, and this is borne out by the trans-Newfoundland corridor study, will the minister enter into an agreement with the province of Newfoundland on a 90/10 basis rather than a 50/50 basis to bring that highway up to standard?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, I think I can say without revealing anything I promised to keep secret that this is on the agenda that we studied and that we are going to study at our next meeting.



MEASURES TO RE-ESTABLISH CONFIDENCE IN CANADA-APPROVED STAMP FOR MEAT

Mr. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
Since, in this morning's papers, there are headlines such as "Canada approved can be misleading", the stamp "approved" is no longer a safeguard in Canada. Since those headlines will appear again today in various newspapers and in view of uncertainty among the Canadian people, does the minister intend to comment on those

headlines so as to reassure Canadians? What stand does he consider taking to correct those irregularities?


Marc Lalonde: First of all, Mr. Speaker, obviously I am not responsible for instructing those who draft newspaper headlines. If we had to correct headlines every time they are misleading or biased, I think half of the House would spend its time doing that.
As regards the problem raised by the hon. member and the kind of biased information conveyed by those sensational headlines, I fully agree with him that this is unfortunate. Indeed, a lot of people read the headlines rather than the articles which are much more complete and give factual information. I think that the responsibility for the "Canada-Approved" stamp comes more properly under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Agriculture and his inspectors, and I would rather let the minister answer this question.



FISHERIES


Mr. Lloyd R. Crouse (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Minister of State (Fisheries). In light of the criticism at last month's meeting of the Fisheries Council of Canada that Canadian fish companies are being beaten in the all-important export markets by European producers, notably those from Scandinavian countries, on the basis of quality and marketing, has the minister formulated any new plans to assist the industry in solving some of these problems which are causing economic difficulties in Atlantic Canada?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of State (Fisheries)):: Mr. Speaker, I read these reports of the Fisheries Council. However, I have to remind the industry that one of the programs we have put into place in the past year has been to ensure first quality fish, especially for our outside markets. I would also underline to them that the saltfish corporation, which is competing very aggressively in foreign markets, is doing extremely well and paying record prices to fishermen. I think the industry has to put its own house in order.



TRANSPORT


Mr. Fred McCain (Carleton-Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. Will the minister consider postponing all assessments of wharfage fees and the collection of wharfage fees by law until such time as an act of this House has placed the fishing harbours in the hands of the Minister of State (Fisheries) on an official basis?
June 13, 1975


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, that qu'estion should be directed to the Minister of the Environment.


Fred Alward McCain: Mr. Speaker, I respect the opinion which has just been expressed, but I have been advised by the officials and have received correspondence from members and staff of the Department of Transport in respect of this subject. It seems the charges are coming from the Department of Transport and not the Department of the Environment. It is for that reason I direct my question to the Minister of Transport. This is a rather serious situation inasmuch as the charge is made on a discriminatory basis. It may be levied on one boat in one port and not on another. It is not levied at all in some constituencies in the coastal area of Canada. For that reason, I again ask the minister whether he will consider postponing any collection and any additional charges for wharfage until such time as it is officially put in the hands of the Minister of State (Fisheries), as the policy indicates it should be?


Jean Marchand: Mr. Speaker, there may be a few cases where the Ministry of Transport is collecting the fees. I will check that. However, I know that most of them have been transferred to the Minister of the Environment. I will inquire into this and advise the hon. member of the exact proportion. I think there is a rule which applies to all docks and wharfs.


Mr. Mazankowski:: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In a somewhat unusual and accommodating gesture this morning, the Minister of Transport forwarded to me a document which he referred to as an advance copy of the national transportation policy. On examining it, I found it consisted only of the front cover.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I am wondering whether we can assume from the minister's action that all we may expect on Monday is the back cover of this document with nothing in between.


Eugene Whelan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Because of the great importance we all attach to the proper inspection of meat and so on, I want to make one of my earlier answers clear. In my reply to the Leader of the Opposition it almost sounded as though those stamps were lying loosely around. This is not so. They are placed under lock and key. Each inspector has a stamp with his own number on it.


Mr. Diefenbaker:: How did they get out of captivity?


Mr. Speaker:: I can understand the minister's anxiety to allay these fears. However, the observations he has made hardly constitute a point of order.


James Aloysius McGrath: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. When I questioned the Minister of Agriculture earlier regarding the possibility of charges being laid under the Criminal Code against persons misusing the Canada-approved stamp the minister said he was looking into the matter and trying to get evidence. I should like to commend to
Business of the House
him the evidence now coming out at the Quebec crime probe, because if he would read that evidence he would see that there is a prima facie case.


Eugene Whelan: There is no evidence whatsoever that these stamps have been improperly used.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


[Stage Direction]
Fourth report of Standing Committee on National Resources and Public Works-Mr. Ethier.
[Editor's Note: For text of above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]

Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate have passed Bill S-24, to incorporate the National Commercial Bank of Canada, an act to which the concurrence of this House is desired.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, there is agreement among representatives of all the parties to allot a specified amount of time to the consideration of the report stage and third reading of Bill C-8. Therefore, pursuant to Standing Order 75A, I move, seconded by the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Drury).
That in relation to Bill C-8, an act to establish a national petroleum company, two sitting days shall be allotted to the consideration of the report stage and the third reading and passage stage of the said bill;
That after the disposal of the report stage of the said bill the House shall proceed forthwith to consideration of third reading and passage stage of the said bill; and
That on the second of the said days at 15 minutes before the time provided for government business in such sitting, any proceeding then before the House shall be interrupted if required for the purpose of this order, and, in turn, every question then necessary in order to dispose of the report stage and the third reading and passage stage of the said bill shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.
In moving this motion under Standing Order 75A, I wish to repeat the undertaking the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Macdonald) gave at the standing com-
29576-13)4

June 13, 1975
Order Paper Questions
mittee meeting last night, that is to say, that the government will not move substantive amendments at the report stage unless there is agreement to do so by the opposition parties.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The motion, being proposed pursuant to Standing Order 75A, has to be put and decided without debate or amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. John M. Reid (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council):: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 1,864, 2,347, 2,357, 2,378, 2,505, 2,551, 2,589 and 2,642.
If question No. 1,852 could be made an order for return, this return would be tabled immediately.
I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Mazankowski: Has Air Canada conducted any studies into the reasons CP Air can operate at a profit whereas Air Canada cannot and, if so, will such a study be beneficial in helping to reduce Air Canada's losses?


Jean Marchand: The
management of Air Canada advises as follows: A study and comparison of the financial results of Air Canada and CP Air has revealed that one of the most significant aspects affecting net profit, after taxes and interest, is Air Canada's debt/equity ratio which was 95/05 last year. If it were more in line with non-government owned industry, the airline's 1974 income statement would have shown a profit. Another important factor involves productivity per employee, which is primarily related to average stage length. Comparative studies of United States carriers have revealed that the longer the stage length the higher the employee productivity. Thus, it is significant to note that for the first three quarters of 1974, CP Air recorded an average stage length of 936 miles-listed as the third highest stage length in North America-while Air Canada recorded an average stage length of only 547 miles-one of the lowest in North America. It is inaccurate to suggest Air Canada "cannot" operate at a profit; the airline has turned a profit in 25 of its 38 years, and in 10 of the last 11.


Mr. Firth: With reference to the reclassification of welfare rates in the Northwest Territories, was consideration given to the higher transportation costs and freight rates in some of the remote settlements and, if not, for what reason?


Marc Lalonde: The responsibility for determining welfare rates rests with each provincial and territorial jurisdiction. While some provinces utilize the increase in the consumer price index as a regular guide to increasing welfare rates, others make a periodic review of their rates and adjust them on the basis of changes in such indicators as the minimum wage, the consumer price index and the market food basket. Therefore, it is not possible to comment upon the factors that were taken into account in determining the recent increases to the Northwest Territories welfare rates. This inquiry should accordingly be referred to the Department of Social Development in the Northwest Territories.


Mr. Forrestall: 1.	Has the National Harbours Board made any survey of the shipping on the East Coast that concluded Eastern Canada has enough container facilities to handle present and foreseeable needs?
2.	Were any remarks attributed to a senior official of the National Harbours Board in the Dartmouth Free Press of April 16, 1975 correct and, if so, which ones?
3.	Is the official mentioned in the article aware of the statement found at page ten of the addendum to the subsidiary agreement signed between the Government of the Province of Nova Scotia and the Federal Government covering the metropolitan area of Halifax and Dartmouth, which states: "The present facilities will reach their capacity before 1975 passes."?
4.	Does the National Harbours Board agree with the assessment made by the Government of the Province of Nova Scotia and the Federal Government and, if not, for what reason?


Jean Marchand: The
National Harbours Board advises as follows: 1. Yes. Several studies indicate that the facilities in Saint John will be sufficient for many years, but that facilities in Montreal and Halifax have less available additional capacity.
2.	Yes. In column three of the article, all the remarks attributed to an official of the N.H.B. are basically correct, with the following exceptions: (a) Referring to New Brunswick, and cost-sharing: "... negotiations are going on, and the whole complex will probably be paid for on a fifty/fifty basis . .." This statement is too emphatic; rather that contributions appear to be moving toward an equitable participation, but the final settlement will be an intergovernmental decision, (b) Referring to facilities in Eastern Canada: "... We have had several studies done which indicate that there are enough there already. .." This statement did not particularly refer to Halifax, as answered in Part 1 above.
3.	Yes. On February 18, 1975 in Moncton, N.B., officials of DREE presented two proposed sub-agreements between the Federal Government and the Nova Scotia Government for review by representatives from other Federal Govern-
June 13, 1975

ment departments and ministries. At this meeting, N.H.B. disagreed with the statement contained in the Halifax/ Dartmouth agreement:	.. the present facilities will reach
their capacity before 1975 passes . .
4.	The National Harbours Board has taken no stand on the immediate requirement for a decision on that and it is our understanding that the work being done by DREE will materially contribute to a decision both in terms of timing and in terms of the nature and extent of the required facilities. The capital investment numbers which would attach themselves to new facilities are extremely substantial and must, therefore, be related to potential traffic. The position of the Board is that the existing facility should be able to handle quite comfortably the available traffic for the next two or three years or whatever period of time is required not only for a determination of this but for a start on new construction.


Mr. Herbert: Has the Department of the Environment studied the effects on wildlife of the installation of high tension power lines such as that proposed by Hydro-Quebec to convey electricity to New York State?


Mr. Lert Marchand (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment and Minister of Fisheries):: Yes, the Department has studied the effects of herbicides used along power lines and further research on this aspect is being conducted. Also, one program, in the ongoing James Bay Environmental Studies, concerns caribou and their migratory routes results of which will be useful in determining possible effects of power line construction on caribou.


Mr. Caouette (Temiscamingue): 1.	In the past ten years, what was the total expenditure of the Department of National Health and Welfare in the Constituency of Temiscamingue?
2.	Of this amount, what amount was spent for (a) family allowances (b) old age pensions?


Marc Lalonde: Records maintained by the Department of National Health and Welfare are not organized in a way that would permit ready access to the particular information requested. Therefore, the cost involved in obtaining the information would be prohibitive.


Mr. Mazankowski: 1.	Has the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transport, the National Research Council or any other section of government investigated and evaluated the use of pipelines to transport agricultural or other solid goods (other than oil or gas), and (a) if not (i) does the government have plans to do so in the near future (ii) has the government been in touch with the Government of Saskatchewan and the Alberta Research Council to examine the results of their studies into the use of pipelines (b) if so (i) is such a method of shipment feasible (ii) what would be the cost to construct a pipeline and to operate it?
Order Paper Questions
2.	Since the government was willing to fund a STOL demonstration in order to evaluate a new rapid inter-city transport system, would the government also be willing to fund a pipeline demonstration in order to evaluate a new rapid method of shipping goods and (i) if so, are there plans for such a demonstration (b) if not, for what reason?


Jean Marchand: 1.
Through funding from the Ministry of Transport, the government has examined with both Saskatchewan and Alberta Research Councils the feasibility of the transport of solid goods by pipeline. While the actual transmission by pipeline is feasible, there are still technical problems to overcome with respect to the injection and recovery systems of the solids into and from the transmission fluids used in the pipeline. Until these problems have been solved, no accurate cost of operating a pipeline can be derived.
2.	The government has no plans for a demonstration project similar to the STOL program and does not feel that such a program should be entered into until the abovementioned technical problems have been solved and there is an interest by industry in examining such a pipeline.


Mr. Baker (Grenville-Carleton): 1.	What criteria are used to select students for the English second-language training programme for landed immigrants, funded by the government and conducted in community colleges throughout Canada and in Ontario in particular?
2.	Are sponsored immigrants denied acceptance to this type of training?
3.	Is there a time limit beyond which immigrants are not permitted to take this type of course?
4.	Is the programme being phased out in Ottawa and, if so, for what reason?
5.	Are immigrant housewives permitted to take the course?


Hon. Robert K. Andras (Minister of Manpower and Immigration):: 1. All independent, sponsored and nominated immigrant workers who experience difficulty in finding suitable employment in their regular occupation or in a related occupation because of an insufficient knowledge of English or French may be referred to manpower-sponsored language training courses. These are generally given at community colleges and other provincially operated training institutions. When a training place is not immediately available, the immigrant's name is placed on a wait list until he can be referred to a course. Immigrants who lack fluency in English or French but who can be placed in a suitable job are encouraged to accept employment and take language training on a part time basis.
2.	No.
3.	No.
4.	No.

June 13, 1975
Food and Drug Safety
5.	Yes if they meet the conditions of (1) above.


Mr. MacKay: 1.	In the years 1973, 1974 and 1975, were any contracts awarded by the Department of Supply and Services to Securex Limited of Montreal and, if so (a) in what amounts (b) for what periods (c) for what specific services?
2.	In each case, were tenders called and (a) if not, for what reason (b) if so, who were the other firms who submitted tenders and did Securex submit the lowest bid?
3.	Were any contracts awarded to Securex terminated before the expiry date and, if so, for what reason?


Hon. Jean-Pierre Goyer (Minister of Supply and Services):: 1. No.
2 and 3. Not applicable.



QUESTION PASSED AS ORDER FOR RETURN


Mr. Marshall: By department, what is the classification and annual salary of each of the 10,332 public servants in Newfoundland?
Return tabled.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Mr. Paul Yewchuk (Athabasca) moved:: That this House regrets the government's failure to give adequate priority to matters which directly affect the health of Canadians and in particular for its relative downgrading of the health research budget, and its failure to assume proper responsibility in the area of food and drug safety.


Gerald William Baldwin: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. There have been the usual interesting discussions between members of all parties as to the length of the speeches and there is an understanding that the first speaker for each of the three parties outside the government party will have 20 minutes and that all other speakers will have 15 minutes, with the exception of the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) who feels he should have the half-hour allotted under the rules and which he would like to take at the close of the debate. I might add, however, that some adjustment might have to be made. If a member of the opposition begins speaking, say, at 4.25, he will be allowed to complete his remarks. Apart from that, this is the arrangement which has been made and it seems to be satisfactory.


Stanley Howard Knowles: We agree to this.


Mitchell William Sharp: We agree also.


Mr. Speaker:: Then it is agreed and so ordered.


Paul Yewchuk: Mr. Speaker, while the Department of National Health and Welfare is one of the biggest spenders in the federal government, there is a good deal of evidence to indicate that the health half of the department has been neglected by this as well as previous Liberal administrations. The present minister is almost totally committed to the welfare side of his department and, one might say, almost as totally unconcerned about the health half. As a result, many areas in the field of national health have suffered. There has been neglect right across the board from food inspection to medical research.
The priorities of the government have been such that the health of Canadians has not been adequately protected. We hear reports about milk shakes being contaminated across the country. We hear reports about contaminated hamburger meat. Canadians are being fed horsemeat for beef, as well as carrion. Dangerous drugs are on the market. All kinds of pollutants, from arsenic in Yellowknife to asbestos in the air in Quebec mines, exist in large amounts, causing illness to workers. Drug information to physicians is being distributed almost exclusively by the drug companies themselves-hardly an adequate source of information. Because of low funding, many researchers in this country are leaving for greener pastures and going to other countries. We have a situation where the medical research community is in deep distress. Yet the minister very complacently argues that we are doing everything we can; that we are doing a good job for Canadians in the health field.
Perhaps one can find the answer to this blatant deficiency when one looks at the make-up of the policy committee on the health side-the nine people who make policy on the health side in the department; The answer may lie in the fact that there is presently no physician on the committee except for one involved in international affairs. It strikes me as rather strange that a minister has set up his organization in such manner, and I think it deserves an explanation. The minister should explain to the House why there is no physician on his policy committee. Why the absence of the principal character in the health care team in the top policy-making body of the health department? Since one assistant deputy minister is leaving soon, according to what I have been told, I suggest that that position be filled by a physician of appropriate administrative experience and training.
Medical research is a suject of particular concern to me. I would be hard put to find a more important area for research to individual Canadians. Good health, backed up by all the research required to maintain it, is probably the most important single desire that any human can have. Of some 40 major departments and agencies of the federal government that received budgetary increases in the year 1974-75, the Medical Research Council, the body responsible for medical research in this country from the federal government's point of view, was nearly at the bottom of
June 13, 1975

the list of priorities. It was thirty-eighth, with an increase of only 2.7 per cent. In 1975-76, the increase is 13 per cent- a slight improvement, but still far short of the objective required.
In the area of medical research, the Liberal government has consistently under-funded the Medical Research Council, thereby destroying forever vast numbers of acceptable and worth-while research projects. This year alone there were some 56 applications for renewal of support for projects already under way, projects that have already been supported for some time and which have been in the acceptable category according to the council but which were cut off because of lack of funds. Of the requests for new operating funds for medical research projects, 17 have been rejected to date this year, and we are only at the beginning of the year. That rejection was also due to insufficient funds.
Last year, while the total budget for the Department of National Health and Welfare was increased by 38 per cent, the Medical Research Council budget increased only 2.7 per cent. The CBC budget was increased by 25 per cent, by comparison. The St. Lawrence Seaway budget was increased by 25 per cent, and CMHC's budget by 22 per cent. All of this indicates that the government has deliberately decided that medical research is low on its list of priorities and is therefore not worthy of any increase at least equivalent to increases given other departments. In fact, funding was not sufficient even to continue numerous projects which had been supported for a long time.
In my view, Mr. Speaker, that is pretty shabby treatment of the medical research community in this country. We should be looking not only to supporting worthy and acceptable projects already in existence but also to embarking upon new, worth-while projects which come in for funding but at the moment are rejected offhand. This slowdown of funding is shameful and unacceptable. I can think of no greater example of false economizing than the erosion of funds for medical research. If the minister of health feels that cutting back funding for medical research is in fact a means of economizing, all he has to do is review the history to determine what the effect of successful research has been.
It is a fact that life expectancy in Canada has gone up by 23 years in the past 75 years, in part no doubt as a result of medical research. There is solid evidence to indicate that for every $1 invested in medical research now, the pay-off ten years later is about $20. That is a pretty good investment. Penicillin alone saves more lives each year than the total lost during the Second World War. Children no longer die of whooping cough. Canadian mothers no longer need to fear epidemics of German measles, such as in 1964 which resulted in 2,000 infants born with congenital defects and an equal number dying prior to birth. Discovery of the Salk and Sabine polio vaccines has saved approximately 50,000 Canadian lives and has saved $200 million each year since 1955 in Canada alone. One could go on and on with these kinds of statistics, but I hope the minister gets the point that attempting to save a few dollars by downgrading the budget of medical research is absolutely illogical and disastrous.
It is even more illogical when one looks at some of the expenditures of this government. For example, we have a
Food and. Drug Safety
bill before the House of Commons today to set up a petroleum company commonly referred to as Petro-Can. It is estimated that the initial investment in this one venture alone will be in the vicinity of $l'/2 billion. In spite of that figure, and in spite of the fact that the reasons for establishing this particular Crown corporation are at best very dubious, the government is prepared to make that kind of investment without even batting an eyelash, yet limits to $49 million the budget for medical research. That is $49 million compared with $1.5 billion.
Think of the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the Canada Development Corporation, another body for whose existence the reasons are very dubious; but the government does not mind spending the money because that kind of venture seemed to be politically expedient at the time it was undertaken. To get even closer to home, let us look at the expenditures of the privy council office and the prime minister's office. The budget for the privy council this year is over $17 million, and for the prime minister's office it is over $2 million. The expenditures of these two offices alone are about half the total amount allocated by the federal government to medical research in this country.
While the Medical Research Council funding went up by approximately 40 per cent in the past five years, expenditures on the prime minister's office went up by 92.2 per cent in the same period. If there are any cutbacks to be made on expenditures, these are the areas that should be cut back-the privy council office, the prime minister's office, vast investments in dubious Crown corporations, including the sprawling CBC, and expenditures on departments whose existence is almost impossible to justify. For example, Information Canada, a department whose existence no one has been able to justify so far, has a budget of $9.5 million for an operation that is considered to be a propaganda arm of the government. More than twice as much is spent on that propaganda arm as on cancer research or heart research.
I am told by experts that any industry which prospers and survives in a free market society must invest at least 5 per cent of its returns in research. Last year the federal government spent only .85 per cent of the health and welfare budget on research. That percentage has been falling continuously since 1970. In the United States the corresponding figure is 3 per cent. In other words, Americans are spending 40 times what we are for medical research. The result is that we are not contributing our fair share to the world community of knowledge in the medical field. It is said-I refer to a statement by a prominent scientist in this country-that Canada is so busy importing medical advances that we have almost become a parasite on the international community of developed countries. I should like to ask the minister whether he feels quite satisfied and proud of that reputation for this country. I hope he will answer that question when he speaks in this debate.
I would also ask the minister whether that is an official direction of policy in respect of medical research in this country. Is it the policy, as it appears to be, that we simply rely on other countries to do the research in this field, and then simply take the information free of charge and do not

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have to spend the money ourselves? If that is the situation, I think the minister should stand up in the House and say so.
The end result of all this is that Canada is losing great numbers of researchers to other countries, particularly to the United States. We all recall a very glaring example of some ten years ago when a researcher at the University of British Columbia had to move to the United States to complete a project for which he obtained the Nobel Prize after completing it in that country.
The fact is that research capability is not developed overnight: it takes up to 12 years to train a qualified clinical investigator, and that means long-term planning is required to provide for the research needs of this country. Moreover, if qualified researchers are leaving this country and, indeed, are leaving the research field, the loss to Canada is quite substantial not only in terms of the loss of highly skilled people with highly developed technological knowledge but also in terms of the loss of the investment in these people during their training period.
The other aspect of this matter which I think is worth considering is that we in this country are faced with rapidly rising health care costs. Perhaps the minister thinks this is a good reason for cutting down on medical research. To control these rising costs the development of high technology is required, and the only way this high technology can be developed is through the whole spectrum of medical research. Research is an essential component of the health care system and must not be neglected or discarded.
The present government funding policies do not only fail to recognize but in fact contradict these facts. Weekend magazine of March 8, 1975, sums up the situation quite adequately when it states:
Medical research in Canada is suffering from a dread disease and the federal government is just handing out band-aids when what is needed is major surgery.
That is a pretty old statement which we have all heard before, but it is very applicable in this case. The same article points out the situation of many of Canada's most respected researchers as a result of this minister's policy. I see he is hanging his head: I hope he is as ashamed as he should be for doing such a terrible thing.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Paul Yewchuk: For example, in Edmonton, in my own province, a project on transplanting the small intestine and associated structures-work of potential benefit to sufferers of stomach cancer, stomach ulcers, and many others-now stands idle while scientific material and expensive scientific equipment sits on the shelf gathering dust.
It is reported that one of Canada's most brilliant and productive neurophysiologists who had made important contributions toward certain neurological diseases has taken a position in the United States. Yet another researcher, who states he is generally a strong Canadian, has said, "But when it comes to getting money, the only place it seems you can get it is the U.S."
In a cancer research project where the researcher felt he was 90 per cent on the way to reaching his goal, he asked

for a tripling of his $10,000 annual budget and was cut, instead, by this government to $2,500. In the United States he was given $264,000 over a three-year period. That researcher stated:
It's amazing to me that a project which has direct clinical significance doesn't seem worthy of support by a Canadian agency but is to an American agency.
I wonder if the minister would mind explaining that. There are many examples of this kind of thing; in fact, hundreds of them. What is at stake is not simply long-term security for researchers but in fact health and human lives, Canadian lives. What is required now is a realignment of government priorities. The priorities of this government are absolutely unacceptable when it comes to this area of concern. We need to know what is really the federal government's policy concerning scientific research in this country. We want to know the federal government's long-term objective in scientific research. I have not heard the minister state that at any time since he became Minister of National Health and Welfare.
We should be looking to funding of research in a ratio to our gross national product at least in keeping with that of the United States, West Germany, Sweden and many other countries which are showing the concern which is required in this area. The public of this country demands excellence in health care. As a matter of fact, the public of this country deserves excellence of health care. Giant strides forward have been achieved in medical research, but it is time we convinced our government that Canada must play its part in this area.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Mr. Speaker, in rising to take part in this debate I should like to commend the hon. member for Athabasca (Mr. Yewchuk) for introducing this motion expressing the regret of the House that the government has failed to give adequate priority to matters which directly affect the health of Canadians, and particularly for its relative downgrading of the health research budget. It goes without saying that no country can be happy and prosperous unless it has a healthy people. Money which is spent on providing adequate health services represents an investment, not a pouring of money down the drain. Health is not merely some side issue; it is vital to the welfare and well-being of a nation.
I congratulate the hon. member for raising this matter as I think the House in general and the government in particular have to devote more time and make more money available to ensuring the good health of the Canadian people. For many years in this country the number of days lost to industry because of illness has been greater than the number of days lost because of strikes. We make a great deal of fuss about strikes and none of us likes to see time lost in this way, but we are amazingly apathetic about the fact that we lose several million man-days of productivity each year because of the ill-health of the people in this country.
It seems to me that the government has to become seized of the fact that progressive thought today is placing more and more emphasis on preventive medicine. We have made much progress in this country in providing health services for those who are ill. We have done this through hospital insurance and medicare. But we are not spending suffi-
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cient money in attempting to keep people well, which is much more important than patching them up after they become seriously ill. This means, as the hon. member for Athabasca pointed out, there is a dire need for larger expenditures on medical research. I was disappointed, as I am sure were all hon. members, when the government began to retrench on the expenditures for medical research. Medical research is not a luxury; it is a dire necessity. What is equally important is that it is a means by which we can save money in the long run.
Let us look at some of the benefits of medical research. In the years when I had the privilege of being a provincial minister of health, we had every year in the province of Saskatchewan a minimum of 400 cases of poliomyelitis and in a bad year as many as 2,000 cases. That meant the provision of hospital care for long periods and the provision of medical care. Of course, a very large percentage of those cases involved people afflicted with some form of partial paralysis.
Salk vaccine has now made poliomyelitis almost unknown in Canada and the United States. No one can place a dollar value on the research that was carried out to produce Salk vaccine, to say nothing of the amount of human suffering it has prevented. The same can be said for insulin, in respect of which a Canadian doctor is the hero of the piece. Insulin has provided good health and the ability to live normally for millions of people affected by diabetes.
But we have not nearly begun to do enough in the field of research. The extent of the fluoridation program has been spasmodic and piecemeal. We are doing very little in the field of research into mental illness. About half the hospital beds in mental institutions today are occupied by schizophrenics. Some research was started in this field but virtually nothing is being done today.
I should like to see, for instance, the minister undertake a control program to investigate the feasibility of a megavitamin program on the orthomolecular theory, the first proponent of which is Dr. Abraham Hoffer of Saskatoon. I know of many people who have benefited from this treatment. I am not competent to say whether this program would be successful in every case in the treatment of schizophrenics, nor do I know what side-effects it might have. That can be determined only by having a specific controlled program to look into the value of the orthomolecular theory and the treatment of patients by the megavitamin program. However, we are doing nothing in this field.
I say that both in terms of dollars to be saved in the long run and in human suffering that could be eliminated, every dollar the Canadian parliament is prepared to appropriate for medical research in the long run would pay excellent dividends. In this country we are sadly lacking in the development of a proper physical fitness program. Some time ago the president of the Canadian Academy of Sports Medicine, at a meeting in Vancouver, said there is no question that Canadians are in exceptionally poor physical condition. He went on to say:
One of our speakers reported today on a test of 400 students aged 18
Food, and Drug Safety
and 19 years. It was a bicycle test... and 40 per cent of them couldn't do it. They weren't even in the condition of most over-forty Europeans.
That is a terrible indictment of a country which prides itself on its health programs. Exercise, diet, recreational facilities, pure food and pure water are essential ingredients of good health. When the government worries about what to do concerning unemployment, and I am aware that hundreds of communities in Canada do not have sewage or water treatment plants or fluoridation of their water to prevent tooth decay in children, I am amazed- because this period of, unfortunately, high unemployment provides the government and this country with an opportunity to ensure that we have at least proper hygiene and that we have pure water and pure food.
While I have great respect for the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) and believe he wants to do a commendable job, I say to him and to the government that they have been marking time on health programs ever since the medicare program came into effect in 1967. What is even worse is that the government has been seeking to welsh even on the medicare program. The minister placed before the provincial ministers of health some time ago a proposal suggesting that the government's increase in contribution to medicare each year should be limited to the increase in the cost of living. What possible relationship there is between providing health services and the cost of living completely escapes me, because illness takes no account of the cost of living. A serious epidemic or the resurgence of some ailment in the country can escalate the cost of medicare and the cost of hospitalization.
To be perfectly fair to the minister, I know that he offered the provinces a thrust fund which I think worked out to something like $30 per capita for compensation. I have no quarrel with the idea of a thrust program, but it ought not to be a quid pro quo for the government seeking to reduce in any way its contribution to the cost of medicare in this country. The result is that the federal government's lack of vision with regard to health services in this country has made it necessary for the provincial governments to assume many responsibilities which properly ought to be shared by the federal government.
Some of the provinces have set up dental programs; others have initiated pharmacare; others are providing glasses and other ancillary health services that are not provided under medicare to senior citizens and to certain needy groups in the community. But the provincial governments should not be saddled entirely with the cost of providing these programs. Surely medicare has been in this country long enough now that the federal government should accept its responsibility to expand the area within which it will operate.
I remember when the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. MacEachen) was minister of national health and welfare and he was piloting the medicare legislation through the House. We managed to persuade him to accept an amendment by which the government, by order in council, without coming back to parliament, could extend the benefits of medicare to a wide field, including dental care, payments for prescription drugs, glasses, optometric care, chiropractor treatment, and so on. But there has been
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no extension of the area of services provided under the medicare legislation. Wherever it has been extended, it has been extended by the provincial governments.
I need hardly remind the House, Mr. Speaker, that there are provinces in Canada which cannot afford to assume these responsibilities on their own. There are provinces which do not have the tax base to enable them to put in denticare, pharmacare, and provide other ancillary health services which the Canadian people need and deserve.
I urge the minister, when he is speaking on this motion today, to indicate whether the federal government is prepared to move into some of these areas so that it will be possible not just to have denticare in such provinces as Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia, but to have denticare and pharmacare in the Altantic provinces and the other provinces which are not able financially to assume the entire burden for these programs.
A few moments ago I spoke about preventive medicine. I cannot think of any preventive program which would be more beneficial to the health of the rising generation than a denticare program which could begin by covering all children up to the age of 16 or 18. Those children whose parents cannot afford to send them to a dentist once or twice a year for periodic check-ups, who cannot afford to pay for orthodontic treatment, are the children who later on have trouble with their teeth and will probably require dental plates long before they should have to use them. We could improve the health of the rising generation by a denticare program, particularly for school children, all across the country at relatively low cost. I know the minister will probably ask, "But where do we get the dentists?" As far back as 1936 New Zealand began to train dental hygienists and they have been working there ever since. The province of Saskatchewan has been training dental hygienists-


Marc Lalonde: The federal government also.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The
federal government has been doing some work, and I give the minister credit-


Marc Lalonde: The federal government did if before Saskatchewan did.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: 
Mr. Maurice A. Dionne (Northumberland-MiramicKi):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in this debate because I can still remember when ordinary Canadians awoke with dread in the middle of the night when one of their children had abdominal pains. In those days, even a case of appendicitis could be a major crisis, especially in rural areas. Not only were doctors and hospitals not always readily available but very often money was even less available. I still remember my father having to borrow money from a neighbour so that he could take my brother to hospital when he had appendicitis. In my own case, when I was working and had a similar operation I had to pay a deposit before I could get into the hospital, and I have often wondered what happened to the people who did not have the money to pay the deposit.
That situation would still persist if the federal government had not dragged the provinces, kicking and screaming, into such programs as hospitalization and medicare. That was because such great Canadian leaders as Louis St. Laurent and Lester Pearson saw the need for these programs and had the political foresight to take the necessary action to implement them and to ensure that Canadians, regardless of where they lived in the country or their financial status, were guaranteed the right, not the privilege, to basic and adequate medical care.
We heard the hon. member for Athabasca (Mr. Yew-chuk) deride the government for not putting enough money into medical research. He used selective statistics, and that can be a dangerous game.


Paul Yewchuk: I did not; I used good statistics.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: But selective. The actual figure in the estimates of the federal government for this year is $48,434,000 for the Medical Research Council. Added to that is $10.9 million for research and development and an additional $5.9 million for research into the non-medical use of drugs. There is about $17 million going into research in this country from private organizations. In addition to that, the provinces are also putting money into medical research and that input by the provinces is increasing. There are fairly substantial sums being put into medical research by Ontario and Quebec. The actual increase in the 1975-76 main estimates over the 1974-75 estimates is 19 per cent, and that is a fairly substantial amount of money. As a matter of fact, the department has received many expressions of satisfaction from researchers and research groups.
When the hon. member equates these things with the increase in the cost of operating the office of the prime minister or the privy council office, he is again being very selective in his criticism because he did not mention the increase in operating the office of the leader of the opposition or in operating the research bureau of the opposition. I have no objection to those increases; we all know that the opposition needs all the help it can get.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Maurice Adrian Dionne: For the
opposition to criticize the increase in the expenditures of the office of the prime minister and the privy council
Food and Drug Safety
office, without also giving the whole picture, is very much like the liquor salesman who advocates total abstinence.


Paul Yewchuk: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, just so the hon. member does not mislead the House, I have here a copy of the statement made by the parliamentary secretary before the standing committee to the effect that the increase is 13 per cent, rather than 19 per cent, over last year's budget.


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: I would advise members of the opposition to be careful about statements they make. There may be an accident in the political situation at some time in this country and the opposition may be forming a government at some time in the future. Then they will be like the old skunk and when the wind changes they will be saying, "It is all coming back to me now."
Canada takes pride in the level of health enjoyed by the majority of its people. Many things have contributed to this: our rising standard of living, the improved state of our nutrition, improvement in our housing, and the control we have maintained of our environment, together with the specific steps we have taken to make hospital, medical care and other forms of health care more widely available to the public. These have all contributed to our rising standard of health.
Mr. Speaker, may I call it one o'clock.


An hon. Member:: It is not one o'clock yet.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner):: Order, please. Is it agreed that the House call it one o'clock?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner):: 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.
Maurice Adrian Dionne: Madam Speaker, from the very beginning our hospital and medical insurance plans envisaged that standards of quality would be required. Long before the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act was passed, the federal government began to contribute to the costs of building or improving hospitals in Canada so that they might reach an acceptable standard in terms of numbers and facilities.
The Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act of 1957 contains federal standards related to such things as accessibility, portability, comprehensiveness and universality. In addition, it required the provinces "to make such arrangements as are necessary to ensure that adequate standards are maintained in hospitals, including the supervision, licensing and inspection thereof". The provincial medical care acts provide for mechanisms to review
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the quality of the medical care being given and for reference of the results of such reviews to the provincial licensing authorities. The effects of these acts has been not only to improve the standard of hospital and medical care throughout Canada but also to reduce the discrepancies between the quality and availability in the different provinces in Canada. This will be referred to again later.
What has been achieved? Many statistics document the improvement in the health of Canadians. In 1961, the expectation of life, at birth, of Canadian males was 60 years; by 1971 it was 69.3 years. The corresponding figures for females were 62.1 years in 1961 and 76.4 years in 1971. Internationally, Canada stands sixth in terms of average life expectancy at birth. Furthermore, we are only three years behind the leading country in the case of males and only 1.3 years behind in the case of females, so it is only a matter of time until women have the upper hand!
There has been a steady fall in the rate of infant mortality. This stood at 22 per 1,000 live births in 1967 and has now fallen to 15.5, a decrease of nearly 30 per cent. This is an achievement in itself. While it is not claimed that these improvements in statistics are related to health services alone, they are related to health in the widest sense. We are well aware that improvement in nutrition, housing and general economic status results in improvement in health, and no doubt all of these factors have contributed to the increasing health of Canadians.
However, some of the credit must also go to the organization of health services and the introduction of medicare and the hospital insurance plans. For example, on the eve of the introduction of hospital insurance in 1958, the Canadian infant mortality rate was 11 per cent higher than that of the United States, 30 per cent higher than that of England and Wales and 40 per cent higher than that of Australia. Ten years later, when medicare was just being introduced, Canada had caught up to a considerable extent, for our infant mortality rate was then 5 per cent below that of the United States, only 14 per cent higher than the rate in England and Wales, and 17 per cent higher than the Australian rate.
By the end of 1971, at the conclusion of the first full year of medicare in all the provinces, The Canadian infant mortality rate was 8 per cent below that of the United States and was virtually identical to that of Australia, England and Wales, although their rates had also been dropping steadily. We were making vast improvements in this field.
By 1973, the third year of operation of the medical insurance program for the whole of Canada, infant mortality was 15.5 per 1,000 live births. This rate was 14 per cent below that of the United States, which was itself at an all-time low, and it was substantially below that of Australia, England and Wales, New Zealand and France. Sweden has the world's lowest infant mortality, with a rate of about 11 per 1,000 live births, but the rate there has been stable for some years while in Canada it is still declining. I could go on giving more statistics, but I will omit them.
The availability of hospital beds and of physicians' services, the number of people working in the hospitals, the amounts spent on hospitals and doctors, all of these are more uniform from province to province now than they

were before the introduction of federal cost-sharing programs. Even within individual provinces the distribution of physicians has improved since doctors can now make a living even in economically deprived areas and the Government of Canada can share in incentive programs to attract them there.
I would now like to mention other achievements in raising the standards of health and health care. Despite occasional lapses, we can be proud of the general quality of the food and drugs which are available to Canadians, and of the quality of our environment. The health protection branch of the Department of National Health and Welfare sets and maintains vigorous standards and carries out a surveillance program which is limited only by the amount of funds voted for this activity. The radiation protection branch sets standards for radiation emitting devices, used both domestically and in health care institutions, which are among the highest in the world.
The medical devices bureau is developing a program which will regulate the quality and safety of medical devices sold both to the health profession and to the public. The modern technology of medicine is such that physicians and other health workers depend a great deal on instruments and equipment, and the medical devices bureau is acting to ensure that they can rely on them with confidence and that patients will not be harmed by them. The Department of National Health and Welfare is also encouraging the development of voluntary standards in the field of health care technology through the Canadian Standards Association and the Canadian Government Specifications Board.
The health protection branch, through the laboratory centre for disease control, has developed a clinical chemistry standardization program. Highly accurate reference methods in clinical chemistry are being developed and these will be the basis for quality control in our hospital and clinic laboratories. In a similar manner, our virology program provides diagnostic reference services and uses very specialized techniques to maintain the standards of diagnosis in this field.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: Order, please. I regret to interrupt the hon. member, but his time has now expired. The hon. member for Grey-Simcoe (Mr. Mitges).


Constantine George (Gus) Mitges: Madam Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate and add my remarks to those of my colleague, the hon. member for Athabasca (Mr. Yewchuk), and all other hon. members who have made or will be making a contribution this afternoon.
In recent years we have had bootleggers who have manufactured their own version of the gut-rot whisky and bathtub gin which was quite prevalent in prohibition years in the United States in the 1920s and the first two years of the 1930s. Much of this homebrew was adulterated and some was described as being poisonous to people who had the misfortune to drink it. This mattered very little to those unscrupulous people who engaged in this practice solely for the purpose of lining their pockets with ill-gotten gains without even a backward glance at the untold misery they caused.
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Similarly, we now have people who traffic in drugs. I cannot think of anything or anybody lower on the face of this earth than those despicable people, who pass themselves off as human beings, who traffic in death and human destruction solely for monetary gain. No mercy should be shown to them. In my opinion, they should be executed. Such punishment is now being carried out in Iran and it is having positive results in ultimately ridding that country of these leeches.
More recently we have had unscrupulous people selling tainted meat unfit for human consumption. They are lining their pockets with perhaps millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains. The unlawful selling of tainted meat for human consumption, from cattle that had died as the result of disease or debility, has caused quite a furore in the province of Quebec. This meat was processed largely for weiners, salami, sausages, minced meat and other processed varieties effectively disguised with flour, filler and spices.
This fraud was further compounded in some cases when some carcasses bore the stamp "Quebec Approved", which indicated that some provincial meat inspectors were also involved in perpetrating this outright fraud. It is relatively easy to distinguish between meat from carcasses of animals which had died some time before being dressed, and meat from cattle killed just prior to dressing. In the latter case, the cattle bleed-out freely and the colour of the meat is a fairly light red, while in the other case there is very little, if any, bleeding-out, resulting in the meat being quite dark red in colour. If a diseased animal dies as the result of septicemia, bacteriemia or some other form of blood poisoning, or dies as the result of a chemical poisoning such as arsenic or lead, one can readily perceive the danger to unsuspecting people consuming that meat.
The most puzzling thing to me, as a former veterinary meat inspector with the Department of Agriculture, is that there is no provincial compulsory meat inspection in Quebec by the Quebec department of health-only when an operator requests such inspection. The only compulsory inspection carried on is in the 45 plants under the supervision of the federal Department of Agriculture. Federal inspection is mandatory only when meat is exported out of the country or shipped from one province to another. Animals slaughtered and processed for consumption within the province do not necessarily come under federal inspection. In view of the startling fact that there are approximately 380 slaughterhouses in Quebec which have not had meat inspection of any kind, and that more than a million animals are slaughtered yearly for human consumption, the people of Quebec have a right to be angry with their government for not providing mandatory inspection.
In my opinion, the only way that Canadians from coast to coast can be sure that the meat they are buying comes from healthy animals is to have all meat inspection in Canada fall under the jurisdiction of the health of animals branch of the Department of Agriculture. I have reiterated the point to the Minister of Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde), the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan), and the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). I have been assured by the Prime Minister, and again today by the Minister of
Food and Drug Safety
Agriculture, that it will certainly be taken under advisement. It is my hope that such a law will be instituted as soon as possible so that the confidence of consumers regarding disease-free meat will be restored.
What are some of the diseases and infections that these unscrupulous people who are knowingly selling tainted and diseased meat are passing on to an unsuspecting populace, for the sole purpose of lining their pockets with ill-gotten gains, having no conscience or remorse for the ills and, yes, I would suspect even some deaths caused as the result of unknowingly eating infected and putrified meat? Let me list a few for the record. One of the things we used to see when I was inspecting was bacteriemia, which means harmful bacteria in the bloodstream, septicemia, a form of blood poisoning, and pyemia, a form of pus-producing bacteria in animals. We saw tuberculosis, which has almost been eradicated. There are not as many cases today, thanks to the vigilant work of the veterinarians in the health of animals branch of the Department of Agriculture. However, I did read the other day that a few cases have emerged.
We then have gastroenteritis, which is an inflamation of the gastrointestinal system, tetanus, which is lockjaw, brucellosis, a contagious abortion in cattle and swine, and leukosis, which is caused by a virus found in poultry; it causes a form of leukemia or cancer of the blood. I can recall condemning as much as 50 per cent of the poultry I was called upon to inspect, not only for looks but for other reasons as well. You can imagine what would have happened if this meat had found its way into our soups, chicken croquettes or chicken patties: it could have caused a lot of sickness to people eating it.
I can remember, in my home town of Owen Sound, passing a butcher's store. This was prior to all meat in Ontario having to be inspected. I saw a beef heart in the window. Staring me in the face was a tapeworm cyst. The name of the cyst is cysticercus bovis. If consumed by an unsuspecting person, it could cause the development of a tapeworm 30 feet long. I approached the butcher and took him aside to tell him what I had seen. He was unaware of what it was. He thanked me profusely. It was perhaps not as a direct outcome of that, but shortly afterwards Owen Sound became the first municipality in the province of Ontario to institute compulsory meat inspection of all meat coming into Owen Sound and any meat slaughtered within its boundaries. I am happy to say that shortly after that the province of Ontario instituted compulsory meat inspection.
As far as provincial inspection is concerned, this is carried on primarily by inspectors who have been given an extensive course in meat inspection. They learn to recognize the more prominent things that can be found on post-mortem. If there are some things they do not recognize, they have at their disposal a list of veterinarians in their vicinity who have been approved by the government. They may call on the veterinarian, who will be there within a few minutes to determine if there is any pathology that was not immediately available to the inspector and consequently will determine whether an animal will be allowed pass through or will be condemned. As far as provincial inspection goes, I think it is good if the rules

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Food and Drug Safety
and regulations are followed to the letter. Unless that is done, I cannot condone it at all.
Federal inspection, as I have stated, is instituted when the meat is transported across the boundaries of provinces or for export purposes. As of December 9, 1974, we had 199 federal meat inspecting plants in Canada. Six of these are abattoirs where horses are slaughtered for human consumption. Most of this meat is exported to Europe. However, there is no restriction on selling horsemeat here. If a butcher wishes to sell horsemeat, he can sell that but nothing else. He cannot sell beef, pork or lamb-just horsemeat.
In the health of animals branch of the Department of Agriculture there is a total of 562 veterinarians of whom 286 are engaged in meat inspection. In addition, there are 985 primary products inspectors under the direct supervision of the veterinarians. At the present time there are 179 vacancies of veterinarian positions in the health of animals branch. The main reason for this is not the fact that there is a shortage of veterinarians in the country, but the low salary range offered to veterinarians by Treasury Board.
The Department of Agriculture, as the main employer of veterinarians, must ensure that this career is attractive and a worthy outlet for highly trained, modern veterinarians. One of its obvious steps is to ensure that the salary scale for this kind of employment compares favourably with that in other segments of the profession. The veterinarians in the government service ought to be one of the highest paid groups. In effect, they are faced with the anomaly that this is the poorest paid group. Medical doctors and dentists in the federal service, whose educational qualifications are the same as veterinarians, have a salary range of at least $8,000 more than veterinarians.
The Minister of Agriculture, in his speech to the graduating class of the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon on March 8, said: "I want to see vets in the government service paid as well as those in private practice." I am glad to note that the minister has confirmed what everybody else has been saying for a long time, namely, that veterinarians in the government service are underpaid. The average income of a veterinarian in the private sector, as of 1973, was $24,000. This is a far cry from the $14,000 the Department of Agriculture pays its starting veterinarians. I hope the minister will be able to convince his colleague, the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Chretien), to take the appropriate action to rectify this state of affairs as soon as possible.
Up to now, veterinarians in the service of the health of animals branch are frustrated and disappointed with the attitude of the Treasury Board, one which shows complete ignorance of the problems and total disrespect for the services performed by government veterinarians in that branch.
I should like to call attention to some of the important services performed by veterinarians in the public service in supporting the economy of Canada. The value of meat, meat products and livestock exported last year to 117 countries was $796,753,000. Veterinary inspection and supervision in 199 federally-inspected establishments pro-
duced meat and meat products having a base value of $2 billion. At the same time, the health of the Canadian public and of Canadian livestock was protected and the spread of disease was controlled.
I should like to see justice done to the veterinarians in the public service and I hope the President of Treasury Board will give the matter the favourable consideration it deserves. If something is not done soon, we may find ourselves in serious trouble because of a shortage of veterinarians in the health of animals branch to supervise our exports of meat and meat products. At the present time in the health of animals branch there is a ratio of 4.7 non-veterinary inspectors to each veterinarian in the meat inspection section. The World Health Organization has recommended that the rate of three non-veterinarians to one veterinarian should not be exceeded. If this rate is exceeded, importing countries could refuse our meat products on the ground that veterinary supervision of animals before and after slaughter was inadequate.
I should like to put on record some statistics regarding the number of animals slaughtered. and inspected under the supervision of the health of animals branch in the past year. The number of cattle slaughtered was 3,291,922; calves, 820,000; swine, 9.5 million; sheep and lambs, 243,000; chickens and turkeys, 236 million.
Mr. Speaker, the Canadian federal meat inspection service has been recognized as one of the best in the world and as one which has obtained the confidence of every country.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Constantine George (Gus) Mitges: Let us maintain this high quality of service by giving its officers the recognition which has been so long overdue.
I should like to say a few words about cancer-producing chemicals which have been used in the processing of food products. I refer particularly to potassium and sodium nitrites. As a former food inspector with the department, it gave me particular satisfaction to learn that at long last steps had been taken to halt the use of chemicals linked with cancer in food intended for human consumption. Chemical preservatives are used to prevent the formation of micro-organisms which produce a highly dangerous disease called botulism.


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


Mr. Claude-Andre Lachance (Lafontaine-Rosemount):: Madam Speaker, health is a general state of physical, mental and social well-being and does not merely consist in an absence of illness or disability. This definition which is found in the constitution of the World Health Organization is a basic axiom and premise for any person trying to understand the development of health policies and the work done in the department of the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde), work which resulted about a year ago in the publication of a working paper entitled "A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians" whose main theme is prevention.
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The document puts more emphasis on the general definition rather than on the conventional concept of health as a strategy for disease control.
The present health care system in Canada, as conceptualized by Aesculapius, is comparatively satisfactory in the sense that care availability has been generalized in the past few years. I would even go as far as to say that a new attitude has developed among the Canadian people, that is they see a doctor when they are ill instead of waiting until they are better.
Indeed, this attitude has developed to the extent that now when one suffers from a throbbing and painful headache day after day, instead of seeking its causes, medical advice is sought and aspirin tablets are asked, when one should have thought of the heavy drinking of the night before. This relates to another point of the development of health care in Canada. The availibility of health care for the Canadian people, especially underprivileged, has not led to the development of adequate preventive measures designed specifically to reduce the demand for health care.
This development came to a stop and although some people go readily to the emergency for such headaches, I feel it would sometimes be better to look for the causes of the illness. Because this whole development was stopped half way, there is an excessive increase in the number of hospital patients and an escalation of administrative costs for hospital care. Faced with this alarming situation, there are three alternatives. First of all, we could reduce the quality of medical care by admitting fewer people to hospitals. This can be done by reducing the number of beds, or more generally, by keeping the budget at its present level regardless of the greater number of people requesting hospital care. Or else, hospitals and research services could draw up a strict budget and try to manage with this budget, perhaps by providing penalties for those who ask for emergency care unnecessarily. Finally, a comprehensive restructuring of health services in Canada might be considered.
I feel that the last of these three alternatives is the only one acceptable to the Canadian people, namely a restructuring of health services, so as to make these services more adequate and more in line with the funds which may be granted, and with our resources in this area.
This approach seems to me the most logical, but it implies a factor of utmost importance, I mean the co-operation of the three levels of government. As a matter of fact, government members have received an enthusiastic support from their provincial counterparts at every level during the debate on the working paper in question, and we are now in the process of defining priorities.
It is becoming more and more evident that in our relations with the provinces, we overlook the jurisdictional aspect in order to seek logical solutions to contentious issues. The discussions between the federal and provincial health ministers have been extremely successful and resulted in an agreement of mutual support. The meetings of deputy ministers had similar results, and is was agreed that the main health problems cannot be solved without mutual support in a spirit of co-operation and determination.
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This aspect of the undertaking is complex. It requires great lengths of time, since the reform of a system such as the health care system cannot be carried out immediately without prior assessment of the benefits involved. On the other hand, the success of such a reform depends on the motivation and the actual interests of Canadians considered individually, and on the support of voluntary organizations. This phase therefore cannot be carried out overnight. It goes without saying that governments cannot expect to achieve it all by themselves, and I can say that at this very moment federal committees are busy in this field assessing and studying each and everyone of the report's recommendations, as well as the countless number of proposals submitted after the publication of the green paper, as it is generally known. Thus, priorities and measures to be taken can be decided upon.
At the same time, many federal-provincial committees are also busy setting priorities and deciding upon implementation methods.
In order to obtain data and thus be in a position to assess any progress made, a study on health in Canada has been launched with the co-operation and support of the provinces. We must then emphasize once more the interest, the support and the outstanding contribution of the provincial governments in that field.
The Health Ministers' Council which has delegated this responsibility to the provinces is pleased with the improvement achieved up to now and firmly believes that within a few weeks or a few months new and dynamic formulas will be developed. Indeed, we may already see in many provinces the results of these efforts while concrete steps are being taken by the provincial government and prevention is once again becoming a matter for consideration.
We may expect a more direct intervention in the future and, in this connection, I am referring to the new system which exists in Quebec, involving local centres of community services which will try to regionalize these services or rather to fan out health services in such a way as to permit people living in a given sector to get nursing or minor hospital care close at hand. These centres, to some extent, are the equivalent of dispensaries in France where people may get treatment without having to report to emergency wards where services prove to be the most costly in the administration of hospitals.
In view of this accumulation of steps taken jointly or individually by the federal and provincial governments, I fail to see why this government is accused of inaction in the field of health. In fact, the very existence of the Green Paper on health proves the concern of the department with regard to the new and much broader concept of health that more closely resembles that of the World Health Organization, that is, that health encompasses far more than merely physical well-being. The Green Paper has had considerable effects and is even considered, in Canada as well as abroad, as a first in that field.
Indeed, we must see in that study a working paper, which is meant as a topic for discussion, its success exceeded by far all expectations. I should like to summarize briefly the importance and effects of that paper in the field of health, not only in Canada but also throughout the world. Last year, the department distributed over 80,000

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copies of the report to Canadians, experts, universities, community groups and others. In return, it received countless letters filled with favourable observations on the matters and proposals discussed in the paper. The briefs contained very interesting recommendations, which proves how concerned and aware the Canadian people are with regard to matters of health and well-being.
Indeed, the ideas and suggestions submitted by Canadians on the means of improving their health are truly extraordinary. That explosion of pertinent and useful ideas in turn gave rise to considerable work and interest in the department. Numerous letters were also received expressing interest the document stirred in health circles abroad. For instance, the World Health Organization received it very favourably and after studying it, distributed it in more than 20 European countries.
In the United States, in the United Kingdom, in France, in Australia, to name only a few countries, the government health organizations expressed some interest and sometimes enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, the authorities in this area and some government officials came to Ottawa to get first hand information on the development and progress brought about by the document. In Canada, it has been praised by official and voluntary organizations which feel it as a very important step in the area of health, a document aimed at a better rationalization of the health system in Canada. For example, the Chamber of Commerce of Canada fully supports the views expressed in this document, in particular concerning the personal responsibility of Canadians in the promotion and the maintenance, for themselves and for their families, of sound health habits whose beneficial effects will spread to every community, and finally to the whole country. The Canadian Medical Association regards this document as one of the most revealing forecasts ever made on the future health of Canadians. These important groups of specialists wish to work in a close cooperation with the department. The Canadian Nurses' Association organized programs to make people aware of the ideas set forth in this document. The Canadian Public Health Association used the new perspectives of the document as a basis for discussion during its recent annual meeting. Other organizations did the same thing, but there is no need to list them all.
The hon. members will recall that the main theme of "New Perspective on the Health of Canadians" is prevention. Prevention is a very important word, because, in the past, we may not have insisted enough on the notion of prevention in the field of care and physical and mental health. There is no doubt that if our only concern is to continue to dispense health care, costs will keep on rising without much benefit for the health of Canadians, and there is no way of checking this trend.
After admitting this fact, it does not mean that the government abandons a sector as vital as health care or that it disregards the importance of a on-going and useful biological research. In that respect, my colleague for Northumberland-Miramichi (Mr. Dionne) has made a brilliant statement on the situation, and I share his views. We must clearly put also more emphasis on environmental health. I think of the risks over which the individual has unfortunately little or no control, and I mean not only air and water pollution, but also the quality of food, drugs,

cosmetics, the presence of radiations and so many others pointed out by previous speakers.
Finally, the importance of life habits as health factors must be emphasized, that is the personal decisions which have both positive and negative implications on the health of every individual. To achieve that goal, and given the relatively limited resources we have in the long and the short run, the Green Paper has established the need to set out definite objectives. In this regard, a number of strategies have been defined in that Green Paper, the most important of which is, in my opinion, the promotion, by all means available, of the concept of health, but as I explained in the beginning of my remarks, health in the sense of "global physical well-being", and not the mere absence of illness.
To that end three proposals have been brought forward. Firstly, to increase the individual's awareness of the factors which affect his well-being in general and to promote simultaneously the means to evade the potential dangers he has to face. Secondly, to encourage the individual to acquire healthy living habits which can only improve his physical condition and well-being. Thirdly, to urge industries, unions, educational institutions, etc., to implement concrete health programs to protect the workers' wellbeing, and more positively, to offer physical training courses in a generalized way precisely to make it possible for those workers to maintain a general well-being in their work.
Some will say that the government must not take so aggressive a step in the area of advertising. The word propaganda could even be used to encourage Canadians to follow healthy living habits. I answer in the affirmative. The government has the responsibility to take the necessary steps through advertising or otherwise to make Canadians aware of the fact that they are themselves in large part responsible for their physical well-being. They practically alone will have to take the means to maintain their body and mind healthy. In that respect again I think that we have a great deal of responsibility as a government that we have not sufficiently explored the avenues with the provinces in that area through education, although education is a provincial matter, as well as through consultation with the provinces, with the distributions of pamphlets in schools, through direct action with students and young people. I think that is the best way to expect the people of this country, particularly the young, to have much healthier patterns of life than is the case now. I am only 21 and I confess I already have bad habits because I was not taught the good ones at school. In this way the good living habits of the young will indeed affect their elders and the growing increase in the use of hospital institutions will be controlled as well as the resulting costs to the Canadian taxpayers.


Gilbert F. Rondeau: Madam Speaker, it gives me pleasure to speak my mind on the subject of health in general in this opposition day. The motion refers to the downgrading of the health research budget as well as the failure of the government to fully assume its responsibility in the area of food and drugs consumption.
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I know my remarks will come as a shock to some and will upset deep-rooted habits and beliefs. Having had an opportunity on many occasions and even daily to see what is happening in the medical field I cannot but make the following remarks.
Logically, Madam Speaker, the government should act as a good family man, a good leader of the nation. The government has extensive powers and also large responsibilities to assume. One of the first responsibilities is to give people not only material well-being but also the means to live for a long time while enjoying good health. Well, what do we see? Hospitals are filled to capacity, people live longer than they used to, I agree, but they do not live a full and active life. As a matter of fact, they do not live. They exist a bit like mushrooms, on pills and needles.
Official medicine acknowledges its helplessness with regard to countless diseases. A 20-year old must have his leg cut because the alleged miracle drug, penicillin, proves ineffective. Because medicine cannot repair a defective heart, it resorts to heart transplants with the poor results we know. It is fine plumbing work but not preventive medicine. Doctors admit they do not know the cause of the common cold, let alone arthritis.
Now, it is up to the health departments of the various governments to protect the people from the mediate and immediate causes of diseases. To this end, as has always been the case, health departments rely almost exclusively on the efficiency of the Physicians' College and its members. Nothing is being done as far as preventive medicine is concerned. To stain people's blood with vaccines, that is not preventive medicine but contamination. To authorize the manufacture of thousands of tons of drugs, the char-latanical virtues of which are publicized on television and radio, that is not preventive medicine. All those drugs from aspirin to thalidomide, are to a certain degree poisonous and mutagenic.
Official medicine, as we know it by its deeds, is ignorant of the laws of human physiology and therefore does not deserve the high reputation it has acquired in all departments and all governments.
It would be advisable for the medieval philosophy of our disciples of Aesculapius to refresh itself by coming in contact with modern biologists and physicians who have really understood the laws of human physiology, laws that unquestionably condition all members of the human species.
Contrary to the representatives of official medicine, those physicians and physiologists have learned that to be in good health, man must have a hundred quadrillion healthy cells; if all his cells are healthy, they will work adequately and man will be healthy and able to perform all his appropriate functions. In order to do their work, cells need synthetic energy and materials, but the cell creates no energy and no matter and only food can bring it the needed energy and matter. According to a thorough study of biochemistry and dietetics, the average man, to be in good health and to grow normally from childhood to adulthood and to perform light work, needs at least 2.5 litres every day of water, in fluid form or in his food, 80 grams of proteins, 50 grams of lipids, 400 grams of glucids, vitamins and mineral salts. It is not what man puts into
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his mouth that nourishes him, but what is assimilated by the small intestine. So that food that goes right through is unnecessary and even harmful.
My hon. friend from Gaspe (Mr. Cyr) thinks that I know nothing about this. I should say that I experienced a problem in my family when physicians wanted to cut off the leg of one of my children and I sent him to Texas. I wish to pay tribute here to physicians more modern than the ones we have here, and today this child is in very good health. Why? Because formal medicine has been forsaken and preventive medicine has taken over.
As I was saying, Madam Speaker, good quality foods are those that are easy to digest and assimilate, that is to say all ripe, raw and fresh fruits, all vegetables, raw as far as possible, nuts, nitrogenous fruits, good cheese, eggs from healthy hens. Such foods contain vitamins in sufficient quantities, essential mineral salts and even the pure and fresh water we need. Digestion, that is the preparation of food for assimilation, will be made easier at meal time by the absence of all psychic or somatic stress, by good mastication and by respect for food combinations like those described by Dr. Shelton in his book on Food Combinations. Anger, anxiety and great happiness inhibit the secretion of gastric juices and digestion will be incomplete. Drinking while eating, even water, dilutes gastric juices and again, digestion will be incomplete.
Coffee, tea, chocolate, vinegar, alcohol "in any form", medicine, drugs, and garlic bring about narcosis of the intestinal cells which can no longer perform their function of selective permeability (or sorting of nutriments) and let surplus nutriments and even waste products get into the blood stream.
Nicotine, marihuana and all other drugs inhibit in some way the control centres of the rachidian bulb and the hypothalamus-


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: Order please. I have been listening to the hon. member for some time and I wonder if he relates what he has just said to the motion before us today, that is to say:
That this House regrets the Government's failure to give adequate priority to matters which directly affect the health of Canadians, and in particular for its relative downgrading of the health research budget, and its failure to assume proper responsibility in the area of food and drug safety.
Then, the hon. member might stick to the motion.


Gilbert F. Rondeau: Madam Speaker, I think I am speaking directly to the motion, since it deals with food and drugs. In my opinion, food and drugs are closely related to nutrition and health in general.
The cells of the human body live in interstitial tissues, from which they draw the nutriments and oxygen they need and into which they excrete 0O2 and other wastes.
Therefore, healthy interstitial tissues are needed to maintain the cells in good condition and only a good blood and lymph circulation can provide interstitial tissues with enough nutriments and oxygen and clear them of any waste. A good circulation requires regular physical activity or daily rational exercises.

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He who obeys these very simple laws will avoid diseases, the experts say, provided his genetic equipment is good. He is what we call a "hygienist". Medical doctors today should insist on hygiene and prevention to upgrade our medical activity.
Sanitarianism is a philosophy, a science and a way of life. It was developped by medical doctors of outstanding skill such as Drs. John Tilden, H. Lindlahr, Trail, Alcott, Dunsmore, Page, Oswald, Kuhne, Jennings, Paul Carton. The work done by these doctors has been tremendous and Dr. Herbert Shelton of San Antonio, Texas has summed it up in a masterly manner.
If today's doctors would accept to learn something of this health philosophy and to dialogue with the increasing number of hygienics specialists, in a very short while, hospitals would be admitting only victims of accidents, pharmacists would become dealers in fruits and vegetables and the hospitals thus liberated would become nursing homes where patients would regain their health without any traumatic operation or drug intoxication.
People should not say that this is utopic, Madam Speaker. Such nursing homes exist throughout the world. There are some in Germany, some in Scotland, some in Paris which are run by Dr. Mossery, some in Florida and some in Texas which are run by Dr. Shelton, and there will soon be such a nursing home near Montreal.
Those who run such facilities have made an in-depth study of human psychology, and they attended the same medical schools as our physicians, our biologists and biochemists, but their scientific connections are different and their applications of scientific knowledge are also different. Thus, they have now come to understand the characteristics, properties and potentialities of human beings. They have now come to understand that toxaemia, which is the poisoning of the body by our own metabolic toxins, causes 99 per cent of all our diseases. They have understood that proper behavior, that is compliance with the laws of human physiology, can enable man to avoid toxaemia. They have also come to understand through their studies and findings that man is essentially capable of regaining his lost health.
This defence mechanisms are numerous and effective. They are well known but underestimated by established medicine, in the same way as the latter's own means of treatment. Under absolute physiological rest, man can achieve autolytic destruction of all infection strongholds causing acute and chronic illnesses. Blood circulating in our 100,000 kilometres of capillary vessels reaches through the most remote parts in our organs and tissues. Surrounding cells disintegrate unhealthy tissues and structure new tissues, thanks to the thousands of enzymes that are manufactured locally when needed. Thus, our cells synthe-tize, inhibit and neutralize viruses, and our white corpuscles destroy pathogenous bacteria and their toxic products. But this requires total rest in an adequate place, under the supervision of a medical and diet counsellor. That counsellor may be a physician or a physiologist from the new hygiene school.
In this way, people condemned by established medicine recovered. Patients earmarked for amputation of one or both legs came back healthy on both their legs. For this reason, established medicine, wishing to be honest and

improve the lives of men, should co-operate with these specialists of true health, which would cause people to live healthier and longer. At any rate, the time has come to bring medicine back to its true role. Abortion on demand, hysterectomies and vasectomies, prescribing tons or carloads or shiploads of the pill, this among others debases the medical profession, because it is killing life instead of promoting it. As I see it, the physician is a man of life rather than death. He is a man of prevention rather than of automatic dispensation of drugs.


Mr. Bruce Halliday (Oxford):: Madam Speaker, before launching into the words I wish to say this afternoon I should like to compliment my colleague, the hon. member for Athabasca (Mr. Yewchuk), for bringing this motion before the House. I think the motion is so well worded that it bears restating. It reads as follows:
That this House regrets the government's failure to give adequate priority to matters which directly affect the health of Canadians, and in particular for its relative downgrading of the health research budget, and its failure to assume proper responsibility in the area of food and drug safety.
The hon. member who introduced this motion discussed it in great detail. I was really worried about the minister as I sat here and noted his concern about the points being made by the hon. member for Athabasca. I saw in him certain signs which worried me; I was apprehensive about the signs of reactive depression I saw in him. Then when he arrived late for the sitting this afternoon I became even more disturbed. But all of us must have some build-up or be paid a compliment once in awhile and I wish to compliment the minister in all sincerity. Three days ago I had the pleasure of listening to him in Montreal when he very admirably represented our country before representatives of 87 other countries of the world. He was a member of a panel discussing the subject entitled "International Understanding-What can one man do". I say quite sincerely that he acquitted himself in very fine fashion.
For the information of the House, I might say that some 20 years ago the minister was a Rotary International Fellow and indeed a fine ambassador for Canada. I think he was talking in this broad field three days ago in Montreal when he discussed international understanding. I believe we have in him a budding new secretary of state for external affairs of this country.
There are three parts to this motion. The last part deals with some specifics in respect of the food and drug safety problem. I wish to allude to four of these which have entered our discussion. They are listed in a small book entitled "Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties". The first drug referred to is called Afagon "C", known as a type of tonic to build up people. Among the ingredients are amino acids, arsenic, strychnine and ascorbic acid. The precautions to be taken are the following:
Keep out of the reach of children. Contains strychnine. Do not exceed recommended dosage. Indiscriminate use may be dangerous, especially in the case of elderly persons.
The second drug is one of a similar type, called Hemosomaton. In this case, also, precautions are indicated. It contains iron, arsenic and glycerophosphates. The warning is as follows:
Contains strychnine. Do not exceed stated dosage. Indiscriminate use
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may be dangerous, especially in the case of elderly persons. Oral iron preparations may aggravate existing peptic ulcer, regional enteritis and ulcerative colitis.
One of the implications in respect of the safety of the drugs listed in this compendium which are available is that they are dangerous particularly in the hands of children. I hope the minister and the officials of his department will look into this matter in some detail.
Two other drugs bear mentioning at this time, because I think the people of Canada are being subjected to drug advertisements that not only delude them and encourage them to spend money but that encourage them to buy drugs which are potentially dangerous.
I refer first to a commonly used facial cream known as Noxzema facial cream. Some years ago one of the leading dermatologists in southwestern Ontario told me there is not one single company that makes more business for him than the Noxzema company. He was referring, of course, to the dangers of contact dermatitis which arises from the use of this particular compound.
The second drug is even more popular. It is known as Vicks. Perhaps you remember having had it used on you when you were children. The father of pediatrics in Canada, the man who built the first children's hospital in Toronto, and the second one also, used to teach us students who put Vicks on children's backs, that one might as well put a postage stamp on their backs. Yet we are allowing and encouraging citizens to spend millions of dollars a year on drugs of this type.
This is some of the information that the department should be studying. But there are more important areas than this, and I am referring to some areas that are of broad concern across the country, matters which cannot be handled by a province and cannot be handled by Canadian citizens as individuals. I speak here of three different areas that I want to discuss this afternoon briefly. The first one is in regard to medical manpower; the second one is in regard to the quality and provision of health care; and the third one is in regard to personal responsibility in the provision of health care.
For a number of years we have been hearing that the federal government is spending funds on trying to determine the status of medical manpower across the country. We are still awaiting a meaningful report on this, and we are worried about the rumours that are spreading that this report will be most inadequate. For instance, in deciding the present ratio of family physicians, as opposed to specialists, to the population, apparently the group studying this matter are going about it in a very simplistic manner. They are identifying the number of specialists across the country, which is very easy to do, and subtracting the number from the gross total number of physicians. They arrive at a figure which they say represents the number of general practitioners or family physicians in Canada. This is a meaningless figure and could not be further from the truth.
I took the opportunity in committee not too many weeks ago of bringing this matter to the attention of the Minister. I told him that, for example, in British Columbia there is an error of some 40 per cent in the figure which they
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present. At that time I did not have the figures with me and I was not able to give specifics, but since that time I have acquired them and I find that it is even worse than I intimated to the minister at that time.
If one looks at the federal manpower inventory for 1973 which was published in 1974, and if one considers the province of British Columbia, one finds that they list a total of 1,946 general practitioners, which gives you a ratio of one GP to 1,217 people in the province. From information obtained from British Columbia we learn that at the University of British Columbia the Health Manpower Research Unit under the direction of Dr. Anderson took a much more realistic view in approaching this whole problem.
It is obvious that physicians who are not specialists are not all GPs. Many of them are doing administrative medicine, many are interns, and you cannot count them as part of the medical work force of the country.
If you take a realistic approach and try to establish how many are practising, functioning GPs, you do this as they did in British Columbia, by referring to the provincial medical scheme figures. They chose the figure of $20,000 gross earnings as the figure they would use as being the average earnings of a person practising family medicine. They said that a person earning less than that was obviously not doing much general practice. They got the figure of 1,270, which represents the number of true general practitioners or family physicians in B.C. So the margin of error there is not 40 per cent but closer to 53 per cent.
I think we must ask ourselves whether or not the government is looking ahead. We heard the hon. member for Northumberland-Miramichi (Mr. Dionne) this morning give us a long list of the accomplishments of governments in the past. I assume he included past Conservative governments in his list. We must start to look ahead. We cannot be satisfied with the situation as it has been in the past. We must also look ahead in trying to predict the manpower situation for the provision of health care in the future.
We must decide first of all how we want health care provided in this country, whether totally by specialists, or basically by family physicians augmented by specialists where necessary. The government has failed to give any leadership on that in terms of trying to delineate what the people of Canada want. It appears to me, and to many people who are looking ahead, that what the country needs is health care provided by general practioners and, where necessary, we need specialists. We must try to determine how many of each brand of physicians we will try to train. Apparently the present government is not interested in doing this.
The manpower study being undertaken should look to the future, not backwards. I hope that when figures come out in the future we will see something with a prospective approach to it rather than a purely retrospective approach. As my colleague says, we should not adopt a purely urban oriented approach. That is a good point.
I want to talk now on the second matter, that is, the quality of health care. The hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands (Mr. Douglas) stressed the need for practising preventive medicine, prophylactic medicine. I

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think there is some truth in this, but we are spending in this country more money per person than most other countries in the world, and more money in relation to our gross national product, and yet the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands thinks we should be spending more money still. What we need to do is to take a look at the money we are spending now and try to decide whether it should not be spent more effectively. In other words, what we need to do is try to get quality out of our health care, and not provide more and more to people and encourage less responsibility on the part of the citizens of this country.
As the hon. member for Athabasca has said, we need to spend more money on research. Relatively speaking, we have been spending scads of dollars on epidemiological research, clinical research, and basic science research. But what we have been neglecting are two other areas of research, namely, educational research and operational research in the areas of health care delivery. I think those latter two areas are the ones on which we should be spending more funds.
I heard a very distressing comment recently on this matter of quality control of health care. It may be a rumour and perhaps the minister will confirm or deny it, that an American named Dr. Lawrence Weed, who is famous for developing a program of problem orientated medical records, is being offered a job by our government which will cost us to the tune of $5 million, to develop a quality care research program here in Canada. I have heard this both confirmed and denied. It alarms me to think that we have to go to the U.S.A. to find adequate medical personnel to assess the quality needs of the people of this country. I know many physicians and researchers in this country who would be more than delighted to have a small share of that $5 million to study the problems of quality care in medical research in Canada.
I think the Ontario Medical Association not many years ago on their own initiative launched a program to assess quality health care. They bogged down completely because of lack of funds. Now we have the rumour that the federal government is offering $5 million to an American to tell us what quality health care is. I think it is a shame.


Some hon. Members:: Shame!


Bruce Halliday: The third and final matter I wish to speak about is personal responsibility in health care. When the minister was in Montreal earlier this week, unfortunately he arrived one day too late. If he had been there one day earlier he would have had the privilege of listening to Sir Edwin Leather, K.C.M.G., Governor and Commander in Chief of Bermuda, a parliamentarian in Britain for 15 years, who gave one of the most excellent speeches I have ever heard.


Mr. Fairweather:: He was a Hamiltonian.


Bruce Halliday: He was a Hamiltonian, and he made one of the finest speeches I have ever heard. He pointed out the dangers we are getting into as a society, and that we are taking away all the responsibility from the individual. We are giving individuals all across the country this, that,
[Mr. Halliday.)
and the other, and the hon. member for Northumberland-Miramichi has the gall to say that this is a right of the people. Of course it is a right. That is a motherhood statement, but people have responsibilities, and I have not heard anyone here today suggest that there are responsibilities which the people of this country have to assume if they want to have the right to good quality health care.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Bruce Halliday: Granted, health care is an important factor, and the people have a right to it, but at the same time we have to provide car insurance and life insurance for people. It is obvious that we do this, but in so doing we take into account the experience of people who drive cars. In regard to life insurance we take into account an applicant's general health when he applies for life insurance, and I think the time is coming when we will recognize the fact that many of the diseases of today are due to the kind of life we are living. They are not due to lack of research in terms of physical research, but due to the way we are living in this day and age, and perhaps it is time to consider providing health insurance based somewhat on the experience and the pattern of living some people have in this country.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. F. A. Philbrook (Halton):: Madam Speaker, as a physician, pharmacist, and former medical research official of the pharmaceutical industry, I am again pleased for the second time this week to join in debate in the House of Commons on health and research, and particularly drug safety and our government's fine record in that field.
On Monday, June 6, I spoke about the merits of the Medical Research Council, and now I would like to refer to the proud record of an equally fine government agency, the health protection branch, and its head, Dr. A. B. Morrison. The HPB, as it is called, while knowledgeable and fair to all, puts the protection of the public first. As an industry representative who dealt with it closely here in Ottawa and who was on the receiving end of its efforts and decisions, I can vouch for that personally.
In the early 1960's when the first oral contraceptive preparations were first marketed in Canada, their effectiveness was recognized at once; however, the potential untoward effects in some women were not immediately apparent. In the ensuing years, with the increasing use of oral contraceptives, the possible hazards were appreciated. The widespread use of these potent compounds, coupled with the fact that they are used by a large number of healthy young women, caused concern, and in 1970 the then minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Munro) appointed a special committee composed of leading Canadian physicians to advise the health protection branch on all aspects of the safety and efficacy of oral contraceptives marketed in Canada. Working in close cooperation with the professional staff of the health protection branch this committee published their first findings and recommendations in December, 1970.
It was my privilege to be heavily involved in that dramatic period of our history as the chairman of the oral contraceptive committee of PMAC, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association of Canada, and a specialist
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myself in that field. There was dialogue but no special lobbying. The special committee was drawn from top Canadians in their field and chaired by Dr. Robert Kirch, the distinguished chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Montreal General Hospital. They worked hard, along with officials of the health protection branch, and came to the best conclusions which could be reached under the emotion-charged circumstances of that time. In fact I believe they fared well compared with their counterparts in other related countries.
It was considered that a reduction of estrogen dose to 50 micrograms per day would reduce the incidence of undesirable side effects without appreciable reduction in efficacy. This proved to be true. The health protection branch facilitated the availability of such oral contraceptives to the Canadian medical profession.
For the information of the consumer a special package insert was designed. This insert details the need for medical advice, following-up at least yearly, and a warning on symptoms requiring an immediate consultation with the prescribing physician.
The health protection branch also instituted the recommendations on extended animal toxicity studies prior to release of an oral contraceptive for clinical trials and continued surveillance of long-term toxicity studies. During 1970-74 the special committee in several sessions arrived at further recommendations. These included, first, methods for evaluation of efficacy and undesirable side effects; second, guidelines for patient selection; third, duration of use of oral contraceptives; fourth, assessment of risks of thromboembolism, carcinogenesis, depression, hypertension, abnormal pregnancy and post-coital contraception; fifth, indications for altering or discontinuing medication; and sixth, guidelines for information to the profession and for information to the public.
The members of the committee on oral contraceptives also acted as consultants to the health protection branch on problems which involved various hormonal drugs, intrauterine devices and ovulation inducing agents, and provided opinion on a number of other questions concerning medical practice and experience in Canada. This group of Canadian physicians proved to be of invaluable assistance to the health protection branch in service to the public and to the professions.
Next, with regard to the chemical hexachlorophene, in late 1971 the health protection branch obtained data from tests on rats and monkeys which had been fed hexachlorophene which showed that this chemical caused brain lesions in these animals. The branch also received the results of tests on humans showing that hexachlorophene could be absorbed through the skin. Hexachlorophene had been used for more that 20 years without any reported ill effects, apart from local irritation. It is a chemical which was widely used for its antibacterial properties in a wide variety of products. These included lotions, creams, soaps, aerosol sprays, toothpastes, mouthwashes and products for personal hygiene. Most products used for surgical scrub contain 3 per cent hexachlorophene. Other products formerly contained small amounts, generally less than 1 per cent.
The RX Bulletin, a publication of the branch, issued a release on hexachlorophene in the December, 1971, issued
Food and Drug Safety
providing to the health professions information available to date and suggested that hexachlorophene not be used for routine total body bathing for infants. However, if is was considered necessary to use hexachlorophene in the prophylaxis of certain skin infections in hospital nurseries, it should be thoroughly rinsed off.
Further investigations were carried out by officers of the health protection branch, and as a result, on March 1, 1972, the former minister of health and welfare, now the Minister of Labour (Mr. Munro), announced action which would be taken to control the use of hexachlorophene. The former minister stated that effective in May, 1972, products which contained more than 0.75 per cent of hexachlorophene would be available only on prescription. Manufacturers of drugs or cosmetic products containing amounts of hexachlorophene less than 0.75 per cent were requested to give serious consideration to reformulation of their products to remove hexachlorophene.
Part 1 of schedule F to the food and drug regulations was amended May 9, 1972, and published in the Canada Gazette, part 2, May 24, 1972, stating:
-drugs, cosmetics and devices containing hexachlorophene and its salts may be sold only on the prescription of practitioners unless the concentration of hexachlorophene is 0.75% or less weight to weight.
In the summer of 1972 reports were received from France that several babies had died, allegedly from the use of a talc powder which contained about 6 per cent hexachlorophene. This tended to confirm the toxicity of hexachlorophene applied in high concentrations to humans, especially infants.
In 1973 a soap carrying the brand name "Quote" was imported into Canada. Laboratories of the health protection branch analysed this product and determined that it contained about 2 per cent hexachlorophene. Several thousand cases of this soap were placed under seizure in the Winnipeg area, and the Canadian distributor was asked to recall this soap at the retail level immediately. While there was no hazard from the use of a few bars of this soap, nevertheless the branch ordered this product removed from the market to protect the public from a potential hazard to health from continued use.
As a result of the action taken by the health protection branch and with the co-operation of manufacturers, the exposure of the public to hexachlorophene from those products covered by the Food and Drugs Act and regulations was greatly reduced.
Next I should like to deal with the drug, phenacetin. Several years ago the department received information that persons who had taken large quantities of analgesic products over prolonged periods of time were found to be suffering from kidney damage. This matter was fully investigated with the assistance of external advisory groups. As a result of information received from across Canada, especially from renal units, along with information obtained from studies conducted in our own laboratories, it was felt that phenacetin in combination with salicylates was the major offender in this country.
Some two years ago regulations were introduced to prohibit the sale of products containing combinations of phenacetin and salicylates. Therefore products with a

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Food and Drug Safety
potential for production of serious disease were removed from the market without interfering with the sale of safer products for relief of minor aches and pains. Canada dealt with the problem in a unique way. The United States required a warning against prolonged use as part of the labelling. In Australia phenacetin was removed from the national health service listing. The United Kingdom does not have a warning in the labelling of analgesics.
My next point is the control of drug advertising in Canada. In considering the different aspects of the control of drugs, we are assured by the various steps which have been taken by the health protection branch in the area of regulating the advertising of drugs in this country. This is only too apparent when one compares the type of advertising that appears in publications and on broadcasts from the United States with those that have been produced in Canada. We have been well served by the statutory requirements and the manner in which they have been administered over the past years.
Any representation to promote the sale of drugs is controlled under the Food and Drugs Act, and special requirements are in force for the broadcasting of drug advertisements. Regulations under the Food and Drugs Act and Narcotic Control Act prohibit the advertising of narcotic drugs, controlled drugs, schedule F drugs, limited dose drugs, as well as therapeutic vitamins and minerals. No advertising can be carried out for the treatment of a schedule of very serious disorders such as cancer, heart diseases, diabetes, and tuberculosis.
All radio and television commercials for drugs are forwarded to the health protection branch by the Canadian Radio-Television Commission for examination and clearance. Such advertisements cannot be broadcast unless they have been approved by the Department of National Health and Welfare and bear a registration number. A complete pre-clearance system is therefore in effect. The effectiveness of this procedure is supported by the insignificant number of complaints, four in 1974-75, received regarding this type of advertising.
A monitoring system carries out a review of national newspapers and magazines on a continuing basis, and all violative situations are followed up immediately. Point of purchase advertising is understandably much more difficult to control, and monitoring is carried out at retail establishments such as pharmacies to detect unacceptable practices. Investigations by inspectors of the health protection branch are carried out in all cases that require attention.
It has been recognized that advertising can benefit the consumer when it is fairly and honestly done. For this reason there has been a conscious effort to assist health, industry and other associations to develop and implement voluntary advertising codes for the promotion of drugs in an honest and truthful manner. It is also worthy of note to recognize the progress being made by organized medicine, pharmacies and industry in developing a system for the pre-clearance of drug advertising in professional publications. In comparing voluntary advertising codes with the published guidelines of the health protection branch it is immediately apparent that the branch has considered the requirements of the legislation very carefully in spelling out the interpretations in such infinite detail. These guide-

lines are included in the guide for drug advertisers published in 1973 to reflect the current policy in dealing with drug advertising claims.
In considering the potential for deception, and even danger to the purchaser through dishonest and misleading advertising practices, it is reassuring to note the degree of protection provided to consumers regarding the advertising of drug products in Canada.
And finally there is the drug quality assessment program. During the 1960's the quality and high price of drugs were the topics of much discussion. A special committee on drug costs and prices under the chairmanship of Dr. Harry C. Harley, my esteemed Liberal and medical predecessor in Halton riding, was established to investigate the reasons for such high costs and to provide recommendations for remedying the situation. As a result of the recommendation to amend Bill C-102 to permit the issuing of compulsory licences for drug patents, health professionals expressed a concern about the possible proliferation of drug products of questionable quality.
In May, 1971, the then Minister of National Health and Welfare, implemented the Drug Quality Assessment Program. This program is designed to provide unbiased scientific and technical information regarding the quality of drugs. The most commonly prescribed drugs are subjected to such tests as chemical analyses, product evaluations, and in some instances bioavailability studies to indicate the conformance with recognized acceptable standards.
The QUAD program provides detailed information on a regular basis to all provincial departments of health. Much of this information is utilized in the development and maintenance of provincial drug lists. This information has provided assistance to health professionals in provinces where legislation to permit product selection has been enacted.
The results of testing, plus detailed price comparison information which is compiled by the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, are published and distributed to physicians and pharmacists across the country. This information enables them to utilize their professional judgment to prescribe and dispense drugs of quality with due consideration of costs. Since the implementation of the Drug Quality Assessment Program and the publication of this information there has been a steady improvement in the quality of drug products available to Canadians, and there has been a reduced rate in the escalation of drug prices.
In the over-all picture Canada has an internationally esteemed reputation with regard to drug safety and health, and credit for this is in no small measure due to the federal government.


James Aloysius McGrath: First of all, Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for Athabasca (Mr. Yewchuk) not only on the speech he made today but on the service he provided to the House by bringing forward this resolution.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
June 13, 1975


James Aloysius McGrath: Of course the hon. member for Athabasca is not only well known as a parliamentarian but is also prominent in his professional capacity as a physician.
I listened with interest to the speech of the hon. member for Grey-Simcoe (Mr. Mitges), who has had a distinguished career as a veterinarian and was an inspector with the health of animals division of the Department of Agriculture prior to his election to this House. His remarks were based on his professional experience.
There is great concern over the recent revelations by the Quebec Crime Commission, on tainted beef and revelations by the Consumers' Association of Canada on the tests they made of four major fast-food retail outlets regarding high bacteria counts in milk shakes.
There was also the concern raised last fall when the CBC program "Marketplace", using tests conducted by the University of Guelph, indicated that there were unacceptable amounts of harmful bacteria in ground beef in Canada. When that matter was raised in the House the immediate reaction of the minister was to discount it as just another television program. However, pressure mounted, and concern was felt right across the country. Because of the high price of beef and meat products in Canada, people were depending more and more on ground beef as a major source of protein.
That concern manifested itself in the House until the minister was obliged, five days after the revelation, to stand in his place and make a statement. He assured the House and the country that steps were being taken by his department to protect Canadians from harmful bacteria in ground beef. His response was a positive one and he was lauded for it. It was positive in that he made the statement in the House, which had the effect of assuring Canadians that they had no cause for concern. It was also positive because he announced that the inspection division of the food and drug branch of his department would hire an additional 30 inspectors. That gives the department a total inspection capability of 91 inspectors to enforce the massive regulations issued under the Food and Drugs Act. Prior to that, there were only 61. I submit that 91 inspectors would hardly be adequate to enforce the regulations in the province of Quebec alone, not to mention the rest of Canada. These 91 inspectors have to check into food retail outlets, check on the charges of high bacteria counts in milkshakes and, of course, carry out their responsibilities with regard to meat being sold that is unfit for human consumption.
The Food and Drugs Act is quite clear. Section 4 reads:
No person shall sell an article of food that
(a)	has in or upon it any poisonous or harmful substance;
(b)	is unfit for human consumption;
(c)	consists in whole or in part of any filthy, putrid, disgusting,
rotten, decomposed or diseased animal or vegetable substance;
(d)	is adulterated; or
(e)	was manufactured, prepared, preserved, packaged or stored
under unsanitary conditions.
That is quite clear. The minister is the only one who has the clear, undisputed, constitutional authority to enforce these regulations regardless of any provincial statute or
Food and Drug Safety
any other consideration. To be precise, regulation B.14.010 reads:
No person shall sell as food a dead animal or any part thereof.
B.14.Oil. No person shall sell as food, meat, meat by-products, preparations containing meat or meat derivatives obtained, prepared or manufactured from a dead animal.
That is taken directly from the Food and Drugs Act. It is quite specific. Just to clear up any doubt whatsoever regarding the authority the minister has to inspect any facility in Canada or take samples, Section 22(1) of the Food and Drugs Act reads:
An inspector may at any reasonable time
(a) enter any place where on reasonable grounds he believes any article to which this Act or the regulations apply is manufactured, prepared, preserved, packaged or stored, examine any such article and take samples thereof, and examine anything that he reasonably believes is used or capable of being used for such manufacture, preparation, preservation, packaging or storing;
That is quite clear. There is no doubt about the minister's responsibility or the statutory authority that is his. Where there is doubt is in the fact that the minister failed to carry out these regulations. More particularly, he failed the people of the province of Quebec. According to evidence given in committee on May 27, the minister said, and I quote:
The inquiry by my officials was started some time in 1973, late 1973. He later said:
-the preliminary investigation by my department started in October 1973, and it was turned over to the police in February for further investigation.
The question arises, why did it take from October, 1973 to February, 1974, to notify the police that there was evidence of meat unfit for human consumption being sold in Quebec? Why did it take that long?


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Because they were tied up in the dredging.


James Aloysius McGrath: This evidence was presented to the minister. The province of Quebec stands out as the only province which does not have adequate legislation to protect its people from carrion or contaminated meat sold for human consumption.
There are in excess of 300 abattoirs or slaughter houses in Quebec which are not subject to federal inspection or, indeed, not subject to any inspection. Given those facts, why did not the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde), in accordance with his responsibilities under the Food and Drugs Act, send his inspectors into the province of Quebec to take samples from these uninspected abattoirs and meat processing plants in order to carry out their own investigation? Why did he not do that regardless of any police or criminal investigation, or provincial inquiry that was taking place in the province of Quebec?
Given the police inquiry taking place in Quebec and faced with the revelations from that inquiry, surely it was incumbent upon the minister to send additional inspectors into Quebec to take additional samples and to proceed in his own right under the Food and Drugs Act and, either through the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada (Mr. Lang) or the attorney general of Quebec, lay

June 13, 1975
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charges under the Food and Drugs Act. The minister failed to do that.
In spite of evidence that was mounting every day, and concern that was expressed by the media and on the floor of this House, the minister did not respond. More particularly, there is now evidence of consumer resistence and mounting evidence that Canadians are concerned about buying meat, especially in this part of the country. Why did the minister not respond like he did when faced with contaminated hamburger last fall, and stand up in this House and make a statement reassuring the people of Canada that he was carrying out his responsibility?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


James Aloysius McGrath: I suspect the real reason has something to do with the political situation in Quebec. It is quite possible the minister finds himself in a conflict of interest position in his capacity as Minister of National Health and Welfare and in his capacity as the chief Liberal lieutenant in the province of Quebec.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


James Aloysius McGrath: I suspect that is the real reason. It can be the only reason why the minister has not responded in this House to the charges that have been levelled against him in this House, in the media, and in the province of Quebec. As I have already indicated, the minister stood in his place in this House last fall when faced with the seriousness of the contaminated ground meat situation and made a statement. He responded positively. He appointed 30 additional inspectors.


An hon. Member:: State the facts.


James Aloysius McGrath: If you want facts, I will give you facts. Here is a resolution of the Consumers' Association of Canada of 1973. I quote:
Be It Resolved that CAC re-affirm its policy of endorsement of meat inspection by requesting the federal Department of Agriculture to give highest priority to establishing federal-provincial co-operative programs to ensure that all meat sold for human consumption in Canada is inspected to meet the same product standards as set out in the Canada Meat Inspection Act and Regulations.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner):: The minister rises on a point of order.


Marc Lalonde: I suggest to the hon. member that if he intends to make statements like this, and if he is really in a sober frame of mind, he should make charges. I would be very pleased to see him before the Committee on Privileges and Elections. But I submit that for him to make statements such as he has made recently is completely against the rules.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


James Aloysius McGrath: I have no hesitation in making this charge right here in this House from my seat, and it is that the minister is guilty of gross negligence and dereliction of duty as Minister of National Health and Welfare.


Marc Lalonde: Do I understand that the hon. member is withdrawing what he said before?


Donald W. Munro: I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that the words of the minister be stricken from the record because he is not speaking from his own seat.


An hon. Member:: Is that your best shot?


Donald W. Munro: That is the rule.


James Aloysius McGrath: I have been talking about a resolution of the Consumers' Association of Canada expressing its concern back in 1973. The same organization, meeting in Ottawa last week, passed an emergency resolution in these terms:
Therefore Be It Resolved that CAC re-affirms its policy that all meat destined for human consumption be federally inspected, and
Be It Further Resolved that mechanism be set in place by federal and provincial Departments of Agriculture to ensure that all dealers in dead and diseased animals are required to account for the total poundage of carcasses they handle-
This was the measure of concern shown by the same organization at an emergency meeting last week. The Food Prices Review Board, in its report on the retail food stores survey, which was presented to the House in November, 1973, made this recommendation-the minister is probably hearing it for the first time; I doubt whether he has read this document notwithstanding the grave responsibility he has for the health of all Canadians under the Food and Drugs Act. This is the recommendation:
Clarification and Stricter Enforcement of Existing Food Standards
and Grading Regulations.
To avoid conflict of interpretation the relationships between the Canada Agriculture Products Standards Act and the Food and Drug Act and regulations in the areas of meat, dairy products and poultry should be clarified.
That was a recommendation made back in 1973 by the Food Prices Review Board. The need for clarification is even greater now when one considers the lame excuses made by the minister in the House day after day.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, I thought there was an agreement that speeches were to be limited to 15 minutes. The hon. member has been going on now for more than 15 minutes.


An hon. Member:: Don't tell the Speaker what to do!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner):: The hon. member for St. John's East.


James Aloysius McGrath: The minister will have an opportunity today to make an explanation. He did not seize the opportunity to make a statement in the House, but by agreement he will have an opportunity to speak for 30 minutes this afternoon. I challenge him to use that time to make a statement assuring the people of Canada, and especially the people of his own province of Quebec who are suffering the consequences of inadequate provincial legislation, that he is carrying out his responsibilities.
I challenge him to show that as Minister of National Health and Welfare he is enforcing the regulations under
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the Food and Drugs Act, that regardless of the political consequences he is stepping up the inspection capability in Quebec, that he is sending inspectors to those uninspected abattoirs in Quebec, that he is instructing them to take samples, and that based on the evidence coming out from the crime commission in Quebec he will discharge his responsibilities and immediately proceed to lay criminal charges against those who have deceived the people of Canada by selling them contaminated meat. If he fails to seize his opportunity today he stands convicted by his own actions or, rather, by his own inaction.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I should like to deal with a problem that is of great concern to me. It is with great pleasure that I do so, because for a long time my constituency has provided the health department in our far north with missionaries, people who were dedicated and rendered great services to this country.
Canada can rightly be proud of its health care scheme. Most people enjoy primary, secondary and tertiary health services that are easily available to the average Canadian. But what about those who live and work in the remotest areas of this country? How do Indians and Eskimos and, of course, people in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon avail themselves of the health protection so easily available to their more fortunate brothers in the South. I say that today the really unobtrusive department is the health department for Indians and Northern Canada in the Medical Services Branch of the Department of National Health and Welfare. The dedicated nurses and health specialists in that department are actually at the forefront in the fight to improve native health. The responsibilities reach far beyond those of their southern colleagues, and yet few Canadians are even aware of their existence.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to acquaint my colleagues and other Canadians with the health department for Indians and Northern Canada. I will discuss some of the daily difficulties faced by those dedicated health specialists who work in extremely difficult conditions and often in isolation hundreds or thousands of miles from the nearest hospital.
The responsibilities for the health of Indians was transferred to the Department of National Health and Welfare when it was set up after World War II. Northern health services were officially inaugurated in 1954 when exploration and development in the Arctic brought deep changes in the lifestyle of Indians and Eskimos north of the 60th parallel.

What was once a modest health service augmented by hospitals and health stations run by missionaries has grown into a network of 14 hospitals, 71 nursing stations, and 223 health centres, professionally staffed by more than 900 nurses and over 125 physicians and specialists. Nursing stations provide the primary point of entry into the health care system. Field nurses, many of whom are specially trained in clinical procedures, provide routine and emergency treatment and health counselling, and refer serious cases to higher levels of care. Public health
Food and Drug Safety
and health education programs are also an important part of the field nurses' responsibility.
Health centres and stations are generally situated in locations where treatment services are available. Nurses operating from these facilities hold clinics, conduct immunization programs, supervise the health of mothers and infants, and encourage people to live safely and hygienically.
Medical services hospitals provide secondary and tertiary health care, and in many cases are the points of reception for patients referred by field nurses from nursing stations and health centres. Not all native or territorial patients, however, are referred to medical services hospitals. Depending on the nature of the sickness and the proximity of the closest federal facility, patients may be referred to provincial or territorial hospitals which are closer or better able to provide the specialized care needed by the patient.
It takes little imagination to realize the immense difficulties which are encountered almost daily by the staff of the Indian and northern health services. I have already alluded to the harsh environment and the immense distances encountered. These, of course, create problems in transportation and communication which only technology can overcome. The federal government's Arctic airport program has solved the worst of the transportation problem in the far north, but weather, temperature extremes, and long hours of darkness greatly increase the hazards of northern transportation. ANIK and TELESAT have improved northern communications immeasurably and have reduced the feeling of isolation. But this is cold comfort to the nurse a thousand miles from the nearest hospital, with a seriously sick infant to care for.
Isolation and the environment are not the only causes of the problems. Many of these problems are the result of cultural and social differences or of ignorance or indifference. In the past, we tried to provide appropriate help and treatment facilities for the natives who had been left to their own devices for many years. Today, these needs have been filled. The enemy, sickness, remains the same, but the means to fight it have changed. The fight will be won in the areas of prevention, of health education and chronic diseases, but victory will remain uncertain as long as our native fellow citizens live in houses without running water fit to drink, a proper sewage system and other services that most of us take for granted.
Since hygiene is an integral part of our daily life, Mr. Speaker, we have a tendency to forget that many native people do not have the same advantages as we do. It can take several years to educate people and to convince them to change lifelong habits, but cultural and language barriers make this even more difficult.
The policy of this government is to encourage Indians and Inuits to be actively concerned with their own health. Recently, we established regional committees, including federal and provincial officials and Indians, to review and coordinate health programs for them. Throughout the years, the health services for the Indians and Northern Canada have aimed at encouraging the natives to become

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health specialists, and even though this program has had some success, a relatively small number of graduates have chosen to become members of the medical services health teams.
As concerns paramedical and ancillary health services, much more satisfactory results have been achieved, and I would like to take a few moments to give an account of the ancillary community health program which has the well-deserved reputation of being a model for the natives who take part in health care distribution.

Indian and northern health services have recruited and trained over 300 community health representatives who are working at the community level as active participants in the local health team. These valuable workers, native in origin, are known and respected by their own people. They bring irreplaceable local knowledge to the problems of health care delivery and can make the cultural and linguistic interpretation of the health message to the people. By bridging the cultural and social gap that persists between the client and the health professional, community health representatives are making a profound impact on the severe cultural and communications problems that have inhibited the success of preventive health programs in the past.
Not all Indian and Eskimo health problems are attributable to environmental conditions. Last year one third of all native deaths resulted from accidental causes; and it is believed that almost two thirds of all accidental deaths are alcohol related. Easier access to alcohol, the lowering of the drinking age, and more tolerant attitudes toward alcohol consumption have combined to make alcohol abuse the greatest single threat to the lives, health, and wellbeing of Canada's native people. To meet and combat this serious problem, the federal government has introduced the native alcohol abuse program.
Because the cultural and linguistic problems encountered in health care delivery apply equally to programs designed to reduce intoxication, the native alcohol abuse initiative has been designed as a self-help program. It is a co-operative program between the Departments of National Health and Welfare, Indian and Northern Affairs, and the native people. Provincial and territorial governments have also been invited to participate and to co-ordinate their programs for Metis and non-status Indian groups.
Projects in the areas of treatment, prevention, rehabilitation, and education are being initiated and developed by the native people, with the advice and assistance of federal and provincial authorities and agencies knowledgeable in the field of alcohol abuse. The program encourages the development of new and original methods and techniques to meet the problem and overcome the social and cultural barriers that are its root cause. We hope over the next three years to explore fully and evaluate alternative ways of reducing this serious threat to native society and, during this period, to develop fresh and innovative solutions to the problem.

I have been referring to some of the health care problems of our native people. I would now like to review some achievements.

Over the last decade, infant mortality decreased by half, but is still two and a half times higher than the overall rate, which is 16.5 deaths per 1,000 live births. In these last years, the death rate has tended to stabilize, and it is a serious concern of the federal government. To meet that situation, we have enlarged our pre- and post-natal health programs, made up lists of the most severe hazards, dispensed more intensive care and exercised closer inspection over expectant mothers and newborns.
A greater number of native babies are now being born in hospitals. There are more midwives and nurses looking after the mother's health, before and after delivery, and the babies' health is more closely supervised during the vulnerable first year of life. We believe that this, coupled with better child care concepts by mothers and improvements in family environment, will lead to highly satisfactory results. The infant death rate is declining from year to year in Canada. Increasing knowledge, better education and co-operation from the Indians and Innuits themselves will hopefully bring similar results as far as our native population is concerned.
Infant mortality and accidental deaths are the main causes of declining life expectancy among Indians and Inuit people. The average age at death reached the Canadian average, but as a whole the situation is still unfavourable.
Throughout the years, major death causes changed. In 1960 respiratory diseases were the major culprit. They have been replaced by accidental deaths.

Tuberculosis has responded dramatically to new drugs and to new techniques for detection and prevention, but the incidence of tuberculosis among the Indian and Eskimo people is still inordinately high. T.B. is essentially a social disease. It breeds on over-crowding, poor diet, apathy and ignorance. Chronic disease control, detection and prophylaxis constitute a major thrust in the Indian and northern health services program. New and reactivated cases of tuberculosis are closely supervised, and chemotherapy regimens are carefully controlled. Dramatic progress has been made in this area, Madam Speaker, but we have not yet reached the point where we can relax our vigilance.
What of the future? Can we expect dramatic improvements in Indian and Eskimo health, or will progress be more gradual? These are difficult questions to answer, and we would be foolish to expect any dramatic change. Education, social assistance, and health care programs are bringing about profound changes in the lives of our native people who have moved in recent years from being a hunting and gathering society to a society not too different from the Canadian mainstream.
The native people are becoming increasingly aware of the erosion that is taking place in their culture and traditional way of life. But no culture, Madam Speaker, remains static. Culture is a dynamic thing that is being constantly modified as new ideas and tools are developed. The impact of Canadian culture on the native people is unavoidable. The native people can only choose to reject those aspects of Canadian culture that are out of keeping with their way of life or, alternatively, accommodate new
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ideas and the tools of modern living to their unique society and culture.

The federal government is well aware of the difficulties experienced today by the native people of Canada. We are well aware of the social, health, welfare and living habits problems which increasingly concern our fellow-citizens the Indians and the Eskimos. The federal government is encouraging the native peoples to look after their health and well-being, stressing the importance of participating actively in the servicing and building of the facilities required to ensure that well-being. The health services of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development are doing more and more in that regard. I feel that those services give all the help and encouragement the Indians and Eskimos need to attain a state of health comparable to that of the majority of Canadians.


Mr. J. R. Holmes (Lambton-Kent):: Mr. Speaker, may I at the outset compliment the hon. member for Athabasca (Mr. Yewchuk) on introducing this important motion today. I have followed the entire proceedings with great interest today, including the question period this morning, and I think it might be useful if I took a moment or two to review some of the observations that have been made.
As a result of these comments, and as a result of the minister's actions and responses within his past two or three years in this portfolio, I think this is an indication of how little interest he has had in this particular area of health, and how little positive direction we have received from that particular department.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Robert Holmes: Let me briefly review some of the comments made today. I noted during the question period this morning that the hon. member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Rodriguez) raised a very interesting and serious question about carcinogenic problems resulting from various substances at Elliot Lake. Certainly that would be interpreted as essentially an environmental problem.
The hon. member for Athabasca led off for our party today, making a very excellent speech covering principally the area of medical research and the Medical Research Council. Let me say in respect of the hon. member for Northumberland-Miramichi (Mr. Dionne), who also spoke this afternoon, that he made some rather unkind remarks about the hon. member for Athabasca and his reference to medical research. I think he missed the entire point and importance of medical research itself. That hon. member placed a series of statistics on the record and, quite frankly, I get a little concerned with this area of statistics, figures, and the numbers' game.
I think we must come back to the very fundamental principle that in the final analysis health care in Canada is only as good as health education, and as good as the very fundamental basis of medical research itself. Let me assure you that if you are weak in one area this will eventually be reflected in the quality of medical care, and I think that is what we are talking about. If I may say so, I
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think Canada has that unique opportunity in that this is one area where technology can be advanced to the point that we could indeed gain an international reputation in respect of medical technology and research. Certainly we have seen this in the past.
I noted a few minutes ago that the Minister of State for Science and Technology (Mr. Drury) was present. There have been some who have been very concerned about an announcement made a year or two ago with respect to a new format or a new set of guidelines which the council may take on, and I want to emphasize as strongly as I can that this is an area of medical research. Certainly at the time these comments were made there was some indication that federal science policy for Canada, including medical science research, would be established principally and directly along the lines of national priorities. I want to make it very clear in unequivocable terms that medical research cannot follow that line and, indeed, we need inquisitive research in Canada. This can be supported by many precedents of the past.
I was rather interested in the remarks of the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands (Mr. Douglas) who made great reference to physical fitness. Of course we should refer to this as a lifestyle problem. I was also interested in the hon. member's comments regarding the sharing of programs between federal and provincial governments. I think perhaps this is a little outdated. I would hope that particular member would review some of the comments made in the past that outlined what we would consider to be some of the federal responsibilities and, indeed, provincial responsibilities, in the entire area of health delivery. Again the hon. member referred to preventive medicine, and this also would follow along the lifestyle aspect.
The hon. member for Northumberland-Miramichi in his references or comments regarding medical research gave a rather interesting number of statistics, many of them involving infant mortality. What he did not talk about, but which is of extreme importance if one analyzes the statistics and wants to get into this numbers' game, is the question of life expectancy.
Let me suggest to hon. members that they should look carefully at what has happened in respect of the life expectancy of the adult population in Canada within the last 30 years. I am sure they will be surprised to find that in fact it has not substantially changed. It is more important to look very carefully at the causes.
The hon. member for Grey-Simcoe (Mr. Mitges) made an excellent speech, if I may say so, outlining some of the problems in respect of tainted meat and the production of chemicals in the food processing industry. This is very clearly an environmental health problem.
I rather enjoyed some of the comments of the hon. member for Lafontaine-Rosemount (Mr. Lachance) who emphasized many aspects relating to preventive health care. He also spent some time talking about traditional health organizational services and the improvements made to the acceptability of health care and so forth. He is to be commended for these observations.
The hon. member for Shefford (Mr. Rondeau) made some interesting observations. He referred to specific

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Food and Drug Safety
problems relating to the aging population, and again he used the term "preventive medicine". I think I should take a moment to comment on the use of this sort of term. I get a little bit concerned about the use of these terms because I think there is some uncertainty about the classification of medicine. We hear of health care, dental care, mental health, clinical diagnosis, and rehabilitation. I am sure all hon. members could go on and give various definitions of these terms as they are applied to specific aspects of health problems as such. I think this is important because it represents some of the fragmentation and diversity of the problems we see in the entire area of health care.
I want to compliment the hon. member for Oxford (Mr. Halliday) who talked about the quality of health. In my view he made a very excellent point when he was trying to destroy the myth that in fact good medicine can be equated with good health. As he so aptly demonstrated, this is not necessarily true. He pointed out that indeed individuals as such have a great responsibility in looking after their own health.
The hon. member for Halton (Mr. Philbrook) referred primarily to environmental aspects of health. He talked in some detail about the health protection branch and the QUAD program. I will not get into a debate with the minister at this time about the QUAD program, even though we have had some difference of opinion about the terms of its implementation while agreeing on the principle of some of the findings.
The hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath), of course, made a very excellent presentation, but again referred to the environmental health type of problem. I was also interested in the comments by the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier), although I think I should point out in this case that most of his remarks were related to health problems which are the direct responsibility of the federal government. When we listen to the minister from time to time it becomes apparent that when he is in a corner and does not have the answer, the matter is always one of provincial responsibility, or is the subject of provincial-federal negotiations. I thought it rather interesting that the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier would pick on an area which is clearly a federal responsibility.
This whole subject is rather important, because if we look at the diversity of subjects which have come before us today we will see that in many instances the health system is a system of fragmentation, a very complex system, very difficult of interpretation and rationalization. If one follows along from this line of reasoning one will see that we must identify problem areas, we must realize there are certain important goals to set, and we must outline certain long-term objectives in order to define specific types of programs.
About a year ago, I forget the exact date but perhaps it was in April, 1974, the minister introduced a new working document entitled "Prospective Health Status of Canadians". I compliment him for that document, but I must say in all honesty that from that time on nothing happened. It was simply a smokescreen to have the health program shelved in Canada at the present time.

I must also say I am rather interested in the health field concept. I shall enlarge on that for members of the House. Every once in a while we have occasion to compliment someone in the department. I apologize again for not recalling the date, but I remember an excellent article which appeared in the Canadian Medical Journal approximately three years ago. I recall that it was a Mr. Lafram-boise who outlined the health field concept, a concept which does not solve all the health problems but contains a formula which at least places in perspective the great diversity of complex problems.
The major problem is in respect of health care which involves the familiar doctor-patient type of relationship. It also involves the problem of ambulance services, nursing care, and hospital care. It is that aspect of the total medical care service or medical program that really utilizes about 95 per cent of the tax dollar. I have no intention of going into the many sub areas in this regard which could be discussed. Some were referred to briefly. The hon. member to my left spoke about the health care costs.
We could talk about such matters as manpower requirements, computer technology, and the regionalization of health care services. In the whole area of health care this is the traditional part which occupies the greatest amount of our time and thinking. The second aspect has been referred to by various speakers.
The hon. member for Grey-Simcoe (Mr. Mitges) and several others referred to the environmental health component. I think this is extremely important. When one speaks about the environmental health problem one speaks about a problem which can have adverse affects on the health of the individual over which that individual has no control. This is a field in which the government may well have or does have a responsibility to intervene on the part of the individual or individuals concerned. There are several of these areas which are very clear.
We know about the conventional problems of air pollution, garbage, sewage disposal and so on. There is also the problem of noise control, and the hon. member to my left this afternoon mentioned the problem in respect of asbestos control. I am sure many individuals could give us a lengthy list of problems of an environmental nature where in fact there should be some intervention and control on the part of the government.
The third category of course is human biology. This includes the classic example in terms of medical research. There is the matter of the clinical approach to improve the medical state of the patient. In the fourth category is the life style health referred to by the hon. member for Oxford. He indicated that individuals have a responsibility for health and that we must eliminate the myth that exists among many individuals that good medicine can be equated to good health. I think this formula is excellent because it prevents anyone using the entire area of medicine in order to opt out of any particular problem.
I do not wish to become involved in a number of statistics, but I think we should review for a moment some of the leading causes of death because I think this is important in terms of the health care formula to which I have referred. It is very interesting to look at these in terms of
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lives lost. If we were to accept the fact that each individual in Canada should live to age 70, then if someone should die at age 31 he or she would have lost 31 potential years of life.
I think one would find that leading the list, perhaps not unexpectedly, are motor vehicle accidents. I have no intention of breaking down the statistics, but others involve other accidents, suicide, cancer of the breast, uterus and ovaries, cardiovascular diseases, GI cancer, leukemia and cirrhosis. Having said this and knowing the interest the minister has had, as well as knowing that the minister presented a health prospectus, and knowing his particular interest in this formula I think it is important-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner):: Order please. I regret to interrupt the hon. member in the midst of his statement but I must advise him that the time allotted him has now expired.


Some hon. Members:: Continue.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner):: The Chair of course can allow the hon. member to continue if there is unanimous consent. Is it agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


John Robert Holmes: Thank you very much. Mr. Speaker, since I do not wish to impose on the time of other hon. members I shall very briefly conclude my remarks. Having made these comments, and having defined the background in which I think there is a government responsibility for problems national in scope, I would simply ask the minister what he is doing about cardiovascular and lung disease, motor vehicle accidents, the problems of the aged and the problems of alcohol and drug abuse. I should also like to know what he is doing about the problem of mental health which was mentioned earlier. In summary I would simply suggest, Mr. Speaker, that if we analyse these various major problems which are national in scope we will find that the minister and the department have made no effort to move in these areas with any degree of importance or sincerity.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a brief but serious contribution to the debate in which we are engaged this afternoon. Before I do so I confess I should like to make one comment in lighter vein. After all, it is Friday afternoon. I want to say that I greatly enjoyed the laughter that burst across the faces of most Liberal members opposite when the hon. member for Northumberland-Miramichi (Mr. Dionne) stood in his place and said that it was the Liberal federal government that dragged the provinces kicking and screaming into hospitalization and medical care. As a piece of rewriting of history that is something of a classic. After all, it was in 1919, the year the present Prime Minister was born-


Gerald William Baldwin: Are you sure?


Lloyd Roseville Crouse: He doesn't know. Maybe it was in 1921. There are two birthdays in the red book.
Food and Drug Safety


Stanley Howard Knowles: He now says it was in 1919. After all, he was there. It was in that year that the Liberal party held its great national convention in the city of Ottawa and committed itself to health insurance. It was in 1957, 38 years later, that the federal Liberal government brought in hospital insurance in a bill under which no dollars were paid out, until the Conservative government took over in 1957. It was in 1966, 47 years after 1919, that the Liberal government finally brought in the Medical Care Act. I submit that it was the pioneering done in the province of Saskatchewan in hospital and medical care, and the pioneering done in British Columbia in hospitalization, that forced the issue and finally brought things to the point that the Liberal government had no option but to bring in these pieces of legislation.


An hon. Member:: Newfoundland did pioneering in this field as well.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Yes, Newfoundland as well. We welcome these pieces of legislation, but I suggest we should keep our history straight.
What I want to say this afternoon is based mainly on an excellent authority, namely, the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde). My point-and it is the one point that I want to make in this debate-is that one of the factors that contributes most seriously to ill health in Canada is poverty. Therefore I suggest that the contribution that would mean the most toward good health in this country would be the elimination of poverty and the achieving of a much greater equality of incomes in this country.
I said that the Minister of National Health and Welfare is my authority. I am forever grateful to him for the excellent speeches he is making in various parts of the country. I will remind him again of his speech on income distribution and the question of community ethics which he gave to the Empire Club of Toronto on Thursday, October 31, 1974. In that speech he pointed out that 20 per cent of our families received less than 6 per cent of all family income-that was in 1972. He said:
Compare this with the fact that the top 20 per cent of Canadian families in 1972 received 39 per cent of all family income.
The minister went on in that excellent speech to spell out the various details and to throw down the challenge to Canadians generally to do something about income inequalities. Then, in one of his later speeches-I refer in particular to the one he made to the Montreal and Ottawa Conference of the United Church of Canada on Monday, June 2, 1975-he referred to his Empire Club speech, and to other speeches that he had made, and gave a brief recital of the statistics he had given on these earlier occasions. But he went further in this speech on June 2 and pointed to the correlation that exists between poverty and ill health. On page 3 of the speech in the text he has given us he says:
I have quoted "Poor Kids," the excellent report published recently by the National Council of Welfare, which describes the appalling waste of our most precious national resource, the children who are our country's future, as a result of the poverty in which they are trapped from birth.

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The Council's report based on data obtained in the most recent census, found 1,600,000 Canadian children-24.5 per cent of all those under the age of 16-living in poverty. It described the world of these poor kids and documented it with studies which showed them facing a greater likelihood of ill health in infancy, in childhood and throughout their adult lives.
That leads me to pick up the document to which he referred at that point known as "Poor Kids", a report by the National Council of Welfare, on children in poverty, in Canada. I draw attention to some of the facts that are spelled out in that report. I will not go into detail, but on pages 11 and 12 there is a summary of a survey of 222 elementary school children at a school in a low income neighbourhood of one of our larger cities, and the percentages are here as to the number of those children who were inadequately nourished, retarded in their height and weight development, retarded in their physical and mental co-ordination, and so on.
This report refers to another survey in another low income area where it was found that more than half of the 3,424 children examined were physically ill. The same document, the report entitled, "Poor Kids", on page 15 makes the following interesting remarks:
Until Canada's medical research community decides to take a far greater interest in this area we will not be able to say. It is a highly revealing commentary on the directions taken by health research in this country that virtually none of it has been concerned with the effects of poverty. That poor kids are disproportionately sick kids seems to be of little concern to Canadian health scientists.
Then I would like to make a passing reference to the report on the relationship between income and nutrition which was put out by the bureau of nutritional sciences of the Health Protection Branch of the Department of National Health and Welfare, on which another report was produced by the National Council of Welfare. The report itself documents with statistics, tables, and charts the correlation that very clearly exists between poverty and ill health, and the summary-if I may abbreviate what I was planning to say-can be found on page 3 of the report entitled "One Child, One Chance". It reads:
This new evidence gives a special sense of urgency to the need for a broad public discussion of the whole subject of the nutritional wellbeing of Canadians. And from this discussion must come action.
That takes me to another of the minister's excellent speeches. This one was given to District 707 Rotary Conference on Poverty in Toronto on Friday, April 18, 1975, in which again the minister gave the statistics of income maldistribution but did what I have been trying to do in these few remarks, related it to the ill health that results on the part of far too large a proportion of the people of this country. Having referred to these statistics-about 6 per cent of the family income being all that is there for the 20 per cent at the bottom of the scale-he asked what these figures mean. Then he said:
They mean children who are undernourished and sick-who are, in fact, more than twice as likely to be ill as their better off counterparts. They mean youth who can never achieve their full potential because nutritional deficencies or the realities of life on the streets robbed them of ambition and energy. They mean young adults struggling to raise undernourished children while they themselves are ill. And they mean the elderly or the disabled living alone in single rooms, excluded from the mainstream of modern society.

I really do not think it is necessary to have this kind of documentation to make one's point, but I am happy to have this support of my contention, especially when it comes from the Minister of National Health and Welfare, who is about to take the floor as soon as I sit down. In any case, I do think that it is a point which needs to be included in today's debate.
I welcome the discussion we have had about statistics and dollars, the various areas in which we are doing things that relate to health and the areas in which we should be doing much more, but I make the point, as strongly as I can, that with all the health services we have we really will not achieve good health for all Canadians until we get rid of poverty. That means doing something about income distribution. That, too, comes under the aegis of the Minister of National Health and Welfare to a large extent. He is talking a good deal these days, when he is trying to fend off something else we are pressing him to do, about a guaranteed annual income, a program on which he is working. Under the heading of health and in the context of today's debate I urge him to push still harder in that area.
That means the minister will also have to persuade the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) of the truths he has been preaching before service clubs and other bodies around the country, and that is that we do have to achieve a much greater measure of income redistribution if we are going to get anywhere near equality.
I am almost ready to sit down, Mr. Speaker. There is another sentence or two in the speeches of the minister which should be remembered. He points out that for all we have done by way of transfer payments and social legislation, the percentage of the total national income that the poor receive has hardly risen at all. In fact, there was a decade between the sixties and the seventies when in percentage terms it dropped. So I add this point to the others which have been made so excellently in today's debate. If we are going to do something to achieve good health in this country, we must get rid of poverty. The minister must work a great deal harder on the whole question of a more equal distribution of the wealth of this country.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Paul Yewchuk: Mr. Speaker, there have been some discussions between representatives of the parties in the House, and it is felt that we would not be opposed to not seeing the clock at five o'clock in order to allow the minister and the hon. member for Battle River (Mr. Malone) to conclude their remarks before the debate closes.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner):: The hon. member seeks the unanimous consent of the House not to see the clock at five o'clock in order that the debate may be concluded by the hon. member for Battle River after the Minister of National Health and Welfare has spoken. Is that agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
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Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I would like first to take this opportunity to thank the hon. member for Athabasca (Mr. Yewchuk) for having given the House an opportunity to discuss a very important subject, the question of health and the policies in the area of health in this country, not only because it is an area which absorbs a substantial part of federal government expenditures, and somewhat over 7 per cent of our GNP, but also because it affects the lives and the futures of Canadian citizens in many respects.
I want to express my appreciation to all hon. members who spoke on this subject today. They have made excellent contributions to the discussion and the consideration of this issue. I would like to include all hon. members of the House, except that I must say that I have to exclude the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) from this list. I would brand his performance as sickening, and he is currently known around this House as the only Newfie joke with two legs and a big mouth.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Marc Lalonde: I have risen on a question of privilege, and I wish to record that I want to examine exactly what the hon. member said and to reserve the right to rise on a question of privilege again next Monday and pursue this matter further. In the meantime I will conclude by saying that, as usual, the hon. member's tongue has been festered in his brain, and I will be charitable in this respect.


James Aloysius McGrath: You haven't got the courage to be stupid.


Marc Lalonde: I would like to begin by commenting on a number of specific points which have been raised, but first I will deal with the point raised by the hon. member for Athabasca with regard to the representation of doctors in the department. It is indeed a matter of concern that we should always have in the Department of National Health and Welfare an adequate representation of members of the medical profession. Historically there has always been a substantial number of medical doctors in the department, and I want to assure the hon. member that this is still the situation. They are found at various levels in the department, and they certainly play a very substantial role in the development of policies and programs.
I would like also to say to the hon. member that we have very extensive recourse to the expertise and knowledge of the medical profession on a very large number of consultative committees, advisory groups, and task forces. Sometimes it is difficult, for reasons I do not have to go into at great length, to recruit some medical doctors into the public service, but the fact is that I have generally found that they have been very generous with their time, contributions, and co-operation when it comes to serving on several dozens of expert committees which are in operation in my department.
I would also like to stress that we have maintained and are maintaining an extremely close liaison with the Canadian Medical Association, and that we have enjoyed very good co-operation and good relations with this organization as well as other professional health groups during the last few years.
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As the hon. member knows, we also work closely with the World Health Organization and other international health agencies on a very consistent basis.
A second point raised by the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands (Mr. Douglas) was with regard to megavitamins. We are very much aware of this situation. I would like to stress that the results to which the hon. member referred, especially by a certain researcher, have not been duplicated by carefully controlled chemical trials. Dr. T. Ban, Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University, for example, has conducted studies and collected results of other studies, and it seems that the views of Dr. A. Hoffer, who supports these particular megavitamins, do not seem to have been vindicated. The drug is not supported or propounded by the Canadian Medical Association, nor in the medical schools teaching here and in the United States. Some may argue that the CM A is only one body, but it is striking that medical schools in this country and in the United States do not seem to be supporting or propounding this particular drug. This is a point of which my department is very aware, and which we are following.
The hon. member for Oxford (Mr. Halliday) also raised the question of Afagon "C". As the hon. member knows, this is one of a number of drug products which have been on the Canadian market for many years. It has very low sales on a national basis. Since this product contains strychnine at a very low concentration per unit dose and no reports of adverse reactions have been received by the drug adverse reaction reporting program, we are of the opinion that Afagon "C" does not constitute a hazard to health when used as directed. Nevertheless we regard the inclusion of strychnine in a product of this nature to be of no established therapeutic value.
Steps are being taken to eliminate the sale of drug products for human use containing strychnine and its salts as well as its raw, processed or botanical source. It is proposed to utilize the regulation-making power of section 25(1)(a) of the Food and Drugs Act to remove strychnine from drug products. Drugs will be declared to be adulterated if they contain strychnine and, as such, will not be permitted to be sold. Regulations to this effect will be presented to the Governor in Council in a very short while.
With regard to the matter of nitrates and nitrites which was raised by the hon. member for Grey-Simcoe (Mr. Mitges), I should like to point out that Canadian action to prohibit all but a very few uses for nitrates as preservatives places Canada at the forefront of regulatory action on a world-wide basis. The United States has not yet taken such action although it is moving in that direction. Our research on the safety of this preservative has been internationally acclaimed. Our scientists have served as advisers to the United States government and the World Health Organization in this area. I wanted to take a minute or two to dispose of those few points and then go on to the basic policy questions that were discussed today.
First of all, I totally endorse what the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) said. He quoted me so often and directly in his speech that I would be hard put to have an argument with him on this subject.

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I should like to comment on the remarks of hon. members opposite who argue that I was not giving enough attention to the very close relationship between the health aspect and the welfare aspect of this whole question. It is not neglecting health if you are trying to improve the welfare of Canadian citizens in the area of social security. It would be a very restricted and narrow interpretation of the responsibility of the Department of National Health and Welfare if it were to be seen as a kind of mutually exclusive responsibility. Ideally I think the two are closely related and must move in parallel fashion. It is for that reason that not only did we publish "The Working Paper on Social Security in Canada" in April, 1973, but in May, 1974, released another working document entitled "A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians." This document received acclaim abroad as well as in Canada.
Tin hon. member for Athabaska wants to know what we have done with the latter. I am surprised that as official opposition critic he is not more aware of what has been done in this respect. Maybe I should spend more time with him in the future.
The hon. member referred to the budget of the Medical Research Council. Research is indeed a very important factor and in our document on health perspectives constituted one of the basic thrusts of health in this country, that is, the strategy having to do with biology of which medical research is a very important element.
I do not doubt the hon. member's concern about that particular subject, but I would be more taken by his party's concern if they had shown as great an interest in the matter when they were in office. I only need to remind the House that the MRC budget which now stands at over $48 million stood at $2 million when the Conservatives were in power in 1959-60, and $4 million when they ended their reign in 1962-63.
The hon. member also talked about $48 million but if he looked at other research expenditures such as expenditures in my department out of the health research fund, and under the health protection branch, the non-medical use of drugs branch, etc,-you have to add about another $25 million to the figure mentioned by the hon. member. I think there is no figure high enough that we could boast about it and say we had nothing else to do, but when we are discussing these matters I should present the real figures which when compared with other countries in the world are pretty good.
The hon. member spoke of percentage increases of 2.7 and 13. There again he was playing with statistics. If he takes the figure of 2.7 per cent which is the figure from one main estimate to the other, he then has to compare it with the figure of 19 per cent which is similarly the figure from one main estimate to the other but he cannot take 2.7 per cent and match it with 13 per cent which is based on an increase of actual expenditures. It will either have to be 2.7 per cent and 19 per cent, or 6.1 per cent and 13 per cent. I am afraid the hon. member has got his figures crossed and has given an erroneous interpretation of the situation.
I have a full file of correspondence received from researchers following the announcement of the increased budget for 1975-76, and the majority of that was supportive of the move taken by the government. In effect the number of researchers receiving support from MRC in

1975-76 is expected to be greater than ever before. The impact on the research training program has been increased, and the number of new MRC scholars in 1976 will be 25 compared to 20 in 1974-75.
The problem of regional disparity continues to have the close attention of the council. The council development program is designed to alleviate this problem, and it is expected that it will be possible to fund all worth-while applications for development grants during the present year. This should be welcome news for researchers working in areas which are not those centres that have been traditionally recognized.
The hon. member spoke of cases that had been rejected. I should like to remind him that the Medical Research Council has full authority and independence to decide who gets grants and who does not. In its judgments the council relies extensively on the peer review system and the advice of over 25 standing committees of experts drawn from the universities, government, and industry. When a particular project is supported or rejected it is done on the advice of the peers of those who submitted the proposal.
The hon. member referred to the movement of researchers. An article in a weekend magazine that was quite clearly written before the figures showing the increased support for research work were published, or at least before the journalists had knowledge of them, gave the impression that there was a great exodus of researchers to the United States. I would point out to the hon. member figures that have been reported by the deans of the Canadian medical faculties to the Medical Research Council about the movement of Americans to Canadian health science faculties, and of Canadians to those faculties in the United States. The number of Canadians from medical faculties going to the United States is 28. I asked the hon. member how many researchers moved from the United States to Canada at that time. The hon. member was silent. If I were in his shoes, I would be silent too. I got these figures from my advisers.
* (1650)
While the number of Canadians who went to the United States was 28, during the same period 38 Americans moved into the Canadian medical faculty. Is this a reason to worry? Is this a tragic movement that is occurring? I do not believe it is. For the year 1973-74 our medical faculty had a net gain of ten people. I hope the hon. member will not raise any more such bogey arguments on this issue.
The hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands (Mr. Douglas) talked about further extending health service coverage. He said he would like the federal government to extend coverage to pharmacare and denticare. I am surprised. The hon. member has a pretty short memory on federal-provincial relations.
There have been substantial protests by a large number of provinces about the way the federal government has moved into some areas of provincial responsibility. There is an agreement between the federal and provincial governments that the federal government will not initiate new programs without first having a consensus with the provinces. That is still the position with this government and, as far as I know, with the provincial governments.
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The hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands referred to the financing formula proposed by the federal government. He said it was based on the cost of living index. That is not the case. The formula was based on the gross national product increase. We said we would put $600 million into a thrust fund to help the provinces improve their health services. We assured them there would be a growth in the federal contribution to help financing, at least equal to the gross national product. It was to be higher than the gross national product for a period of five years and after that it would correspond to it. For their own reasons, the provinces declined this offer.
We have not stayed put and refused to move. We have had further meetings with the provinces. There has been an agreement between the federal government and the provinces that we will work on a step-by-step approach rather than try to have an overall financing formula. That is what we are doing at the present time.
My officials are consulting with the provinces on the possibility of extending some cost sharing to certain facilities and services if it is established there will be an appreciable cost benefit with regard to coverage under hospital or medical care. These consultations are moving along well. I hope it will be possible eventually to reach an agreement with the provinces in this particular regard.
The hon. member for Oxford (Mr. Halliday) talked about government responsibilities. Other members also talked about it. By the way, I thank the hon. member for his kind comments. I am sure his offer of a portfolio is not a double-edge offer. I will take it as being well meant.
The thrust and perspective with regard to the whole area of health that the government published in May, 1974, was that we really want to improve the health of Canadians. I agree we must put more money into research and the services which we have. However, if we want to save money in the area of health so that it can be put into research, we must appeal to Canadians to improve their life style and we, as individuals, must work toward improving the environment. The environment includes the economic environment, the welfare of the people. This is the area where we will be able to make the greatest saving.
If we can reduce the consumption of tobacco and alcohol, and convince Canadians to wear seatbelts when driving in their automobiles, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars would be saved on health care. That money could be spent on research and for providing better services.
It has been calculated that if only 50 per cent of Canadians agreed to wear their seatbelts when driving, this would save 600 lives and prevent 20,000 injuries a year. Imagine the savings. These injuries often involve months of hospitalization. Sometimes people become handicapped for life and are a burden on society. This is one matter over which people do have some control.
The federal government, provincial governments, volunteer associations, professionals in the health field, and citizens in general should concentrate their efforts on getting this message across. If this were done there would be no worries about having enough money to meet the needs of researchers. We in this country must concentrate
Food and Drug Safety
on our lifestyle and improve our environment in order to reduce total health costs.
I only have a few minutes left. I wish to refer briefly to the Health Protection Branch and its activities. This year this branch or division of the Department of National Health and Welfare is celebrating its one hundredth anniversary. I would not like this debate to conclude without paying tribute to those Canadians who, over the past 100 years, have served as public servants in all capacities in that branch, and have made such a contribution toward improving health in Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Marc Lalonde: The Health Protection Branch is an institution of which Canadians can be very proud. It stands very high compared with other such institutions. As a matter of fact, for those who would be tempted to downgrade the work of my department and people working in the health field in Canada, I would only repeat the tribute that was recently paid by the Director General of the World Health Organization with whom I met quite recently. He said that in his opinion Canada stood among the top countries in the world with regard to health services and its innovative approach to providing health services and improving the health of its citizens.
I wish to refer to some points raised by the hon. member for St. John's East. His statements certainly indicate that he would not qualify as an inspector, and that he would not qualify either as a police officer. Having been a practising lawyer, I would also say he would not even qualify as a lawyer if we have to rely on the statements he had made this afternoon.
He asks such questions as: why did it take four months before calling injhe RCMP? In October, 1973, my inspectors were concerned, and this was well before the report of the Prices Review Board to which the hon. member drew attention. Their attention was drawn by rumours, by insinuation, floating around by word of mouth. They initiated an investigation. They went round and tried to find some evidence. This is difficult. It takes time. The hon. member talks about evidence. The hon. member should know the difference between hunches, intuition, assumption, and evidence.
Even after those four months of investigation there was no evidence. But there was enough suspicion to call in the police and say; "Listen, it seems this is something broader than the 'little mistake' sometimes made by a person operating in this field."
The police were called in, and even with all the power of the police it took months and months before they could gather the evidence. The RCMP alone put several thousands of hours into surveillance-and it had to be undercover surveillance because we were facing a well-organized professional criminal group in this respect. This is not the type of operation or job that any meat inspector or any other federal inspector is equipped to deal with. This is a police operation and this is what was required. The police did their work, and the reason no legal action was taken earlier was that it was necessary to gather the evidence.
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That is what the police have been doing for all these months.
My department, the department of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lang), and the department of the provincial minister of justice have to act within the law. Before taking cases to court we have to produce evidence. Now we have some evidence, and more evidence is coming out in Quebec. On the basis of this evidence, obviously if there are clear cases of the law being broken, prosecutions will be instituted. The law will be made to be respected. But we cannot go around instituting proceedings on the basis of hunches. We have to act within the law and we must get hard data to ensure that those who indulge in criminal activities are brought before the courts in the proper way.


James Aloysius McGrath: I rise on a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker. I did not interrupt the minister while he was speaking because his time was limited, although he did not extend that courtesy to me. But the minister did make what I consider to be a racial slur. He laughs. He should be the last one to laugh.
It is a known fact that there is in this country a means of demeaning the people of my province, and it is known as the Newfie joke. I consider it, as used by the minister today, to be insulting, demeaning, contemptible, and a racial slur. I also consider it to be unparliamentary, and I submit to Your Honour that the minister should be obliged to withdraw that remark.
We in this House come from different provinces and from different races, and if this kind of racial slur is to be condoned the level of debate could deteriorate to the point at which it would be nothing but an exchange of personal insults. I submit that the great constitutional lawyer and advocate from the province of Quebec who made that contemptible remark, that racial slur, should be obliged to withdraw it.


Mr. Baker (Grenville-Carleton):: On the same point of order, Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to both of the speeches made. In his characteristic, strong way of speaking, the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) was putting forward what a great number of the people of Canada believe is the problem with the Department of National Health and Welfare. In putting forward his point of view he did not in any way deal with the personality of the minister in the way the minister saw fit to deal with it in this House. He did, of course, question his competence as a minister, but surely there is no better place than the House of Commons to criticize a minister's competence. That is what ministerial responsibility is all about. Ministers come into the House from time to time and have their competence and the work of their departments questioned.
This chamber is the place for that kind of debate. I have been here as long as the minister, and this is the place to put forward points of view. But I think the statement was regrettable because it did cast a slur on a certain area and the people who inhabit that area. If something similar had been said about my own province I would have felt pretty strongly about it, cast in that light. I think the statement made by the minister is a regrettable one and I hope he will apologize, at least for that part of it.
In the latter part of his speech the minister gave what some might consider, particularly his supporters, a factual

answer to the charge of incompetence and other things. That is quite within the guidelines of debate and of good taste and manners. But I respectfully suggest that the hon. member for St. John's East was quite right to rise in the context of the minister's remarks and reference to him, which was really a reference to the people of Newfoundland.
It may well be that the minister did not intend to do that, but if there is not a question of privilege here-and there is a great deal to say for it being a question of privilege-then it is a matter that the minister should reconsider. I think he owes the hon. member for St. John's East an apology.


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I do not mind my competence being questioned. I think it is part of debate in this House. But the hon. member did not question my competence, he questioned my integrity, and that is something that will not go unchallenged. If the hon. member wants to say he had no intention of questioning my integrity, I will certainly be pleased to withdraw my remarks if he withdraws his.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner):: All hon. members will, of course, be aware from rulings made recently by Mr. Speaker that privilege is defined in the very narrowest of terms. It may well be that the two hon. members in question have a grievance with one another, a dispute, and that strong language has been used, but I doubt very much that the Chair can rule that a question of privilege has been established. At any rate, the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) did not follow up his question of privilege with a motion, so there is really nothing further for the Chair to do at this time.


Mr. Arnold Malone (Battle River):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to express my appreciation to members of the House for extending to me the chance to say a few words at this time. I will make them interesting if I cannot make them short. In attempting to put on the record things that have not yet been talked about today I will pass through my notes, picking out only those areas in respect of which there is some need for comment on the record, and some rather important things about health and Canadian people that have not yet been stated.
It is important that we underscore one of the things which has been expressed vigorously today, and that is the need to work toward a preventive approach to health as opposed to that of simply focusing on cures. It is one of the problems of our society, a problem that arises not only in respect of health but in respect of other areas such as education. We are always looking at how to fix things up after the fact, when it is important that we, as a society, work very hard toward giving the kind of treatment to people in a preventive sense which this society has not yet experienced.
I would like at this time to focus on what I think is a bewitched Department of National Health and Welfare. Let me point out that while the minister was here today, on Friday 13, I still believe this department has quite a bit of superstition attached to it. If we analyze the department we will find it is a department that does not pay
June 13, 1975

attention to the human head. I think this reflects the kind of thinking which was traditional 500 years ago.
When we consider that in this country we have a fairly high level of medical services for a certain segment of the people in our society it behooves us to ask the question: How in a country such as Canada, with its level of economic development, is there still a need for medical services in respect of the eyes, the teeth, and psychiatric problems? I believe this is the result of a cultural and sociological background in which we still believe in the myth of mental illness. As a society we have failed to pay full attention to the human head, and we dispute from time to time that aspect of the human body as a part in respect of which we must also provide health services.
Canadian society today seems to be of the opinion that nature has given everyone good health, and if you are blind or deaf, or suffer from a neurosis, the attitude is probably-so what? I think it behooves us as a culture to recognize that health care means care of all parts of the body, and it is important that we get away from the superstitious practice of long ago in respect of mental illness and mental health.
Another thing I should like to put on record today is that Canada does not have a food industry. We might think we have, but those who think so simply do not know what food is. What we have instead is a cosmetic taste industry wrapped up with colourful packaging, merchandising and advertising. The Canadian public at large does not know what food is. I think it is rather interesting that the field of agriculture has so tremendously outstripped human beings in that regard.
It should be pointed out that it was quite some time ago when the Canadian government passed the Feeds Act, which describes precisely some of the requirements for domestic livestock feeds, sets out guaranteed nutritive analyses, and prohibits supplementary feeds being put on the market without having first been written in chart form and guaranteed as to analysis.
The book I have in my hand is what might be referred to as the farmer's bible. I could open it at almost any page and find it filled with charts in respect of feed stuffs and nutritive requirements of domestic livestock feeds. In the twentieth edition of "Morrison's Feeds and Feeding" at page 988 we find such statements as peanut oil contains total dry matter of 93.5 per cent, that it contains 38.6 per cent of digestive protein, and contains total digestive nutrients of 80.9 per cent. There is a long list of other products in respect of which similar information is given. There is a chart, covering several pages, which contains similar information.
If we turn to another section in this book we find all the domestic farm animals listed together, with the various weights and other factors involved in an effort to achieve a total description of the nutrition required for fattening, lactation, pregnancy and so on. And yet there is no way in our society that a human being can walk into a supermarket and begin to know what he is buying in terms of nutritive value. If one should buy wieners they might be made of beef. One has no idea whether they are all fat, all meat, or what is the protein percentage. What difference does this make? It makes the difference that the people in the poverty sector of our society simply cannot go into a
Food and Drug Safety
store and know how to buy protein or other food items which would meet their nutritive requirements and help them manage their dollar. This is extremely important.
Many people think one can go into the supermarket and buy products which have the best food value, but there is no way in the Canadian supermarket that one can determine what products contain the nutritive value they can afford. However, this information is extended to farmers in respect of domestic livestock.
I would simply ask members of this House how is it that we have considered cows, horses, and swine to be of greater importance than human beings. I think it behooves us to recognize that some years ago the Department of Agriculture carried out this type of a study in respect of animals, and we should have similar information in respect of foods for human consumption so that when we go into the food markets, rather than just buying colour and packages, anyone could understand the food industry and thus be able to purchase the kind of food that would provide a balanced diet.
I should like to turn to another area under discussion at this time. I think that 20 per cent of Canadians can be described as poor according to United Nations standards. I believe this is absolutely deplorable in a nation such as Canada. However, while this is something about which we should not be proud, it is very interesting to note that most of those poor people are Canadian native Indians. I think this is a cloud over Canadians. As a society we simply have not recognized some of the facts. Perhaps I might share some bits of information which I believe indicate how much we think about the health care of Canadians who are poor people. We might look at some things which could be called luxuries.
Some 98 per cent of all Canadians have running water in their homes, while only 31 per cent of the native people have running water in their homes. While 96 per cent of Canadians have indoor toilets in their homes only 24 per cent of the native people have indoor toilets in their homes. Why is it that in Canada on a national average there are only 20 infant mortalities for every 1,000 live births, while among the Indians the figure is double with 40 mortalities for every 1,000 live births and in respect of the Innuits the figure is 70 infant mortalities for every 1,000 live births?
Why do we feel we have a good health policy when we ignore the statistics which show that the native Indian people have a life expectancy on the average of 36 years, and the Innuit people have an average life expectancy of 20 years, while other Canadians have a life expectancy of 62 years? This is a shame we should all bear, because we cannot live in the midst of plenty and ignore a major sector of our society.
In Saskatchewan dysentery is 22 times higher among the Indian people, and typhoid fever is 35 times more common among Indians than among the general population. If we can look for some reasons as to why this is happening-and the department must certainly bear an obligation in this respect-we find that the change in the dietary patterns of the native people may be one of the causes. These people did not always have the problems
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they now have. They have them today because there has been a change in their dietary patterns.
Let us take a look at some of the traditional foods that native people used to eat, such as whitefish which is extremely high in protein content. It has a protein content of 25.8 per cent, only 1.3 per cent fat, no carbohydrate content, 356 milligrams of calcium, 106 international units of vitamin A, 135 micrograms of Thiamine, Bl, 222 micrograms of Riboflavin, B2, and in the range of 4 to 15 milligrams of vitamin C. That is only one example, but the native foods that were consumed traditionally contained quite a high nutritious content.
People in the North who, culturally and historically, never used a diet too high in carbohydrates or sugar, are now eating tremendous amounts of potato chips, chocolate bars and drinking coke. I think hon. members would be interested to know that in the Northwest Territories the price of beer all over the territory is the price at which it is imported to Hay River. Yet the price of food includes the transportation costs to wherever it goes, even as high as Frobisher Bay. What does it mean? It means that you can buy beer cheaper than a dozen eggs or a roast of beef. The fact of the matter is that we are giving to people, whose dietary systems have not been adjusted through the period of time, a high carbohydrate diet, and enticing them economically to consume such foods.
I think the House should be extremely concerned about the fact that the teeth of the native people in the Northwest Territories are in a deplorable state, despite the fact that dentists are moving to the area. One person told me he watched a young boy having eight of his teeth pulled out in succession, all abcessed.
Dentists are so busy that all they have time to do is to pull teeth. They have no time to do any preventive work
on filling ones that have partial cavities. The reason is that there are only 15 dentists per 1,500,000 square miles in the Northwest Territories. I think it should register with all of us that we cannot accept this deplorable state in our nation's health, by ignoring 20 per cent of the Canadian population.
I should like to share some information with hon. members. I have here an article which reads as follows:
Food costs in the Northwest Territories ranged from 15 to 70 per cent higher than similar costs in southern supply centres according to a cost of living study released last week by the Territorial Department of social development-
-it costs 383 per cent more a year to maintain a house in Pelly Bay than in Yellowknife.
We simply have to ask, to what extent do we accept that the native people of this country are in fact Canadians?
Are we willing, government or otherwise in this House, to say that there is an adequate health service plan in this country, when in fact 20 per cent of the Indian people are considered poor by international standards? I think it behooves us all to recognize the fact that we will have no health program in this country which is of any level of adequacy until we recognize the full responsibility of caring for all the people, or at least make it possible for all people to have adequate care at their disposal.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner):: Order, please. It being past five o'clock, it is my duty to inform the House, pursuant to Standing Order 58(11), that the proceedings on the motion have now expired. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until Monday next at 2 p.m.
At 5.27 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Monday, June 16, 1975