1975-06-02

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Adrien Lambert (Bellechasse):: Mr. Speaker, under Standing Order 43, I request the unanimous consent of the House to submit an extremely important motion.
Considering that the late Commander Alphonse Desjardins was an official French-language stenographer at the House of Commons for a quarter of a century;
Considering that in addition to numerous other achievements, he was the founder of the first caisse populaire in Quebec and in Canada;
Considering that Quebecers are especially proud of so great a Canadian, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Roberval (Mr. Gauthier):
That this House congratulate the Postmaster General of Canada for having authorized the issue of a postage stamp to commemorate so great a Canadian, and that this House express its wishes that his work continue to prosper throughout all of Canada.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The House has heard the motion submitted by the hon. member. Pursuant to Standing Order 43, such a motion requires unanimous consent of the House. Is such consent granted?


Some hon. Members:: Yes.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: There is no unanimous consent, so the motion cannot be submitted.


INDIAN AFFAIRS
Mr. Arnold Malone (Battle River):: Mr. Speaker, I, too, rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 to move a motion on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. In view of the fact that a number of statements made in the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development program circular D-l places Canada's status Indians in a
non-workable economic position, and since in a letter to native peoples from the assistant deputy minister of Indian and Eskimo Affairs it is stated that the conditions are "non-negotiable" and that "these terms and conditions remain mandatory", I would, therefore, move, seconded by the hon. member for Lambton-Kent (Mr. Holmes):
That this House instruct the minister in charge of Indian Affairs to retract, in full, the implementation of program circular D-l until this matter can be fully reviewed by the Standing Committee on Indian Affairs and Northern Development.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The motion is proposed pursuant to Standing Order 43 and requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


LABOUR CONDITIONS
Mr. Eudore Allard (Rimouski):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 43, I ask the unanimous consent of the House to move a motion on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity.
Since Montreal longshoremen have once again gone on strike and the port in this city is consequently closed, that as a result of the strike, grain delivery is partially disrupted which causes considerable harm to Quebec producers, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Abitibi (Mr. Laprise):
That the House consider without delay the measures to take for the immediate return to work of the Montreal longshoremen to bring back to normal the operation of the Montreal harbour.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: There is not unanimous consent; the motion cannot be put.
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June 2, 1975

Oral Questions FINANCE


SUGGESTION MINISTER OF FINANCE ASK BANKS TO EXERCISE RESTRAINT IN IMPOSITION OF SERVICE CHARGES- MOTION UNDER S.O. 43
Mr. Stanley Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to present a motion under Standing Order 43, and it is one to which I believe the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) would be happy to agree. I move, seconded by the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Brewin):
That the Minister of Finance be asked to call on the chartered banks to exercise restraint with respect to the charges they impose on their customers, it being the view of this House that the amounts being charged for deposits, withdrawals and the writing of cheques have got out of hand, and that charges for transfers by customers from one account to another are beyond reason.


Mr. Speaker:: The motion is proposed pursuant to Standing Order 43 and cannot be debated without the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Robert L. Stanfield (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to address my question to the Minister of Labour or the Acting Minister of Justice, whichever may be the more appropriate. It refers to the reported withdrawal of their services by longshoremen in Montreal. Has the Minister of Labour verified this situation, and, if the reports are correct that the longshoremen have withdrawn their services and the port is closed down in that sense, what action has the government taken?


Hon. John C. Munro (Minister of Labour):: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I can verify to the Leader of the Official Opposition that it is correct that the longshoremen have withdrawn their services. I am advised that, subject to further amplification by the Solicitor General, appropriate legal remedies are now being looked into with a view to their institution.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the Solicitor General, in his capacity as Acting Minister of Justice in the House, precisely what measures are being taken, whether the government is seeking an injunction as before, and does the minister feel it necessary to gather evidence or, on the other hand, does he feel that the report of the withdrawal of service and the vote not to work would be considered sufficient evidence in this case?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I have been in contact with the Solicitor General and the Department of Justice on this matter, and I want to tell the House that we are preparing to take certain legal actions, but we are in the process now of gathering information to make those actions possible. At this time I cannot indicate what those specific actions will be. I would expect that by tomorrow I, or one of the ministers, will be able to inform the House in that regard.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, since the right hon. gentleman has volunteered to supply some information, I should like to ask him what additional measures this government has in mind to restore the reputation of Montreal as a world port? I understand that some 14 ships or so were abandoned unserviced in the port, which surely reflects on the port and its usefulness to Canada, particularly following the previous interruptions of service. I would ask the Prime Minister what measures, if any, his government proposes to take to help restore the reputation of Montreal for reliability.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Well, Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman is quite right in indicating the seriousness of the matter so far as the future of the port of Montreal is concerned. We indeed view it as a most serious situation which, beyond the immediate labour problems itself, could have very severe consequence for the harbour and therefore for the city of Montreal itself. Beyond the legal decisions I just referred to in reply to the previous question, I am trying to ensure that the responsible authorities in Quebec, and indeed public opinion itself, understand the seriousness of the situation and that we will have very strong public support in whatever action we take.


GOVERNMENT ACTION TO AVOID STRIKES WHICH DISRUPT GRAIN TRAFFIC-MEASURES TO PROTECT PRODUCERS FROM FINANCIAL LOSS
Mr. Don Mazankowski (Vegreville):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary for the Minister of Labour. In view of the statements made over the weekend by two leading delegates of the Japanese flour milling industry that Canada's prominence as a grain exporter is severely threatened by lengthy strikes which disrupt grain traffic, I should like to ask the minister if he is in a position to advise the House of what specific action the government is considering to alleviate those costly disruptions in this very important industry. I ask this question given the fact that the grain movement can be disrupted by any one of the more than 30 unions involved in the movement of grain.


John Carr Munro: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member may be aware of discussions initiated at the last presentation of the CLC to the government when there was discussion between the Prime Minister and the CLC with reference to consolidation of certain bargaining units. This discussion having been carried on, there are indications that it is possible that management and labour will get together in an effort to resolve matters of this kind, particularly in respect of the grain industry. The hon. member may have noticed, and the opposition referred to it last week, that the president of the CLC indicated he was looking into this particular area right
June 2, 1975

now to see whether there could be some consolidation of the bargaining units which would reduce the incidence of work stoppages.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I must say, Mr. Speaker, that the minister's statement is rather uncertain. In the interim, while the future of Canada's reputation as a reliable shipper is being severely undermined and while the effect ripples throughout the whole economy, the greatest hardship is imposed upon the producers of grain in that they have lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Could I ask the minister if any consideration is being given to developing ways and means in which the producers of grain may be shieled or insulated from the financial hardships that are caused by these frequently recurring strikes?


John Carr Munro: Mr. Speaker, I think the most appropriate and positive action that can be taken in a situation such as this is for business and management, together with the government, to come together in an effort to find an appropriate solution. Without that type of co-operative effort I see no permanent solution.


FINANCE
Mr. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa-Whitby):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Finance. In light of the information made public in a recent court case involving Imperial Oil reported in the press last Friday which suggested that the supply and pricing of oil imported by Imperial Oil are managed from the headquarters of Exxon Corporation in New York, and that Exxon has engaged extensively in the practice of transfer pricing between its subsidiaries in order to avoid the payment of Canadian taxes, has the government made any plans to modify its oil import compensation scheme to ensure that payments reflect real costs to the companies involved and not costs as disguised by transfer pricing between one company and another.


Hon. John N. Turner (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, as a result of that report I want to consult with my colleague the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources and my colleague the Minister of National Revenue to see what substance there is in it.


ALLEGATION IMPERIAL OIL OPERATES DUMMY CORPORATION IN BERMUDA TO AVOID PAYMENT OF CANADIAN TAXES-GOVERNMENT POSITION
John Edward Broadbent: I have a supplementary question for the same minister. In light of the further revelation in the same court case that Imperial Oil has operated a dummy corporation in Bermuda for the purpose of avoiding the payment of Canadian taxes, does the government view this as a problem and, if so, what does it plan to do about it?
Oral Questions


John Napier Turner: Of course, the administration of the Income Tax Act is the responsibility of my colleague, the Minister of National Revenue. I will be talking to him.


John Edward Broadbent: While agreeing that the administration of the act is the responsibility of another minister, the act itself is the responsibility of the Minister of Finance. I should like to ask him whether the government is concerned about the creation of dummy corporations in Bermuda or elsewhere set up specifically for the purpose of avoiding paying Canadian taxes, and, if so, does the government intend to bring forward legislation to deal with the situation?


John Napier Turner: We are concerned but we have a duty to operate on the basis of facts rather than allegations and suppositions. We will look into it.


LABOUR CONDITIONS
Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Mr. Speaker, I should like to address my question to the Minister of Labour.
Since Parliament passed legislation to put a little order in the St. Lawrence ports just over a month ago while the dispute is continuing and since it is increasingly evident that it is to the detriment not only of the Canadian economy but of the Canadian workers as well, will the minister consider the advisability of introducing legislation to promote the establishment of a purely Canadian union, thus enabling Canadian workers to receive orders from Canada and not from union leaders of a foreign country?


John Carr Munro: Mr. Speaker, so far as legal remedies being pursued now are concerned, I believe the Prime Minister has fully answered that question a few moments ago. I would advise the hon. member, on information which I just received from the Minister of Agriculture, that there have been no impediments to the grain movement in the province of Quebec.


INDUSTRY
Hon. George Hees (Prince Edward-Hastings):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. As the latest figures show that industrial productivity in Canada has fallen during the present year at the same sharp pace it did during the past two years, is the minister planning in the very near future to announce measures to correct this very serious situation?

June 2, 1975
Oral Questions


Hon. Alastair Gillespie (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce):: Mr. Speaker, we are experiencing exactly the same situation as the United States, something which occurs periodically in the phases of business. The business cycle in Canada peaked last year and our productivity declined accordingly. I expect our productivity to start to pick up in the next few months.


George Harris Hees: Is it the view of the minister that if other industrial countries happen to be experiencing-


John Napier Turner: That is argumentative, George.


George Harris Hees: -industrial troubles at the same time as we are, this makes it impossible for Canada to even consider doing something on its own?


Alastair William Gillespie: On the contrary, Mr. Speaker. As the hon. member knows, we have a large array of programs aimed at assisting Canadian industry to improve its productivity.
I recited a number of these in the debate in the House last week. I can assure the hon. member that we will continue to offer these incentives to the Canadian enterprise system unrelentlessly.


George Harris Hees: I have a final supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. In view of the fact that industrial productivity has been declining sharply despite the programs which the minister has recited on so many occasions, is the minister not convinced that the time has now arrived to bring in innovative measures and stop pretending that everything is all right and that "business as usual" is satisfactory to his department?


Alastair William Gillespie: Mr. Speaker, I would be the last one to suggest that we should carry on a business as usual basis. I would agree with the hon. member that there is a large section of Canadian industry which is being hurt. It is being hurt because our customers are not able to import on the same basis as they did before. Their economies are not as strong as they were and not as strong, relatively, as the Canadian economy.


George Harris Hees: And the minister is not as strong as he should be.


Alastair William Gillespie: Let me assure the hon. member that we will maintain our onward thrust in trade programs, in industrial programs and in incentive programs.


George Harris Hees: And keep on failing and failing and failing.


OLYMPIC GAMES
Mr. Otto Jelinek (High Park-Humber Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the President of the Treasury Board. Because of the fact that revenue from the Olympic coin program for the last six months to March 31 totalled a mere $1.5 million, at which rate less than one eighth of the expected $250 million will be realized by 1976, and

acknowledging the fact that the cabinet will indeed introduce legislation permitting the minting of gold coins even at this late date, which may help the situation somewhat but certainly not enough, could it therefore be taken for granted that the government will not subsidize Montreal directly or indirectly other than through the coin- that is, both silver and gold coins-and stamp programs?


Hon. Jean Chretien (President of the Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, the government policy regarding the Olympic Games is well known. We have helped Montreal and the province of Quebec through the programs mentioned by the hon. member, but it is not the government's intention to finance them otherwise than by the selffinancing program.


POSSIBILITY SEIGNIORAGE ON ALL COINS WILL GO TO OLYMPIC COMMITTEE-GOVERNMENT POSITION
Otto John Jelinek: I have a supplementary question for the Postmaster General. With planning under way at the Canadian Mint for the minting of all Canadian coins, such as nickels, dimes, quarters and others, to bear the Olympic logo, and with reports that the seigniorage from all these coins is to go to the Olympic Committee and not the Consolidated Revenue Fund where it belongs, could the minister on behalf of the government come clean with the Canadian public and tell this House that this will not be the case, or can it be assumed that a direct grant, which this can be taken for, will in fact be forthcoming through this means? I wish the government would stop trying to fool the public in this regard.


Hon. Bryce Mackasey (Postmaster General):: Mr. Speaker, in answer to the hon. member's question, it would be preferable if his premise were accurate. There is no intention of diverting the regular seigniorage, which normally goes to the Canadian public through the Consolidated Revenue Fund, to the Olympic next year. I did read press reports about the possibility of there being abnormal high seigniorage due to the staging of the Olympics in Canada. That could be legitimately considered as part of the coin program, but as I said and as my colleague beside me said, there have been no firm decisions even on the gold coin at the present moment, so I think the question is based on an inaccurate premise. I can only repeat that if, theoretically, we were to consider the seigniorage route, then we would make it amply and abundantly clear that the normal seigniorage would not be diverted to financing the Olympics or helping it to meet any deficit, if one occurs.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Allan B. McKinnon (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. In view of the right hon. gentleman's statement in which he pledged to main-
June 2, 1975

tain a NATO force level which is accepted by our allies as being adequate in size and effective in character, when does he plan to increase Canada's contribution, since our allies in general, and U.S. Defence Secretary Schlesinger in particular, feel that Canada's contribution is inadequate?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I will be making a statement on the subject later. Perhaps the hon. member would prefer to hold his question until then. I will certainly deal with this and other aspects of the NATO meetings.


Allan Bruce McKinnon: Mr. Speaker, I have already read the right hon. gentleman's statement, and it does not answer the question I had in mind.


Mr. Speaker:: The right hon. Prime Minister has indicated that he proposes to make a statement later this day. The subject should surely rest until then.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Bill Jarvis (Perth-Wilmot):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture. Last Tuesday in response to my question the minister informed the House that he was to get a report late on Tuesday regarding the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency's attempt to get its supply-management program in proper order. Would the minister take time today to tell the House the general nature of the report he received last Tuesday?


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, I received the report on Friday. After discussing it with my officials and the National Farm Products Marketing Council, we decided to call a meeting of the provincial ministers and signatories as soon as possible to go over the final position of the proposed agreement.


William Herbert Jarvis: A supplementary question. Is the minister telling the House today that despite the optimistic reports received by him earlier last month, the agency has unfortunately not solved this one aspect of its problem, that is, the supply-management aspect?


Eugene Whelan: No, Mr. Speaker. I think if I were to say any more about the agreement before it is signed it would be that I am very optimistic that they are getting their house in order even better than I thought they were, and better than a lot of hon. members were aware. They have the problem under better control than it was before it seems to me, but there are some areas that need to be discussed further. We feel we can do that more quickly by bringing them all to Ottawa and discussing it here.


William Herbert Jarvis: A further supplementary, Mr. Speaker. Last Tuesday in reply to a question from the hon. member for Vegreville the minister indicated that he would check his records to determine which provinces have not been able
Oral Questions
to bring their numbers of birds into line. Has the minister had an opportunity to check the records and is he in a position to tell the House which, if any, provinces have been unsuccessful in bringing their numbers into proper order?


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, I do not think any province has been unsuccessful. Some provinces have been more successful than others.


INDUSTRY
Mr. Frank Maine (Wellington):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. In view of the fact that RCA Limited plans to divest itself of two of its five Ontario manufacturing plants by no later than the end of this year, and that other manufacturers of home entertainment products such as Canada Cabinet and Furniture are also seriously suffering from competition from foreign manufacturers, will the minister consider reviewing the situation in the hope of finding a solution to this important problem?


George Harris Hees: Just tell him everything is fine the way you usually do. It is the cycle-the fault of the United States- the weather.


An hon. Member:: Read the brochure.


Alastair William Gillespie: Mr. Speaker, may we have order. I can understand that the opposition would not be interested in the question; they did not ask it.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


George Harris Hees: How about the one he asked on Thursday?


Alastair William Gillespie: Mr. Speaker, there are some concerned people on our side who are interested in policies which will deal with real problems-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Alastair William Gillespie: -and who are not just interested in tomorrow's headlines.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Alastair William Gillespie: Mr. Speaker, I met with the representatives of that industry a short while ago with the hon. member present-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


George Harris Hees: So it is a set up question.


Alastair William Gillespie: -and with a number of other members of the House, Mr. Speaker-

June 2, 1975
Oral Questions


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


An hon. Member:: Talk about headline hunting!


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. In view of the report that a Mr. Tan Doi Nguyen, a former South Vietnamese banker was in Saigon jail as late as April 14 on charges of fraud and narcotics smuggling and now has reportedly reapplied or is seeking re-entry into Canada, has the minister conducted an investigation into this man's activities or can he assure the House that he will conduct such an investigation?


Hon. Robert K. Andras (Minister of Manpower and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, we are looking into all these allegations. When we have a clear picture on any of them that are pertinent we will be glad to give the information to the hon. member.


Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary. In view of the reports that a Mr. Trang Shi Tan a former chief of the special branch of the Saigon police, among other top Saigon officials, wishes to seek entry into Canada and in view of the fact that a Mr. Cochrane who reportedly worked closely while in Saigon with the chief of covert CIA activities in Viet Nam, a Colonel Lonsdale, is now the United States consul in Montreal, I must ask the minister to consider conducting a thorough and public investigation into the backgrounds of all South Vietnamese who seek entry into Canada and who held sensitive government or business posts in Saigon before the last regime?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, we will take the necessary precautions to protect the national interest. I want to say, however, that the nature of refugee movements is such that we have to operate without the total formalities that we do in ordinarily checking admission to Canada of people who apply for resident status. That is the nature of the movement. We are doing our best to ensure that the national interest is protected but there are risks to be taken in every refugee movement. I know of none that we have been involved in since the Hungarian refugee movement which did not have some cases which gave us difficulty. It is a question of doing our best under these circumstances.


MANPOWER
Mr. Lincoln M. Alexander (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, a question for the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. In view of the fact that the minister's recent

statement indicated that this year would show one of the highest unemployment figures that we have seen, is he contemplating some imaginative steps to ensure that the vast numbers of people seeking jobs this year will be accommodated and will he be making an announcement in this regard?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I have indicated, as have some of my colleagues, that we are conscious of and concerned about the level of unemployment this country faces in light of general international economic problems. We are now looking at the various options open to us.


ALLEGED DISSATISFACTION WITH SERVICES OF MANPOWER CENTRES
Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: A supplementary question on the same theme, Mr. Speaker. I am sure the minister is aware of two recent surveys of the business community, one in Vancouver and one in Montreal. Some 60 per cent of firms surveyed in Montreal were not satisfied with the services of Manpower centres and some 49 per cent of the firms surveyed in Vancouver were not satisfied.


Mr. Guay (St. Boniface):: Question.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: I will get to the question, Joe. Is the minister going to look into these surveys and see to it that Manpower services are made to work? It is common knowledge that they are not working in terms of acquiring the jobs and the employees required by employers.


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I hope the hon. member is just as diligent in bringing forth for hon. members of the House the complimentary comments made about the service.


REGIONAL ECONOMIC EXPANSION
Mr. J. Robert Howie (York-Sunbury):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion. Can the minister advise the House when the first of the five phase Fundy tidal power studies will commence?


Hon. Donald C. Jamieson (Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Mr. Speaker, I have initiated some inquiries about this. The hon. member asked about it the other day. Unfortunately, I do not have the answers yet but I will get them as soon as I can.


IMMIGRATION
Mr.   Sean@: Mr. Speaker, a question for the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. Can the minister advise whether the interesting and extensive trips of Mr. Richard Dicerni and those of Mr. Daniel Coates taken at public expense during the period these gentlemen served on the minister's personal staff, were taken with the minister's knowledge and authorization?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I believe that question was on the order paper and answered.


NATIONAL ENERGY BOARD
Mr. Doug Neil (Moose Jaw):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the right hon. Prime Minister. In view of the fact that the National Energy Board has scheduled preliminary hearings on the Mackenzie Valley pipeline on July 8, 9 and 10, will the Prime Minister please inform the House whether the government is contemplating or has the intention of presenting a statement or brief to the board?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I will take notice of the question on behalf of the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources.


FINANCE
Mr. Paul Dick (Lanark-Renfrew-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Finance which is supplementary to that asked by the hon. member for Wellington. Representations were made in the House by the hon. member for Vancouver South on January 27 and February 6 and a letter was sent to the Minister of Finance on February 17 inquiring whether there would be any relief under the provisions of Bill C-172 of the twenty-ninth parliament that would allow electronic components to be taxed rather than coming into Canada dutyfree and thus save jobs in the RCA plants in Renfrew and Owen Sound. Has the minister, further to the reply of April 8 in which he indicated he was considering the matter, given it further consideration, and will he take action?


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I have nothing to add to the letter, except to say that the problem may not lie particularly with the tariff.
Oral Questions


REQUEST FOR REPORT OF ANTI-DUMPING TRIBUNAL ON ELECTRONICS INDUSTRY
Mr. Walter Baker (Grenville-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, may I ask a supplementary question. I am sorry I was not at the meeting this morning when the sheet music was handed out. Can the Minister of Finance tell the House if the proceedings before the anti-dumping tribunal which were announced by the Minister of National Revenue some time ago with respect to the electronics industry are still under way and if a report will soon be available to the House and the country on this distressed industry.


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, that question is important enough to warrant giving the hon. gentleman a detailed answer on another occasion.


INCOME TAX
Mr. Gerard Laprise (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Revenue being absent, I shall address my question to the right hon. Prime Minister.
Upon his return to Canada, he was doubtless advised of the inquiry into organized crime in Quebec, especially with regard to the sale of carrion. Can he assure the House that the Department of National Revenue will look into the income tax of the dealers in carrion to make sure that all taxes were paid on the income involved which, in some cases, amounted to as much as $25 million?
[English]	*


Hon. Judd Buchanan (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, I will be happy to take note of that question on behalf of the Minister of National Revenue.


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Gordon Towers (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. As $188,500 of the total of $824,000 paid to Ugandan refugees represents overpayments made because of misrepresentation or fraud, and as two of the recipients of the money were able to purchase a motel in British Columbia costing $127,000, will the minister conduct a ministerial or judicial inquiry to establish ways and means to ensure the recovery of such overpayment?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I believe that is standard procedure, but I will look into the matter.
While I am on my feet, Mr. Speaker, may I say that I may have inadvertently misled the House in the sense that I said to the hon. member for Hamilton-Wentworth that

June 2, 1975
*

Oral Questions
the answer to his question on the order paper had been given. Actually, that answer is in course of preparation.


POSSIBILITY OF FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE TO GENERAL
Thomas Gordon Towers: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. As the Ugandan refugee payments were made under the Immigration Adjustment Assistance Program, can the minister inform this House if General Quang, who is also a refugee and about whom the hon. member for Esquimalt-Saanich asked questions last week, received any financial assistance under such a program?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, the answer is that he has not.


IMMIGRATION
Mr.   Sean@: Mr. Speaker, may I return to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration who set the record straight? Since the question I asked did not appear directly on the order paper, those questions having taken three months to be answered, may I ask the minister directly if he authorized the expenditure of public funds for the extensive trips taken by the two members concerned on his personal staff?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, of course I have authorized trips taken by members of my staff, in the same way as every other minister in this House and of other governments has. The details will be available to the hon. member when the question is answered. I have not seen the answer myself yet.


POST OFFICE
Hon. W. G. Dinsdale (Brandon-Souris):: Mr. Speaker, my question could have been directed to the Minister of National Health and Welfare. However, to begin the week right, I will address it to the Postmaster General. It is about the recent epidemic of Mackasey 'flu which assumed its most virulent form in Montreal. Is it connected with tainted meat, how is it spread and what efforts are being made to provide immunity to the general public?


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


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Andrew Brewin (Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. As the time limit given to South Africa by the Security Council of the United Nations to end the illegal administration of South West Africa, now known as Namibia, has expired with a rejection by South Africa, what action does the government of Canada contemplate in order to induce South Africa to respect and accept the decisions of the United Nations?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I understand that the question of Namibia and the United Nations deadline is still before the Security Council. Once the Security Council deals with the question of the deadline and with the question of mandatory sanctions, it will be possible for the government of Canada to take note of that situation. In the meantime, we cannot take much action because the matter is before the Security Council.


OPERATIONS OF FALCONBRIDGE NICKEL COMPANY IN NAMIBIA-SUGGESTED ACTION TO END TAX CONCESSIONS
Francis Andrew Brewin: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. As Falconbridge Nickel Company, or some of its subsidiaries, are continuing to operate under the illegal authority of the government of South Africa in Namibia, and as Canadian tax concessions are being made to those companies which are operating without the consent of the legal authority, the Commissioner of the United Nations, what steps is the Canadian government taking to end such tax concessions and to require such companies to desist from all activities in Namibia not legally authorized?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Mr. Speaker, I am not in a position to advise the hon. member in detail on the matter of tax concessions. In general, a number of departments of the government of Canada have been giving attention to the question of Canadian companies operating in Namibia. Of course, there is no way under Canadian law by which the government can force any mode of conduct on business operations of Canadian subsidiaries in other countries. Furthermore, as the hon. member knows, it is a principle of government policy not to interfere in the operations of Canadian companies abroad.
In a more general way the Canadian government, of course, does not recognize the authority of South Africa over Namibia. We have recognized the authority of the United Nations Commissioner and we regard the present situation as illegal. Corporations or subsidiaries operating in Namibia do so at their own risk and initiative. If they should be subject to nationalization or confiscation in Namibia, the government position would obviously accord with the acknowledgement that they are operating on their own initiative and at their own risk.


POSSIBILITY OF PROTEST TO FRANCE OVER RESUMPTION OF NUCLEAR TESTING
Mr. James Gillies (Don Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also addressed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. On May 26 I asked the Acting Prime Minister if the government of Canada plans to make a protest to the government of France over the resumption of nuclear testing. The Acting Prime Minister said he would make inquiries. Can the Secretary of State for External Affairs tell the House if the government will make a protest to the government of France against the resumption of nuclear testing.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Mr. Speaker, at the recent NPT conference in Geneva, the position of the Canadian government was made known on all forms of nuclear testing. At present, no protest along the lines suggested has been made directly to the government of France.


James McPhail Gillies: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Is it the position of the government of Canada that the resumption of nuclear testing does not deserve a protest on its part?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Mr. Speaker, the position of the government of Canada on this question has been made clear frequently, and just recently at the conference in Geneva. That is the position. Its importance is very great indeed.



VETERANS AFFAIRS


Mr. Jack Marshall (Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Veterans Affairs. Following the unanimous recommendation of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs to the effect that minister should consider adding rehabilitation projects to the recently announced veterans housing program, has the minister reached any decision in consultation with his counterparts and, if so, what is that decision?


Hon. Daniel J. MacDonald (Minister of Veterans Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, the veterans housing program was announced just a short while ago. We feel it will be beneficial to community groups, which have made representations, and to individual veterans. As I told the committee, I will be looking into the requests hon. members presented to the Veterans Affairs Committee and I will do that as soon as possible.


Jack Marshall: Since many veterans will be denied the advantage of maintaining or upgrading their homes under the rehabilitation clause of the National Housing Act because they live outside the areas the provinces will designate, would the minister think seriously about this matter so that thousands of veterans living on fixed incomes who cannot afford to bring their homes up to a
Oral Questions
reasonable standard may obtain the benefit of this provision?


Daniel Joseph MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, the answer is, yes. We shall certainly give them every consideration.



TRANSPORT


Mr. Dan McKenzie (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. In the light of constant labour problems at the Port of Montreal, will the minister take the necessary measures to direct increasing grain shipments to the Port of Churchill, which is not strike-prone, so that grain shipments will not be constantly help up?


Hon. Jean Marchand (Minister of Transport):: believe the ship owners decide which ports to use.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Bill Clarke (Vancouver Quadra):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. In view of the fact that 15,000 Canadians showed their support for the Green Peace Foundation by attending the send-off last month in my constituency of the latest Green Peace ship, this one protesting the near extinction of whales, and in view of the fact that Canada says it has done everything in its power domestically to preserve the whale population, may I ask what action on a world community basis the government plans to take to stop whaling by other countries in order that the whale population may have a chance to regenerate?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: I take note of the hon. members's question and I wish to inform him that Canada has been associating itself with international efforts to protect all species of whales. We have undertaken internationally to pursue this course along the lines of the representation made by the hon. member.



EXPORT DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION


Mr. Peter Bawden (Calgary South):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. On May 8, the hon. gentleman stated in this House that the board of directors of the Export Development Corporation would be meeting the following week to consider its practices relating the EDC involve-

June 2, 1975
Oral Questions
ment with export companies which have agreed to boycott Israel. Will the minister tell us whether as a result of this meeting any firm policy was agreed upon and has he now issued a directive in writing covering this important matter?


Alastair William Gillespie: The board did review its policies and confirmed that it will not negotiate any contract which involved direct lending with respect to agreements containing an Arab boycott clause; it would not insure any investment involving an Arab boycott clause and with respect to insurance policies it would not insure a boycott clause within such a policy. This position has been made known to me and I am considering it together with other questions at the present time.


Peter Colwell Bawden: Can the minister give the House a complete assurance that he will be issuing directives in writing to his department and to the EDC so that there may be no question about the policies being followed?


Alastair William Gillespie: I think the government as a whole will be considering this matter in the very near future. The view of the government will be communicated, of course, to all departments and to the Crown corporation.



CONSUMER AFFAIRS


Mr. G. H. Whittaker (Okanagan Boundary):: Mr. Speaker, may I address a question to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs? It arises from the answer given by the hon. gentleman in reply to a question by the hon. member for Okanagan-Kootenay with regard to wide-mouth Mason jar lids. I quote: "I may remind the hon. member that one of the reasons for such a shortage was a strike in the company manufacturing these products in British Columbia." In view of the fact that there are no manufacturers of wide-mouth Mason jar lids in British Columbia, I ask the minister what he is doing about this shortage which is just as acute now as it was last year. When does the government intend to take this problem seriously?


Hon. Andre Ouellet (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the hon. member that he is quite new in this record because discussions have been going on for months between the officials of my department, Canadian manufacturers and American manufacturers in order to encourage them to increase their production to meet demand, particularly in British Columbia. Officials of my department met manufacturers of British Columbia just for this reason. We are constantly in contact with provincial authorities to ensure that, as far as possible, there are enough products to meet demand.



AGRICULTURE


Mr. Gordon Ritchie (Dauphin):: A question for the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Speaker. What progress has the government been making in its attempts to have United States quotas on beef lifted? What progress has been made in working out a solution satisfactory to both sides to end this dispute?


Eugene Whelan: I think some progress has been made, but the discussions have not yet been completed.



NATIONAL ENERGY BOARD


Mr. Cyril Symes (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources I have a question for the Prime Minister; it relates to the Mackenzie Valley pipeline application by Canadian Arctic Gas and by Foothills. Can the right hon. gentleman assure the House that participation in any public hearings or pre-hearings held by the National Energy Board will be open to groups which oppose the construction of the pipeline as well as to representatives of the pipeline companies?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Might I ask the parliamentary secretary to the minister to answer that question?


Mr. Maurice Foster (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, the public announcement of these hearings to be held by the Board this fall made it clear that all intervenors can make presentations.



MACKENZIE VALLEY PIPELINE HEARINGS-POSSIBILITY JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WILL PRESENT BRIEF ON PUBLIC INTEREST

Reginald Cyril Symes: Perhaps I should direct this question to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister tell us which government departments intend to intervene in the hearings and in particular can he confirm reports that the Department of Justice will be setting out for the benefit of the NEB the Canadian public interest as it is affected by the pipeline proposals?


Maurice Brydon Foster: I will take notice of the question and get the answer for the hon. member.
June 2, 1975



THE CANADIAN ECONOMY

[Stage Direction]
Privilege-Mr. Diefenbaker

Robert Lorne Stanfield: A question for the Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether anyone has brought to his attention the fact that while he was away, the Minister of Labour, speaking in the House last week, referred to "the prevailing myth that wage settlements are running at double the average rise in wages in the United States" and stated they were eroding our competitive advantage over the Americans. Since this directly contradicts what the Prime Minister said at the first ministers' conference in April and is directly contrary to what the Minister of Finance has been saying I wonder if the right hon. gentleman has been able to restore a consensus with regard to this matter in his government since his return.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I have not been called upon to restore a consensus. I was under the impression, and I am sure it is a correct one, that both ministers are following the same policy. I will read the speech to which the Leader of the Opposition has referred and if there is anything I can add I will be pleased to do so.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I have notice of some questions of privilege to deal with. I have notice, first, of what ought to be a brief question of privilege by the hon. member for Northwest Territories (Mr. Firth.)


Mr. Wally Firth (Northwest Territories):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of privilege concerning my question to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mr. Ouellet) last Friday, as reported in Hansard at page 6276.
During the preamble to my second question I mentioned that certain models of television sets had been banned by the department because they were hazardous. Specifically, I mentioned the brand name Sony. Upon review of the matter I found that I was in error and that Sony products were not placed in the hazardous category. I would like at this time to apologize to the makers of Sony for suggesting they were marketing inferior products, and to the House for placing misleading information on the record.
There was a brand of television set available in northern stores long after it had been banned by the department. However, I will not confuse the issue further by mentioning the name.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: If the Prime Minister thinks that both ministers are going in the same direction it is not much wonder the country is in trouble.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Is he prepared to state publicly in the House this afternoon his support for the position being taken by the Minister of Finance that current wage settlements threaten our competitive advantage over the Americans? Is the Prime Minister prepared to give his support to the position taken by the Minister of Finance or does he prefer to leave him dangling on a string?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I have said the same thing myself, so certainly I support the Minister of Finance. I am sure the Minister of Labour also supports him.


Some hon. Members:: Oh!


An hon. Member:: Why don't you read the speech?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: If there are some doubts over there, why not ask the minister concerned-I am sure he supports the Minister of Finance. There may be some disagreement regarding statistics and that often happens, but the policy of the government on financial matters is as stated by the Minister of Finance.


MR. DIEFENBAKER-SPEECH OF PRIME MINISTER ON PRIVY COUNCIL ESTIMATES
Mr. Speaker:: I have notice of two other questions of privilege. On May 27 the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker) indicated, by way of certain preliminary remarks, his intention to raise a question of privilege and then to conclude his remarks and put whatever motion might be attached thereto at the first opportunity upon which the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) was in the House. In addition, I have received further notice from the right hon. member for Prince Albert indicating his intention to do this today.
I have also received notice of a question of privilege from the right hon. Prime Minister concerning those remarks by the right hon. member for Prince Albert. I do not anticipate an easy time sorting out the results of the remarks. Indeed, my difficulty is beginning already in regard to whom I should call on first. However, since the right hon. member for Prince Albert is in the course of his remarks and has indicated that he will continue and conclude them to the point of putting a motion, I think for the sake of neatness, although it is an exception not to call upon the Prime Minister, I should call upon the right hon. member for Prince Albert. As I say, his remarks were commenced at an earlier date and it is appropriate to conclude them and to move whatever motion the right hon. member might want on the record. Then, in turn, I will recognize the Prime Minister. However, I am open to discussion about the order of priority.


George Harris Hees: Seconds out of the ring. Hold on to your hats!

June 2, 1975
Privilege-Mr. Diefenbaker


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I would not want to deprive the House, nor myself, of the privilege of hearing from the right hon. gentleman, but I might make his remarks simpler if I say this. I am, of course, prepared to cede to him right away, but it might make some of his remarks shorter and simpler if I concede at the outset that I did make one mistake of fact. On the question of fish, there is no doubt that the right hon. gentleman was right and I was wrong, but that is as far as I am prepared to go. I do regret that I misled the House in regard to that erroneous statement, and I withdraw it without equivocation. As for the rest, I will gladly cede the floor to the right hon. member.


Mr. Speaker:: That clears up the question of the stocking of Harrington Lake, I presume, so far as it pertains to a potential question of privilege. However, it seems to me to leave in the balance a number of other questions that were raised by the right hon. member for Prince Albert. I wonder whether the right hon. member for Prince Albert would want to continue and to conclude his remarks now and put whatever motion he has in mind, following which I propose to recognize the right hon. Prime Minister either in reply to those remarks, or alternatively-or perhaps in addition-allow him to put whatever question of privilege the right hon. Prime Minister wishes to put before the House.


Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prince Albert):: Mr. Speaker, it is never too late to admit that one was wrong. I accept wholeheartedly the withdrawal of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and the suggestion concerning fish.


Mr. Nowlan:: He was fishing.


John George Diefenbaker: I should like to refer, however, to words that he used in the House concerning the fish. As recorded at page 6010 of Hansard, the Prime Minister said:
The right hon. gentleman for Prince Albert liked fishing and had Harrington Lake stocked at public expense with fish for his enjoyment.
Then he went on to say:
That was a shameful incident.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Read the interjection there.


John George Diefenbaker: In the dictionary "shameful" means, in effect, disgraceful; subject to shame on the part of the person who committed the wrong; unworthy of consideration in any organization that has regard to truth and honour.
In face of that, I should have liked to hear a withdrawal of the word "shameful", which after all is the essence. Webster's dictionary makes its meaning clear: "conduct that brings to shame; disgraceful, scandalous conduct; injurious conduct that dishonours and offends decency; ignominious conduct". This was the word used by the Prime Minister to describe what he now admits had no basis in fact, and which certainly could not have justified use of that expression.


Some hon. Members:: Shameful!


John George Diefenbaker: I go on from there, Mr. Speaker. Loose statements are sometimes made in this House in the

course of debate and under provocation. Spontaneity ameliorates, if not excuses, a retort that is not fact if it is provoked in debate. But such was not the case with the speech delivered by the Prime Minister on the twenty-second day of this month: it was planned, programmed and premeditated. I am told that he read from a script which he had entirely before him.
He stated during the course of his speech that he has a staff that is honourable, responsible and objective. I know many of the members of that staff and I entirely concur with the Prime Minister's view. It is of interest that since the speech of the Prime Minister the press got in touch with the high officials of his office, or his two offices, and everyone with one accord has said, "I had nothing to do with it; it was somebody else". When the Prime Minister is replying, I wonder whether he would advise who was the inspiration for the various statements that he made which apparently were designed to be a smokescreen.
Certain arrangements had been made between the opposition and the government. Under normal circumstances, on that afternoon the opposition would have led off but arrangements were made whereby, because the Prime Minister was going to leave, he should speak first.


Some hon. Members:: That is not so.


John George Diefenbaker: If some of the interrupters over there continue, Mr. Speaker, I will have to tell them what the Prime Minister thinks of them. He said of many of the Liberal members that they were bums and nobodies.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: He was right.


John George Diefenbaker: I would not want those hon. gentlemen opposite to prove he was right in that regard. I am informed that the arrangement was made and there was no declaration that the Prime Minister should be restricted to 15 minutes. That is true because he had longer than that; but do not let anybody tell me that what he did was not done with the intent to deprive members of the opposition of the opportunity of questioning him-speaking for an hour and a half, on and on he went.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I do not like to interrupt the right hon. gentleman but, with respect, I would suggest his question of privilege pertains to the Prime Minister's remarks about him specifically and not so much about the Prime Minister's use of time, and I think the hon. member should confine himself to the earlier question.


John George Diefenbaker: When the Prime Minister referred to a member of the opposition as fraudulent, apparently the person who occupied your position did not think that was unparliamentary. The Prime Minister made that statement with that disregard he has shown for parliament all through the years. I had expected that we were past the days when those in the opposition should be spoken of in that way. I had thought that we were past the days when the Prime Minister of Canada would speak to the Leader
June 2, 1975

of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield), who asked a question, by saying, "What is your God damned question anyway?" That is recorded in Hansard, unchanged and unexpurgated. I had expected that we were past the situation in which opposition members were treated in that way.


Some hon. Members:: Order, order!


John George Diefenbaker: The matter before you is one that concerns the integrity of parliament and the House of Commons. It is one that cannot be justified. I had hoped the Prime Minister would have followed the course he did six years ago when one morning he made a statement that there was no foundation at all for a question I asked concerning a letter, and that afternoon he rose and apologized and said he wished he had taken the admonition of the right hon. member for Prince Albert before denying the existence of the letter. He apologized to the House of Commons and to me. Has he forgotten that?
That would indicate exactly the point I am making. The Prime Minister, by tilting his head just now, has indicated that he has forgotten that, and that is the point I make. He has forgotten so many of the things that constitute parliament and for which parliament stands, and I am not at all surprised that he has forgotten the incident in question.
Parliament demands, on the part of all of us, the assurance that when a statement is made as a fact, it shall be true, unchangeable, and the consequences to follow that statement are the basis of all parliamentary argument. That is the essence of parliament. We do not hold the views of Machiavelli. He did not understand our system because, after all, the British parliamentary system was just being built in those days. He said:
And a prince will never lack good excuses to colour his bad faith. One could give innumerable modern instances of this, showing how many pacts and promises have been made null and void by the bad faith of princes: those who have known best how to imitate the fox have come off best. But one must know how to colour one's actions and to be a great liar and deceiver. Men are so simple, and so much creatures of circumstance, that the deceiver will always find someone ready to be deceived.
That is not the parliamentary system. That is the idea of a dictatorship in which the dictator speaks. Throughout the years I have formed an admiration for the Prime Minister in many respects but I have never included veracity. I have had an admiration for his adroitness and his parliamentary-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John George Diefenbaker: I would like some of those whom the Prime Minister calls non-entities to let us know who they are so they will appear in Hansard.


An hon. Member:: Stand up, Joe.


Joseph-Phillippe Guay: I am one of them.


An hon. Member:: That's the first one.


Joseph-Phillippe Guay: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. I should like to repeat what I said, for the benefit of the right hon. gentleman. I said, and I quote, "I can take a joke", and that is the end of the quotation.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!
Privilege-Mr. Diefenbaker


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman proves the truth of his own statement whenever he speaks.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Joseph-Phillippe Guay: This is a real farce.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, I have restricted my statements in regard to the hon. member for St. Boniface (Mr. Guay) because of the high esteem in which I have always held him.


Joseph-Phillippe Guay: Thank you.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John George Diefenbaker: Returning once again to the circumstances under which these statements were made by the Prime Minister, let me say they were made with utter disregard for the rights of parliament. That speech was intended to be delivered so that no one could answer it. When it was suggested that the opposition should speak first, the Leader of the Opposition, with his characteristic desire to live true to the parliamentary forum, took the stand, which was represented by a member of the opposition who discussed the matter with the House leader, that the Prime Minister should have the first opportunity.
I am not going over the facts, as I dealt with those at length on May 22. I do not know who misled the Prime Minister, but when I have regard for the facts, he seemed so anxious not to have Mr. Pitfield called before the committee or give evidence that I can only conclude that those two men sat down together and asked, "What can we say? What stories can we tell? How can we fill the hour and a half in order to prevent the opposition from speaking?" Under no circumstances would I have Mr. Pitfield give evidence concerning his position as Clerk of the Privy Council.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John George Diefenbaker: For once we are in agreement. What I do object to is that this person is almost in the position of a Damon and Pythias relationship with the Prime Minister. His own staff did not produce this conglomeration of half-truths; it required somebody other than his staff to have brought forth this monstrosity.
I have already dealt with these various items. I shall not repeat what I said. To me they represent an endeavour to destroy a member of this House in respect of his credibility by spreading around, through the mouth of the Prime Minister, allegations that are not true. That is not parliament. The example of that is in the Profumo case. Profumo told parliament he had never been involved with the woman in question. That was not true. It was not because of his extramural activities that he was removed from office. I would have thought the Prime Minister would have kept in mind the case of Profumo and would have realized that to make statements that have no basis or inference in fact constitutes a degradation of the House of Commons and therefore represent a breach of privilege.
There are many works on this subject. Your Honour has them and I shall not quote the various items. I would

Privilege-Mr. Diefenbaker
refer, however, to Wilding and Laundy's "An Encyclopaedia of Parliament," where at page 597 it states that the rules-
-are concerned only with the protection of the reputation, the character and the good name of the House itself. It is in that respect only and for that limited purpose that they are concerned with imputations against the conduct of individual members.
That, I believe, is the general principle. There is no case in which a libellous statement made against a member of this House or of the British House of Commons has been treated other than as one of privilege, with the opportunity being given for the matter to be fully looked into by a committee of the House of Commons.
These were not loose statements made in the course of debate when one is agitated by the excitement of the debate; nor were they made in consequence of interruption and the like. Those statements were made when a man representing Her Majesty the Queen as First Minister stood up in the House of Commons and made such statements as the Prime Minister did. He is no greater and has no more authority and no more rights than any other member in this House of Commons. That is the essential fact. This is something he apparently has not learned.
Sir, at page 98 of Beauchesne's fourth edition these few words epitomize the conclusions arrived at:
-to constitute a breach of privilege they must concern the character or conduct of members-
It goes on to say, in their various capacities. What did the Prime Minister say? I do not want to requote what I have already placed before the House. The statements he made in connection with Harrington Lake have been construed by him as being true. He described it as the greatest land grab in history. A land grab does not mean the taking over of land by way of rental or otherwise. He referred to 4,800 acres. When he made that statement it was not true, because the only portion that was taken over was some 14 acres.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: Only!


John George Diefenbaker: These hon. gentlemen will qualify ultimately for the view of the Prime Minister if I have to identify them.
That is the answer given by the National Capital Commission. When the prime minister took over, he took over everything out there. That is the situation which prevails. He left the impression, by the words he used, that I had in fact committed a wrong, that I had engaged in a land grab.
I do not have to deal with the other matter, the question of the so-called bomb-shelter. That was supposed to offset, I presume, the wasteful expenditures, the wanton expenditures of the government in purchasing two cars-dreadnoughts, I call them. What did the Prime Minister do? I have the figures from the department concerning the cost of the bomb-shelter, but lately I have found that the Prime Minister has lowered the roof by a couple of feet. I do not know what the purpose was.


An hon. Member:: For a wine cellar.


John George Diefenbaker: I would remind the Prime Minister of another circumstance which causes me more concern than anything mentioned heretofore. He referred to the most secret place in Canada. It is on the classified list. It has never been removed from that list during the term of three prime ministers. Two and a half years ago the security committee was asked to remove it from the list of things that cannot be given publicity, but this was not done.
Nothing is more serious than for a prime minister or anyone else, or the Privy Council to reveal a situation concerning a highly secret defence installation, as he did the other day. I will not refer to where it is. I will not join with the Prime Minister in identifying something in respect of which he committed an offence against the security of our country. He referred to a matter that has never been freed from its secrecy. He did this the other day in order to show how wasteful the expenditures on my part were in the few hundreds of dollars expended by the Department of Public Works to provide a shelter which was not asked for under any circumstances.
He tried, so far as the shelter is concerned, to compare it with the wanton expenditure around Sussex Street at the Prime Minister's home never before equalled in history. He compared an expenditure of a few hundred dollars with his pool.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: That was a gift.


John George Diefenbaker: When he speaks, I will be glad to hear from him. Who were the philanthropists who made possible that pool and were so desirous of helping the country that they first got in touch with the Department of National Revenue to find out whether or not they could deduct whatever the expenditure was in the determination of their income tax? That would be something for him to reveal today. Why does he hide it?
I mentioned all the cases the other day. I pointed out that they do constitute an interference in the rights and privileges of members of the House. A while ago the Prime Minister indicated to me that he did not recall the time when he apologized because, after all, he does not have a very good memory. When you can forget your age, you can forget almost anything.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John George Diefenbaker: Here is the item. On November 28, 1969, the right hon. Prime Minister said:
Mr. Speaker, may I rise on a question of privilege. In reply to questions asked of me this morning by the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker), asking if I had received a letter from Mr. Saulnier with respect to the activities of the Company of Young Canadians, I replied in the negative. Notwithstanding the admonition of the right hon. gentleman that memories can be faulty, I nevertheless insisted that I knew of no such letter. I added, however, that "if there were such a letter, I would not hide it". Mr. Speaker, I should have heeded the wise counsel of the right hon. gentleman. On examination of my files I find that Mr. Saulnier did indeed write to me on March 17 of this year on this subject. I wish to apologize through you, Mr. Speaker, to the House and to the right hon. member for my erroneous reply. I have taken this earliest opportunity of correcting the record.
All I say to the Prime Minister now is this: Live up to what you did on November 28, 1969, and apologize to the House for a speech which as long as you live will consti-
June 2, 1975

tute for you something that did not destroy my reputation. The right hon. member will not be able to say the same thing for himself.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John George Diefenbaker: I therefore move, seconded by the Leader of the Opposition:
That the slanderous and libellous allegations made by the Prime Minister in a speech made in the committee of the whole House on Thursday, May 22, 1975, against the right hon. member for Prince Albert, particularly the false statements regarding expenditure of public funds alleged to have been made while the said member was the Prime Minister of Canada, be referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections, and that the said committee be authorized to summon the right hon. Prime Minister as a witness.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I have the motion of the right hon. member for Prince Albert. Of course, I will want to consider the matter very carefully and take it into account in coming to a decision. The Prime Minister has already stated his intention to the Chair to raise a question of privilege, or alternatively the floor is open to him for his remarks in reply to the comments of the right hon. member for Prince Albert.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the point of privilege I had to raise was raised in a few seconds at the outset and I will not speak any more on my question of privilege. But if you will allow me, I will respond to the one brought up by the right hon. gentleman, particularly because he has followed it with a motion which I believe you, sir, will have to judge and you will have to decide whether there is a prima facie question of privilege.
I will not refer in any detail to the rules, but I will point out that in my speech of May 22 I did make one mistake of fact which I have corrected today. I have withdrawn the error contained in that statement. Beyond that, I would merely want to say that I am prepared to live by the rest of my statement. Undoubtedly there was some rhetoric in some of the expressions I used. I would say that this is a sin that I share with the right hon. gentleman opposite.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: But in regard to the case that I was putting before the House-in response, I emphasize, to a statement the right hon. gentleman made on April 30-the facts and the case I put before the House I am prepared, if you should so decide, to argue in front of whatever committee the House decides would want to hear me on this matter.
However, there are a few errors of fact the right hon. gentleman made this afternoon which I would like to set right so that we can go to the committee, if that is necessary, with a clear record. I will not refer to the errors of fact he made in his April 30 speech. There was certainly at least one error of fact, and perhaps a half-truth. Nor will I refer to the errors he made in his speech on May 27 when I was away. There were at least two errors and, I would say, two half-truths. I just mention them now so as to reserve my right to put these errors on the record if the House decides that it wants to pursue this matter in any greater detail.
Privilege-Mr. Diefenbaker
In my speech I emphasized on several occasions that I found the whole matter rather petty, that I was attempting to respond to the accusations that had been made by the right hon. gentleman and other people at a level which I did not think is very germane to the conduct of the country. But, once again, if a debate is to ensue on that, I want to reserve my position perhaps to enumerate a few mistakes that the right hon. gentleman has made even this afternoon.
However, before doing so, I understand that the right hon. gentleman is alleging more than an error in fact. He is alleging that there is a question of privilege. I do not know in what way his privilege as a member of the House has been affected, except perhaps, as he alleged, in the word "shameful". If you, sir, judge that that word is non-parliamentary, I will tell you in advance that I will withdraw that statement. But I hasten to add that you will have a lot of work, because I have heard the word "shameful" at least 100 times-and that is a guess-shouted across the House or contained in speeches on many occasions. I would cite just one occasion: it is in the very text that the right hon. member just read. He said he skipped a line when he read it.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John George Diefenbaker: That is another of those statements that is not true.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: He read from page 6010 of Hansard where I had said the right hon. gentleman had Harrington Lake stocked at public expense with fish for his enjoyment. Then he went on to quote me as saying that that was a shameful incident. Before I said that, some hon. member shouted "Shame!". I am quite certain, although I could not prove it, that the word "shame" came from the other side at that point and was obviously directed at the fact that I was making such a petty point. That is why I went on to say:
That was a shameful incident. It is, I repeat, a petty point; unfortunately it was brought out in the speech of the right hon. member for Prince Albert.
That is the only case that I would see for a question of privilege. The rest is made up of exaggerations, statements with some rhetorical emphasis, in his speeches as well as in mine. But on the basic case, I do not think it would be in the best of taste to repeat it here-


An hon. Member:: Fuddle-duddle.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: -but I will gladly do so if hon. members are interested. I would prefer to just enumerate a few of the mistakes he has made this afternoon. He said my statements were unprovoked. I just say that they were in answer not only to his own speech made on April, 30, to which I addressed myself directly, but to constant interruptions from the other side. So that is obviously getting off to a false start. He then indicated, and I noted his words, that I read entirely from a script before me. This is not true.


An hon. Member:: Pretty close.


John George Diefenbaker: Is this a spontaneous falsehood?

June 2, 1975
Privilege-Mr. Diefenbaker


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The right hon. gentleman asks, "Is this a spontaneous falsehood?" He is admitting he is making a mistake about my reading.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: If he wants to be gracious and say that he made a mistake in fact, then I will sit down now. The hon. member is shaking his head.


John George Diefenbaker: There was no mistake.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: It is an erroneous statement to say that I read entirely from a script. It is true that in the last minutes of my speech I did read from a script, and hon. members opposite will remember that I galloped through it; but the whole of the first part was not read at all. There were a few notes I had gathered, not sentences. The right hon. member wanted to attack Mr. Pitfield, and I would say in a most disgraceful way for a former prime minister.


Some hon. Members:: Shame!
Mr.Trudeau: The former prime minister talked about the rights of parliament. He should have learned that civil servants have rights too, and that they should not be attacked.


John George Diefenbaker: I didn't. I simply said that he was your Damon or your Pythias.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The right hon. gentleman said that Mr. Pitfield had obviously inspired me to say these things. Nothing could be further from the fact. The things I had to say about the right hon. gentleman I thought up myself, and I still believe them.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I say that because of the one error I did make. I want to made clear that it was my own, that I am responsible for it and that no one on my staff or anywhere in the government inspired me to make that mistake. The right hon. gentleman went on to say that I had broken an arrangement, presumably by speaking first-


John George Diefenbaker: That statement was never made by me.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: -or by speaking too long.


John George Diefenbaker: You were allowed to speak first, out of courtesy because the Leader of the Opposition felt that as Prime Minister you should go first.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The right hon. gentleman says that statement was never made by him. Let me read, Mr. Speaker-


Joseph-Phillippe Guay: He doesn't remember.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: -from Hansard of May 27, page 6152:


John George Diefenbaker: On Thursday last it was understood between the hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield) and the government, in respect of the debate that was to take place, that 15 minutes would be allotted. The Prime Minister asked to go first.


Mr. Sharp:: That is not true.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Not only is it not true, but a few minutes ago he said that he had never even made the statement I just read.


Mr. Goyer:: Apologize.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The right hon. gentleman chides me because I do not remember things that happened 55 or 56 years ago, but he cannot remember what happened last week.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John George Diefenbaker: I do not forget my age, though.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: It is entirely wrong, therefore, to say that an arrangement was broken by me, as he said. There was no arrangement. The truth is that I, through the House leader, made it clear to the opposition that I preferred not to speak first because I wanted to know what they were going to attack me on or question me about. That is why at the outset of my speech I made it clear to the House that since they wanted me to speak first, since they were not taking that privilege, and since I did not know what they were going to ask, that is the reason I dealt with certain serious matters and some which were not serious and of a petty nature which were constantly brought up by hon. members opposite.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: But where the matter becomes serious is, after alleging that I broke an arrangement, the right hon. gentleman said that it was with the intent of preventing the opposition from either speaking or taking time. I believe that in parliamentary language this is called imputing motives, and I raise my own question of privilege at this time. I would ask the right hon. gentleman to withdraw that statement in which he imputed to me the motive of trying to prevent the opposition from speaking.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: It is as a result of innumerable interruptions and points of order such as we saw when I was speaking that I did speak a great deal, and it is because I had no text in front of me that I was fairly lengthy in my speech and decided to stay on another 35 minutes beyond the time I said I would leave. I did not hear one single question during that time.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: So, Mr. Speaker, I register with you this question of privilege and I ask the right hon. gentleman to withdraw this imputation of motives against me.
To go on, the right hon. gentleman then said that I said an hon. member was fraudulent. I did not say that. I said that an hon. gentleman had made fraudulent use of statistics and I hoped that it was not intentional. Even when he could have read last week's Hansard and even on a question of fact the right hon. gentleman cannot get the facts right, yet he complains that I made one mistake.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
June 2, 1975


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: With regard to Machiavelli, I am pleased that I at least forced the right hon. gentleman to read some of the classics. I think it would do him good if he read a bit more of Machiavelli and a bit less of Baron Munchausen.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The remainder has to do with Harrington Lake and the bomb-shelter. I might say something about lowering the roof. This is the first I have heard of that. I do not know where he obtained this information. I am quite sure it is erroneous too, but I will check into whether the roof of the bomb-shelter was lowered. That sounds like another pure invention; but he may have heard of it, much as I heard about the fish, from people who talk too much. The advantage of making an accusation is that we are permitted to set the record straight. I certainly understand now why the right hon. gentleman was such a poor fisherman, when he did not have the number of fish I thought he had in the lake.
On the question of Carp, there may be another privilege involved; I am not sure. All I can say is that all I know about Carp-and I am not talking about fish; I am talking about the underground complex, or whatever it is-is what I read in Weekend magazine several months or years ago.


John George Diefenbaker: That is where you get your information, is it?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The right hon. gentleman is chiding me for having obtained my information there, yet a moment ago he was saying that I was breaching security for saying something which was an official secret.


An hon. Member:: Shameful!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I repeat that I will stand by whatever decision you make. I do not mind going before a committee if it is necessary to carry this on. I am a little disappointed because I had been told that the right hon. gentleman had made a very forceful intervention last week and that he was pretty entertaining. I regret that I did not have the benefit of that. I must say that I am prepared to consider this whole matter as a humorous interlude. If the right hon. gentleman wants to make more of it, sir, I am in your hands.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I might indicate that, as is my usual practice, I would reserve judgment on the question of privilege. I see the hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield) and the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) both seeking the floor. The floor is, of course, open for discussion of the question of privilege, and I would recognize them and other hon. members who want to participate.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I should like to make this very brief intervention. Some of the comments made by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) this afternoon would provoke a more restrained person than myself to reply. I would simply say, with regard to the understanding, that it was clearly
Privilege-Mr. Diefenbaker
understood that our position was that if the Prime Minister wished to go first, he was entitled to do so.


Mitchell William Sharp: Not his wish, no; that is not true.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: There was no request, Mr. Speaker, that the Prime Minister should go first. As to the matter of going on for an hour and 20 minutes, I do not rise to impute motives. I do not think there is any need for anybody who was present to impute any motives at all. The fact that the Prime Minister went on for an hour and 20 minutes in those circumstances speaks for itself, I think.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Robert Lorne Stanfield: I wish to say one or two things about the question of privilege raised by the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker). The Prime Minister seemed to approach this question this afternoon as if it were a question of mistaken fact. He seemed to think that he had in fact terminated the whole question by admitting that he had made a mistake of fact. I was here in the House, Mr. Speaker; I heard the Prime Minister; I have read Hansard since then, and I rise to support the motion. It seems to me very clear, and I submit this to you, that the Prime Minister was reflecting upon the conduct of the right hon. member for Prince Albert when he was prime minister; that the Prime Minister was not only inferring, but stating, that the former prime minister, the right hon. member for Prince Albert, had taken advantage of his office for his own personal benefit.


An hon. Member:: Right on.


John George Diefenbaker: That is what he meant.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: That, Mr. Speaker, is the essence of the first two paragraphs or so on page 6010 when the Prime Minister discussed the land grab. He said the former prime minister, the right hon. member for Prince Albert, "was adding thousands of acres of land for his private enjoyment".


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: We will take it in committee if you want.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: The Prime Minister says we will take it to committee. The Prime Minister never withdrew that, Mr. Speaker. I am not sure what he meant this afternoon when he said that nobody else thought those things up for him and he thought them up himself.
Quite apart from that, I suggest it is very clear to anybody who heard the Prime Minister, or to anybody who reads Hansard, that this is not a question that can be straightened out simply by the Prime Minister rising in his place and admitting he made a mistake in fact, because the point the Prime Minister was trying to make was that by adding thousands of acres for his own private enjoyment and taking part in the biggest land grab-I think he said in Canadian history as far as a private citizen of Canada is concerned-the Prime Minister of Canada was accusing the right hon. member for Prince Albert of having taken advantage of the office for his own private gain and his own private purposes.

June 2, 1975
Privilege-Mr. Diefenbaker
I think that is clearly a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker. If the statement were made against me, I would expect that the Prime Minister would stand in his place and apologize if there were any such inference. But he cannot, with all due respect, Mr. Speaker, ask us and the people of Canada to forget about this whole thing by rising and saying this afternoon that he just made a simple mistake of fact on one matter.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, like the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield), I believe this matter can be dealt with briefly. I also believe that the issue can be narrowed and made quite clear.
The first point I should like to make is that there does seem to be one area of common ground between the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker). The right hon. member for Prince Albert has proposed a motion which would refer this matter to one of the standing committees. The Prime Minister says that he would be quite happy to see it go to a standing committee and to appear before it. I see Your Honour shaking your head; I think I know what that means. The fact that these two gentlemen agree to do that does not necessarily make it a question of privilege in parliamentary terms, but at least I think it simplifies the problem Your Honour has to face.
Let me move on and say that I agree with the Leader of the Opposition that what is before us is not just a dispute over facts. If that is all it is, Your Honour could say that is not a question of privilege; that goes on here every day, every hour-disputes over facts. What, it seems to me, is at stake is whether the Prime Minister, in what he said, damaged or sought to damage the reputation of the right hon. member for Prince Albert.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Stanley Howard Knowles: My hon. friends over there can get into this debate if they like, but I suggest they do so by taking the floor. I draw Your Honour's attention to citation 108(3) on page 98 of Beau-chesne's fourth edition, which reads:
Libels on members have also been constantly punished: but to constitute a breach of privilege they must concern the character or conduct of members in that capacity, and the libel must be based on matters arising in the actual transaction of the business of the House.
I thought I had better look into the Oxford English dictionary that is on the table for a definition of "libel". It is very clear; it is "a statement damaging to a person's reputation". I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that the statement which the Leader of the Opposition has just quoted and which I should like to quote again is, if it is true, damaging to the reputation of the right hon. member for Prince Albert. The statement is in the paragraph near the top of the second column on page 6010 of Hansard for Thursday, May 22. It is in the paragraph in which the Prime Minister was talking about the alleged land grab at Harrington Lake, and he used these key words:
He was adding thousands of acres of land for his private enjoyment.
I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that this is not just a dispute over facts; this is an allegation that the right hon. member for Prince Albert, when he was prime minister, used his

position as prime minister to do something for his private enjoyment, and of course if this had been done it was at considerable public expense.
The Prime Minister today has withdrawn the charges about the stocking of Harrington Lake with fish and he has withdrawn the use of the word "shameful", but the sentence which he uttered after he had made both the charges is still there, for he said:
-the facts are as I have stated them, Mr. Chairman.
In other words, the Prime Minister stands by his assertion that the right hon. member for Prince Albert did add thousands of acres of land to the property at Harrington Lake and that he did this for his private enjoyment. I say again, it is not a dispute over facts; that would not constitute a question of privilege in the parliamentary sense. But a statement made by the Prime Minister of Canada that a former prime minister used his position to add to his private enjoyment at public expense has the effect-at least it would have the effect, if it were true-of damaging the character of the right hon. member for Prince Albert.
It is for this reason that I believe the matter should go before a committee, so that the Prime Minister and the right hon. member for Prince Albert can appear before that committee and get to the bottom of the facts, but more important, so that they can get to a position where the reputation of the right hon. member for Prince Albert is either left the way it is on the record, or cleared.
As I say, sir, I take very strongly the position that in essence we are not dealing with an argument over facts. We do that all the time and we frequently correct ourselves and correct each other. But in this instance we are dealing with a statement which, in the terms of the citation I read, is damaging to the character of a member of this House. I submit that that has the elements of a question of privilege. I hope, when you have considered the entire matter, that you will come to the position of putting the question to the House so that the matter can be voted on and sent to the appropriate standing committee.


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, may I set the record straight about the arrangements which were made for the debate. As I recall my conversation with the House leader of the official opposition, I said that we were facing a situation which was almost without precedent, as it had been a long time since a prime minister had been called before the committee of the whole on his estimates, and we had to agree upon a procedure. I said the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) would prefer to speak second, but, of course, he would be prepared to speak first if that was agreed upon. After some consultations, the House leader of the official opposition came back and said, "We think the Prime Minister should speak first. He is the Prime Minister." So this was the arrangement as I understood it. These comments are irrelevant to the question of privilege but are made to set the record straight.
Speaking on the question of privilege, I suggest that one has to look at the context in which the Prime Minister made his speech. He was under attack. It had been sug-
June 2, 1975

gested that the Prime Mihister had spent money for his private enjoyment as Prime Minister of Canada. This was the charge which had been made by the other side. It had been suggested, for example, that repairs to the Prime Minister's house were made for his private enjoyment as Prime Minister. Those were the kinds of statements which were made across the floor of the House. Surely, in these circumstances, the Prime Minister should be given the privilege of pointing out that when the right hon. gentleman from Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker) was prime minister, improvements were made which resulted in his private enjoyment while he occupied the position of prime minister.


John George Diefenbaker: That is not what he said.


Mitchell William Sharp: Therefore, I think this is a spurious point and I am surprised at the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) for supporting it.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, will the minister permit a question? Does it not make a difference as to whether the charges are true or-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Is the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre rising on a point of order?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I want to put a question to the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Sharp) who expressed amazement at the stand I had taken. He asked if it was not proper for that side to accuse this side of spending money, in the same way as this side accused that side. I know that the matter is equal between the two sides if it is true that the right hon. member for Prince Albert spent the money that way; but if it is not true, surely that makes a difference.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I can explain, because I know the facts. The truth is the same for the right hon. gentleman and for myself. When we talk about private enjoyment, when we talk about thousands of acres and about using that space, he did it and I did it.


John George Diefenbaker: I did not do it.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's Residence Act sets aside 17 acres. I'll bet you the right hon. gentleman used the lake, too. I'll bet you he went fishing in that lake. This is outside the 17 acres.


John George Diefenbaker: Childish!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The right hon. gentleman says it is childish. I quoted him-


John George Diefenbaker: Is the Prime Minister to be given the opportunity for a second speech?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I am answering a question. The truth embarrasses you.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre asked a question and the Prime Minis-
Privilege-Mr. Diefenbaker
ter has been recognized solely for the purpose of answering.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I repeat, if he enjoyed the lake, so did I; and I said in my speech that I thought it was a good thing that this had been added for the enjoyment of the prime minister. The right hon. gentleman said that he only used 17 acres. I quoted him talking about me, Trudeau, when he said, "He took over everything over there".


John George Diefenbaker: That is exactly what happened. That is exactly what the National Capital Commission said.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I used the lake and he used the lake. The truth is the same on both sides. In the one case was I using it for my private enjoyment, and in the other was he using it while prime minister? I submit that both men, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and the right hon. gentleman for Prince Albert, are preposterous.


John George Diefenbaker: Childish!


Mr. G. W. Baldwin (Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, I do not think much turns on the arrangements. Without question, the government House leader and I discussed whether the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) should speak first or not. When the government House leader telephoned me in the morning after the cabinet meeting, that was my first official notification that the Prime Minister would not be present in the House for the full day. In those circumstances, after consulting my colleagues I agreed that the right hon. gentleman should go first. But there was a clear understanding that the Prime Minister would make a statement which would not be lengthy and that he would hold himself ready for questioning. But that is beside the point and I will not press it.
I want to respond to what the government House leader said about the words that were used by the right hon. gentleman. This was not a case of the Prime Minister coming here during the heat of debate and responding to something which the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker) had raised in debate. What was said by the right hon. member for Prince Albert had been said three weeks earlier, so this was not a case of statements being made in the heat of debate; it was a case of the Prime Minister's deliberately-


Robert Lorne Stanfield: And premeditatedly.


Gerald William Baldwin: -and premeditatedly saying something. There is no question about it; he did it in a considered way. He came here on May 22 and made those statements. He cannot be excused on the grounds that he made those statements in the heat of debate. There is a clear distinction to be made. This was, in my opinion-


Joseph-Phillippe Guay: That is your opinion, not everybody's opinion.


Gerald William Baldwin: -a cold, considered slander. We who sat here heard it. There was more than an innuendo contained in those remarks. They were a reflection upon the character of the right hon. member for Prince Albert in his discharging of functions as prime minister of the country.

June 2, 1975
Privilege-Mr. A. Lambert
It was a slander upon him and we so understood it on my side. If I misjudged the Prime Minister, if he did not so consider it, or if he did not intend his statements to be regarded in that light, he has the opportunity now to get up and say so.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, I rise with some hesitation, not being a member of the front benches.


Joseph-Phillippe Guay: It might take you a long time to get there.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Like you, Joe, after many years I might not make it. I have listened for over one hour to speeches made on this question of privilege. I have heard much rhetoric and many allegations, many of them provocative. I have seen a lot of smiling and a lot of people thinking they are cute, and we have taken up one hour and ten minutes of the time of parliament.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Paul Wyatt Dick: I think this matter might best be clarified in committee. After all, we cannot brush it under the carpet, because not only must justice be done; it must appear to be done.


An hon. Member:: What a cliche.


Paul Wyatt Dick: It may be a cliche, but it has been around for a long time because there is a great deal of truth to it. Instead of spending time on counteracting and conflicting statements, I suggest that we should send this matter to committee. Let us send it out of the House to the committee to be appropriately dealt with.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I think I can conclude the intervention on this very interesting point by saying that for the first time I can fully understand why last fall I resisted when I was called to this chair. I shall reserve my ruling on the question of privilege and try to arrive at a judgment on it by tomorrow or not later than the next day.


REFERENCE TO MOTION CONCERNING ISSUE OF COMMEMORATIVE STAMP
Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Mr. Speaker, I wish to rise on a question of privilege.
At the beginning of the sitting, I submitted a motion under Standing Order 43 requiring the unanimous consent of the House. Since the motion involved no political partisanship likely to lead to controversy, I was unpleasantly surprised that it was not unanimously accepted. Would the reason for it be that the motion was in memory of a French-speaking Canadian? I do not know. Yet it was simply a question for the House of honoring one of its former servants who, in addition, was the founder of an extremely important cooperative movement in Canada and to hope that his work would continue to prosper throughout Canada.

Once again, Mr. Speaker, I should like to point out to the House the utmost importance of Standing Order 28. If the Standing Orders were taken more seriously, we would not have to submit to a unanimous refusal on such important questions, without the member who has risen to oppose the motion being recognized by the Chair and identified in Hansard, as was the case today, on a motion of national interest. Let us beware that such a habit of systematically refusing unanimous approval lead not one day to difficult and regretful situations. The public is always entitled to know the name of a member who submits or opposes a motion.


Mr. Speaker:: I thank the hon. member for rising on a very important question of privilege. I am sure he understands very well that the problem is not the adoption of the motion under Standing Order 43, but simply the unanimous consent to put the motion. In any case, each time, this afternoon, as usual, I have heard not only one voice, but several voices say no, although I am not certain whether there were English of French voices, and pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 43, it is completely impossible not only to ask for the adoption of the motion, but even to put the motion before the House.


IMMIGRATION POLICY
[Stage Direction]
First Report of Special Joint Committee on Immigration Policy-Mr. O'Connell.
[Editor's Note: For text of above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]

Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I wish briefly to report to the House on the Nato summit meeting recently concluded in Brussels. This was only the third meeting of the Nato council conducted at a head of government level in the 26 years in which this organization has been in existence. Hon. members will recall that a brief summit session took place last year following the very successful twenty-fifth anniversary foreign ministers' meeting here in Ottawa. The Ottawa meeting produced the Ottawa Declaration. This declaration was signed by heads of government in Brussels a few days later. Because of competing events here in Canada which will be well remembered by all who engaged in them, and which culminated on July 8 of last year, I was unable to travel to Brussels for that signature occasion.
The council meeting this year took place on Thursday and Friday of last week and was attented by the heads of government of 14 of the 15 member countries. The occasion was a useful one, for it permitted heads of government to be briefed on the current political situation in Europe as well as on the state of military preparedness of NATO. The speeches to the council made by some of the heads of government were released to the press and are therefore
June 2, 1975

familiar to hon. members. The communique reflecting the proceedings has also been made public, and I should like to take this opportunity to table a copy of it in each of the official languages.


Mr. Speaker:: Is that agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: This meeting, Mr. Speaker, gave me an opportunity to emphasize to our NATO allies that it is in the interest of the alliance and in the interest of Canadians that our political adherence to NATO remain firm and that our military contribution remain effective. By effective, I mean both cost-effective and military-effective. The purpose of the defence structure review is to ensure that those goals are met. I may say that the contribution of the Canadian armed forces in Europe is highly prized. The professionalism of our troops and airmen is recognized by each member of the alliance, and it was impressed upon me by some of my NATO colleagues how disappointed they would be should any Canadian government at any time take any steps to lessen the effectiveness of the Canadian military contribution.
During the course of the meeting I proposed that there be more frequent opportunities for heads of government to consult with one another and that this opportunity should permit consultations of an informal kind for these, in my experience, were of great value. I used the Commonwealth heads of government meeting experience as an example as I put forward this proposal.
I am happy to report, Mr. Speaker, that the suggestion was taken up in positive terms immediately by the President of the United States and by the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. During the ensuing discussion, by far the greater number of countries indicated their interest in the idea.

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity in Brussels to meet on a bilateral basis with President Ford and several other heads of governments. The meeting also allowed me to meet the president and two of the vice-presidents of the European Community, with whom I talked rather extensively about the formal support the commission gave to the Canadian proposal on the establishment of a contract agreement with the European Community. With the same objective in view, I also went to Denmark and to Luxemburg. Both visits completed the series of discussions I had in the capitals with the heads of the governments of all the member countries of the European Economic Community. During these visits, I could explain that Canada was willing to negotiate the establishment of official relations with the community; in return, I received the assurance that the matter is being considered favourably. During my discussions with the chairman of the commission, I was informed that the community will open an office in Ottawa before the end of the year.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a very brief reply. If I am brief, let me add it is only because I am particularly well-informed on this subject that I can reply at all. The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), I understand, had some
NATO Summit
difficulty in deciding he would make any statement; it was only at 2.15, apparently, that he made up his mind and I received a copy. I am glad I received one at all.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Just as well if you had not.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: The Prime Minister referred to the respect in which our troops are held in Europe. There can be no doubt about the respect for the quality of our personnel. Frankly, though, I think there is a good deal of doubt about the way in which our troops are equipped.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Robert Lorne Stanfield: 1 must also say, not because of anything the Prime Minister said this afternoon but because of statements made recently by the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Richardson), that the government's position regarding our contribution to NATO is rather ambiguous. The Minister of National Defence, as I understood him, said that we have to consider the question of quality as well as quantity. I think there is a great deal of doubt in this country today about precisely what we are committed to do with respect to NATO, and I have to say to the right hon. gentleman that he did not do anything here this afternoon to clarify that doubt.
The Prime Minister said how disappointed our NATO colleagues would be should any Canadian government at any time take any steps to lessen the effectiveness of Canadian military contributions to NATO. I hope it is not unsporting of me to remind the right hon. gentleman that that is one of the first things he did after taking office.
I am also a little puzzled by the Prime Minister's reference to the desirability of more frequent opportunities for heads of government to consult with one another. That is another way of describing a summit meeeting, I would think. I understood the Prime Minister, a few weeks ago, to have very considerable doubt about whether a summit meeting, at that time at least, would be useful. I do not know whether the right hon. gentleman has been so impressed by what took place at this summit that he has changed his mind or quite what he is getting at. As I say, he seemed to be taking the position a few weeks ago that a NATO summit was something that should take place only under quite precise and propitious conditions. He is now suggesting summits as a continuing institution.
Athough he did not say so in this statement, in another statement the Prime Minister is reported as having said that NATO needs the continued support of the people. There can be no doubt about that. I would have to ask the right hon. gentleman how much he and his government have done to encourage the Canadian people in that regard. How much leadership have they given the Canadian people to enable them to appreciate and to support our role in the NATO alliance?
With regard to the missing link or the search for the link with the European Economic Community, I say this is good if it continues. The interest of the Prime Minister in the Common Market is a little late, but certainly it is better to be late than never. I for one would be grateful for some clarification as to what kind of contractual link the

June 2, 1975
NATO Summit
Prime Minister is seeking, because this has been a little fuzzy in the mind of the Prime Minister. Perhaps following his last trip to Europe the Prime Minister can be a little more precise. If I have the opportunity of asking him a question in a few minutes, I would ask him-and he might think about this-to clarify a little further, following his last visit, what he means by a contractual link.
The last thing I want to say concerns detente. I think the movement toward detente is something that we all support in principle. One thing that has disappointed me is that there does not seem to have been much success among the NATO countries, among the countries of western Europe, in getting any clearcut understanding from countries east of the Iron Curtain, the U.S.S.R. in particular, regarding the free movement of peoples, theirs and ours.
I have long felt that this is a matter of vital importance. I know the attitude of Russia, for example, toward other countries interfering in the internal affairs of their country or other countries, but I suggest it would be unfortunate if in fact something called detente is negotiated involving some limitation of troops as well as some approval of the status quo, if in fact by that implicit approval of the status quo we from the west are indeed saying we are prepared to go along with the very restricted movement of peoples which is now permitted in the U.S.S.R. and the countries associated with the U.S.S.R. In a moment, if I may, I should like to ask the Prime Minister a simple question on that point.


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, like the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield) I, too, until about 2.15 anticipated that the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) was not going to make a statement on his trip to Europe but would simply table some comments in the House. Having listened to his statement and having read it just prior to his getting to his feet, I can understand why there was some hesitation about using up the time of the House on the question of NATO and the role Canada is to play in NATO, we get absolutely nothing from the Prime Minister. It seems to me that if the government is committed to maintaining our country's membership in NATO, he had an obligation to produce some answers to our allies in Europe to the questions that they have been asking about the nature of our role, as well as to provide the House with the answers we should have given to our allies at a NATO meeting. The Prime Minister did none of these things.
The specific question is: Are we going to continue our somewhat mixed contribution by performing a role on the ground as well as in the air? If so, are we going to re-equip our troops on the ground? If not, what is to be Canada's contribution to the NATO defence of western Europe? None of these questions was dealt with in the slightest either in the communique that was attached to the Prime Minister's statement, which of course is issued by all members of NATO, or in his statement in the House. In view of what has been said here about the opposition taking up a lot of time in the House with gratuitous remarks, I think the same comment could be applied to the statement that the Prime Minister has made regarding the government's position on NATO.
At this time I should like to make it clear that the New Democratic Party believes that, if it was once appropriate for Canada to be playing a role in NATO, that time has

since passed. I wish the Prime Minister would remove the government from its ambivalent position. On the one hand, it seems to me inclined to the view taken by our party-that it is no longer appropriate at this stage in history for us to take part in NATO-which might account for the lack of clearcut policy in terms of our military contribution. On the other hand, the Prime Minister makes the statement that the government does not take that position but that it is firmly committed.
We think we should be out of NATO. We think it is much more appropriate now to have a highly trained, professional military force for our country and that this force should be made ready for strengthening United Nations' peacekeeping forces when we think such course of action is appropriate, so the force is available for use in emergency relief operations.
I am not going to take the time of the House to elaborate on my reason for saying that; I simply conclude by telling the House that we expected much more from the Prime Minister in terms of clarifying the government's own view of NATO. We are going to continue, says the government, in our commitment, yet apparently the government has not made up its mind how it is going to continue in its commitment.
With reference to the meeting concerning the European Economic Community, I, like the Leader of the Opposition, welcome the announcement of the opening of an office. However, I would simply urge the government to come forward soon, primarily through the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Gillespie) but also through the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner), with some imaginative programs to develop our secondary industry in particular.
Trade relationships are, of course, important in the western world. But by improving secondary industry in Canada in terms of efficiency we will be able to gain access to those markets as well as to many others. The real objective of a trade policy should not be one of looking for special concessions from the European Economic Community but one of developing a first-rate secondary industry in Canada. We need the kind of leadership from the government we have not yet received that would set out in clear terms how we are to go about achieving that, and if we achieve that I would argue we would not have to be preoccupied with looking for special concessions from the European Economic Community.


Gérard Laprise: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to see the Prime Minister is back in good shape from his trip in Europe.
The Prime Minister told us how satisfied he is following the conference of the leaders of NATO countries. I believe such conferences complete others held by foreign affairs ministers who meet once or twice a year to discuss problems facing the NATO countries and the ways to solve them.
Since the inception of NATO, that is 25 or 26 years ago, we realize that Russia has been stopped for a while at least in its ambition to dominate Europe and perhaps several

other areas of the world as well. In the past several years, we have seen the organization go through all kinds of problems. For instance, let us recall the dispute between England and Iceland with regard to fishing activities in the territorial waters of Iceland. Let us recall another problem not yet solved opposing Greece and Turkey, two countries members of NATO, about Cyprus. Let us not forget what is now happening in another country also a member of NATO, Portugal. All those are fairly recent problems that the organization must consider. We must therefore see to it that the organization does not crumble so that it will oppose the Warsaw Pact bloc which, in my opinion, has not quit pursuing its objectives to impose its rule all over Europe and perhaps others areas of the world.
Until now, NATO has assumed its responsibilities, and I feel it should continue to do so. On the other hand, after 25 or 26 years of protection in Europe, might the time not have come for the European countries to assume a greater part of their own defence by participating economically, for instance, in the number and quality of the troops and weapons needed to ensure the defence of Europe. Doubtless, the Canadian participation has its own objective, that of making as remote as possible the danger of a widespread conflict such as that of 1914 or 1939-45, which, if it were to recur in the future, could have much more serious consequences for America. Seen in that light, I feel that the countries of Europe that want to protect themselves should contribute to a greater extent to those defence organizations.
There is another problem which was mentioned before, that of modernizing our defence and surveillance equipment. We will soon have to make considerable improvements because we are becoming aware that our aircraft, for instance, are almost obsolete; they will have to be replaced in the relatively near future. Now, to do so will require astronomical expenditures and, as in all parliamentary democracies the government must submit its credits to Parliament and to the people, something that is not done on the other side of the barricade, at least not in the member countries of the other pact; one wonders if the U.S.S.R. is not thus in the process of winning a war of attrition.
In any event, Mr. Speaker, I feel that those meetings can only help better understand the needs of that organization; what the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) proposes could complement what has been done in the past, and so give us a better overall view of the problems at hand, help us find the required solutions, to keep that group to face the other party which, to my mind, continues to constitute a threat.
I feel therefore that if we are to continue watching its activities closely, serious meetings must be held as often as possible.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the right hon. gentleman about the contractual link which I understand consists of a structure to be put in place making provisions for consultation between the EEC and Canada as questions arise from time to time. That was my understanding. Perhaps the hon. gentleman will correct me if I am wrong.
NATO Summit
I should also like to ask whether his discussions with representatives of the EEC this time went beyond that point. Did he have the opportunity of discussing France's attitude with the President of France, or the attitude of the government of France toward such a contractual link between the European Economic Community and Canada? The Prime Minister has visited all the EEC countries now and has given us a good deal of information about the attitude of various governments, with the single exception, I think, of the attitude of the government of France.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: On the first part of the question, Mr. Speaker, the answer is yes, we did go beyond that. As the hon. gentleman knows, the commission has now agreed with us on the form of the term of reference which could be the basis of an agreement between the community and Canada giving form and substance to the contractual link. So in reality we did go beyond discussing the mere term of reference. That is already in the mill. The discussions I had with the president and the two vice-presidents of the commission were directed mainly to the accepted order on which the council of ministers would authorize the commission to negotiate the terms of reference, and what specific action Canada might take while waiting for the council of ministers to give that authorization.
I suppose that leads into the second question as to what specific action we took with France. I might first correct the hon. gentleman who has said I have not reported the attitude of the government of France. I did that after my meetings in Paris last October. At that time I had not yet been in Brussels, and I have not since then raised the question officially with the President or Prime Minister of France. As the hon. gentleman perhaps knows, the Prime Minister was not at the NATO meetings, nor was the President. However, he did come to the banquet on Thursday night, I believe. As far as I know, he arrived just for the banquet and left right after. Being the senior Prime Minister present, I guess, I was seated opposite the President of France. We did a bit of talking, but the table was at least ten feet wide and it was a bit difficult to get into any detail.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: We have no difficulty communicating here.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: That is correct, but we have microphones here. I might say that the King of Belgium did not think it was appropriate to set up telephone or telegraph assistance between the people invited to his table. I might add that I could not even kick him under the table as I would love to do if I were sitting opposite the hon. member for Peace River. I would kick him above the table, too, if I came that close.
The Government of Canada will very soon be receiving visits from the French minister of commerce and from one of the important ministers of state, Mr. Poniatowski, in the coming weeks. Of course, this is likely to be the kind of subject we will raise with them. Whether I will be able to report to the House on this is not known at this time.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, I have a question relating to detente. I should like to ask the Prime Minister whether he had any discussions with his NATO colleagues on the
6340

NATO Summit
matter of detente, particularly in respect of the right of citizens to leave a country. My concern is that detente may be negotiated without anything effectively being determined in this connection and that the detente will, de facto at least, involve approval by us of the very limited movement which is now available to citizens of the U.S.S.R. and other countries. Can the Prime Minister give us any encouragement in this regard?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Well, Mr. Speaker, the question of detente was raised by several of the heads of government as well as the question of the mutual and balanced forced reduction. I raised this myself in my remarks. I would point out that the meeting in Brussels was not so organized nor so convened in a way that would permit us to discuss in any detail the question of detente or MBFR. Timing itself was not set with those two objectives in mind. That is the reason the Canadian government, the Secretary of State for External Affairs and myself had some reservations about the date of the recent meeting. We thought that more progress might have been achieved had there been a greater period of preparedness.
That is not to argue that we were not prepared to go. In fact, we did go. We were just arguing on the most effective way of meeting. Indeed, that was also the substance of my interventions on the matter of more frequent heads of government meetings. I would not advocate such meetings if they were merely for the purpose of sitting around the table and reading speeches to each other. I believe more should go into these meetings. That is why I argued. This is linked, once again, to my proposal concerning more frequent meetings and my hesitation about going on a specific date to the one which just took place.
As to the substance of the detente discussions, the Secretary of State for External Affairs would certainly be prepared to answer in greater detail perhaps at another time. The Leader of the Opposition is really stating the policy which has been that of the Canadian government, for which we are well known. There is, in technical language, the third basket, the one in which we have insisted that detente must go hand in hand with the free movement of people and ideas and an exchange of information between the two blocs, and that merely a military detente would not be satisfactory. We insist on this third basket. I am told that progress is being made on that. I would remind the hon. gentleman that that has been the Canadian position from the outset. We have gained a great deal of support for it. That continues to be our position. I believe that covers the matters about which I was asked.


Francis Andrew Brewin: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby pointed out, the Prime Minister in his statement on NATO did not deal with the type of military contribution Canada proposes to make. I should like to put this question to him: Is it contemplated that Canada will continue its role in the front line of the central front in Europe, which would clearly involve a very heavy expenditure for new equipment, or is it contemplated that Canada might contribute a mobile contingent for use on the flanks of NATO which are said to be particularly vulnerable at the present time?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the defence structure review to which I referred in my statement, and indeed at Brus-
[Mr. Stanfield.)
sels, is precisely to ensure that it is at the same time effective in military and in economic terms. As I told them quite candidly, our defence review is not terminated at the present time. I could not answer the type of question the hon. member is asking me.
I did receive representations from them concerning the kind of structure they would like to see. I pointed out to them that Canada had a whole set of priorities and would try to make its defence structure as effective as possible within all those priorities. But I did give them the assurance, which I understand is not supported by the New Democratic Party, that our political adherence to NATO remained firm and we had no intention of withdrawing in a political sense, and that in a military sense we have no intention either of reducing our contribution there. I realize that is not the position of the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby. I am sure it is not known to him that every socialist leader I met there argued on the contrary, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, the Prime Minister of The Netherlands-


John Edward Broadbent: Did you go to Sweden?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: -the Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of West Germany. Indeed, this even appears to be the position of the Portuguese government in which I think the hon. member is hoping the socialists will play a not inconsiderable part. I will gladly go to Sweden. I suggest that the hon. member might perhaps take a little trip to see some of his socialist friends, too.


Gérard Laprise: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the right hon. Prime Minister whether at that meeting of heads of states of member countries of NATO the subject was raised of contributions not only by Canada but every member country of NATO, and did the Prime Minister himself make commitments for Canada and can he inform the House in that respect?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question as well as the seriousness of the comment he made at the beginning of this period, a seriousness that I think contrasts somehow with the attitude of the leaders of other parties. I would like to say in direct reply to his question that the specific discussion about which he is asking was not raised at the meeting I attended. Defence ministers of NATO countries had discussed this kind of problems in some detail one or two weeks before. In brief, Mr. Speaker, the Canadian position is that we are now conducting a study about the most efficient course for our contribution to NATO. So it is possible we may change the methods of participation. But in so far as the funds, our political and military involvement in NATO and in so far as our desire to make sure that our military participation is maintained, at least at the present level, I did not leave any doubts and I gave the assurance on behalf of the government of Canada that that would be our way of participating.


OLD AGE SECURITY ACT
Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that the recommendation appearing on today's order paper, under introduction of the bills, to amend the Old Age Security Act, to repeal the Old Age Assistance Act and to amend other acts in consequence thereof, is not in accord with the provisions of the bill and therefore a new recommendation will be required. As the House leader, may I suggest that the present recommendation be replaced by a new recommendation and that the introduction [DOT] of the bill be delayed until tomorrow or Wednesday.


Mr. Speaker:: Is there agreement to the suggestion of the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Sharp)?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: It is so ordered.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[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. 1,606, 1,733, 1,897, 2,212, 2,369, 2,427, 2,428, 2,447 and 2,454.
Mr. Speaker, if question No. 556 could be made an order for return, this return would be tabled immediately.
I ask, Mr. Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Schumacher: 1.	Does the government have available an economic impact analysis of the effect of conversion to the metric system and (a) if so (i) on what date was this analysis done (ii) by whom (iii) from what areas was the data gathered (b) if not, for what reason?
2.	What facts does the government have to ensure that metric conversion is the best interest of the Canadian economy during the current recession in North America?
3.	(a) Will standardization benefit Canada in the long run (b) what information is available, and what analysis has been done, regarding the implication of our trade position in the short term?
4.	What steps has the government taken, if any, to provide (a) low cost loans (b) technical assistance (c) education for small businesses?
5.	What steps has the government taken, if any, to provide for protection for smaller manufacturing firms against the effects of the heavy financial outlay conversion will require from them in competing with imports from historically metric countries?
Order Paper Questions
6.	Has any data been' gathered and, if so, what is its nature to ensure that conversion to metric will not broaden the gap between presently imported and exported finished products?
7.	Will government purchasing policies maintain a viable level of goods from domestic firms over metric European goods and what form will such protection take?
8.	What funds have been set aside and what plans have been made for public education?
9.	What is the projected cost for conversion to metric system?


Mr. Gaston Clermont (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce):: 1. (a) The
White Paper on Metric Conversion in Canada contains the government's analysis of the effect of conversion to the metric system. It states in part:
The Government accordingly accepts eventual conversion as a definite object of Canadian policy, and proposes means of study and consultation whereby the pace and methods of change may be determined in the national interest.
The White Paper on Metric Conversion in Canada of January, 1970, pointed out that "each industry sector must weigh the benefits of an internationally uniform and coherent system of measurement against the costs of changing from the existing system and that metric conversion consists of "a variety of programs extending over periods of years as determined by the needs and problems in different sectors of the economy. Therefore, the supporting data necessary for any additional analysis could only be compiled gradually at the industry and sector level. To attempt to integrate such data as may be made available by individual economic sectors would be relatively expensive in money and manpower resources and the ex post facto result would not be significant in the light of the conclusion of the White Paper that metric conversion in Canada should be acknowledged as inevitable and in the national interest, (i) This analysis was tabled in the House of Commons on January 16, 1970. (ii) The Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, (iii) In the White Paper on Metric Conversion in Canada, representative national organizations put their views on metric matters before the government. Among those who expressed support for conversion were: The Consumers' Association of Canada, The Canadian Home and School and Parent-Teacher Federation, The Agricultural Institute of Canada, The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, The Canadian Pharmaceutical Association, The Canadian Council of Professional Engineers, The Chemical Institute of Canada, The Engineering Institute of Canada, The Canadian Standards Association, The Canadian Hospital Association, The Canadian Construction Association.
2.	The White Paper spoke of the "vital importance of foreign trade to Canada especially the need for growth in exports of manufactured goods." It specified "the overwhelming world trend to the metric system as a powerful argument for Canadian conversion." It stated that "there is no precise means of assessing the effects on trade of differences in the measurement practice of Canada and foreign buyers," but "it is the practical judgment of many of those concerned with Canadian trade in established metric regions that the unfamiliar standards significantly hinder Canada's penetration of the market." The eventual costs of not planning and scheduling in 1975 and 1976 for subsequent implementation could be large in terms of missed opportunities for rationalization and increased ef-
29561 - 57)4

June 2, 1975
Order Paper Questions
ficiency, as well as in terms of market opportunities foregone. The costs incidental to metric conversion in the Canadian economy will not reach their peak until the years 1977 and 1978 when world trade would be expected to have resumed a normal rate of growth.
3.	(a) Yes. (b) The White Paper notes that "conversion of units during commercial negotiations (necessary now in world trade in primary commodities) may be a handicap and a source of error. In the case of exports by secondary industries the problem is with the differences in standards and therefore in the products themselves." Until such time as industries formulate their individual plans with respect to their timing and method of conversion it would not be possible to estimate the short term benefits of standardization on our trade position.
4.	(a) Cabinet has approved a program of loans and loan guarantees to be available to small businesses, to be called the Small Business Metric Conversion Assistance Program. Such loan assistance would be available to businesses facing special financing difficulties resulting from metric conversion when such businesses were unable to obtain financing from commercial lending institutions, (b) and (c) Counselling services to small business will be available through the facilities of CASA (Counselling Assistance to Small Enterprises) or the Federal Business Development Bank when this takes over the responsibility for the work now performed by CASE.
5.	The steps the government has taken to protect smaller manufacturing firms facing special financing difficulties are state in 4 above. There are no indications at the present time however that smaller manufacturing firms will incur heavy financial outlays for conversion or that imports from historically metric countries will be significantly affected by Canada's change to the use of metric units. As stated in the White Paper on Metric Conversion "Given a clear direction in which to go, many sectors of the nation will have few problems in conversion, provided the transitional process is wisely phased."
6.	There is no evidence that conversion to metric units will adversely affect Canada's trade balance. The Government believes that Canadian entrepreneurs have at least equal ability with foreign competitors to take advantage of the change.
7.	The Government would continue to respect the relevant provisions of GATT, particularly as it concerns nontariff barriers.
allocated for the Information and Education Directorate of the Metric Commission have been as follows: 1973-73, $115,200; 1973-74, $672,300; 1974-75, $1,887,800. (2) matters relating to formal teaching in schools and similar institutions are the responsibility of the provinces.
9. Since metric conversion will proceed over a number of years in a way to be determined by the needs and opportunities in different sectors of the economy, the cost of conversion is, by that fact, undeterminable at this time. Its magnitude will depend on the pace and the phasing of conversion adopted within and without the respective sectors. As stated in the answer to Section 1 of the question the supporting data for any additional analysis do not at present exist. The White Paper states that conversion in any industrially advanced nation is a complex and costly process, but the costs are expected to be more than offset by the benefits arising from the simplicity in the use of the more rational system of units and from the improved ability to communicate both commercially and in other ways with the growing metric community. Given sufficient notice of the required conversion, costs for changes in measuring devices used in distributive trades dealing with consumer goods would not appear to be onerous for any one establishment. In a number of industry sectors the magnitude of costs will depend on the rate of conversion and could be minimized by phasing to coincide with cycles of tool design and equipment obsolescences. The experience of most countries that have already undertaken metric conversion is that actual costs have been very substantially less than estimates made by individual firms.


Mr. Carter: 1.	What are the names and number of ships under charter to Canadian National and operating in the Atlantic area?
2.	What is the cost and duration of the charter in each case and the name of the company from whom they are chartered?
3.	What was the cost to Canadian National for repairs to and/or maintenance of such ships since being chartered by Canadian National and operating in the Atlantic area?


Jean Marchand: Vessels under charter to CNR Atlantic Region: 1. MV Stena Sailerb, MV Marine Atlantica*, MV Marine Nautica, MV Percy M. Crosbie, MV Marine Sprinter, MV Marine Runner*, MV Marine Packer, MV Sarah, MV Clyde, MV Kloster, MV Topsail Star, MV Dunure, MV Marine Trader.
8.	Two general aspects may be distinguished when considering the subject of education as related to converting to the metric system: (1) matters affecting usage by the general public. In this respect, the amounts spent or
Delivery of vessel anticipated early June, 1975. bTo be returned to owner early June, 1975.
2.
		Daily	Duration		
		Charter	of		
Vessel	Owner	Rate	Charter	From	MV Stena Sailer]	Stena Line A/B	$5,425	13 months	May	1974MV Marine Atlantica	Stena Line A/B	7,550	GO months	June	1975MV Marine Xautica	Stena Line A/B	7,550	60 months	Oct.	1974M V Percy M. Crosbie	Chimo Shipping Ltd.	548	36 months	June	1974MV Marine Runner	Eastern Shipping Ltd.	415	GO months	June	1975MV Marine Packer	Rideau Shipping Ltd.	085	36 months	June	1974MV Marine Sprinter	Moso Ambrose Shipping Ltd.	450	GO months	May	1974M V Sarah	The Lake Group Ltd.	1,387	8 months	April	1975

June 2, 1975

Order Paper Questions
		Daily	Duration	
		Charter	of	
Vessel	Owner	Hate	Charter	FromMV Clyde	The Lake Group Ltd.	1,107	8 months	April 1975MV Kloster	Dorman Roberts Ltd.	980	8 months	April 1975MV Topsail Star	Topsail Shipping Ltd.	1,000	20 months	Nov. 1975MV Dunure	Puddister Trading Co. Ltd.	1,000	8 months	April 1975MV Marine Trader	Puddister Trading Co. Ltd.	1,000	8 months	April 1975
*Terminated
3. Cost of refit and running repairs recorded against operating accounts are: 1974: MV Stena Sailer, $30,306; MV Marine Nautica, $5,067; MV Percy M. Crosbie, $54,410; MV Marine Packer, $52,748; MV Marine Sprinter, $13,882. No repairs were recorded in the accounts against the above vessels for prior years.


Mr. Neil: 1.	With reference to rising costs, does the Department of National Health and Welfare use high grade heavy paper for news releases and covers for the Minister's speeches and, if so, for what reason?
2.	What is the difference in unit costs between such paper used by the Department and the lighter grade paper used by other departments?
3.	What was the increased cost to the Department in using the heavier paper in the 1974-75 fiscal year?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: 1. The Department of National Health and Welfare is currently using an average grade heavy paper for the heading page of news releases and covers for the Minister's speeches. When the current stock was ordered last spring, the more common lighter weights of paper were not available and the heavier weight paper was substituted to maintain good quality reproduction. A lighter weight paper will be used when present stocks are depleted.
2.	The difference in costs between the heavier weight paper and that used by other departments varies depending on the weight of paper used and the quantities ordered.
3.	The increased cost to the Department in the fiscal year 1974-75 for the heavier paper was $1,500. Since this purchase was unavoidable, a year's supply of paper was obtained and the departmental logos were printed at one time. The alternative would have been to pay a higher unit cost for a smaller quantity of heavier paper and the printing, and later in the year, again a higher unit cost for the lighter paper when it became available and for a second printing.


Mr. Cossitt: 1.	With reference to the full-page advertisement appearing recently in various publications entitled: "Say Goodnight to Fahrenheit" (a) in how many publications did the ad appear (b) what was the total cost involved (c) what was the name of the advertising agency and the total advertising agency commission (d) were tenders or competitive presentations called for from various advertising agencies and (i) if so, from whom (ii) if not, for what reason?
2.	Will the government be placing further advertisements in connection with conversion to the metric system and, if so (a) what is the total estimated cost (b) in how many publications will such advertisement appear (c) what is the name of the advertising agency and the total estimated agency commission (d) were tenders or competitive presentations called for from various advertising agencies and (i) if so, from whom (ii) if not, for what reason?


Gaston Clermont: 1. (a) 106
daily newspapers; (b) $125,494.97; (c) Maclaren Advertising Co. Ltd. No commisssion was paid by the Metric Commission; (d) No, (i) n/a; (ii) Maclaren Advertising was considered thoroughly competent to handle the project.
2. The need for advertising is always under consideration in relation to specific arrangements but no immediate amounts have been authorized.


Mr. Clark (Rocky Mountain): 1.	As of April 18, 1975, with which provinces had the Minister of the Environment (a) discussed (b) not discussed a federal-provincial accord to reduce potential flood damages and a national flood hazard mapping programme and, in each case, where a discussion had proceeded, what was the name and position of the provincial minister or official concerned?
2.	In what areas within federal jurisdiction has a high flood risk been identified and development proceeded in spite of knowledge of the risk and, in each case, what federal investment or support was involved?


Mr. Len Marchand (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment and Minister of Fisheries):: 1.
(a) As of April 18, 1975, the Minister of the Environment had discussed federal-provincial accords to reduce potential flood damages and a national flood hazard mapping program with the following:
(a) As of April 18, 1975, the Minister of Environment had discussed federal-provincial accords to reduce potential flood damages and a national flood hazard mapping program with the following:
Province
Date of	Provincial
Meeting	Minister	Department
Saskatchewan
Manitoba
British Columbia
February 18 March 18
March 14
Mr. Byers Mr. Green
Mr. Williams
Environ ment
Mines, Resources and Environmental Management
Lands, Forests and Water Resources

Order Paper Questions
	Date of	Provincial	
Province	Meeting	Minister	DepartmentQuebec	March 17	Mr. Mas.se	Natural ResourcesNova Scotia	January 27	Mr. Bugneli	TourismPrince Edward Island	January 28	Mr. Clements	Community ServicesNew Brunswick	January 24	Mr. Dube	EnvironmentNewfoundland	February 25	Mr. Dav/e	Provincial Affairs and Environment
Oj) As of April 18, 1975, the Minister of Environment hud not met the representatives of Alberta and Ontario.
2. None.


Mr. Gauthier (Roberval): How many of the 734 Treasury Board employees listed in the estimates earn between (a) $15,000 and $20,000 (b) $20,000 and $25,000 (c) $25,000 and $30,000 (d) $30,000 and $35,000 (e) $35,000 and $40,000 (f) $40,000 and $45,000 (g) $45,000 and $50,000 (h) $50,000 and more?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: (a)
99; (b) 150; (c) 127; (d) 74; (e) 12; (f) 5; (g) 1; (h) 1.
(a) 895 central administration employees (b) 5,537 marine transportation employees (c) 12,542 air transportation employees (d) 1,621 related ground services employees (e) 213 surface transportation employees (f) 115 Transportation Development Agency employees (g) 120 Atlantic Pilotage Authority employees (h) 901 Canadian Transport Commission employees (i) 128 Great Lakes Pilotage Authority employees (j) 94 Laurentian Pilotage Authority employees (k) 2,345 National Harbours Board employees (1) 62 Pacific Pilotage Authority employees (m) 62 Northern Transportation Company employees (n) 1,427 t>r Lawrence Seaway Authority employees earn between (i) $15,000 and $20 000 (ii) $20,000 and $25,000 (iii) $25,000 and $30,000 (iv) $30,000 and $35^000 (v) $35,000 and $40,000 (vl) $40,000 and $45,000 (vii) $45,000 and $50,000 (viii) $50,000 and more?


[Stage Direction]
Question No. 2,428-Mr. Gauthier (Roberval):	Hon. Jean Marchand (Minister of Transport): The
In the Department of Transport estimates, how many of the listed answer is as follows:
Salary Distribution
Ministry of Transport	(i)	(ii)	(iii)	(iv)	(V)	(vi)	(vii)	(viii;(a)	113	85	31	31	2	4	-	2(b)	385	127	48	16	1	1	-	-(<*)	2, 234	1,205	200	58	4	2	-	-(d)	48	15	6	3	-	-	-	-(e)	43	18	14	9	1	-	-	-(0	7	19	3	4	1	1	Atlantic Pilotage Authority	(g)	11	13	35	Canadian Transport Commission	(h)	138	64	44	27	ii	0	1	1
Great Lakes Pilotage Authority
(i)	3	13	88	-	-	-	Laurentian Pilotage Authority G)	5	3	20	1	-	-	-	-National Harbours Board (k)	165	50	27	8	-	-	-	-Pacific Pilotage Authority (1)	1	3	1	7	-	-	-	-Northern Transportation Company Ltd. (m)	90	24	7	4	-	-	-	-St. Lawrence Seaway Authority (n)	111	50	20	10	1	1	-	-

June 2, 1975
Mr. Lachance: 1.	With reference to the answer to Question No. 2,278, will the Public Service Commission give the reasons why competition 74-AGR-CC-HA-19 was cancelled twice on the grounds of form?
2.	Is the Commission considering taking corrective action in the form of selection tests to avoid a repetition of this situation?


Hon. James Hugh Faulkner (Secretary of State):: I am informed by the Public Service Commission as follows: 1. Competition 74-AGR-CC-HA-19 has not been cancelled. On August 9, 1974, an Appeal Board allowed an appeal against the appointment proposed in the competition. As a result it was necessary to re-assess the candidates and to extend a second right of appeal. Several appeals were subsequently filed and they were allowed on December 17, 1974.
2. The case is currently before the Federal Court of Appeal (Case 75-A-16). Further action in the competition will be determined when the Federal Court issues a ruling on the case.


Mr. Cossitt: Since January 1, 1972, what were the names of all persons other than regular CBC news personnel who acted for CBC in the capacity of a freelance newscaster or under any contract as a newscaster (a) what remuneration did each receive (b) from what geographic areas did they report (c) in each case, how many times was their material used on CBC newscasts (d) what was the average fee paid to each per news report?


James Hugh Faulkner: I am
informed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as follows: It has not been customary to require the CBC to supply such details of its internal management and administration.



QUESTION PASSED AS ORDER FOR RETURN


Mr. Symes: 1.	What was the total amount of money spent in each of the fiscal years 1972-73 and 1973-74 by the Department of Regional Economic Expansion on contracts to outside persons and organizations for research, development and other consulting services?
2.	What are the names and addresses of these outside persons and organizations and what amounts of money were involved in each contract?
3.	What was the purpose of each contract and title of each report submitted?
Return tabled.
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PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


Mr. Speaker:: Order, It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 40, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe (Mr. Marshall)-Social Security-Blind and disabled allowances-Discussions with provinces to alleviate problems of recipients; the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. McKenzie)-Supply and Services-creation of jobs in aerospace industry in Winnipeg-Government action; the hon. member for York-Sunbury (Mr. Howie)-Energy- Fundy tidal power project-Inquiry as to commencement of studies.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Gerald William Baldwin: That it is the opinion of this House that it is necessary to declare that the power of the executive has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished: end, in particular, that means must be found by this House to inquire into, prevent, and correct abuses in the expenditure of public money by the Government of Canada, including the immediate passage of laws to strengthen and improve the office of the Auditor General.
He said: Madam Speaker, now that the captains, some of the kings and the movers and shakers of questions of privilege have departed, this is a most attentive audience. Probably the House is at its best when it has a limited but highly intelligent group, as it has on this side. I hope hon. members have listened with care or have read the motion which I put before the House.
Any student of the parliamentary system who may be hidden away in the House would easily recognize the wording used in the motion which I founded on a resolution adopted in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom on April 6, 1780, which reads as follows. Perhaps the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) might advise us on this. But seriously, members on the government side might well listen with care to this motion passed nearly 200 years ago, which reads:
That it is the opinion of this committee, that it is necessary to declare, that the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished. That it is competent to this House, to examine into and correct, abuses in the expenditure of the civil list revenues, as well as in every other branch of the public revenue, whenever it shall appear expedient to the wisdom of this House so to do.
That is the famous Dunning resolution which was put forward at a time when, as is the case in Canada today, the then government held almost dictatorial powers and engaged in stupid and extravagant expenditures and foreign expeditions. It was just in the process of losing its

June 2, 1975
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American colonies. Domestically, the country was in disarray, with inflation and unemployment, with over-expenditure and extravagance, with waste and corruption. All those things took place under a government which had all the power in the world to do things about the situation, just as we have a government with the same power today.
I wish I had the time to put on the record some of the things said at that time in the House. After considerable research-I went back to 1780-I found that the mover of the resolution, Mr. Dunning, made the point that on that day a large number of petitions were brought to the House of Commons protesting against the situation which existed in the country. In the words of Mr. Dunning:
That day was destined, by a previous order, to the taking into consideration the petitions of the people of England; amounting to about forty in number; and conveying their sentiments and names in such an immense quantity of parchment, as seemed rather calculated to bury than to cover the speaker's table.
Mr. Dunning went on to say, as recorded in the Annual Register; they did not have Hansard at that time:
This was, the setting limits to the increased, dangerous, and unconstitutional influence of the Crown, and an economical expenditure of the public money.
It was a very good speech, and I just hope that hon. members who have some thought and care for the people of this country and for their constituents will read what was said 200 years ago and think of the shameful way-I use the word deliberately here-in which it is necessary for us in the House to remind the government and the people of Canada of the situation which faces us today and which parallels that of nearly 200 years ago. We thought that the powers of the progenitor or ancestor of this House were firmly fixed. We find that such was not the case.
It is also rather interesting to find that so important was the issue that at page 170 of the Annual Register of 1780 the following statement is to be found:
The speaker, on this day, took a decided part in support of the motion. He observed, that however irksome it was to him to take any part in their debates, and however cautious he was, and ought to be, of obtruding his own private opinions on the House, there were cases, and he considered the present as one of them, in which it would be criminal of him to remain silent. The question before them, he said, was of infinite consequence to that House.
Mr. Speaker went on to make a very good speech which I would recommend to hon. members on the government side. I am sure that if Madam Speaker or others in the chair were to see fit to adopt the sentiments of Mr. Speaker in those times, there would be no objection from this side of the House to their doing so. I point this out to call the attention of the House, through you, Madam Speaker, to a situation in which we find ourselves today, of being compelled to put before the House a motion of this kind in order to draw attention to the very dangerous condition in which we as parliament now find ourselves.
We have here a tacit alliance between the Liberals and the NDP. I heard my friend, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, applaud heartily a while ago the motion that was read, and I may well have to withdraw the statement which I am now making. If so, I will be glad to do so after I hear his speech. However, I have always been under the impression that both these parties believe in big government and in some measure of complete executive control between elections.

This has completely undermined the parliamentary system and destroyed any meaningful opportunity for the taxpayer, the consumer and the voter to exercise influence through his elected representative. This is particularly the case when that executive is composed mainly of a small group of wilful and arrogant people, either former bureaucrats or those who suffer from the same social, political and intellectual liabilities in attempting to deal with modern problems. Their motto is simple: the state is ours and we do what we want with it.
If we look about us, total government spending is up to almost 40 per cent of the gross national product. That is all-government spending in Canada. The fact is that for this fiscal year the total spending of the federal government will probably settle somewhere between $33 billion and $35 billion after all loans, investments, advances and supplementary estimates are brought in. The President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Chretien) may be very optimistic about the limitations on the supplementary estimates he is going to bring in, but I have been around here a little longer than he has. I have watched this happen and I have no doubt at all that before this fiscal year is over total government spending will reach at least $33 billion for all accounts.
Of this spending, approximately one-half is untouchable by this House. One-half is in the form of statutory estimates and it was held by Mr. Speaker in the last parliament that any attempt, in dealing with estimates in this House, to move to reduce them is not permissible. That is the ruling under which we are now operating. So the government can sit back complacently, knowing that some day in the month of June all of these estimates will be automatically passed. No matter what we want to do about them, there will be automatic approval and the ministers, deputy ministers and others, with the aid of their subservient majorities in the committees, can make a mockery of committees and set up all the roadblocks they wish to prevent the considered examination of estimates.
There is an energy crisis in this country, which is rich in energy but which is running 10 to 20 years behind schedule. There is a transportation mess, a lack of housing, high interest rates, problems in immigration and, of course, the black clouds of unemployment and inflation. Madam Speaker, despite the fact that this government holds very near dictatorial power, you name the problem and this country has it.
Before I go on to deal with the particular subject of the office of the Auditor General which concerns me to a very considerable extent-others of my hon. colleagues will deal with the question of the spending of the taxpayers' money, with the examination and scrutiny of the estimates in committee and in the House, with questions of secrecy and the refusal of the government to allow its civil servants to be cross-examined in committees-I would like to deal with a statement which to some extent is linked with what the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) said today in his statement.
I was intrigued by a statement attributed to the Prime Minister on his recent trip to Europe when he went over there to play with his new toy, the so-called contractual
June 2, 1975

link. He was reported to have said that the people of Canada will decide with regard to our future relations with NATO. What unparallelled effrontery from this Prime Minister who bears almost sole responsibility for diminishing our association and influence with our partners in the Atlantic alliance! Canada did have influence and friendship after the last war, not because of our puny diplomacy but purchased solely with the blood and lives of Canadians.


George Harris Hees: Hear, hear!


Gerald William Baldwin: Not so long ago I had occasion to stand by the beautiful cemetery at Nijmegen, which the people of Holland keep green and trim in honour of the Canadians who lost their lives there, many of them my comrades, and as I thought of the extent to which our influence and prestige has been diminished it struck me that many of the people in those graves would be resting uneasily. This prestige has been dissipated by the perverse and personal decisions by those at the top. These are not the decisions of people of Canada, not the decisions of this House but the decisions of the Prime Minister and his immediate associates. Now we are treated to the ludicrous spectacle of the right hon. gentleman crawling around from capital to capital in Europe trying to repair the damage he did. I say it is almost obscene to suggest that the Canadian people had anything to do with either of these decisions. What was done was done at the very top of our power structure.
As I said, because of the tyranny of the clock I will leave to others the charges that this government has abused its great power by the stand it has taken in refusing to divulge information and making a secret society of executive government even more difficult to penetrate, its equally medieval attitude that civil servants are exempt from having to appear as witnesses at parliamentary committees at the arbitrary discretion of ministers, and the farce of the so-called examination and scrutiny of estimates.
I would like to take some time-a short time because we do not have too much time to spend on this today-to deal with the office of the Auditor General and what ought to be done when, after years of bickering about the powers, authority and effectiveness of this office, the government having been presented with a' very objective and well buttressed series of recommendations by the independent committee for the review of the office of the Auditor General, has intimated that it has no intention of acting, certainly not in the near future, on these proposals, nor has it indicated if or when it will accept them. It has gone as far as refusing to allow a committee of this House or of parliament to study the report and to make recommendations.
This follows applications I made in this House under Standing Order 43 and questions I asked of the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Sharp). I understand that there are some hon. gentlemen opposite who are sensitive. The Minister of Public Works (Mr. Drury), for many years president of the treasury board, is very sensitive indeed about the Auditor General and the powers of the Auditor General. I know that he was one of the ministers who led the fight and who is probably still leading the fight to see
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that this country and this parliament does not have an effective, useful and meaningful Auditor General's office and legislation to implement such a proposal.
Let us see what happened in this regard. As the power of this House has diminished with regard to meaningful examination and scrutiny of estimates, we are driven back to the final line of defence of the beleaguered taxpayer of Canada, the office of the Auditor General. Commencing some years ago in the late forties and fifties, the then Auditor General, Mr. Watson Sellar, considered that the limited provisions of the legislation found in the Financial Administration Act not only authorized but probably compelled him to examine what he ultimately defined as being non-productive payments.
I say to the House that the Auditor General is not just a financial auditor. He is a parliamentary auditor and he has the very high duty to examine payments which have been made by the executive and by civil servants to see that they follow precisely the limitations and the bases upon which they were passed by the House of Commons and by this parliament. Mr. Sellar felt that the wording of the terms of the Financial Administration Act justified him in going to the point of saying that there were certain payments which may well have followed the prescribed route which was set out by the parliament of Canada, but because they produced no obvious or apparent benefits to the people of Canada, they should be called non-productive payments and should be listed in the Auditor General's report to the House of Commons, and he suggested perhaps the government should take a look at them.
This practice was followed by Mr. Sellar's successor, Mr. Maxwell Henderson, who was appointed by the government of the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker). I would point out to those hon. members who have said from time to time that Mr. Henderson was taking a biased and political stance that some of the first and most difficult decisions he had to make as Auditor General involved expenditures and problems which had been created and were arising out of the then Conservative government. I think some of my friends will remember the time when Mr. Henderson demanded three income tax files because he felt obliged to examine them for the purpose of his report.
I say to members of the House that in the course of his duties, Mr. Henderson was an officer of parliament in the highest traditions who carried out his task in the very best way possible on behalf of the people of Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Gerald William Baldwin: Mr. Henderson raised this issue in 1960 and 1961 with the then public accounts committee on which there was a Conservative majority. It was headed by a chairman who later became Speaker of this House and who is now a senator-Senator Macnaughton. The committee made a finding that it was incumbent upon the Auditor General to examine all so-called payments of a non-productive nature; his duty was to report to the House in respect of such payments and in particular to ascertain if they were in fact payments which conferred any benefit or value to the people of Canada.

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From that time Mr. Henderson followed that practice and in his annual report listed a great many instances of non-productive payments. In due course these began to hurt. Ministers of the present government and its immediate predecessor became very annoyed with Mr. Henderson and took it upon themselves to do what they could to cut Mr. Henderson and his office down to size. It was a deliberate tactic nourished and supported by certain members of the government.
In 1966, the then public accounts committee instructed Mr. Henderson to bring in a special bill for the consideration of the committee, to be known as the Auditor General Act. He did so, I believe in 1968-69, but at that time the government, alarmed at the implications of this legislation, packed the public accounts committee with its particular praetorian guard to make sure that the bill would not be approved by the committee. That proved to be the case; the bill was not accepted and we found that the next year the bill was brought in by the government.


John Mercer Reid: Based on their recommendations.


Gerald William Baldwin: Yes, based on the recommendations of the really biased, very prejudiced, very partisan public accounts committee. For the first time the government took upon itself the obligation of packing that committee for the purpose of dealing with attempts by the Auditor General to secure for himself the authority, power and prestige which his office needed. It was a very shameful thing that was done by the government as a whole. I am not referring to any particular individual.


John Mercer Reid: An unanimous recommendation.


Gerald William Baldwin: What was the next stage? In the bill brought in by the government, specifically the then president of the treasury board, direct aim was taken at the two measures which were so essential to the retention of authority in the hands of the Auditor General. In regard to the appointment of staff, an issue which had been controversial and difficult for some time, authority was taken away from the Auditor General. The right of the Auditor General to make comments on the so-called non-productive payments was completely ruled out. That was what the bill was all about; it was a bill brought in with great words of praise by the then president of the treasury board.
We all know what happened next. This blatant attempt to muzzle the Auditor General, to tie him down and in effect make him useless to conduct a proper scrutiny of public spending, was perceived by the people of Canada as an affront to them. There was a great outpouring of public indignation and wrath as a result of which the minister and the government had to abandon the bill. Subsequently the public accounts committee authorized an internal committee consisting of representatives of the Department of Justice, one of the legal counsel to the Auditor General and the parliamentary counsel of this House, and probably one other, to bring in a model bill in the public accounts committee.
The committee took some time, but after some delay did complete its studies and had an appropriate bill prepared. That bill was never made public, however. The government took it, ran for cover and hid it. It has been under

cover ever since. Quite obviously, that must have been because the bill contained clauses which were repugnant to the government. Some people may have seen it but this House has not seen it. I think this is shocking. The public accounts committee is a creation of this House, and when that committee, acting on behalf of this House, requests that a bill be prepared, I think it is a grave impertinence on the part of the government to prevent the bill from coming into our hands. I believe that was the case.
The final act in this interesting drama took place in 1973 when Mr. Henderson retired or was replaced by the present Auditor General, Mr. Macdonnell. The latter gentleman reviewed the situation and, quite properly, decided that as he was new and would bring his own views and approach, he would like to advice of an independent and impartial committee. After discussion with officials and the chairman of the public accounts committee, three people outside government service were commissioned to make a report, which they did in March, 1975, under the title "Report of the Independent Review Committee on the Office of the Auditor General of Canada".
This was a very far reaching and objective study which contained 47 recommendations. Amongst them were these suggestions; that there should be separate legislation concerning the role and responsibilities and relationship of the Auditor General; the Auditor General should have authority to issue a special report on his own volition to the House of Commons on any matter of pressing importance or urgency that should not be deferred until his annual report; the Auditor General should audit the financial accounts of all Crown corporations whose expenditures directly affect the budgetary accounts of Canada; and the Auditor General should have the right of access to financial records and documents of all Crown corporations and the power to see if value was received for payments made.
I pause here to point out that people have sometimes asked me how it is that the Auditor General can find examples of waste, stupidity and even corruption at times when members of parliament cannot. The answer is that under the Financial Administration Act there is provision that the Auditor General may have access to information, to audit documents and to cross-examine witnesses as well as the power to administer oaths to witnesses. These are powers which a fearful government is loth to allow to members of this House, the committee and the press. If we had access to such information, we also could find examples. In any event, these were some of the sensible and rational conclusions proposed after a good many months of study and discussion with people in Canada and outside the country.
I appreciate the fact that the government might not have the opportunity and the time to introduce such a bill. It seems to have got its legislative schedule in a mess because of the conflict between the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) and the Minister of Labour (Mr. Munro) with regard to the introduction of a budget. The government House leader has my sympathy; when dealing with colleagues like that he does not need an opposition. In any event, I can understand why the government House leader is not able to bring in a bill at this time.

Why should not this House provide some input to legislation which we want to see passed? There ought to be legislation on the crucial issue involving the survey and state of the public accounts of Canada. Why should not a committee of the House have that report referred to it, with instructions to make a careful study of it and, if necessary, draft a model bill? The government is not bound to accept it. I realize that the government is the master of its own destiny and can do what it wants.
I remember not many years ago, when the government of the day had to deal with the difficult and sensitive subject of divorce, that a parliamentary committee was given wide terms of reference and studied that question for IV2 years. It brought in useful recommendations and annexed to its report a model bill which formed the basis of the bill introduced later by the minister of justice of the day who became the present Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, when acting as minister of justice, showed his conservatism. I spell that with a small "c" because I do not want my social standing to be impaired. Nevertheless, he introduced the bill. It was not as far reaching as it ought to have been. I cite this as an example to show what can be done usefully by a committee of this House in dealing with problems of the kind I have mentioned.
It is grossly wrong of the government House leader- this is part of my complaint-to refuse to discuss with myself, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and the House leader of the Creditiste party terms of reference under which this matter could be considered by a parliamentary committee or by a committee of this House, as the case may be. The government, if it were to bring in legislation, would have the benefit of that review if there were such committee consideration. I think it is very wrong indeed of the government to refuse us the right to provide some input into those recommendations which the government will take into consideration when it decides to deal with that legislation.
It will not have escaped your notice, sir, that no vote is attached to this motion. If there were a vote, it would of course be defeated. The government whip would whistle up his honourable bodies and there would be no chance for our motion to pass. I think it is a waste of time calling some of these votes. I suggest, through you, Mr. Speaker, to members on the government side and to the people of Canada that the grave crisis and predicament which we find ourselves in at this time with regard to the public accounts of this country, with regard to the indications of gross mismanagement, over-expenditure, waste, extravagance and the government's dictatorial and tyrannical conduct call for the most careful consideration. Time is running against us and I should like to think that some consideration will be given to the proposition I have put before the House.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that the opposition has given me the opportunity to keep in shape.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Penalty killing.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I am really amazed by the hon. member's motion. It is almost unbelievable. When I was practising
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as a country lawyer I never saw people pleading guilty in this manner. This is unbelievable. Hon. members opposite cannot do their job as an opposition criticizing the government, and now they want someone else to do their job. They want the Auditor General to do it. We have given the opposition 500 hours in committees to examine government expenditures. All they can do is come forward with a motion which reads:
That it is the opinion of this House that it is necessary to declare that the power of the executive has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished-
The hon. member who spoke on the motion did not substantiate his case. I do not know what he means. I presume he spoke to take up time in the House. The motion continues:
-and, in particular, that means must be found by this House to inquire into, prevent, and correct abuses in the expenditure of public money by the government of Canada, including the immediate passage of laws to strengthen and improve the office of the Auditor General.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: A very good motion.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Well, it is a motion, exactly what I was expecting. We are living in the twentieth century, not in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries where the Conservative Party is. This motion takes us back 200 or 300 years. It could have been moved in England in 1780. You know, I was not very old then. I thought the opposition would come to grips with the difficulties modern governments must deal with in the twentieth century; instead, they move the sort of motion which belongs to 1780 and talk about Sir John A. Macdonald, and so on. They have not dealt with the realities of modern government. This is amazing. Yes, a report was prepared.


Gerald William Baldwin: And you hid it.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Yes, we got it.


An hon. Member:: And it was tabled in the House.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: And it was tabled in the House.


Gerald William Baldwin: You hid the bill.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: We will have the bill. It is going to come. We received a report a couple of weeks ago, and the opposition wants us to table the bill today. We cannot do it. They want us to follow a procedure which will take months and months, and perhaps years. We cannot wait that long before coming to grips with the problem. We tabled the report and we have started to work. This government has started to act. We do not talk, as the opposition likes to do; we are willing to move and we have said in the House that we are preparing legislation.


Gerald William Baldwin: You have not said that.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: The hon. member uses strong words. I do not use them because I do not try to impress anyone. He talked about the committee preparing a bill and about wanting the Auditor General to be respected. We have great respect for the Auditor General. This bill was put aside at the request of the new Auditor General because he wanted time to look into the situation. He wanted to know what the situation was.
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June 2, 1975
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Gerald William Baldwin: It was hidden several months before then.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: It was put aside at his request. We think the new Auditor General was rational in wanting to look at the situation and at the report. Hon. members opposite want the Auditor General to do the work of the opposition, not to act like an Auditor General. I do not think it is proper to have an outside officer look at the expenditures of government to judge whether parliament sets the right priorities. The role of the Auditor General is that of a judge. He must look into government expenditures and determine if money was spent according to the laws of the land. The laws of the land are passed by parliament, and we follow the wishes of parliament.
The hon. member spoke about wasteful spending, but in his half-hour speech he did not raise a single instance of wasteful spending.


Gerald William Baldwin: If the Auditor General were a judge, many people would be in jail.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I am President of the Treasury Board and have many friends in this House. I have yet to see a member of parliament, especially from the opposition, come to me and suggest that I should cut expenditures in his particular area. They all come to me and ask me to intercede with the Department of Public Works and see that a wharf or facility, and so on, is built in their area.


An hon. Member:: You are talking about government members.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: No; the opposition is exactly the same. It is amazing how they want you to spend money on this and that-


Gerald William Baldwin: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order, as I am entitled to, and point out to the minister that on two occasions recently we moved motions in this House to reduce government expenditures but the government voted them down.


John Mercer Reid: The motions involved ministers' salaries.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: The Conservative House leader made an unbelievable speech today. He did not make one single point on the basis of this report suggesting anything to the government on the basis of the Wilson report. He did not take a single one of the recommendations and suggest what should be done. He spoke only in generalities and never came near to being constructive, as an opposition should be.
That is why, when the great choice is put before the people of Canada, even though we are not perfect they take a gamble on us rather than try that other gang over there, because they know those people cannot put their minds to a problem and come up with a constructive proposition.
Of course the government spends a lot of money. Earlier today I listened to the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Stanfield) suggesting that the equipment in the hands of our men in Europe was no damned good. I am not an expert on these matters, but I am certain that if we took

measures to buy new planes, or guns, or whatever, the opposition would accuse the government of wasting money. They should face the implications of their own speeches. However, because they are so much in contradiction with themselves, no one takes them seriously.
Today we are considering government expenditures. I would remind hon. members that the government has no control over most of these expenditures; it is the House of Commons which controls them. For example, if I wanted to cut one cent from the old age pension I could not do it. I wouldn't do it, of course. But don't let hon. members opposite blame me because I am not cutting such expenditures; there is not a single man on the opposition side who would vote for a reduction in the old age pension and all those other measures. The same goes for any other programs of that kind which have been passed into law. The so-called strong executive we hear so much about has no control over these expenditures which were voted by the House of Commons. So the opposition should stop this nonsense saying that the government is spending $28 billion. Yes, we are spending $28 billion, but the portion of that expenditures over which we have direct control is very small.
When people talk about the take of the federal government in relation to the share taken by others, there are a few things I should like to tell them. The national accounts show a totally different profile of federal government spending trends than the motion implies. In 1974 only 6.1 cents in every dollar was spent on the purchase of goods and services and capital formation, compared with 8.5 cents 20 years earlier. This hardly seems like the prescription of a power-hungry executive arm of government. In that same period when the rate of these types of expenditures was increasing by more than a quarter in relation to gross national product, the provinces were in the process of doubling their expenditures in these areas.


Gerald William Baldwin: Prodded by you!


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Since when are we running the
provinces?


Gerald William Baldwin: All the time.


An hon. Member:: We wish we were.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Yet it is the federal government which is characterized as the villain by the opposition. This is precisely the area of federal expenditure-goods, services, and capital formation-which seems to be attacked day after day in this House as having gone wildly out of control.
But what, hon. members may ask, happens to all the rest of the money which is collected in taxes if only 6.1 cents of every dollar goes to direct federal expenditures like national defence, physical works of all kinds, public works, salaries and the like? Those items totalled only $8.3 billion in 1974, and the central government taxed Canadians over $29 billion. The simple answer is that this parliament and its predecessors have committed themselves in various ways to improving the degree of social justice and equity for all Canadians by guaranteeing certain minimum levels of resources to ensure, as far as possible, that none of us thrives-unduly at the expense of a less fortunate neigh-

bour. If you like, it is the price of being civilized, and it cannot be cut with impunity.


Gerald William Baldwin: What a price!


An hon. Member:: Who said that?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I am saying so, and there are a lot of people who subscribe to that thesis because we have won a lot of elections on that issue.


Gerald William Baldwin: The price is not right.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: The point I am making in the context of this motion is that the indirect expenditures to which I have referred are mainly parliamentary commitments by which the executive is bound, and they can be changed only by parliament. The executive does not have the power to alter such things as old age security payments at its own discretion.


Gerald William Baldwin: What about the meat?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Since 1974 such transfer payments as those for old age security, guaranteed income supplement, unemployment insurance and family allowances-all amounts destined to be spent by individuals rather than by governments-accounted for more than $8.6 billion. Another $6 billion was collected by the federal government and turned over to the provinces to be redistributed by them to individuals, groups, and local governments.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: I will read it in Hansard.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Bonjour, Mr. Stanfield. Add to this the fact that more than $2 billion was distributed in subsidies to farmers and by way of incentives to encourage business to locate in areas of high unemployment, and one wonders how the opposition can become so desperate as to claim the need for a reduction in the administrative capability required to remain fully accountable to parliament in carrying out its wishes.
I would remind hon. members that we spend 500 hours a year examining estimates in the standing committees. When one attends these committees one is amazed by the pettiness of the questions which are asked there.
The other day the hon. member for York-Simcoe (Mr. Stevens) spent a whole day talking about the potted plants we have in the Treasury Board offices. There is an old man, 87 years old, who read about that in Hansard. He happens to be my father. He took a trip from Montreal to see what the scandal was about. He went to the department for the first time and then he told me, as we say in French, "That was nothing a fouetter un chat. We have better than that in the old folks' home in which I am living." But it is the kind of petty politics which the opposition plays when we give them 500 hours in which to examine the expenditures of the government.
My father is a layman, a good Canadian who worked for 50 years in a factory. And he would not believe we could spend time on petty things like that.


Gerald William Baldwin: Was he out on Harrington Lake?
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Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Oh, the opposition has great fun speaking about the Prime Minister's house. I do not have to defend the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). But what beats me is the way they like to talk about that big Cadillac of his. I know that guy; I have known him for many years. That is the last thing he would travel in-a Cadillac. It's not his style! When we were both practising law he would go to work on a motor cycle, and people could not believe that a lawyer like the Prime Minister, defending unions, would come to Shawinigan from Montreal on a motor bike. But because he is now Prime Minister the RCMP has decided that he should travel in a car like that. I am sure he hates to be in that big car-he would like to drive that little quick one that he owns. That is more his style.


Walter David Baker: He should have the opportunity.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: It is not wise to have debate and to spend hours or days in the House speaking about matters such as that. But because certain Canadians have put up money to build a swimming pool at the Prime Minister's residence, this is supposed to be a big scandal. It is not the Prime Minister's money, and this swimming pool will be used by future Prime Ministers. I should like to think that one day one of you guys over there will be able to take advantage of it, but the way you are handling yourselves in the House that will not happen for a very long time.
We like to have constructive criticism, but the motion before the House today is not that at all. I might tell hon. members that we are working on the Wilson report. We had two options with which to deal. We could have sent this report to a committee and then waited a year for a report back, study it in cabinet, then bring in a bill which we would send the committee, where it would be another year before it became law. But we have decided to take faster action, and I ask hon. members to judge that. The easiest solution for us would be to send the matter to committee and wait for a report back.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: Your front bench support has left.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Do not worry, they have confidence in me. They know there is no substance to these allegations. I do not understand why we spend so much time on this matter. We have stated our policy. If in the fall or during the next session the government does not bring in a bill, then hon. members will have a good point. Then will be the time to tell me I have not produced. I am doing my best right now.


Gerald William Baldwin: Why could not we have some say about this? Why are you afraid of us?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: This report was tabled a few weeks ago.


Gerald William Baldwin: I do not have the time to wait another ten years.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: We should go to the substance of the problem. Hon. members say the power of parliament has been removed. The House still had direct control over expenditures and budgets, but the point is that the House of Commons does not want to take action on these things.

June 2, 1975
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John Mercer Reid: Parliament has the power to reduce
expenditure.


Gerald William Baldwin: With that slavish majority over there, that is nonsense.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: For a while we had a minority.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: You were good then. You behaved yourselves.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: The people of Canada decided to put all their confidence in one party and they put an end to that situation. We would have been quite happy to share power with hon. members opposite at times, and at other times with the NDP. We were supported by the NDP more, because hon. members opposite were not smart enough. They could have used the situation to get a more conservative administration of sorts, but they kept on playing politics. They always play politics, Mr. Speaker, instead of coming to grips with problems and offering constructive solutions.
Hon. members opposite are always moving motions that produce nothing but a few speeches. I do not mind, of course, because I have to get in shape for the next election and I need the practice. However, I could use my time for other matters that are more meaningful. As I say, we will bring in a bill which will go to committee. If this takes a year, then hon. members opposite can get up and blame me for not delivering. We are here to be blamed if we fail, but we have not even started to take action yet.


Gerald William Baldwin: You are afraid to debate the report.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: We are not afraid, but we do not want to lose time. We want to implement some of the good points in the report as quickly as possible, and this is why I should like some constructive criticism from the opposition. Instead, Mr. Speaker, they have gone back to 1780 and governments of that day. Perhaps we would have had more entertainment by reading some of those ancient speeches than listening to the kind of nonsense we have had today.
We hope the opposition will address themselves to the serious problems facing this nation. In less than a month we will have a budget. This would have been a good occasion to tell the government whether to cut expenditure or increase it, and if we should spend more, where we should spend that money. Or they could tell us where to make cuts. Instead they sit back and wait until the decisions are made, and then complain because those decisions are not what they want. The people of Canada would like to know what the opposition feels is the best thing for the Minister of Finance (Mr. Turner) to do.


Gerald William Baldwin: He has not made up his own mind yet.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Of course he has not. He is waiting.


Gerald William Baldwin: Waiting for us to advise him.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: He is waiting to hear what hon. members think, but they do not offer any constructive proposals. They have three leaders in that party over there, four

critics on economic policy, and so on. Perhaps one day they will all be able to get together.


Gerald William Baldwin: Do you follow Munro or Turner?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: We do not fight outside; that is one great quality of the Liberal party. We fight inside and have a lot of discussion, but we know that when the time comes for the good of the country we will stick together. The people of Canada want constructive leadership, and that is what they cannot find among members on the other side. We have our differences. We do not agree all the time. If ever an hon. member opposite becomes President of the Treasury Board, he will soon discover that very few members of the government agree with him. But when the time comes we unite because we know that in difficult times the people want leadership.


Gerald William Baldwin: You unite because you love your jobs.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I will listen to what hon. members have to say, but so far I am not impressed by the motion. It seems to me this is one more day lost. We would have spent the time more constructively if we had debated a bill. We are losing many days by futile debate of irrelevant matters. We have stated our policy, that a bill will be brought forward in the fall or next session. If the bill is no good, then tell us at that time. If I do not bring forward a bill within a reasonable time, let hon. members opposite make a motion and tell me that I have not done my job.


Walter David Baker: We will remember that.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: What burns me up, Mr. Speaker, is being criticized for nothing. I do not mind being criticized if there is substance to the criticism; but criticizing me for nothing, as hon. members are today, is a waste of parliamentary time. It may very well be that legislation that is good for Canada will not be passed because of this debate.
We hear all sorts of nonsense about so-called waste of expenditure. The opposition has a kind of Watergate syndrome, always thinking that there is something sinister about the government. I think our system in Canada is a good one, but if we continue to use these days to waste time like we are doing today the people will become even more cynical about this place.


Gerald William Baldwin: Have you been reading the evidence in the Hamilton trial lately?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: That is the kind of innuendo and so on I refer to. We have a parliamentary system in which we do not go on fishing, expeditions, but when there is a fish caught we fry him in court right away, and that is what we are doing. This kind of innuendo and so on is the sort of thing with which you can kill your mother or your wife. It is like meeting a friend who says that your wife was not home this afternoon and your neighbour was not home this afternoon. He does not say they were in the same bed, but this is the kind of thing that is implied. When you have an accusation, you should make it.
June 2, 1975


Gerald William Baldwin: What do you do with a dredge, boil it or fry it?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Those guys are close to the stove now. We will see whether the judge decides to put them on the stove or not. That is not our function.


Gerald William Baldwin: You hid it until after the 1972 election.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: This is the system we use because we do not want to tarnish the reputation of people for no reason. We should not do that. We should respect the rights of people, but with all these rumours that circulate a lot of people become cynical about politicians.
I have been in this House for a long time, and let me tell you that there are very few guys who sit in this place who are crooked; but because of all this innuendo all politicians are put in the same basket. What we must have is respect for this House and the elected people in this country. In order to get this we must collectively stop this kind of nonsense.
When we have an accusation to make we should make it, and then stand by it. That used to be the rule in parliament, but the situation is no longer like that. This is why people are cynical about us as politicians. The people who come here to all parts of the House are members who want to serve, but people are cynical about members here because too many people play this little game to score political points.
As a result of the poll conducted in Quebec last week we are now right down in the last position. This is a result of these innuendoes and unsupported accusations, and I say this is unjust. Most members of parliament have lost a lot of money and have made many personal sacrifices in order to serve their constituents, no matter to what party they belong. By playing this little game we, as members of parliament, are destroying each other. We have reached the point that it is sometimes embarrassing to admit to being in public life. We should be very careful in trying to score political points at the expense of the other guy, because this is why our political reputations are going down the drain.
We should spend our time trying to be more constructive and attempting to pass good legislation. We should put our accusations on the table. This is what the government does, and then it stands on its own feet. Hon. members should make their accusations and the government will listen to them and then take action.


An hon. Member:: The government never listens.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: You listen but you don't act.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I think my time has expired so I will thank hon. members for giving me the opportunity to practice my bad English.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, we have had a pretty full and entertaining afternoon. Perhaps the House would consider calling it six o'clock now.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is it agreed that we now call it six o'clock?
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Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: It being six o'clock, I do now leave the chair until eight o'clock tonight.
At 5.55 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.
Stanley Howard Knowles: Madam Speaker, the speeches made this afternoon by the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Baldwin) and the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Chretien) are the kind of speeches one likes to follow in the sense of wanting to reply to some of the points that have been made. That is a temptation to which I may yield for a moment, but actually I take part in this debate because I have a suggestion I should like to make. It is not the kind of suggestion that will be acted on tonight or tomorrow morning. However, it is something I should like to throw into the discussion which takes place with regard to the question of parliamentary control over expenditures.
As I mentioned, before I get to the serious part of what I want to say or what I hope is a constructive suggestion, I wish to comment on one or two things that were said. Hon. members will not be surprised if I say I was wondering this afternoon, when the hon. member for Peace River on behalf of his party was complaining about excessive and extravagant expenditures of public money, where he and most of his friends were during the last few weeks when bills were being put through the House to increase salaries of members of parliament, senators, cabinet ministers, judges, lieutenant-governors and so on. If we are to preach restraint and speak against extravagance I believe the place to begin is right here.
Another comment I should like to make is in response to the remarks of the President of the Treasury Board. He referred to his efforts this afternoon as another practice session. I can assure him that he is becoming well practised in dealing with motions of this kind. It is always a delight to listen to him. I must say, however, that when he makes the assertion that the government is not exercising too much power, that is really all it is, just an assertion. When he stands up and says, "But we won the election", I tell him that has been the excuse of every government majority I have seen in this House of Commons.
It is perfectly true that the Liberal Party came out of the election in 1974 with an overwhelming majority. The President of the Treasury Board thinks that the people of Canada really wanted it that way. Maybe they did on July 8, 1974, but I suggest that the people of Canada have been thinking it over a good deal since then. I suggest they realize that governments which have overwhelming majorities sooner or later become arrogant. The trouble with this government is it is not later, it is sooner.
The appearance of having all the power and therefore being free to put off decisions about major issues is something that is annoying the people of Canada, and is expressing itself on the part of the people in the feeling

June 2, 1975
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that all they have today is a government with so much power that it can just sit there until the eve of the next election and not really try to cope with the problems facing the country. I think of such problems as housing, unemployment, inflation and pensions. What attention are these problems receiving? I contend that the thrust of the motion before us today, in its argument that the government is exercising too much power and is being careless in the spending of the people's money, does reflect the thinking of many Canadians today.
I hope that since every month we do get a little closer to the next election-it is probably a little more than three years away right now-the government will realize that time runs out and that if the attitude of arrogance is established for two or three years, or three and a half years, it will be in vain to try to dispel that attitude during the next election campaign.
However, I said that I did not want to get into the contest between the Liberals and the Conservatives over who was the blackest but rather that I had an idea that I would like to throw into the discussion of the problem of parliamentary control of expenditures. It is a very real problem. It is a problem not just because the Liberals or sometimes the Conservatives are in power.
The problem arises from the fact that the Government of Canada is a heavy spending operation-somewhere between $25 billion and $35 billion a year are spent. When one considers that that amount of money has to be collected and spent with some degree of propriety, it becomes a huge operation, and the possibility of its being done with adequate checks is somewhat slight, to say the least.
Through the years of parliamentary history in the United Kingdom and in this country we have tried to cope with this problem of controlling public expenditures by means of procedures surrounding the granting of supply. Way back in this House we had the practice, which was in vogue in Britain a few hundred years ago, to the effect that before any supply could be granted, grievances could be expressed, and so on. For a long time we had in the House the practice of taking all estimates, every last dollar, into a committee of supply, which was a committee of the whole House. I think it could be said that in those committees some decades ago we did a fairly good job of questioning those items dollar by dollar. But the fact is- and nobody is to blame for this-that the operation had grown so large that it became impossible to continue to deal with all the estimates here on the floor of the House and in committee of supply.
So we tried the idea of referring estimates to committees. We tried that some years ago. We even had a committee called the committee on estimates. But that did not seem to work very well. So then we tried the idea of limiting the number of days in which the estimates could be dealt with on the floor of the House. That soon became a frustrating experience because all the ministers had to do was to just wait until time ran out and then their estimates were passed.
Then we tried again the idea of referring the estimates to committees, and in effect that is the regime that is being practised now. But we find that to be not very

satisfactory. Those who sit on the Standing Committee on Agriculture are not sitting there as accountants trying to save money; they are sitting there with an interest in agriculture, and they want money to be spent on agriculture. Those in the Committee on Health, Welfare and Social Affairs have the same approach, and so on. So we are really not getting a study of estimates with a view to checking or limiting expenses.
This very session we are trying an experiment to see if we can correct the situation by bringing the estimates of some of the departments back to the floor of the House for a day or two at a time. I think we have had some pretty good debates on some of these days, but again the efflux of time results in the estimates being passed. Let us be frank about it. With all the good will in the world and all the impartiality we can muster, we have not yet found a satisfactory way of controlling expenditures in any ongoing sense. Some will say that that is why we have an Auditor General.
The hon. member for Peace River is strongly in favour- and I agree with him-of the idea of strengthening the role of the Auditor General. We also have the Committee on Public Accounts. But so far as we in this House are concerned and so far as the public of Canada is concerned, the operations of the Auditor General and of the Committee on Public Accounts occur after the fact.
The Committee on Public Accounts gets as its terms of reference the public accounts after the financial year is closed, and sometimes it is a long time after the year is closed. And the report of the Auditor General is a report on mistakes that were made in the past. This has to be done and it is supposed to have a salutary effect, but in fact it does not provide for any checks on the expenditures while they are being made. I know that the Auditor General's operation is not only a post factum operation but that he has the authority to make ongoing checks in the departments to make sure the departments are not spending money for which there is no parliamentary authority.
What we have not come to grips with yet is the possibility of there being parliamentary control over the decisions as to how money is to be spent. We get the estimates, that Big Blue book, and by the time we get them, they are an accomplished fact. The Treasury Board has decided that these are the estimates. We can discuss them, we can try to reduce them, we can complain about them, but there they are. We in parliament have no part in deciding where that money is to be spent or how much money is to be spent.
I can imagine that some of my friends in the House who, like me, are interested in procedural matters will say that that is part of the way in which responsible government works. The government makes the decisions, it brings in bills or estimates, and then it stands or falls depending on whether the House supports what it does.
I have been around here a while; I am a traditionalist; I like the ways in which parliament is operated, and I suppose I could say, let us stick with the good old ways in which it used to be done. But I wonder if we should not do some hard thinking about this and come up with a way in which members of parliament of all parties in some appropriate committee can have a hand in the decision as to how the money will be spent before it goes into the Blue Book of estimates. Once the items are in that book, all of our
June 2, 1975

discussion in committee of supply, in standing committee, or on the floor of the House, does not change it at all. I should not say that in absolute terms-I have seen one or two dollars changed in a few decades-but in reality nothing is changed.
All the discussion we have afterwards in the Committee on Public Accounts, or among the public on the basis of the Auditor General's report, does not change a thing except for drawing attention to some sins, the result of which is that some of those sins are not committed again for a little while.
What we really need is parliamentary participation in the decision as to how money is to be appropriated, where it should be spent, for what purposes it is to be appropriated, and so on.
As I say, Madam Speaker, I fully realize the conflict between this approach and the idea of responsible government, namely, that the government makes the decisions and all we can do is to say yes or no. But perhaps that idea needs to be considered carefully in light of the complexity of democratic government in a country like Canada today when we are spending $30 billion odd, when we have hundreds of thousands of persons who are working for the government, when we are involved in the lives of our people from the cradle to the grave, perhaps not as much as I would like it to be but certainly a lot more than was the case a few years ago.
Perhaps the sacred notion that only the government can produce that Blue Book and put it before us has to be revamped. Perhaps the sacred right of members of parliament, as the representatives of the people, to have some say about how the purse is distributed should prevail, and we should establish some kind of committee which could have some say in how the money is to be appropriated before it gets into that Blue Book.
I am a party to the experiment we are conducting in this very session. As I have already said, I think that some of the days we have spent on estimates have been worth while. I am prepared to go further and say that I think under our present system perhaps one or two departments per year should come before us without time limit, so that we can really hold the ministers at bay until we get satisfaction about their estimates. But even if we achieve that, we would still be dealing with proposals for expenditures after the fact. In that situation it is inevitable that most of the comments from the opposition side will be comments of criticism and complaint.
The President of the Treasury Board is quite right that members of the opposition complain about too much money being spent on one thing, and then they come along and want more money spent on something else. I will accept that criticism myself. There are things we spend money on around here which do not deserve it, and I think the poor, people on low incomes, those who need better health care and those who need better pensions deserve more money put their way. It is not satisfactory and it is really frustrating that all we are able to do is address ourselves to these things after the horse has been stolen from the public treasury, if I can produce an awfully mixed metaphor.
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As I said when I began, I do not expect an idea like this to be approved tonight, tomorrow morning, or perhaps even in this session's Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization, but I throw it out, and I throw it out as strongly as I can. I do so as a traditionalist in terms of parliamentary procedure who still likes it the way we did it when I first came here. Granted, we were spending so little money then that we had plenty of time to do it in the old way.
What we need is a new approach to the spending of money. Even if we do not make the same change with respect to legislation, even if the government has the say as to what bills it brings before parliament, surely in terms of the proposals for the spending of money there should be some input into the making of those decisions by members of parliament as a whole before the fact, rather than afterwards. I think if we had something like that, it might be tougher on us in the opposition-we might have to take more responsibility for the decisions- but I believe it would be a better and more responsible way of discharging our task as the guardians of the public purse.


Mr.   C.-A. Gauthier@Roberval: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to deal with the motion of the opposition:
That it is the opinion of this House that it is necessary to declare that the power of the Executive has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished; and, in particular, that means must be found by this House to inquire into, prevent, and correct abuses in the expenditure of public money by the government of Canada, including the immediate passage of laws to strengthen and improve the office of the Auditor General.
Madam Speaker, I think the excessive powers of the present government is the cause of the financial dictatorship exercised by that government. Who is responsible for that dictatorship of the federal government over Canada as a whole which is extended to the provinces?
The federal government was certainly wily with the provinces when it took from them the taxation rights it has exercised for years.
Today, the government is blamed for its tremendous spending powers. I quite agree, but that situation did not originate with the present government. For over 30 years, succeeding federal governments have taken advantage of their sound economic situation to increase their expenses at the same rate as their tax revenues.
Municipalities and school boards complain that the provinces are infringing upon their fields. The provinces voice the same complaints with respect to the federal government which interferes increasingly every year into exclusively provincial fields. While everyone protests loudly against federal infringements, the government apologizes and even strengthens its hold, claiming that it is only trying to save the provinces. Indeed, the federal government, the great protector of the provinces!
It is to improve social justice, as the president of the Treasury Board (Mr. Chretien) said this afternoon, and the same minister added that although the government doubled its expenditures, it is not any worse than the provinces which have doubled their expenditures also. But he forgot to indicate that the provinces are still directly responsible for matters of health, highways, agriculture

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and all the sectors devolved upon them by the constitution.
Madam Speaker, the President of the Treasury Board greatly disappointed me today all through his speech. I usually like to listen to him, for he is serious, but today, I do not know what sort of wind was blowing, I did not appreciate at all his speech.
I wondered: Is it possible that I could have travelled 500 miles to attend such a speaking contest. He said to the opposition members: If you really want us to work, make us serious proposals. But whose duty is it to make proposals, Madam Speaker?
Whose duty is it to bring forward legislation in this House? The minister seemed to forget that the government does have this authority. And the minister went on: We do not have any control because 50 per cent of the estimates are controlled by the House. The minister knows quite well that every budget is submitted by the government to the consideration of the House and, of course, the majority government always approves it by a majority vote.
If the minister lost control, it is certainly not due to the opposition, but perhaps to the excessive number of technocrats to whom he gave, not to say yielded, all his powers. When he says that expenditures have doubled, he should add that the number of those technocrats has also doubled. The minister also said that we have no time to lose, because we must live in the twentieth century.
The time has come to call the government to reason, to convince it that accumulated deficits will never produce real worth for the country. Even if we discuss government expenditures during 500 hours, we will have lost our time if a negative vote from the government and government members destroys the work of Parliament. This is not the time to play politics in expectation of forthcoming elections. This is the time to administer and save public funds.
We received the new Auditor General's report. I did not read it through, but had a quick look at it. I hope it will be taken seriously by the minister and implemented. I hope the report does not raise government's anger as did the one by the former Auditor General who was forced, although under cover, and I stress forced, to leave his post, because probably he was not looked upon favourably by the government. For this reason, I extend to the new auditor the wish not only that he remain in favour with the government, but also that he stand his ground, that he remain independent in his role. Because I believe that a country's Auditor General must not be influenced by government. The Auditor General's office must be permanent, independent and free to act.
Unfortunately this has not been the case in these last years, with very unfortunate disputes centering on the Auditor General. As long as everyone's function is not respected, as a group with responsibility is not garanteed the freedom to discharge that responsibility, the country will suffer. Everyone is now complaining that government expenditures are too high. That may be true! There certainly are oversights, because we see in the auditor's report eye-opening remarks. There is stated for instance, in paragraph 54, that the auditor recommends adequate control over the defence industry's productivity program.

I do not wish to read all these data. I shall simply refer to the titles, for I do not have too much time and I simply wish to call the ministers' attention. Because he told us in his speech this afternoon that he would introduce the bill in connection with this report.
We are waiting for this famous legislation, but we are also waiting for the recommendations of the board to be included and not to be put aside.
There is another remark at paragraph 55, and I quote:
55.	Internship Salaries Improperly Retained by Canadian Forces Medical Officers.
And paragraph 56 reads:
56.	Shared Costs under Assistance Contracts not Verified.
These remarks are rather serious, Madam Speaker. I continue the quotation:
In our 1972 Report (paragraphs 105 and 107) two instances were given of the Audit Services Bureau of the Department of Supply and Services being unable to give an opinion as to the costs of contracts providing Crown assistance to Canadian manufacturers.
It is then recommended that in the future, the government submit these contracts to the auditor who will be entitled to inspect them.
Then, paragraph 57 says:
57.	Unauthorized subsidizing of Non-Government Laboratory.
"Unauthorized subsidizing".
If in studying the law, we notice weaknesses in our own constituency concerning unauthorized contracts, and if the auditor and his office have the time to study each item seriously, they will find that action was often taken without the knowledge of the department. It would be appropriate to call the attention of the minister to these weaknesses.
Then, at paragraph 64, we can read:
64. Questionable Payment of Costs of Maintaining Leased Housing.
We may wonder if this concerns housing which was leased and for which the rent was subsequently increased without justification. In some measure, this is what the auditor wants to bring to the attention of the minister.
Paragraph 66 reads:
66.	Lack of Authority to Credit Interest to Special Account.
67.	Expenditures made Without Proper Authority.
Section 29 of the Post Office Act, R.S., chapter P-14, provides:
The Postmaster General may, without public advertisement, enter into a contract with any person operating a railway, air, bus or common carrier ship service, but no such contract involving an annual expenditure of more than five thousand dollars may be entered into without the approval of the Treasury Board.
Paragraph 68 deals with the duplicate payment of disability pensions. All mistakes done in the accounting, Madam Speaker-without the work of an auditor, an audit office, we could never know about them! I am sure it is like with unemployment insurance in those offices. Inevitably, the men who work in those offices are subject to mistakes like anyone else, and I think that is where you see the importance, the need of having an Auditor General's office that is absolutely free and can have access to all documents in order to inform Parliament on what is happening within the administration. Paragraph 69 deals with

losses through the fraud, default or mistake of any person. That is again a human matter-there are some ten cases mentioned in respect of those losses. And there is defalcation at a Canada Manpower Centre. This has to do with employment offices, defalcation at a Canada Manpower Centre-it is serious enough-and I think that in a report such as this in which we see all departments screened they become interested and must keep that report in mind. I think that every department must read that report carefully, and when the legislation is introduced, there will be provisions to prevent such things from happening.
It also says:
Other cases that the Auditor General considers should be brought to the notice of the House of Commons in accordance with section 61(1) of the Financial Administration Act
73. Weakening of parliamentary control.
All estimates of expenditures submitted to Parliament shall be for the services coming in course of payment during the fiscal year.
I believe the minister is well aware of that. That is where the Auditor general gives notice to the government of the carrying over on the previous budget of several unspent amounts of money on the current year budget. I believe and I hope that the minister, as he said this afternoon, will take this report into serious consideration and will accept it as his own so as to introduce legislation. He asked the opposition party to make suggestions, proposals to him, but let him introduce the legislation. It is not the opposition that will introduce the legislation in this House; let him introduce it and we shall see what it contains. We shall examine it to see if it includes all the guarantees needed to ensure, on the part of the Auditor General, a free discharge of his duties and I believe that from that time on, we will work seriously in this House, Madam Speaker.


Mr.  R. Gordon L. Fairweather@Fundy-Royal: Madam Speaker, the part of the motion which concerns me is that part having to do with the power of the executive. I want to discuss accountability and secrecy in government, a perennial difficulty which might be seen in a different perspective, depending on where one sits in this chamber.
It seems to me that if the government could devise ways of being more open with parliament and the people, it would gain substantially in the passage of measures which it wishes to bring before parliament, and its measures would meet greater acceptance on the part of the public. I never understood this conflict between "we" and "they". It seems to me it would be better to use the word "us" when referring to this House.
We adhere a fair amount to the adversary system in public life. It is an important element, and essential. But it seems to me that it is important for members of parliament to have the opportunity to obtain some consensus from the various constituencies on public matters. This would involve not an adversary role for members, but a new role. We can only do this if there is frankness on the part of the government.
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I want to compliment the government on one of its measures which has involved members of parliament and constituencies, and found a good deal of acceptance, after some pressure of course being exerted in the introductory phase of the program. I am referring, to the Local Initiatives Program. I am not now discussing individual projects. They have no part in this debate. The fact remains that there has been a major amount of consultation with constituency advisory groups and members of parliament, no matter whether they support the government or not. By and large, projects have been accepted in the constituencies. Some members have had to endure a certain amount of pressure and they could easily have said, "This is the government's program, and the government can take its lumps." But they did not say that. Because there has been a bit of sharing, a bit of openness- with some exceptions, I admit-the program was successful and remains an interesting illustration of what can be done when there is frankness in government.
Having said that, I turn to a side of government spending and government policy where there is no openness, where the reverse holds true. I am referring to the Department of Regional Economic Expansion. The department is involved this week in a seminar in Halifax. The national conference on development incentives was called by the Nova Scotia government, held in Halifax, but closed to the public and press in order to permit full and frank discussion. A fair amount of government money is involved, and many of those present are DREE officials or their counterparts in provincial development departments. There will also be representations by organizations such as the Independent Businessmen, the Manufacturers' Association, and some chambers of commerce. I, for one, deplore this method of transacting public business. The meeting has obviously been called in an effort to direct or re-direct regional economic expansion policies which need inputs from the various private and public sectors.
I think it is wrong for the government to be part of any system which bears the imprimatur "secret" or "not open to the public." I forecast that the inevitable reaction will set in after such a conference, and its purpose will be frustrated because of the very shroud of secrecy which has been cast over it.
I have made these points because I want to contrast the LIP program and its openness with the DREE program, which is the very antithesis of openness and, for that reason, is in serious trouble.
In these days many people have been considering the whole aspect of government in democracies. Some have even convened seminars on the general topic of the gov-ernability of democracies. I hope that hon. members who are interested will take the opportunity to read an important series of lectures by Ralf Dahrendorf, who is now head of the London School of Economics. Mr. Dahrendorf's first lecture in 1974, which is part of the series of Reith lectures, begins by saying, "The elementary desire to be free is the force behind all liberties." After discussing the dilemmas facing the democratic governments of the western world, Dahrendorf says:
The force of liberty, of the principles of a humane and open society, may be equally strong, but it needs explanation: moreover, such explanation may lead to different conclusions at different times.

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He goes on to discuss the political economy of liberty in a changing socio-economic climate, and then says:
The new liberty which we can hope and work for is a liberal response to a world which is in a process of radical transformation.
He then discusses some of the pressures on governments. I listed some of them, taking my list from another speech which he made. There is a problem facing democracy because of the desire for participation. Governments have asked for participation. We use phrases such as "participatory democracy". I have wondered why democracy needs such a qualifying adjective. Then, once the concept is in operation, governments are confronted with problems because it is difficult to take certain decisions, some of the conflicts participation arouses being incapable of satisfactory resolution, and the government can only act as a mediator or as a referee and thus leave some areas of participation frustrated.
Then Dahrendorf talks about the fact that political spaces are too small and insufficient to reach some of the problems. We have heard, from two or three of our colleagues who have taken part in this debate, suggestions as to ways and means of improving the mechanics of this institution.
Then he says international agencies are not designed to cope. We pay, I presume, more than lip service to many of these agencies, but the fact is that many of the agencies to which we belong, the World Health Organization, UNESCO and some others, are so politicized that what I might call neutral decisions, that is, decisions not based on politics, are impossible to make. The World Health Organization is just about to exclude Israel. UNESCO, in a very cynical mood last November, did the same thing to Israel. So there are serious problems with international agencies. Such agencies, for instance, have no way of coping with the harvest of the sea bed; there are no mechanics other than national ones to decide what is to be done in this field.
Then again, and we are daily witnesses to this, there is the extra-parliamentary power held by giant corporations and giant trade unions, neither of which seem very amenable, I regret to say, to the sovereignty of parliament. I am not indicting anyone; I am stating as a fact that the Port of Montreal is now closed despite a law of this parliament; I am reminding hon. members that despite the efforts of a responsible minister of the government the mails of Canada are in a chaotic state, 1 cite this as an example of the problems facing the democratic process and there seems to be no way of effectively controlling these extraparliamentary forces-I was about to use the phrase "bring to heel" but I did not mean that in the sense of interfering with the rights of individuals. But I am rather old-fashioned, in the same way that the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) claims to be an old-fashioned person. I have an old-fashioned view as to the sovereignty of this institution and I am deeply grieved when the public becomes cynical about it. I therefore welcome my hon. friend's resolution because it gives us a chance to say some of these things.
Part of the problem, too, is that many of us feel uncomfortable about telling the truth. I think of a couple of

people who were not afraid to tell the truth. One was George Orwell, surely one of the great writers in the English language during the present century. He was not taken in by rhetoric even though he was a Democratic Socialist. When his party in the thirties turned its back on what was obviously happening in the Soviet Union, he told the truth. As a result, he was out of favour with the left. He told the truth, too, about what went on later in the authoritarian states-Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany, and so on. This time he fell out of favour with those who in the late thirties cozied up to these dictators and were prepared to accept them.
These are days when it is well to examine our institutions and procedures and to think about openness in government. One of the senior people in the department of urban affairs had the temerity to discuss with the Indian people a policy decision affecting them. One would have thought the Russians were coming. The man was dismissed, although I notice recently, since those days, there has been a new wave in the department and the very issue for which that director was dismissed a year ago has become the in thing to discuss with the Indian people. I am willing and anxious to give the government credit for its turn-around, but the main thing here is that there should be an opportunity for openness. Nobody here would suggest for a moment that plans to house the Indian people of Canada have anything to do with the national security of the state.
It is my view that the only areas where governments are entitled to keep things secret are where the security of the state is involved, or the privacy of an individual in his dealings with the Crown, or the confidentiality of the Crown's dealings in connection with expropriations and so on. It is this propensity to secrecy which means that in so many instances we parliamentarians read in the newspapers from time to time that policies have been leaked. They are leaked because frustrated public servants are unable-presumably under the Thoreau doctrine of civil disobedience-to accept certain decisions or impending decisions; they feel there should be more public discussion.
I have never been able to accept the government's preoccupation with secrecy. I would have thought the AHOP incident would have shown to the ministry and to the executive that a little more openness, a little more consultation, a little more frankness, would lead to much more acceptance by the public of the issues involved.
The need for openness has been dealt with on many occasions. By curious coincidence, the Library of Parliament this very day sent members a useful check list of articles in leading publications dealing with some of these issues. I took the trouble to get several of them copied. I do not intend at this stage, when other members wish to speak, to load the record with them, but there is a series of articles which are worthy of attention, one, for instance, in the fall edition of The Public Interest by Daniel Bell, the prognosticator of the industrial revolution. His article discusses in a very apt metaphor, I think, "The Public Household-on 'Fiscal Sociology' and the Liberal Society." Might I be allowed to quote a few paragraphs because I think the analogy might find some acceptance on the part of ministers. Daniel Bell says:
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In the classical tradition of economics, there are two realms of economic activity. There is the domestic household, including farms, whose products are not valued (a housewife is not paid; the produce consumed on the farm is not always measured in GNP) because they are not exchanged in the market. And there is the market economy, where the value of goods and services is measured by the relative prices registered in the exchange of money.
Here is the important sentence:
But there is also now, more important than the other two-
And I presume the very reason for my colleague's resolution.
-a third sector which has come to the fore in the last 25 years, and which in the next 25 will play an even more crucial role, the public household. For reasons that I seek to make clear below, I prefer the term "public household," with its sociological connotations of family problems and common living, to the more neutral terms such as "public finance" or "public sector."
Bell goes on in an interesting article to elaborate the need, in this whole area of the public household, to exchange views and ideas, and to have some control over the purse strings. I do not want to stretch this analogy any further. I look to the treasury benches tonight, in thinking about public households, and wonder exactly how these learned gentlemen would fit into the public household. I suggest to them that if there were some exchange of information with those who are part of that household in regard to spending and budgets, then the administration of public funds would be much more open and amenable to the scrutiny that this resolution seeks to make possible.
I think, that should be enough from me, Madam Speaker, and I should like to conclude by making three points about democracy and its governability. The first is that I hope most hon. members are as nervous as I am about my feeling that there should be retrenchment in the field of education. Though there will soon be a time when fiscal arrangements will have to be made between Canada and the provinces, there cannot surely be, at this stage in Canada's history, any retrenchment in the field of postsecondary education, or any attempt made to tie it to the job market. If this should occur, and if this policy were found acceptable, then as far as I am concerned it is the end of free inquiry by our universities. Certainly I hope that will not happen.
Secondly-


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


Mr. Fairweather:: Madam Speaker, may I finish two sentences?


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Morin):: It is agreed that the hon. member may complete his remarks?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Robert Gordon Lee Fairweather: I am very sorry, Madam Speaker; I do not like to take more than 20 minutes but obviously I have. I was making my second point, which is that there cannot be by government any restriction of free play on the part of the media. I am uncomfortable with the word "media" but it is a convenient word to use. I am made nervous by
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those people in society who feel there should be some restriction on some aspects of the media. I think probably in the next two years what we will need will be protection, not restriction, of the media.
Lastly, I want to make the point that most of us within the next few years are going to be increasingly aware that we are members, in one way or another, of large organizations. We each have a whole series of organizations to which we owe loyalty.
Once again I go back to the Montreal analogy. The group will be more important to many people than the larger loyalty, and I think this has serious policy implications for governments. I hope this group loyalty will always take second place to the loyalty that we owe to our country.


John Mercer Reid: Madam Speaker, what we are discussing today is a breakdown in the operations of the House of Commons. It is quite clear from hon. members who have spoken that there is a great deal of disquiet about the way in which the House of Commons is operating and the way in which it discharges its duties.
I agree with the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Baldwin), who has moved the motion, that the power of the executive has increased and is increasing. The reason for this is twofold. First of all, the House of Commons has taken many decisions over the last few years. In the ten years that I have been in the House of Commons I have seen parliament give the executive great power to do things on behalf of the Canadian people. Much of the power that the executive has acquired it has acquired because the parliament of Canada has given it that power. Along with that power and authority to do certain things, parliament has also provided spending power.
The executive is also increasing its power in another and very important way. In order to cope with the problems of the 1970's the executive has gone through a number of reorganizations. It has focused on the problems it has had in trying to deliver services. It has analysed those problems and come up with solutions to them. Consequently the executive, I believe, has been able to keep in touch and deliver services more in keeping with the changes in Canadian society that have taken place.
However, contrast this with the way in which the House of Commons operates. The House of Commons operates in a way that would be appropriate if society were at the level it was in about 1900, a time when society was quiet and the demands put upon its politicians and its legislative apparatus were much less. It was a time when there were practically no demands for the involvement of members of parliament and ministers in many of the operations with which they are now concerned. By being able to cope with these problems of supplying today's services and being able to reorganize itself, the executive arrogated a great amount of power unto itself, putting a greater distance between it and the House of Commons.
I believe the reason for this is that the House of Commons has never been able to focus upon what its relationship toward society at large should be. Because it has not attempted to focus upon this issue, it has not been able to cope as effectively with the changes going on in society as has the executive. What frightens me about this is the lack

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of respect in which parliament is held by many people outside the chamber. They feel that parliament, mainly the House of Commons, is not able to grapple properly with the problems of our society. They feel we are not only wasting our time but wasting their time. They feel we are not able to provide the kind of leadership that is required because the House of Commons is impotent.
In many respects what makes the House of Commons impotent is nothing more nor less than those of us who make up its membership. We have been unwilling and unprepared to give up the mythology about this place that so many of us have had bred into us when we enter this chamber. We have been unable to face the fact that the House of Commons no longer is equipped to do the kind of work that it did 100, 200, 300 years ago when the original forerunner of this motion was run for the first time in the British House of Commons.
We have a swiftly moving society in which changes take place rapidly. Yet we in the House of Commons are profligate with our time. We do not budget our time or attempt to distinguish between what is important and what is not important. We waste our time with trivia and do not focus upon the larger issues of our day. Consequently all one has to do if one wants to find proof of this statement is to observe the debates of the House of Commons on any bill that is before it. Even on many occasions of opposition day motions like this, to look for and find intelligent debate instead of a series of monologues is almost impossible. If one looks at the record of the proceedings before committees, unless there is some very constant whipping of the committee to focus on what it should be dealing with, members go off in all directions, and we do not pay attention to the subject before us. It seems to me that is one of the grave weaknesses of the House of Commons, and there are reasons for that.
When I go home to my constituency I am expected to know not only what is going on in every department of the federal government, but also what is going on in the provincial government and each of the municipalities. That is tremendous pressure that members of parliament have to bear. In the kind of work we do for the constituency we must deal not only with federal departments and agencies but also with other levels of government as well. Therefore it becomes very difficult for us to concentrate on one of two subjects.
Behind the reforms of 1965 and 1968 was an attempt to set up cadres of experts in committees made up of members of parliament who would stay with those committees and learn what the departments were doing and what they were about, and then be able to criticize effectively. We have few experts in the House of Commons. We have few people who have followed the operation of a committee or a department over a long period of time. So what happens is that, when a minister comes before a committee with civil servants and other outside witnesses brought in by the committee, members of parliament do not have the background necessary to ask the right questions, the tough questions to get the answers out.
In many cases the ministers and the civil servants sit there ready to provide a great deal of information, but the

questions never come. Most of them are disappointed at the kind of grilling they get before a committee. This seems to be a failure not of the House of Commons but of the members who make it up, and of the lack to any attempt to focus on what really is important.
If we take a look at the way in which the House of Commons operates and read the debates in respect of any bill that you care to choose, we will find that the frightening thing is that most members do not focus on what the bill does. What they focus on is the speech that they happen to be making, and if they can attach to it a particular bill before the House, so much the better. The most fantastic reform that could be made in the House of Commons would be to force members to speak on the topic before them. That would completely destroy 95 per cent of the speeches made in the House of Commons.
One must be realistic, and one has to look at the people who make up the House of Commons and realize that we are not experts but generalists. We are not going to be able to do a job on the estimates, we are not going to be able to quarrel with the government about expenditures, because members are not interested in finding out how the government is administered. What the members of parliament are interested in is the policy of departments, what a department is doing, and in having a department expand its services, preferably in their own ridings. What they are not interested in doing is saying that we must cut back on this service which is going to affect their constituents, or we must cut back on another service because we cannot afford it.
What happens when we go into the committee is that members argue with the ministers to increase the amounts of money they are spending on programs, particularly in their ridings. I do not blame the members. I do this myself when I appear at the committees, and I make my representations to the ministers the way everybody else does.
It should be clear when we are trying to reform the House of Commons, and we should be precise in acknowledging this, that we are not interested in cutting back expenditures or in decreasing services to our constituents, but that what we are interested in is the policy of departments and the expansion of these services. That happens to be the way the House of Commons operates.
There are very few wealthy men in the House of Commons, if there are any, which means that most of us are looking for the expansion of government services rather than contractions. We are part of the average Canadian group, and that is what we are doing. When we look at reform of parliament let us take that into consideration and put together a structure that is going to make some sense.
As I said before, we are profligate with our time. It is quite true that we are taking longer to pass laws than we ever did before. We are sitting longer and producing less. The fact of the matter is, as pointed out by the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Chretien), that we are spending more time on the estimates than parliament ever did before, yet we are accomplishing less and feel less satisfaction with the work we are doing. We are spending more time on legislation yet we feel we understand it less.
June 2, 1975

A book was published this year called "The Canadian Legislative System", written by Robert Jackson and Michael Atkinson. In that book they deal with the amount of time and effort that goes into the passage of legislation. Let me quote from the book at page 157 as follows:
Allan Kornberg's research demonstrates clearly that Parliament has been working longer to achieve less in the twentieth than in the nineteenth century. Table 3 shows that the lengths ot Parliaments and the number of sitting days have both increased while the percentage of bills introduced and passed has declined. The average number of bills passed per day between the first and eighth Parliaments was 1.39, but between the 19th and 27th Parliaments the performance ratio fell to .54.
That is a disgraceful record. They used a second example on page 162, Table 4, in which they gave the years of the session, the average number of sitting days, the average number of public bills enacted, the average number of days to pass a bill, the number of pages of enacted legislation and the average number of pages passed per sitting day. Let me take the latter statistics and run down the table for you.
The base period used was 1945-1947 when there was 4.3 pages of legislation passed per sitting day; in 1953-1957 it was 3.7; in 1964-1968 it was 3.5 and in 1968-1972 it went to 3.7. That is quite a decline from 4.3 in the 1945-47 period. Of course the number of pages does not give any idea of the quality of the legislation, but I think it is symptomatic to note that in this particular session it has taken us an average of three and one half sitting days to pass each bill that has gone through the House of Commons. Indeed, if one looks at the size and the complexity of the legislation, we would have to admit this is probably a disgraceful amount of time to spend in the House of Commons on average pieces of legislation.
What we should be focusing on in the House of Commons are those pieces of legislation which are clearly important, and we should be spending more time in committee on those pieces of legislation that are obviously more of regional and less of national interest.
One of the things we have to do is learn to examine our operations from the point of view of time. For example, we should have committees travelling more, but we cannot operate the committees and the House of Commons with the existing committee system if we have them travelling. The fact of the matter is that the machinery we have set up in the House of Commons requires a great number of members of parliament to be present, and when we send out a committee, and right now we have the committee on immigration travelling, we immediately see the very large holes in the ranks of all parties.
We should be re-examining the way in which we do our business so as to provide time for all committees to travel, so that the committee work can be done and members can get out to their constituencies. Right now those of us who have to go some distance to our constituencies find it is becoming impossible to keep in touch with our constituents as much as we would like to do that.
I do not believe this can be called one of the vintage sessions of parliament. I think the House of Commons has been relatively dull. It has not produced much in the way of debate. It is important to realize that the House of Commons is perhaps more of an opposition forum than it is a forum for backbenchers on the government side. Nonetheless, both sides have an obligation. But this House
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of Commons has not been good. I believe there are a number of reasons for that, and the first is that we have gone through two elections, four years of politics, and most of us are trying to recover from the experience. There are leadership problems and changes taking place in three of the four parties.
The economic problems we have to face are so overwhelming that few countries have been able to find a way out. Members are frustrated because there do not appear to be any easy nostrums available to solve the problems. The last reason is that there is a feeling that the House of Commons is not operating as an effective unit in itself.
I believe that the House of Commons has an important role to play as a deliberative and legislative body. As a deliberative body it should be discussing more often the issues of our times. We do not really do that at the present time very well because, with the nature of our parliamentary system, we tend to be dealing with legislation which is one or two years old. We just do not process the material in the proper way. It lies around and waits and waits, until finally it goes through after one or two sessions. We have bills that have been hanging around for two or three sessions which are still not passed.
The debates that take place in the House of Commons tend to be a farce. Why? Because as soon as a bill is introduced, the minister speaks, perhaps the parliamentary secretary speaks on this side, members on the opposite side speak, and we may have a debate which takes place for one or maybe two days. After that, the debate becomes a monologue because we on this side are told to sit down, not say anything, and try to get the bill through. That means that for the last four or five days of the debate on that particular issue very little is heard from the government side because, if we stand up and say something, members opposite tend to take that as a starting point to continue and go on and lengthen the debate. We must change that because if the House of Commons is to be meaningful there must be debate and not monologues. That means there will have to be an acceptance on the other side that debate ought to take place and that we ought not to have a series of monologues.
Members opposite complain bitterly that they are not reported on what they say in the House of Commons. Of course they do not get reported, because to get reported in the House of Commons there has to be clash. We do not have clash because members opposite do not want to accept any kind of programming or any kind of limitation that would in fact lead to the kind of clash, healthy debate and exchange of ideas that would be healthy and useful for this organization.
Before my time is up, Madam Speaker, I want to run through a series of other suggestions I have concerning possible changes. First of all I think we must focus on working on some kind of allocation of time procedure, not a guillotine but a method by which members opposite are brought into the final discussions when time is allocated on legislation. I believe this is essential if the House of Commons is to become a forum for debate and exchange of ideas, instead of witnessing the kind of sorry situation that debate now passes for in the House of Commons.

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Second, we must re-examine the committee process radically. We must reduce the number of committees and the number of people serving on those committees. Right now, to make the committee system work we should have approximately 150 members. We actually have about 65 members from both sides of the House who make the committee system operate. We might as well accept that. We must accept the fact that members of parliament come down here on their own volition. They write their own job description. For some of them committees are a joy; for some they are a drag. Let us face up to this fact. Let us reduce the number of committees and the number of people on them.
We must examine the way chairmen of committees are elected. I would like to see more chairmen elected from the other side. I think this is a desirable reform so that members from all sides of the House can take their full responsibilities in holding offices in the House of Commons. I believe we should also re-examine the way in which we deal with estimates in the standing committees. We must provide more opportunity for the members to focus in on these.
I believe one of the major obstacles to the committees doing a good job on estimates is the fact that there are too many members on the committees. Because of the unreasonably high quorum requirements, there are members who are interested in some committees who cannot get in the amount of time they need in order to do an appropriate job. That means we must cut down on the size and on the numbers, and give them more time.
What the government should be thinking of doing is spreading out the time during which members can carry out an examination of the departmental picture over the full year, and not just have it concentrated in the period between March and the end of May. It would be more desirable if this were spread out over the whole of the year. What we could do is set up four of five departments in the first term, four or five in the second term and four or five in the third term. In this way we would not have the tremendous crunch of committees that now takes place when we consider all our estimates at the same time as the legislative program starts to move through the House of Commons. So, from the period beginning the end of February until the end of May the committees are totally overburdened.
The amount of sitting time committees can get in any given two-week period is about five slots of about an hour and one-half each. This simply is not enough time. We could organize our system better if we gave up the idea that in fact members of parliament are interested in the actual spending, the real dollar figures. What we have to do is see that members are interested in the departmental picture, and design a system where they can have the annual reports, the estimate figures, and whatever other information they require at their fingertips. In this way there would be more time to do the job. This means that many of the functions members now have in respect of the estimates and the way in which committees operate will have to be changed. I think that if we change them and acknowledge what really goes on, we can make reforms that would be worth while.

Another matter I think we should look at with great seriousness is the concept of members of parliament and the roles they play in their constituencies as an important part of the procedure of feed-back for government. Members of parliament complain bitterly that when they speak in the House no one listens to them, and that when they ask questions in a committee no one pays attention. My experience on this side is that indeed members of parliament are listened to in the committees and in the House of Commons by the bureaucrats, the ministers, and the people who assist the cabinet in making decisions.
The problem is that in many cases the members are not sufficiently well prepared in order to make the cases they want to make. However, they are the most valuable feedback system in many cases the ministers and the bureaucrats have in respect of the way in which their programs are actually operating in the constituencies. It seems to me that there really should be some forum, or some way in which members can organize and provide information to ministers and departments in a better manner than is now done through the medium of the estimates.
In many cases I believe there is a failure on the part of the members to actually go out, co-operate, and do the sort of thing the hon. member for Fundy-Royal (Mr. Fair-weather) mentioned. I feel there are opportunities for us to make substantial changes in the way this House operates, and the sooner we do it the better for all of us.


Mr. Tom Cossitt (Leeds):: Mr. Speaker, when I first came to the House I suppose like all newcomers I had certain preconceptions of what was going on here. Perhaps the strongest of these was the belief that the executive arm of government was growing at an alarming rate to the point where we were moving in the direction of a presidential system and rapidly away from our traditional parliamentary system of government. After three years I have seen nothing to weaken this conception, and I have seen countless things to strengthen it.
It seems to me a delusion to believe that parliament is the completely effective governing body in Canada. While parliament should be supreme, its authority has been whittled down and carved up by a government that has little respect for the parliamentary process. The tone was set some years ago when the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) made his infamous remark that opposition members of parliament were nothing more than a bunch of nobodies. This belief has been carried right on through the entire apparatus of government to a point where parliament has been treated with disdain.
Executive power has been increased with fantastic speed. The expenditure of public money has risen with little restraint to levels undoubtedly believed impossible just a few short years ago. I doubt if even the cabinet has much control over this situation. We are being governed primarily from decisions in the Prime Minister's office, and parliament is being tolerated as an unfortunate constitutional nuisance.
A few days ago the Prime Minister came before the House to be questioned on the estimates of the Privy Council and the Prime Minister's offices. Supposedly he had come here to allow parliament to examine and question the gigantic increases in executive power in Canada,
June 2, 1975

and it was to be a day when questions could be asked and presumably answers obtained. It certainly did not turn out to be the kind of day it was supposed to be. Instead, the House was treated to a rambling, filibustering, arrogant monologue, and in effect we were told that it was not our business to ask searching questions.
In effect we were told that the executive branch of the government was supreme and it could do what it liked to do without accountability to parliament, and therefore without accountability through parliament to the Canadian people themselves. The Prime Minister was not only demonstrating arrogance and his dislike of the rights of the democratic opposition but, what is far more important, he was demonstrating his obvious attitude that the government has some sort of God given right to do anything it wishes to do without being properly and adequately questioned about it. His performance was an indignant and almost sneering response on behalf of the government to those who dared to exercise their right on behalf of the people of Canada to examine the galloping rise in government expenditures since the Prime Minister came to office.
One need only look at what has happened to government expenditures since 1968. Then federal government expenditures were about $12.25 billion. This year they are over double this figure, $28 billion, or a little more. In the last year alone, the government has increased its expenditures by over $6 billion taken from the taxpayers' pockets. Years ago the late C. D. Howe made that now famous remark, which came back to haunt him years later, "What's a million?". Today, the government has brought that remark right up to date by saying in effect, "What is another six or seven billion dollars?"
If one works out the total government expenses right down into hours, the government is spending over $3.25 million an hour to carry out its operations. One can only imagine with horror the inevitable disaster to which such policies are taking the economy of the country, and what the inevitable result will be for a democratic parliament if we stand by and allow the power of the executive branch of the government to continue to run wild.
I realize that in using figures to illustrate the situation in Canada today one runs the severe risk of drawing from the Prime Minister a ridiculous statement, such as the one made in the House on Thursday, May 22, and I quote from page 6011 in Hansard. He said: "What I am pointing out is that the hon. member for Leeds is making fraudulent use of statistics". I can only presume that the Prime Minister was referring to figures which I have used in regard to the galloping increases in expenses in connection with the operation of his office, his official residence, his summer home, and the expenses of the Privy Council office. I suggest that if any of these figures are fraudulent, the guilt should be laid directly where it belongs, namely, at the feet of the Prime Minister of Canada, because any figures that I have quoted with regard to such expenses have been taken directly from answers given by the Prime Minister himself to questions asked in the House by me and other members of this party. If the figures are fraudulent, the Prime Minister himself must accept the blame.
Auditor General
In 1970 the cost of operating the Prime Minister's office was just over $1 million, and today, five years later, in 1975, the cost will be over $2 million. If such figures are fraudulent, they are taken directly from government records. The cost of operating the Privy Council office in 1970 was $5,800,000, and this year, just five years later, the figure has gone up to over $17 million. If such figures are fraudulent then the fraud has been committed by the Prime Minister and the government.
In his remarks on May 22 the Prime Minister made light of his own expenses by referring to his ashtrays and his chandeliers. He tried to make a joke of it all in the hope, I presume, that it would be simply swept aside or buried. The fact is that his chandeliers and ashtrays provide a very clear indication of the over-all champagne taste of the present government when it comes to spending public money. It starts at the top with the Prime Minister's emperor complex, it goes along to the royal style of living of the Prime Minister, and moves on without any restraint whatsoever through every department of government. Never was the champagne taste of the government more apparent than when one has examined the cost of the Prime Minister's residence itself, figures that show that the operating costs have increased 173 per cent since the present occupant of 24 Sussex Drive moved in.
If ever there was an example of increasing power of the executive branch, it was the refusal on the part of the Prime Minister to allow Michael Pitfield to appear before the Miscellaneous Estimates Committee. In short, the committee and this House were told that certain people in the entourage of government are beyond questioning by the elected representatives of the people. It is almost as if Sussex Drive has become the emperor's palace where statements will be made when the emperor wishes to make them, and in the meantime those of us in parliament should behave by not asking questions.
The arguments advanced by the Prime Minister that Mr. Pitfield was in a position where, as secretary to the cabinet, he would undoubtedly know cabinet secrets and therefore could not testify because of this, are nothing more than sheer nonsense. If a question in this area had been asked, Mr. Pitfield could have declared that he could not answer it because of his attendance at cabinet meetings. There are other questions Mr. Pitfield could have been asked and could have answered. But he has been hidden away from examination. The Privy Council office grows in size to almost 400 people, with another 100 in the Prime Minister's office, and yet this group has been placed on some sort of pedestal beyond proper and adequate parliamentary control.
It might be appropriate to refer to words written by the Prime Minister himself in April of 1963 when he wrote of the Liberal party: "There is not remaining in this party one single man for whom principles mean more than power". It seems to me that the Prime Minister has been reading his own words to a point where he has now put them into practice himself, where it has become power for the sake of power on the part of the executive branch of the government, rather than power for the sake of solving the problems of the people of Canada.

Auditor General
Let me quote again words written by the Prime Minister appearing in Cite Libre with reference to his predecessor. He wrote:
Mr. Pearson must betray the program of his party as well as the principles. He had nothing to lose but his honour. He lost it. His whole party lost it too.
I would suggest that if any honour has been lost by those in the Liberal party, it is being lost by those who sit opposite and go along with the policies of the government which will inevitably destroy this country economically and which are downgrading rapidly the power of parliament.
The Prime Minister also Wrote these words: "Pearson, Pickersgill, Lacoste, Gordon-all lousy idiots". I suggest that if there are any idiots at all in the House of Commons today, then they are those who are prepared to sit idly by as the government proceeds along its present disastrous path.
In the three years I have been a member, one of the things that has bothered me the most is the inability of the House to examine properly the estimates of various government departments. I recall, on occasions prior to coming here as a member, sitting in the gallery as a spectator and watching members examining the estimates of various departments. I recall that it seemed at that time that members had some say, some control, over what was going on. But along came this government in 1968 and changes were made that resulted in the operations of parliament being drastically curtailed to a point where members of the House do not have any effective control over the estimates of the government.
I think that the taxpayers of the country would be absolutely appalled if they could witness the shocking spectacle of hurried and inadequate examination of the estimates by the committees of the House in order that the estimates can be pushed through the House by a certain set date, regardless of whether or not members are satisfied with what they contain or with whether they have obtained answers to legitimate questions.
I firmly believe it would be better, and would serve the democratic process better if parliament were to revert to the system of the past where there were no fixed deadlines in existence for the passage of estimates through the House.
Something that should be of the greatest concern to members of the House has been the revelation that certain funds are often buried or hidden in the estimates so that they can not be properly discovered. We have seen examples uncovered recently of hidden votes for so called "security measures", and one wonders how parliament can properly examine expenditures of this country when things are hidden from its view.
I was surprised to learn, when raising certain questions before the Miscellaneous Estimates Committee on the expenses of the Prime Minister's office, that expenses for the use made of government aircraft by the Prime Minister are not included in any way in the expenses and operations of his office.

Since 1968 we have witnessed the Prime Minister travelling to all parts of the world, and when it is on government business I am sure Canadians have no argument with this whatsoever. Nevertheless, the expenses for such things should properly be charged to the operation of the Prime Minister's office, and perhaps the reason that this is not done is because it would also necessitate charging to the same budget the expenses involved in the Prime Minister's use of government aircraft for extensive pleasure and political trips. Surely it is time that the Canadian people knew of the thousands and thousands of dollars which have been spent in this regard by our Prime Minister and which have been buried in the costs of the Department of National Defence, or in the costs of the Department of Transport.
It is strange that if a minister of the Crown other than the Prime Minister uses a government aircraft, the cost of such operation is charged back to that minister's department and reflects in his expenditures, but that this procedure is not followed in regard to the Prime Minister himself. One can only conclude that placing the staggering travelling costs for pleasure and politics on the part of the Prime Minister under the costs of his office would be something more than parliament and the people of Canada would be prepared to swallow.
No one should really be surprised by the government hiding things because secrecy has been one of its main principles. It has been used to withhold from parliament what seems to me in many cases to be legitimate information. Many hon. members at one time or another have been refused answers to questions on the ground that the information fell into such categories "not in the national interest" or "not the established policy of the minister to reveal". Such phrases have been used in most cases for the sole purpose of preventing parliamentary examination of facts.
I suggest that the only reason for any information of any kind ever being withheld from this House should be that the answer, "made public, would be harmful to the national security" otherwise all information should be readily available to parliament. At the same time, of course, one can understand the hesitancy of the government in adopting such a policy because it would obviously make even clearer the encroachments made by the executive branch on the powers of parliament.
One would expect that the Auditor General would be able to dig out all the things which are wrong in the gigantic operation of government, to recommend that something be done about such things, and to expect that something would be done. This has obviously not been the case, and the fact is clearly illustrated by these words written by the former Auditor General, Maxwell Henderson:
Looking back across the years, I can see that the office of the Auditor General of Canada has been increasingly beleaguered. The attempts to hamper his staff and hamstring his investigations have come ever more dangerously close to fruition and today, for all my work, the office is in graver danger than ever before. I can see that unless this post is strengthened-strengthened substantially and soon-two results are bound to follow: first, the staggering toll of waste, fraud, duplicity and ordinary stupidity that costs the Canadian taxpayer millions of dollars every year will continue to climb. Secondly, the ultimate control that
June 2, 1975

parliament wields over the purse strings of the nation will continue to diminish.
Those words not only told what was happening at the time they were spoken but provided a prophetic look into the future. Already that future has become all too visible as the control parliament wields over the purse strings of Canada goes ever downwards. If ever there was a time when parliament should take the bull by the horns and pass legislation to strengthen the office of the Auditor General, that time is now.
The problem seems to be that the government regards the Auditor General as it regards parliament itself, nothing more than a nuisance. When Maxwell Henderson wrote the following words about the then president of the treasury board, who is now the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Drury), he might just as well have been writing about the entire cabinet. This is what he said:
Drury, by his own admission to me, never understood the function of the Auditor General; he could never comprehend why we reported all those non-productive expenditures in our reports and I had to explain to him that it was done by order of parliament.
The fact that the functions of the Auditor General had to be explained to a minister is bad enough, but it is even worse that the government should object to parliament being made aware of so-called non-productive expenditures. I recall one non-productive expenditure in my own constituency of Leeds where the government had moved in a water testing laboratory to the city of Brockville just prior to an election campaign. It moved it in with much suitable fanfare for local consumption, and supposedly Brockville had received a permanent establishment from the Department of Health and Welfare. Then when the election was over, the government moved the establishment out to another centre, but it remained stuck with the lease and continued to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars rent for vacant space in a shopping centre until the lease expired some years later.
I would like to return just for a moment to the growth in the Privy Council office and in the Prime Minister's office, which provides an excellent example of the increasing power of the executive branch of government. What on earth do all these people do? On May 22 the Prime Minister tried to pass it off by saying that about half his staff existed to answer his mail, but a look beneath the surface clearly shows some of the things which have happened since 1968, and probably the most obvious indication of the increase in power of the executive branch appeared in the establishment shortly after the Prime Minister took office of regional desks in his office. No longer were the elected representatives to be the ones who reflected the opinions and views of the Canadian people. Instead, an addition was made to the bureaucracy, and further additions have been going on ever since.
Even these additions are not sufficient to satisfy the obvious lust for power on the part of the Prime Minister and some of his associates. They have found it necessary to engage all sorts of outside consultants, brought in for large fees, to perform services which could undoubtedly be performed by those already in senior positions in the public service. Among the vast personnel in the Prime Minister's office is a horde of administrative assistants, executive assistants, special assistants, and so on. I would like to refer briefly to one of these individuals, the princi-
Auditor General
pal secretary to the Prime Minister, Mr. Jack Austin. In particular I would like to refer to a recent Southam News story which stated in effect that he was using the facilities of the Prime Minister's office as an information gathering centre to fight a $70,000 personal tax case against the government.
This is a pretty serious allegation, and it is certainly serious enough that it should have been dealt with immediately by the Prime Minister. If the news story is not according to fact, this should have been stated publicly at once. However, a strange silence on the subject is the only thing coming from the government, and it seems to be yet another example indicating that the Prime Minister's office and the Privy Council office are some kind of inner sanctums beyond parliament, beyond criticism by the press, and beyond any accountability whatsoever to anyone.
I realize that I have only several minutes left, so I would like to conclude by saying that there are many unanswered questions. I think the Globe and Mail in an editorial a few days ago put it well when it said, in regard to the appearance of the Prime Minister before this House recently, the following:
But what Mr. Trudeau forgets is that there are a great many Canadians who feel entitled to answers to the questions he dodged: why has the cost of running the Prime Minister's office and the Privy Council office increased 40 times over...


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I regret having to interrupt the hon. member, but the time allotted to him has now expired.


Mr. Serge Joyal (Maisonneuve-Rosemont):: Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the motion submitted today by the members of the official opposition refers to a bill with a view to increasing and reinforcing the office of the Auditor General of Canada.
I am all the more satisfied, considering that the hon. member for South Shore (Mr. Crouse) is here and that, as member of the opposition, he is presiding over the work of such a committee. Being myself vice-chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and having had occasion since the beginning of Parliament to participate actively in the committee's tasks, one will readily understand, Mr. Speaker, that the motion submitted by the opposition today is not a matter of indifference to me. Indeed, since the publication of the Wilson report on March 27, 1975, I feel that there is not a single member in this House that is indifferent to the office and future of the Auditor General. But before mentioning anything directly about this report, Mr. Speaker, I should like to point out the impartiality, neutrality and honesty with which the hon. member for South Shore is presiding over the destiny of the work of the Public Accounts Committee.
Indeed, Mr. Speaker, ever since I have been attending the discussions of this committee, all members of Parliament who are on the committee, including members of the opposition, have noticed by themselves to what extent the hon. member has mastered the work of the committee and to what extent he is concerned about ensuring its effectiveness.

June 2, 1975
Auditor General
Indeed, Mr. Speaker, I should like to re-establish in the minds of Canadians the credibility of the Public Accounts Committee. It happens too often that one relies on the sayings of an Auditor General whose mandate has ended, and not enough attention is given to the work of the present Auditor General and that of the committee. It is a known fact, Mr. Speaker, that since the beginning of this Parliament, the Public Accounts Committee has already submitted a first report and is now drafting a second one. This second report, Mr. Speaker, is being drafted following submission of the second report of the Auditor General on March 31, 1974. Since the beginning of April, the committee for public accounts studied ten paragraphs of the report of the Auditor General for the financial year ending in 1974; I think it should be able to table its report within the next two weeks.
That is to say, then, Mr. Speaker, that since the start of the 30th Parliament, that committee has already brought the House two reports. If there was no agreement between the members of the committee to accelerate the work, to avoid partisan attacks, to attempt to diversify the work of the committee by bringing discussions to the table bearing on various subjects, I doubt that we could be as proud as we are today of the work of the committee.
Still, Mr. Speaker, I must point out that the attendance of the committee members during this Parliament is not what it should have been. For instance, I must mention to the hon. member for Roberval (Mr. Gauthier) that his party has failed completely to show up for the work of the committee since the opening of this Parliament.
I should also point out to the member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) that his party is very seldom represented. It is too bad, because each time we had to rely on a colleague of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, he always raised pertinent questions which could be included as recommendations in our report. I would therefore hope, Mr. Speaker, that this party will be more assiduous from now on.
I would also make the same comment, Mr. Speaker, about the two main parties in the House. The proceedings of this committee often cannot be immediately concretized in recommendations because we do not have quorum. Thus, for example, when we agreed with the Auditor General that a special meeting would be held on October 12, we had to wait to get a quorum while the whips went to fetch some of their colleagues who were sitting on different committees.
I deplore the fact, especially since the members opposite have loudly brought forward the issue of the credibility of the proceedings in the Public Accounts Committee. If they are so anxious to criticize the government administration, they should be the first ones to sit in majority on this committee. Well, I say so, Mr. Speaker, and without any partisan thought, that has never been the case since the beginning of this 30th Parliament. And I deplore it all the more so that the business of this committee is conducted, I think, as I said earlier, in a nonpartisan manner.
[DOT]
I would like to point out, Mr. Speaker-and this has been mentioned directly in the Wilson Commission Report-that the Auditor General's Office has experienced

considerable changes since Mr. James Macdonell has been appointed. I want to point out also the excellent work accomplished by Mr. Macdonell in the public accounts committee.
You know, Mr. Speaker, in the Middle Ages there was a saying that when a new monarch was crowned in replacement of one who had died or had resigned, the palace had to be redecorated. Sometimes, that was done to the accompaniment of drums and trumpets, but some other times, it was done in a silent manner, but not less efficiently. I believe that is the course Mr. Macdonell has chosen to follow when he took up his duties.
For instance, when his predecessor, Mr. Henderson took office, 10 per cent of the staff in the Office of the Auditor General were professionals. When he left, half were professionals a quarter of which were chartered accountants, members of Canadian acknowledged institutions. On the other hand, the report of the Wilson Commission stated that out of 395 authorized positions in the office of the Auditor General, only 290 had been filled.
Of course, Mr. Macdonell could have assumed his post, made profound statements, awakened interest in mass media, solicited interviews with newspapers, radio and television stations and attempted to make a fuss about the lack of personnel in the Office of the Auditor General. Such was not the case, Mr. Speaker, he was rather efficient. I am surprised that members of the opposition failed to point this out.
Judging from what the previous speakers said, most of them did not read the Auditor General's report for the year ending March 31, 1975. The hon. member for Leeds in particular most certainly did not read paragraphs 70 and 71. Mr. Speaker, these paragraphs do not deal directly with shortcomings or breakdown in government administration. It is much more general. It is a study on financial administration and control.
This paragraph would authorize the Auditor General to carry out a thorough investigation into the financial administration and control of each and every department and Crown corporation. With his personnel of 290 people, the Auditor General would certainly have been unable to complete this study to which he refers in his report for March 31, 1975, without the assistance of additional personnel. What did he do? Did he call a press conference? Did he complain on TV or on the radio about his lack of personnel? No, Mr. Speaker, he was a lot more resourceful. What did he do? He met the Chairman of the Public Service Commission, as stated in his report on page 75, and asked to take part in the public service executive transfer program.
What is this program all about? It is quite simple. It is a program which permits a department or a Crown agency to call directly upon the private sector and request for the government the personnel who could be associated to an assignment or particular duties. The Chairman of the Public Service Commission agreed to the Auditor General's request, so that 19 accounting firms throughout Canada were called upon to provide the Auditor General with the additional personnel.
June 2, 1975

Mr. Speaker, although I realize time passes quickly, I seek the unanimous consent of the House to go on with my remarks.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. McCleave):: Order, please. It being ten o'clock, it is my duty to inform the House, pursuant to Section 11 of Standing Order 58, that proceedings on the motion have expired.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

Jack Marshall: Mr. Speaker, I find that I continue to make apologies to the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) or his representative who is here tonight, for having to appear at the late show on a subject which he continually refers to as a provincial responsibility. I also find that changing conditions, primarily caused by inflation, demand leadership from the minister to deal with what I can only describe as a crisis in Canada. I refer to the crisis which exists in relation to the amount of assistance available to those citizens who suffer from disablement, particularly blindness.
On February 20 I asked the minister if in view of the fact that the introduction of a guaranteed annual income had to be postponed because of differences of opinion by the provincial welfare ministers, whether any discussion had taken place as to the plight of those citizens, the blind and disabled persons of Canada.
The minister correctly replied that most provinces had opted over the years to take over blind and disabled allowances, which are included in the various social assistance programs under the Canada Assistance Plan. But I have to say that at present, under existing conditions, this is not good enough, because conditions today dictate that these disabled citizens cannot under any circumstance cope with the cost of the bare necessities of life required to live even below acceptable standards. And I cannot accept the answer from the federal government that the problem is provincial in nature which, to my mind, is only passing the buck-as I do when I question the provincial authorities concerned.
The Blind Persons Act and the Disabled Persons Act are reported on each year by the federal department of National Health and Welfare since back in 1952. In 1963 the legislation was amended to set a maximum allowance of $75 per month; and later in 1966 was again amended to
Adjournment Debate
permit provinces under the Canada Assistance Plan to transfer the allowances under the provincial programs.
I asked the minister and the parliamentary secretary about this. Why this was agreed to by parliament I'll never know, when I try to reconcile it with the fact that the federal government dt the same time retained jurisdiction over the Old Age Security Act. By so doing, at the present time the disabled and the blind are at the mercy of 10 or 11 different programs of the provinces which, to my mind, is a ridiculous situation and leaves much to be desired.
But the tragedy of the situation is this; Madam Speaker, and that is that the disabled and blind citizens of this country are at the mercy of the procrastination of both levels of government which, for some reason or other, cannot or will not realize the special needs of those citizens of Canada who, through no fault of their own, were born with or became victims of disablement. And they will continue to suffer and will deteriorate in their bodies and minds as a result of a lack of compassion on the part of those who are responsible.
And I ask the parliamentary secretary replying tonight, when will there be some realization of the need for attendant care that is necessary for the disabled citizens of our nation? Or when will there be some realization of the special nutritional needs of the disabled and the blind, not only the adults but children suffering from the various afflictions that Canada supposedly recognizes? Again I ask, when will there be some recognition of the needs of our own Canadian adult citizens who suffer through no fault of their own?
I know and recognize that the minister responsible on a federal basis is aware of the difficulties that have come to the fore as a result of the action taken by past governments ignoring the needs of Canadians who suffer through no fault of their own and, due to the stupidity and ignorance of past governments, recognizing that disabled citizens must be given some consideration as a result of the transfer of responsibility; but until he can come up with an agreement on a guaranteed annual income he must show some compassion to provide assistance to those who have little or no influence to present a case for themselves in their predicament.
I can only say, Madam Speaker, that the situation which exists has got to be criminal; that these citizens are allowed to exist under the financial assistance presently available in this supposedly affluent nation of ours. And yet the solutions are simple, Madam Speaker, if there is any compassion in the hearts and minds of those who govern, and that is to reverse the various orders in council that proclaimed the criteria for the chronically sick under the Disabled Persons Act of 1970 and the Blind Persons Act. This can be done by repealing that procedure to give the provinces the option I have expressed, and by introducing on a national basis an amount of assistance to allow those who are disabled or blind the basic benefits which Canada proclaims is in her interest to provide for Canadians.
The disabled of our country should be granted immediately an amount of assistance even related to the poverty line figures as established by Statistics Canada, or according to their established needs as related by the Senate Committee on Poverty, which the government chooses to

June 2, 1975
Adjournment Debate
ignore. Else let it ever remain on the conscience of every member of parliament that we have ignored those Canadians who have no voice in presenting their case to those who are elected to govern. I hope the parliamentary secretary will be able to provide an answer to this predicament which exists among those who are blind and disabled.


Miss Coline Campbell (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member so rightly indicated in his question of February 20, and again tonight, the provinces can provide more substantial benefits to the blind and disabled persons within their boundaries by opting to apply the more generous provisions of the Canada Assistance Plan instead of the Blind Persons Act and the Disabled Persons Act which sets a maximum benefit at $75 per month.
It was because of the limitations of the categorical programs which classified need into the categories of blind, disabled, unemployed, and so on, that it was decided that the federal government would cease to participate in these programs. Most provinces have decided to cease to accept applications under these programs and have transferred recipients to their more comprehensive assistance programs. Unfortunately, the province from which the hon. member comes has preferred to remain within the programs which limit allowances to $75 per month, rather than apply for blind and disabled provisions under the Canada Assistance Plan.
I must also correct the impression the hon. member would leave with the House when he implies that "the guaranteed income is a long way down the road." I would point out to hon. members that, at the most recent conference of ministers of welfare, it was reaffirmed that the social security system should incorporate income support for people who are unable to work or for whom employment cannot be found-those very people of whom the hon. member speaks, the blind and the disabled, as well as the aged. As the minister said in this House on May 7,1975, "A guaranteed income program for those unable to work should be implemented as soon as possible, even as soon as 1976." I would refer the hon. member to the communique which was issued at the end of the conference and made available to all members of the House for more details in this respect.
I would also like to point out to the House that a major element of the new approach to social services and one which received unanimous approval from all the provinces was that people in receipt of support should be provided with the rehabilitation and employment services required to make it possible for them to take employment found or created for them. It was agreed that cost sharing for rehabilitation services to disabled persons would be substantially improved by adding a number of services not hitherto covered by shared cost agreement, including transportation services and the operative and capital costs of provincial rehabilitation facilities.
In addition, sharing would apply when such services are extended for the purpose of helping disabled people to become more self-dependent in their homes instead of only when the services relate to obtaining employment. Improved financing for support services for the aged and handicapped is intended to enable as many as possible to remain in their homes and communities rather than being

sent to institutions. Such services could include homemaker services, meals on wheels, and day-care for the aged and the handicapped.
I have just stated what this government is doing for the blind and disabled and others for whom the government shows such deep concern.


SUPPLY AND SERVICES-CREATION OF JOBS IN AEROSPACE INDUSTRY IN WINNIPEG-GOVERNMENT ACTION
A. Daniel McKenzie: Mr. Speaker, on May 23, 1974, a great stage production reached Winnipeg, Manitoba. It was none other than the "Liberal (ravelling road show" with a list of goodies. The main actors in this road show were the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Richardson), and the hon. member for St. Boniface (Mr. Guay). It had an illustrious director, none other than the president of the Liberal party of Canada, Senator Molgat of Manitoba.
In this great ham production it was announced that there would be a $15 million hangar built in Winnipeg- one of the goodies. It was reminiscent of the 1972 campaign, the "goodies campaign". Well, we have seen no evidence of this $15 million hangar being built, and if it ever is built it will not be a political gift. It was announced as far back as 1968 as an Air Canada requirement for Winnipeg to look after the larger aircraft.
It was also said in this road show that 800 aerospace jobs would be created in Manitoba. We have seen no evidence of 800 jobs being created. There has been a decrease in the number of aerospace jobs in Winnipeg. Despite the announcement that the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Goyer) made last week that the Buffalo aircraft would be overhauled at the Bristol plant, this will mean no increase in staff whatsoever.
Shortly after this big show on May 23, 1974, the Liberals put out a paper called the "South Centre Focus". This paper states that 800 new jobs will be created for Winnipeg South Centre, and continues:
It is estimated that 800 new jobs will be created as a result of James Richardson assigning all the Department of National Defence Boeing 707 work to the Winnipeg facility and as a result of the directions given Air Canada.
What does this mean to my riding of Winnipeg South Centre? A bunch of baloney. They are so concerned with my riding! It would mean the addition of 3,600 people into the community, based on a family unit of four. It is said that these jobs would mean an annual payroll addition of $10 million, based on an average wage of $12,500. I say that is completely false.
I now refer to some other election material put out by the Minister of National Defence:
The latest and in some ways the most important achievement in Jim Richardson's six years as the federal member from Winnipeg South is the return of a major Air Canada overhaul base to Winnipeg.
Completely false. This election material goes on to say: That "something" has been achieved by Jim Richardson and the Air Canada overhaul base is back home again in Winnipeg.
Another complete and total fabrication. He is playing with people's lives; he is misleading people, and hon.
June 2, 1975

members opposite do not care. I hope they have a good answer; if so, I will apologize.
This material goes on to say that Air Canada's $15 million super hangar will overhaul the Boeing 727's. The 727's are going to be overhauled in Montreal, and the minister knows it.
Air Canada made a statement on December 5, 1974, under a heading in the Free Press "Air Canada hangar role 'conjecture'". The statement continues:
The type of work to be carried out in the new Air Canada line maintenance hangar which should be built by 1976 is still "conjecture", and Air Canada spokesman in Winnipeg said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Then we have been told that more grants will be made available for CAE in Winnipeg. Under the heading "Richardson, Marchand consult on Winnipeg aircraft work", a Free Press report goes on to say:
A federal government capital grant of between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000 is available for new equipment at the CAE aircraft repair base-
I guarantee that the whole thing will be closed down by the end of the year. In answer to a question of mine on May 23 about the creation of 800 aerospace jobs, the Minister of Supply and Services said that Bristol Aerospace engaged more workers than last year. I have checked into this and there has been no expansion whatsoever at Bristol Aerospace. The minister went on to say that the "general aeronautical situation in Winnipeg is much more advantageous than in any other region of Canada". If it is advantageous in Winnipeg, I should like to know what it is like in the rest of the country.
Another news release also from Boeing indicates there are layoffs rather than any expansion. In a news release dated May 29 from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers of Winnipeg it is stated:
From the present total employment of 160 (98 union, 62 management), there will be continuous layoffs until the total employment target of 69 (48 union, 21 nonunion) is reached on August 1,1975.
We are going down, Mr. Minister, we are not going up to the 800 figure, and we will never let you forget this in Manitoba. The press release continues as follows:
To reach this goal there will be 91 layoffs within the next two months.
In its future plans, C.A.E. finds it no longer good business sense to retain its Department of National Defence approval, therefore, will no longer be qualified to perform any sort of work for the Department of National Defence. It also means the elimination of all side shops such as welding, heat treating and plating.
The Company does intend to retain its M.O.T. approval which allows it to work on civilian aircraft; however, this type of work is of a very inconsistent nature.
The news release also states:
Air Canada still owes C.A.E. 100,000 man-hours of work for 1975, and D.N.D. owes 40,000 man-hours of work.
I hope the minister will be able to inform me tonight when this work is to come forward. The release continues as follows:
Supply and Services Minister Jean-Pierre Goyer stated that Winnipeg is a privileged city because of all the aerospace work being performed here; we question this statement. We also realize that the promise to create 800 new aerospace jobs in this city was a damn lie.
TransAir did absorb about 20 C.A.E. employees but since January 1, 1975, 130 employees have departed from C.A.E. Many former C.A.E.
Adjournment Debate
employees have been forced to accept low paying jobs, and you can be assured that they have considerable resentment toward the government because of its lies and neglect of the West.
I should like to point out that the aerospace industry-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I regret having to interrupt the hon. member but his allotted time has expired.


Jean-Pierre Goyer: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to comment on the non-parliamentary words that have been used by my hon. friend, as I think we have had a lot of those comments today. Perhaps we can go to the substance of the matter.
Since January of this year my department has placed a total of $11,907,000 in contracts with the Manitoba aerospace industry. For the balance of this year I expect that an additional $4 million will be placed quite shortly, possibly rising to $6 million, depending on the timing of future government aircraft programs.
Of this work close to $6 million worth of contracts will be carried out by Standard Aero in the manufacture of engine components and the repair and overhaul of engines, while almost $8.9 million involving manufacture of aircraft components and the overhaul of aircraft will be performed by Bristol Aerospace Limited. As a matter of fact as recently as last week I announced a contract with Bristol in the amount of $1.64 million for the conversion of D.N.D. Buffalo aircraft to research and rescue machines.
These government contracts alone will provide jobs for over 700 people in the current year. I think it is important to recognize the substantial share of the federal government's aerospace requirements that is enjoyed by the Manitoba sector of the industry. For example, in the fiscal year 1974-75 the distribution of aircraft repair and overhaul contracts alone present the following interesting figures: In terms of dollars awarded the figures are Nova Scotia, $4.7 million; Quebec, $29.5 million; Ontario, $29.1 million; Manitoba, $13.8 million; Alberta, $2.4 million and British Columbia $262,000. In terms of dollars per head of population Manitoba is first with $13.67. Second is Nova Scotia with $5.79. Then Quebec follows with $4.89. The total for Manitoba is away out in front of all the provinces in its share of the repair and overhaul business.
I should further note in passing that while employment in the aerospace industry declined nationally from 35,000 to 25,400 people between the end of 1969 to the middle of 1974, it rose in Manitoba from 2,300 to 2,900 people in the same period. Definitely things could be improved, but I believe this proves that Manitoba is well ahead in terms of the aerospace industry.
In conclusion I should like to say that in respect of the Air Canada hangar the hon. member will see that the government will fulfil its promise. In the case of the DND-707 repair and overhaul facilities I hope that the strike at TransAir will come to an end in order that we may continue the work we promised in Manitoba.

June 2, 1975
Adjournment Debate


ENERGY-FUNDY TIDAL POWER PROJECT-INQUIRY AS TO COMMENCEMENT OF STUDIES
J. Robert Howie: Madam Speaker, the problem of assuring an adequate production of low-cost power for the Atlantic seaboard is compounded by the lack of co-ordination between the federal and provincial governments, the lack of positive leadership and planning.
I made the suggestion to the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion (Mr. Jamieson) in committee and in the House that the greatest potential infrastructure dynamic in Atlantic Canada today is the Fundy tidal power project, which has been favourably endorsed and is to be the subject of a five-phase study. What I wish to do tonight is convince the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion that it is very important for his department to be directly involved in the Fundy tidal power project to ensure that its full impact as a development tool is recognized and realized. In other words, I want DREE to assume the leadership for this project and fill the vacuum which has existed too long. I feel that DREE has demonstrated the capability of being the vehicle to harness the input of all departments of government, the provincial governments and agencies, to move this project forward.
The Fundy tidal power project can have a tremendous impact on recreation, tourism, industry and commerce in Atlantic Canada. It could do for Atlantic Canada what the tar sands can do for western Canada. It is my hope that the minister would welcome the challenge. At the very least, DREE should be represented on the study board.
The Atlantic region of Canada has one of the greatest predictable energy potential developments in the world. At the head of the Bay of Fundy, between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the tides rise and fall some 50 feet twice a day, and this phenomena will go on forever into the future. The energy which this volume of water could generate passing through turbines amounts to billions of kilowatt hours when converted into electric energy. A large-scale Fundy power development would save over 10 billion barrels of oil over a 75-year period.
The development of a Fundy tidal power project in the Atlantic region would be the first real infrastructure on which all manner of other industrial enterprises could be founded. It is only natural that enterprises consuming power will locate where the source of power is large and constant, not threatened by external factors such as world politics and resource shortages. There is a vast potential for electrochemical and electrometallurgical industries which are so dependent on the availability of large blocks of electrical energy. Moreover, there could be a tremendous surge in tourism which will have a great impact on employment growth rates within the related service industries.
Fundy tidal power development has many advantages. It can provide an independent energy source for Atlantic Canada while conserving oil for the rest of Canada. It can help to improve Canada's balance of payments. It would provide Atlantic Canada and the rest of Canada with greater security against the risk of rising energy costs. It becomes part of the solution to the basic problem of regional disparity, and it gives people of the Atlantic region a sense of pride and confidence, not only in their

own region but in the knowledge that they can contribute significantly to the rest of Canada.
With all these advantages going for it, and a major energy crisis on our doorstep, now is the time for action on the Fundy tidal power project. It is time that the federal government, and in particular the Department of Regional Economic expansion, took the initiative and provided positive leadership in this field. With strong leadership we can have interprovincial support, and with strong direction and purpose we can have federal-provincial co-operation. The sooner these great sources of renewable wealth can be developed for the benefit of the citizens of Canada, the better.
I suggest that a start could soon be made on the Shepody Bay and possibly the Minas Basin project by forming a Crown corporation, with shares owned by New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in proportion to their investment and legal rights, and with financial input from the federal government. Strong leadership from the federal government could bring the provinces together to settle the many questions concerning the division of obligations and benefits from such a project.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to respond to the hon. member for York-Sunbury (Mr. Howie). He has spoken about federal leadership in energy matters relating to the Maritimes. I should like to point out to him some facts of life.
Let me point out, first of all, that the federal government in the past year has poured $1 billion worth of compensation payments into Quebec and the Atlantic provinces to provide a uniform price for crude oil. I should also like to point out the Point Lepreau nuclear generating station which will receive half of its funding from the federal government, as well as the hydro interconnections between various provinces and the value of that standing offer by the federal government.
The hon. member has quite rightly raised the matter of the five Fundy tidal power studies. Surely this is one of our great untapped power generating sources. I assume that the hon. member is referring to the recommendations of the Bay of Fundy Tidal Power Review Board. That board suggested that the 1967-1969 Atlantic Tidal Power Programming Board study be extended by a series of phased studies relating to the five following points: first, marketing of tidal power; second, transmission of tidal power; third, retiming or storage of tidal power; fourth, power system studies relating to utilization and marketing of tidal power; and fifth, environmental impact arising from development of tidal power in the Bay of Fundy area.
I am happy to indicate to the hon. member that arrangements have now been concluded whereby the federal government is authorized to meet 50 per cent of the cost of the recommended studies, and the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia will each pay 25 per cent of the cost, up to a maximum total cost $3 million.
Discussions have been and are currently taking place between federal and provincial officials on the setting up and management of the study program. A meeting of federal and provincial officials is currently scheduled to
June 2, 1975

take place later this week so that they may allocate specific study work projects and arrange for their execution.
I think this will indicate to the hon. member that activity is going on between the two levels of government to see that these important studies related to the Bay of Fundy tidal power will be carried out.
Adjournment Debate


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Laniel):: The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m.
Motion agreed to and the House adjourned at 10.32 p.m.
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Tuesday, June 3, 1975